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4591ca7a-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-bf5dcc4b89c8 | Short Stuff: James Polk, Disinterred | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-james-polk-disinterred | Did you know that former president James Polk had his final resting place moved twice? It's true! And almost a third time even. Let's go listen to some short stuff. | Did you know that former president James Polk had his final resting place moved twice? It's true! And almost a third time even. Let's go listen to some short stuff. | Wed, 22 May 2019 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=142, tm_isdst=0) | 11738086 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making small, smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry. And like I said, this is short stuff. So let's get to it. About James Cape. That's right, let's get to it. James Cape Holk, 11th President of the United States, former Governor of Tennessee, former speaker of the House and House Representative of the State of Tennessee. Former member of the Senate. Or was he? He clerked for the Senate. He did clerk for the Senate. That's where he got his start, which is pretty impressive because he was still in law school, I think. But he made such a name for himself that they basically said, come on, as the Tennessee State Senate mascot, buddy, and we're going to raise you up from there. Yeah. So Polk was born in North Carolina, although I think people in Tennessee have a lot of respect and reverence for him, but he was born in North Carolina, or North Kakalaki, as we call it, and when he was ten, they moved to Tennessee. This article calls the Tennessee Frontier. Yeah, well, I mean, it was at the time. Sure, why not? If you were a white European settler. Sure. And his dad, Samuel Polk, his paw, chuck, we're talking in Tennessee. That's right, his paw. He built a two story house in 1816 in Columbia, and that's where James lived for a while as a young adult, and it now serves as the James K. Pulk Museum, homeland Museum, presidential Museum. Yeah. So that's like, just a bit of the background of this interesting story about the fact that James Polk has been exhumed and moved a couple of times since his death. Yes, the short stuff just got interesting, even though this article, I'm sure you noticed, did not say anything about his death or where he was buried. There is clearly a paragraph or two missing, I think. So I went back and I was like, is it under this ad? Like, what's going on here? I did the same thing, but no, it's not there. So basically, James Polk, he became the 11th President of the United States after John Tyler, who was the first president not elected, I believe, to become president. He succeeded William Henry Harrison, who died after a month. You know that famous Simpsons song there's? William Henry Harrison, I died in 30 days. That's what happened. And John Tyler succeeded on well, James Polk soundly beat Tyler, and he beat them, basically saying, like, look, I've got some campaign promises I'm going to handle. I'm going to take care of these things in one term, and then I'm going to go and I'm young. And no one's ever elected a president this young. No. I think he was 49 when he was elected or something like that. So at the time, he was definitely the youngest, for sure. Although you'd think in like the 1840s or 1850s, that was like old school, but I guess not. But he was elected and he did what he said he was going to do. He established the Naval Academy. He oversaw the very first US postal stamp, created, you know what we need? Stamps. Right. And everyone's like, what's that? And he's like, Just watch, everybody. Yeah. And then he signed into law the Smithsonian, which makes me a big fan of him. Sure. He also did something pretty big. He established the independent Treasury System, which was the predecessor chuck to the Federal Reserve. And at the time you might think, well, Federal Reserve boo or yay or whatever, however you feel about it, it was very much needed at the time because back then, state owned or private banks would routinely just not trade you gold and silver for the paper that you came to trade back in. They would say, we don't have it, sorry. And this would cause panics over and over again. So they set up a bank to the banks, the independent treasury system. And that was a big one, lady did, because it took a lot of political clout to overwhelm the state's interests at the time who were run by these influential bankers who didn't want a federal system above them. So those were some big ones. He also started the Mexican American War, which is definitely a mark against him. That's right. But through all he got, a lot happened in those four years. And like you said, true to his word, he said, Four years, I'm out, and went back to Tennessee. And then I think, let's take a break now, and then we'll talk about how he died and started bouncing around after that. 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. 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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. Folk died of what they think now is cholera. He got sick. They kind of denied it was cholera, but he was surrounded by people with cholera. But they were like, no, you don't have cholera. And he was like, I'm pretty sure I have cholera because everyone around me has cholera. And they said, no, it's not cholera. Not you, James. But I think he died. That's kind of widely believed to be his cause of death today. Well, the first place he was interred was the Nashville City Cemetery. With the cholera victims? Yeah, it was a legal thing. It wasn't called the Nashville City Cemetery back then. But the way I saw it, it was basically like if you died from infectious disease. Infectious disease. You had to be buried there. Yeah. As close to the groundwater as possible. Yeah. So that's the first place that he's buried. We need like a ding or something here because he's been interred one time. I think Jerry could manage a ding. Let's hope Jerry he's buried there. And again, the Nashville City Cemetery. Like a common call or a victim. And somebody said, well, this is no place for a beloved president to be buried. We need to show some respect and also more closely follow the wishes of his will. Yeah, because he said that he wanted to be buried at Polk Place, which was his mansion where he and his wife lived. And they moved him there. They actually built him, like, a pretty sweet little memorial in the front yard. You can see drawings of it. And it's like, there's the house, there's the memorial, like, right there in the little front yard. It was pretty cute. Yeah. And his wife, Sarah thank you for for remembering her name. I was, like, frantically searching for it and couldn't find it. Yeah. His wife Sarah, I guess she was like, well, let me just live for another, I don't know, 42 years. I read that and I was like, is that a misprint? No, it could be in this article, but it's not. Yeah, exactly. According to this article, he never died. He's right behind you. Oh, my God. So, yeah, she lived another 42 years, which is outstanding. Great long life. And once she finally died, there was a bit of an argument over the ownership of Polk Place and kind of like where they should be ultimately in what they thought was their final resting place, but everyone else was like, but where should their real final resting place be? Right. Well, I think they would technically be there, but he, in his will, had left the stipulation that the state of Tennessee could take Polk place and own it as long as a poke would be allowed to live there forever. Right. And Tennessee said that's an inperpetuity, which is illegal. So this clause, this part of your will is null and void, which left it open to his heirs to do with what they wished with this place, which was turn around and sell it to a developer because he didn't have any children. These were all relatives who didn't give a spit about what happened to his beloved home. Yeah. I can't believe that was sold by developers in 1900. And they demolished it. They demolished it. And this was like Tennessee was thinking of turning this into the governor's mansion and preserving this, and they said, no, get rid of it. So they actually disintered him. So the state of Tennessee disinterred he and Sarah and moved the remains to the state capital. And you'd think, okay, that would be the end of the story. The guy's been buried two times now. No, one to three times. He's been buried three times. Let him rest in peace. Right. Wait, buried, buried and then was it three times? Yeah. He was buried in the city twice. Buried. Yeah. Right. I know. It kind of confirmed me, too. It's like trying to understand economics. Yeah, that's the old saying. Buried never mind. Buried twice, but moved only twice. That's it. Okay, so like you said, they moved into the capital and a place of great reverence and respect where people can go see, although he is sort of in the shadow of these two, he doesn't have the kind of monuments that Jackson and Johnson have. No. And that's why there are some people in the Tennessee state government, specifically a guy named what's that state senator's name? Joey Hensley. Joey Hensley, which is, number one, not a senator's name, if you ask me. Number two, not a Tennessee senator's name. But there you have it. Joey Hensley. Right, exactly. I could see him on, like, Jersey Shore or something like that. He's, like, bright orange. His hair stands up, like, a mile high. Anyway, Senator Joey Hensley is like, look, man, I have been up here for 14 years working in the Tennessee legislature, and I can tell you James Polk is not getting his reverence. People don't know he's buried there. They barely mention him on the tour. He's literally in the shadows of Jackson and Johnson statues. Like you said, we got to do something better. Let's move this guy to his presidential library at his father's house in Columbia, Tennessee. Yeah. This is a couple of years ago in 2017, and a lot of hoops have to be jumped through to move a dead president's body. Believe it or not. Right. It did pass the state Senate in March 2017, which was just kind of like the first stop to getting this done. The governor has to approve it. The House has to approve it, a local judge, and then, most importantly, in this case, the Tennessee Historical Commission has to approve it. And that's the one that said, no, I don't think you should do that. Yeah. And his family is kind of divided about it. Some people are like, yeah, of course. This would be a great place for him. It's his presidential library. And other people like, who. Right. And I didn't understand why anybody would be opposed to moving him if he's not getting his due in the capital. But the opposition's position seems to be that he wanted to be buried at Polk Place in Nashville, at least closer to that. Right. Polk Place isn't around anymore, so he's still buried in Nashville and at the capital. Yes, I get that. So I saw also in 2018, the issue was brought back up again, and it got voted down by one vote by the state Senate this time. So he's not going anywhere. Yes, it doesn't look like he's going anywhere. So if you're ever in Nashville, go eat some hot chicken. Maybe go cut a record at Jack White's little recording booth. Don't forget to pick up a mold aroma while you're there, pick up a mold aroma and go. If you want to pay your respects to James Bolt, short stuff 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." | |
a68b7756-5462-11e8-b449-af3c040b19c7 | Seriously, What Is Dark Matter? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/seriously-what-is-dark-matter | Chuck and Josh take on astrophysics again and this time it pans out well. It turns out that there simply isn’t enough matter in the universe to account for its mass. Which is super weird. What is this missing matter? Does it even exist? | Chuck and Josh take on astrophysics again and this time it pans out well. It turns out that there simply isn’t enough matter in the universe to account for its mass. Which is super weird. What is this missing matter? Does it even exist? | Thu, 27 Sep 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=270, tm_isdst=0) | 41369682 | 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 Bryan. There's Jerry, and we're about to try some pistons, think. Oh, yeah. This is stuff you should know. We're about to try something. Yeah. This did not break my brain like I thought it would. Yes. I think it's a pretty surface level explanation, but it gets the point across, and I don't see any reason for us to try to go any deeper. I think we very quickly spin out of control, like an up down quark or something. Yeah. So dark matter is invisible glue that holds everything together. The end. We just don't know what it is. No, we'll get into it. But you might notice, dear listener, a new thing in your feed popping up next week. Next week. Next Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesdays. We are debuting a new thing called Short Stuff, which is just the cutest name. It is. It's stuff you should know. Short Stuff. I guess it's the full name. Probably. Or not. Who cares? Yeah, but it's The Stuff you should Know episode. It's you, me and Jerry. But over the years of recording, we've got these lists of topics we want to do. So many lists. And this one part of the list has kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger because there are topics out there that are really interesting, but they're just not big enough for a full episode, even with tangent upon tangent. And we could have been, like, well, put, like, three of them together randomly. We thought about doing that one. It just didn't feel right. So what we did was spin off, like, a new podcast called Short Stuff, which is just a smaller sized episode of Stuff You Should Know, just because the topic wasn't quite big enough to warrant a full episode or a large size episode. We're doing a small size episode. Yeah. So look for like ten to 15 minutes, tops. I think we're in the wheelhouse of about twelve minutes. We seem to, like, magically hit twelve every time. Yeah. And it's like it's kind of fun. I think it's a great idea. I'm really happy with them. Yeah, same here. And I think the first four we recorded, we didn't know what we're going to call it yet. Right. And I don't believe we went to the trouble of going back and changing that. We might do that. Are we doing that, Jerry? She just shrugged. No, she said no. She said that sounds like a lot of work. Yes. It would be just like us to just sort of waddle our way into this thing sure. Which is exactly what we did. But hopefully you guys enjoy them. It doesn't cost you anything. Yes. So don't complain. Actually, do complain. If they're way off base here, they could be better. We want to hear about it now. I think people will be like, oh, this is just like a little bite sized stuff. You should know that's exactly what it is. It's like a snickers, miniature bit of stuff. You should know that's. Right. And you know our love of small things here, especially Snickers or like, tiny Tabasco bottles, this is the tiny Tabasco bottle version of our show. Those things are priceless. All right, so physics, dark matter. Go. Let's do this. All right. This wasn't as hard as I thought. No. And it's actually pretty easy to get across. Here's the thing. So astronomers have gotten to the point it's starting in about 1920 on yeah. Astronomers and physicists and astrophysicists and even particle physicists got to the point where all of their combined knowledge was refined enough that they could look out into the universe and be like, we can figure out how much this weighs. Right. To put it more scientifically, we can figure out what the mass of the universe is. It's going to take us a really long time. But we are now at the point where our level of observation and our level of understanding of physics is such that we can do it. We're there now. Yeah. And it's not just like, oh, well, that way. Is this the end? Right. Like, knowing something's mass tells you a lot about it, the way it behaves and the nature and future of the universes we'll see. Yeah, for sure. So it's not just weight. It's more complicated than that and what weight can tell us. Right. The problem is you can't just, like, put a galaxy or star or something on the scale they tried. They have broke the scale pretty quick. It actually vaporized it. But there are ways you can infer the mass of something. One of the ways that you can infer the mass of a star, from what I understand, is to measure its luminosity, how bright it is. Yeah. I've also heard that it's a mixed bag, because it seems like it they have doing this they have different sizes in their lifespan. Yeah, I've just heard luminosity and mass is not just straightforward. Sure. Like most things in astrophysics are. Yeah, that's the word on the street. Right. So when they started getting to the point where they could infer the weight of a star or of a galaxy or of a galaxy cluster, which is basically like a galaxy of galaxies, they started to notice something really weird. All of the matter that they could see, the stars, the gas clouds, the cosmic dust, everything matter. Things that make up you and me, things that everything has a common basic unit and atom that's made up of elementary particles like protons and neutrons and electrons, matter. Every nonliving and living thing in the galaxy you would think is made of matter. The problem is they started finding that this galaxy over here in this galaxy cluster, and everywhere we're looking, the amount of matter that we're seeing is way too small for the amount of mass that the thing we're looking at appears to have. And a cosmological mystery was launched. What the heck is going on? Was the question of the day. Yeah. So all that matter that we know about, they call that baronic matter. And they were like, the calculations are offered something like, there's got to be something else there to account for this. Well, that's the two possibilities. Well, sure. And so way back in to an astronomer, a Dutch astronomer named Jan Hendrick Urt, because he's Dutch. Sure. He actually, I believe, was the first person to use the term dark matter. Is that right? That's what I saw. So dark matter is sort of a placeholder name for what they came up with, for lack of a better word. This invisible matter that has to be out there, is it sort of like wind? Like, you can't see wind, but that doesn't mean it's not out there, because you can measure it in different ways, see how it reacts on other things. Right. And so they started calling it dark matter, this invisible well, we'll talk about what it ends up sort of looking like in a minute. I don't give that away yet. Right. But this invisible matter that they think is there, right. But it doesn't emit or absorb light or electromagnetic magnetic energy. So it's way different. It behaves differently, such that people were very confused as to what the heck was going on. And they still are. Yeah, sure. So this term dark matter, like you said, it's a placeholder, and it's a placeholder for the current point. We are in our understanding of the universe, which is, when we look out at galaxy clusters and galaxies and all this stuff, there's not enough matter to account for the amount of mass that we're seeing. So, again, that means one of two things. Either there's something there that we can't detect, or our understanding of physics is off, and the term dark matter stands for both of those. It could be a thing, an undiscovered particle or something like that, or it could be a misunderstanding of physics that we need to eventually correct. Either way, there's a lot of mass that is unaccounted for throughout the universe, and it seems like there's a lot more what we call dark matter, then there's regular matter. And the more we look into it, the more it seems like there's something there that we haven't discovered yet. Yeah. So right now, baronic matter, all the stuff that we know about accounts for about four and a half percent, 23% of where they pegged dark matter. Then we have something that I don't even know if I ever want to cover, called dark energy, which makes up the other 72%. But they know it's there because there's something out there that we can't account for that has a significant gravitational force. Right. That's where the whole thing started, where they first detected it. Right. So when they first started looking out at galaxies and stuff like that, there's this whole thing that Newton came up with, the second law of motion. And this is like a tried and true law. It's a law. This isn't Newton's suggestion of motion or Newton's second what about this? Of motion? It's a scientific law that's, as proven and accepted as a scientific observation, can be as to be made a law. And it said that when you're looking at a galaxy far, far away and most of the matter is accumulated toward the center of the galaxy, then that means most of the mass is accumulated toward the center. Okay. Yes. Okay. So that means that the stars near the center are going to spin. They're going to rotate around the galaxy a lot faster than the ones on the fringes, because the ones on the fringes are going to go a lot more slowly because they are further away from that center of mass. So the gravitational pull is going to be weaker. Yeah. I mean, that's the easiest way to say it is in the center, you have more mass. More mass means things are spinning faster. There's more gravitational pull. So all the astronomers supposed, like you said, the stuff on the outskirts are probably hanging out there, spinning a lot slower. Right. Well, when they looked, they found that's not the case at all. As a matter of fact, the stars on the outside are spinning around the center of the galaxy just as fast as the stars near the center of the galaxy, which makes zero sense. Yeah. It's almost as if there's some invisible force out there. Right. If you look at this galaxy, the situation that they started to find and it wasn't just one galaxy. They found it in this galaxy, too. In this galaxy, too. And even stranger than that, they found it in those clusters, those galactic clusters. So rather than stars that make up a galaxy, this is galaxies making up a huge, giant mega galaxy. The same thing happened. The galaxies on the outer edge of the cluster were circling just as fast as the ones toward the center, and it just must have knocked their socks off. I can't imagine how many times they went over the same area to make sure that they had gotten it for clarity. This was the 1950s and 1960s is when they discovered this. Yeah. Okay. So what they figured out was that either there was something really wrong or there was something that they hadn't picked up yet, because those stars on the outer edges of the galaxy or those galaxies on the outer edges of the cluster, for as fast as they were flying, they should have spun off into space. Yeah. There was something missing that explained what was holding that galaxy or that cluster together as fast as the stars of the galaxies were spinning around on the outside. That was the first clue that something was way up with that astronomy was missing, something big. Right. And they knew this was off because they had been using luminosity, like you said, to take measurements for years, and it was pretty good. But then when they started measuring the rotational velocity of things, like how fast something was spinning in relation to where it was toward the center, as you said, there was a missing ingredient there that didn't match whatever these luminosity readings were showing. So you're right. Luminosity was clue one. The angular rotation was or acceleration of the outer stars was clue number two. So now we've got two different ways of measuring the mass and gravity of remote bodies in the universe, and they don't align well. They're aligning in that there's something missing here. Right. And I think that's a pretty good cliffhanger for a break, don't you? I think people are going to be like, what? Yeah. Why don't you guys go listen to the first half of this podcast or first part again, and we'll see you after these messages. I really hope we're putting this well. I feel like we are, but sometimes you just can't tell. No, this isn't the sun red ducks. I hope not. No, this is much more simple. Okay, so like you said, they not only studied regular galaxies, but they started to study what you referred to as, and you didn't make it up, but galactic clusters, these knots of galaxies, could be thousands of them, could be hundreds of them, but they are bound together by gravity. And they were like, you know what? Let's study these, because maybe what we can find this is what we suppose at least is there might be these big, giant pools of hot gas that we never could detect before, and that would account for all of this mass, right? And they did find these superheated gas clouds, and we're like, great, that's it. But they're like, no, it still doesn't account for everything. That's, like, a small percentage of what needs to be accounted for. Right? So it was a breakthrough, but it wasn't the solution solver that they were looking for. It was because if you can find something that we know has mass, like huge clouds of gas, that, again, you know, particle has mass, and if you put enough particles together, has a lot of mass. If you could fill in the blanks of the missing matter, that explains the mass of this thing you're looking at great. Especially if it's something we already know about, like hot gas. And they did find some hot gas, but say that that explained 5% of the missing mass. It did explain everything. And what that did do also was, okay, we've gotten that much more sophisticated, and it still hasn't answered this dark matter thing. It's pointing to the idea that there's something we haven't discovered yet that is accounting for all of this. It's very foreboding it is, but it's also, I think, very exciting. Sure. Yeah. For them and us. Sure. So the other thing that happened when they started studying these galactic clusters was that they found out that these clusters and super clusters can and this is really neat you can look up images of this. It can distort space time because their mass is so great. So if you're on planet Earth and there is a light, so you're looking from like a telescope on Earth, you're looking at a distant light, like, who knows how far away, like a star 3 billion light years away. Sounds great. In between you and that is a galactic cluster, let's say, that will act as a lens, and depending on where it's situated to where you are relative on Earth, it will distort that light into one of several things. If you're in perfect alignment in it, it's going to form what's known as an Einstein ring. And if you look it up on the Internet, it's like this beautiful circle of light. Yeah. It's really cool looking. It could be elliptical or oblong. They call it the Einstein cross. Basically splits it into four. So it looks like four little stars, all perfectly aligned. Four copies of the same image. Yeah. And like a cross. Yes, perfect cross. Or it could be a cluster. And this one is sort of cool just because it's kind of scattered. It looks like a bunch of arcs and banana shaped arcs and arclets, but it's all different versions of the same image that you're seeing. And what you're seeing is that far away star, but you're seeing it through that galaxy cluster that is a distortion of spacetime. Right. The mass of these clusters are so big and so huge that the gravity in them bends light, just like a mound of glass can bend light. Yeah. Magnifying glass, same thing. Now, we have gotten to the point where we are so good at math and physics that we can look at that reflection that bend and say, this galaxy has that much gravity. And since this galaxy has this much gravity, it must have this much mass. Yeah. Now, if you take that number, this much mass, and you examine the luminosity of the galaxy, there's that difference. Yeah. You're like, this is not off by the luminosity is ten, but the mass is ten and a half. Right. There's sometimes factors of times 100. Right. Sometimes there's just no way that your math is off. There's a huge discrepancy. So there's a third clue that there's something missing. Yeah. I mean, that's basically all these are little hints along the way that we're still not able to account for something with our calculation. Yeah. And rather than the better and more sophisticated our observations and exploration of space in the universe becomes right. It doesn't become like this blank is not getting filled in. It's just becoming clearer and clearer that that blank is really there. There's a void in either our understanding or our discovery. So then computers started getting better and better and more advanced. I love how this article puts it. They turn to the computer. It sounds like they turn to the bottle or something. Yeah. To compute. So computers started getting so good, and our knowledge of what was out there and our measurements of matter and mass was so great that we could take a pretty good guess on how much baryonic matter there was out there, maybe how much dark matter there might be. Design a program and a model that you could feed this information into to spit out what it might, quote, look like in quote. Yeah. They basically said, this is how much baryonic matter we think there is. This is how much dark matter we think there is. Like, map it out. Go, computer. And they hit start on the whopper machine, and it spit out what was sort of like it turns out that it wasn't on the edges. It was everywhere. It was like a web that wound through everything invisible to us that sort of acted like this cosmic glue. Yeah. And so in some places, it clumped. In other places, there are long filaments, and it kind of looked like it had galaxies or galactic clusters trapped in a spider's web. So cool. But it just permeated everywhere. And like you said, it seemed to be like this cosmic glue or cosmic connective tissue, and it was pretty surprising. So I said, okay, well, that's the computers take and see if we can replicate that. And that kicked off a series of projects that are still going on today to map dark matter in the universe, which I want everybody to stop for a second, because this is about as nuts as it gets. They have gotten to the level of sophistication where astrophysicists are mapping in 3D models stuff that isn't there. Well, they're mapping 3D models of voids yes. Based on how much light bends around a galaxy 3 billion mile light years away. Yeah. Not miles. Light years. Right. And then using that to infer the gravity and then the mass, and then they're using that information to create a 3D map of something that may not exist. Yeah. And the coolest thing about all this to me is it's based on stuff that Isaac Newton and Einstein came up with. Right. Yeah. And, well, we won't spoil it, but they weren't wrong. But that is nuts. Either physics has gone totally insane, or this is the pinnacle of human ingenuity thus far. Well, thus far, for sure. I'm glad you added that. So let's talk about a couple of these. About seven years ago, in 2011, there were a couple of teams using data from Sandrad's X ray observatory. And what they're trying to do here, like you said, is create this real map based on direct observation instead of this speculative computer map. Right. What they found out is the computer map was pretty on, which is great, but they needed the real thing. So they are looking at a cluster, or have been called a Bell 383, 2.3 billion light years from Earth. And what they saw was what looks like sort of a football, an American football, or an Aussie football, for that matter. Oh, are they similar? I just got one in the mail. I bought one. You need to get Simon to sign it. Go Melbourne. I should, but it would cost so much to ship it there and back. Maybe I'll just see Simon again one day. Is Melvin your team now? Yeah, that's who I got on. That's a good city. Yeah, I like it. So it looks like a football with one end pointing toward us. We're on Earth, so we're the observer in this case. And here's the one thing they didn't agree on, though, was the density of the dark matter on Able 383 in the center. Yeah, which is weird because some people calculated it was more dense in the center and matter increase, and other people said it was the opposite, not like, well, we're not sure, but they thought it was less dark matter at the center, which is a big deal. Yes. But they both came up with virtually the same shape and same orientation separately and independently, which showed we're onto something, or else, again, we're all collectively out of our minds right. Based on some shared delusion that we're all working under. Right. Then there was another one. This one is super cool. In January 2012, anytime I see international team of researchers, I get excited. But the Canada France Hawaii telescope has a 340 megapixel camera. So you actually take pictures of stuff that far away? It's like the iPhone XS camera. Is that one of the new ones? Yeah. Okay. Is it good? I think it's a pretty good camera. It's not 340 megapixel? No, it's not. But I have to say, I've been to this observatory before. Oh, really? It's really cool. Did you look at photos on display and stuff? No, they had, like, telescopes that you walked around and looked out into the universe on. It's amazing. Did they let you take pictures? Yeah, I guess so. With your phone. Oh, I thought you meant with the 340 megapixel camera. Probably. I'm sure they were taking pictures. They didn't give them to us or anything. But what's crazy is it's on Hawaii. So it's just hot and muggy and humid, and then you drive up this mountain and you're, like, freezing in a North Face coat with, like, a hat on, and then you just go back down the mountain and it's Hawaii again. Very cool experience. So what they did here was basically stitched all these photos together. It was like photos of 10 million galaxies in four different regions over five years. Stitched it all together and what they finished up with was basically saying that computer model was pretty on target because what this looks like is what it spit out so many years ago. Yeah. So they're definitely on to something, it seems like. Should we take another break? Yes. Alright. We'll talk about what dark matter is. Hint we don't know. All right, Chuck, we're back. This is where I start to get a little, like, brain breaking. I understood all that stuff, but this stuff is where I was like, what? Well, we're transferring from astrophysics to particle physics. Maybe that's my hang up. And particle physics is hard. I actually had to teach myself particle physics to write one episode of The End of the World. Maybe that's my problem. Even still, I'm like, wait, what? It's really hard to understand. Yeah. I've always been an astrophysicist, though, at heart, I think. So that just goes against my nature. Okay, I'm with you. But they're very much tied together. Like, you need particle physics to explain these larger cosmic structures. Right. So the big question here is, at the end of the day, is it the fact that we just can't really observe this stuff and it's just like all the other matter? Or is it some new matter that we don't even know about yet? That's the question. That's the big question. Or the third option is that our physics, our understanding of physics is wrong. Right. Which means, well, we'll see some people go back and tamper with things Newton said he doesn't like that much to the dismay of Newton kill Bern. So if it's just stuff that we already know exists but we just can't observe yet, those fall under the umbrella of Machos massive compact halo objects. Right. Which are huge, massive structures that we already know about. Neutron stars, black holes, brown dwarf stars that are huge and have a tremendous amount of mass and thus exert a lot of gravity around them, but are too dim to show up clearly when we're looking at, say, a galaxy or galactic cluster. Yeah. Like we talked about luminosity. They have low luminosity. We know they're there, but they're not shining. But we don't know that that's them. That is one proposal for what dark matters. They're just things that we already have identified, know exist. We just can't see them in these particular things. Right. That actually doesn't have for as Occam's razor as that is. That actually does not have as much support in the physics community as the other idea that dark matter is made up of some particle that we have not discovered yet. Yeah. So that's where I got a little confused with the Wimps and the Simps. Wimps stands for weekly interacting massive Particles. Huge amounts of mass, but difficult to detect because they just interact weekly with ordinary matter. Right. Here's why they're difficult to attack, to detect. They interact weekly with matter. That's not stating it very well. The weak nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces, and it's found almost exclusively in the nucleus of an atom. What these Wimp particles, weak, interactive, massive particles are hypothetical, we don't know that they exist. Mathematically, they fit the bill of dark matter. The fact that they interact with gravity and with the weak force only means that, no, we can't detect them. We don't have weak force detectors. We have detectors along the electromagnetic spectrum. Right. So everything we do when we look out in the universe, we use X rays or microwaves or radio waves, all of those are electromagnetic. If these particles don't interact with the electromagnetic force, that has no effect on them whatsoever. Right. We have no way of detecting that. Right. All we can do it makes sense, since they have a gravitational pull because they have so much mass, we can just sense their gravity and be like, what the heck is going on? Which is exactly the position we're in now. Okay. Wimps were a big. They were promoted as the particle, I think, starting in the 80s. It seems like an 80s thing. Yeah, it does a little bit, because there was something called the Wimp miracle, and this breaks my brain. But apparently, if you take the relic density, which is really unimportant for getting into here, but say the density of a Wimp, like, how dense the universe would have to be for a Wimp to exist, it corresponds with the weak force number. And that made everybody say, oh, well, they're particles that don't interact with the electromagnetic force. They just interact with the weak force. Nowadays, they've kind of moved to the strong nuclear force. Simps. And the strong nuclear force also is found just basically in the nucleus of an atom. It's the thing that holds an atom together super tightly. It holds the quarks into the proton and holds the proton what's the neutral charge? One neutron. Yeah, the neutron and the proton together. Keeps them together. That's the strong nuclear force. And they think that is probably the particle. Now, interesting thing, though, doesn't interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, so we have no way of detecting it. Right. But it would still have mass and hence exert a lot of gravity. So that's sort of the takeaway. Right. Got you. Yeah. Well, not everyone is on board with this period, like some people. There are some astronomers out there who say they dare say, maybe Newton got it wrong, and maybe we should crack open the Bible and rewrite it. Like Thomas Jefferson in the 80s. There was a dude physicist named Mordehai Milgrom. Great name. He suggested that Newton's second law of motion, which is force equals mass times acceleration, which I got wrong in the board breaking episode. That's right. But we're not physicists. We just play them on the air. He said, maybe we should look at that again, and maybe he was wrong, and maybe we should modify this. And he called this modification. Modified Newton newtonian dynamics. And the way that I read this was it almost sounded like it's probably not quite right, but it almost sounded like he had some answer. So he was sort of rewriting the question to fit. Yeah, it was ad hoc, is what he was called out on. It wasn't like, oh, here's a new understanding of a physical law around the universe. Right. This just applied to those galaxies and their rotational momentum, or rotational acceleration. Yeah. His whole position was that that breaks down at very small accelerations, like a planet on the outside or a star on the outside of a galaxy, but over a long distance. Right? Yeah. And so a lot of people were like, that's ad hoc. It doesn't hold any water. Anyone can do that. Get out of here. Yeah. And then apparently there was a study in 2007 that showed that even down to accelerations, as slow as 500 trillionths of a meter per second squared, which is really low acceleration, newton's second law of motion still held fast. That's so awesome. So Mond is pretty much out the window, from what I understand. Newton is giving the finger from the grave to see what you get. He very famously liked to say, Bite it. It's on his tombstone, I think. What else do we have here, alternative wise? This guy. Love this dude's name. I looked it up. Dragon. Hugh Kovitch. Oh, is he one of the guys at CERN? Yeah, I can do better than that. Dragon. Hi dukovicovich. Sorry, Dragon, but yeah, he said that there's such things as gravitational polar opposites. Right. Particles and antiparticles have not only opposite electrical charges, but opposite gravitational charges. Yeah. So if those are near a galaxy, then it would strength sort of like a magnet, almost. No, they'd form pull a dipole. Yeah. So it would strengthen the gravitational field. So that's what's accounting for in fact, I guess he's saying there is no dark matter, right? Yeah. He's saying that that's dark matters. Gravitational dipoles. Which is interesting, because that means if that's correct, then if you got your hands on an antiparticle, it would fall upward because it would have an opposite gravitational energy. Yeah, that's pretty neat. That is pretty neat. I would love to have, like, a pencil made of any particles. You just be like, Watch this, right? Just knock everyone socks right off. So should we talk about it? That's what I would do if I had a whole bunch of anti particles. That's where my imagination ends. Should we talk about the big Bang a little bit? Yeah. Because this is the thing. Like, if you've been sitting here going like, come on, why does this matter at all? It actually does matter if we want to figure out how the universe can possibly end, right. Which is your specialty these days. I'm so excited about this coming out. Yeah. We're talking again. Josh's upcoming ten part series, the end of the World. The end of the world. Josh Clark. Yeah. It's slated to come out November 7. Yeah. And it's this and more times ten. Literally times ten, yeah. What other stuff you talk about? AI. I know that's in there. AI. Reckless experiments with viruses. Oh, jeez. The Fermi paradox. The Great Filter. The whole thing is about existential risks, man. You're getting smarter. I'm just talking about the old movies. It's a downer. Yeah, but you're like getting in there with people. It's just different. It's not better. What? You got interviews and stuff, though, with leading experts, right? Yeah, but I kind of use them as, like, a Greek chorus to kind of chime in and help explain it or be like, yeah, Josh is actually right here. That kind of thing. Sure. It's not just me saying, all right, so look for that, everyone, but with the big bang. The idea is that the universe is expanding, and the big question is, what's the end game there? Are we going to expand forever? Right. And what does that mean in relation to dark matter? So, again, this is the point that we're at. We've actually figured out what the density of the universe has to be. There's something called a critical density, and it's ten to the negative 29 grams per cubic centimeter, which this article says is equivalent to a few hydrogen atoms in a foam booth. That density of matter. Yeah. That is the critical density of matter in the universe. If it's more than that, equal to that, or less than that, there are three different possible outcomes for the universe depending on how dense the universe is with matter. Right. In a phone booth, everyone is saying a box that used to hold public telephones that you would step into to make a call. Yeah. What's a good movie you can go watch to see? There's one called Phone booth. Oh, yeah. I said a good movie, though, right? Superman changes his clothes in a Phone booth. There you go. Go watch the original Christopher reef, Superman. Right. Or imagine if you were laying dead in a casket and someone set you up and you were on your cell phone, but you were only three hydrogen atoms, and your cell phone is connected to a machine by Cord. Right, exactly. All right, so where were we? We're talking about the critical density of the universe. Right. So there are a few different outcomes here that they've come up with, right. As far as where we're headed. Yeah. So if the universe has a density of matter, all the matter in the universe, if you could just slice the universe up into phone booths yes. And equally spread out all of the matter in the universe across all those phone booths, if that equals just a few hydrogen atoms per phone booth, again, that's the critical mass density. And if that is actually the same as the density of matter in the universe, then what we have is a universe that keeps expanding forever, because the universe started inflating at some point after the Big Bang, and this is a huge discovery in and of itself. Sure. Right. Everybody thought the universe was just kind of there and unchanging. No, the universe is actually expanding inside. It's inflating, and the matter in the universe is actually spreading away from it. So everybody's, like you said, what's the end game? If the universal mass is the same as the critical mass density, it's going to just keep expanding forever, but eventually it'll get kind of cool and everything's going to die and stop. I think it's called the heat death of the universe. Yeah. And that's called critical or flat universe. If the actual mass density is greater than the critical mass density, they call that the Big Crunch. That's not good. A closed universe, that means it will expand and then eventually slow down, stop expanding, and then collapse on itself. Right. You know those bungee swings? Yeah. My daughter was just on one of those. Okay. So they launched her up in the air, right? Yes. Well, she went that way, and then she came back this way. She did. So when you come back this way when she came back this way, it was because the universe is closed and the gravity, because of the mass, was greater than the critical mass density. And so gravity overcame it and brought it back together in what was called the Big Crunch, which I'm assuming she did not undergo. I tried to explain that to her, and all she said was, again, I don't blame her. And then finally, we have another outcome. If actual mass density is less than critical mass density, then we keep expanding, but there is no change in the rate of expansion. We don't start expanding faster and faster. Right. And I think nothing really cools off. It just keeps going forever, which is kind of the all good one, really. That's called the Waterson universe, right? Yeah. All right. Or specifically the coasting or open universe. I like that. Aka waterson. So the only way to figure this out for sure is to live until the end of the universe, and we're talking billions, possibly trillions of years into the future. Right. Or we could just figure out how much matter there really is. The problem is, even if we can account for all the regular matter, every bit of things that makes up you, me, and everything we can see in the universe, we still have to account for dark matter. Hence the reason why people are mapping dark matter, so we can figure out truly how much matters in the universe, and then we can predict how it's going to end. Yeah. It's not just folly and like, hey, this would be neat. Right. I mean, part of it is there's a part of sandwich and a glass of milk at the end of that calculation. Yes, that's true. And I want to say, you got anything else? But I'm not going to say that I got nothing else. All right, well, that's dark matter. Don't even get us started on dark energy. Please, God, don't get us started on dark energy. If you want to know more about dark matter, type that word into the search bar. Or those words in the search bar. And since I said that, it's time for listing or mail. And I call this something on game shows. Hey, guys. Always wonder what it was like to have a moment where they say, I have to write into stuff you should know for listening to mail. Well, I just had that moment yesterday. I listened to the select podcast on game shows. It wasn't a select podcast. It was just a live show. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, they fooled me. I love all your episodes, but I found this one particularly fascinating. Flash forward to this evening. My fiancee and I were sitting down to watch a movie. I'm not much of a movie person. Sorry, Chuck. So I told Peter, her fiance, to just pick something to watch he puts on quiz show. Oh. I saw this email not realizing it was based on the real life event, so I started telling Peter about your podcast and how quiz shows like this one on the movie were rigged in the it almost killed game shows. I was like a sponge, releasing all the information I had heard yesterday. The chance that he selects that movie the day after I listened to your podcast just blows my mind. Pretty awesome. It's a Mandela effect, right? Syncretism. Anyway, thank you for what you do, for keeping me company as a drive around DC on the beltway every day. Oh, you poor person. I know when one of your episodes queues up, I know my drive will go so much faster. Lots of love, Kristin. Thanks a lot, Kristen. That was a great email. We're glad we could help you out, make you look pretty good in front of Peter. Yes. Good luck with the upcoming wedding. Yeah. Which we assume is impending. Sure. Okay. Well, if you want to let us know you're getting married, let us know. We'll say best wishes. Every once in a while, somebody will send an invitation in. Always nice. We're not taking them up, but we usually sign it and send it back at least. Yeah. I mean, if someone was getting married here in the studio on a Tuesday at 01:00, we'd be there, and we'd also be like, we need the studio. Yeah, exactly. So maybe make it 12:00. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on social media. Just go to what's, our website? Stephanie.com that's right. And you'll find all the links there. And you can also send us an email. Just wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You." | |
How Human Cannonballs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-human-cannonballs-work | There's no question that human cannonballs are daredevils. They pack themselves into the confines of huge cannons, which shoot them into the air. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about the bizarre performances of human cannonballs. | There's no question that human cannonballs are daredevils. They pack themselves into the confines of huge cannons, which shoot them into the air. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about the bizarre performances of human cannonballs. | Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:23:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=15, tm_min=23, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=188, tm_isdst=0) | 27637211 | audio/mpeg | "Objects carry a lot of power. They tell stories about people, places, or a time in history. On mysteries at the museum. The podcast from travel channel don wildman searches for objects that tell shocking stories of american history, like the ordinary blue mailbox that changed the course of a massive spy case in the cold war. Uncover the histories behind extraordinary objects. Listen to mysteries at the museum on apple podcasts spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs. Better than leaving brands. Find halo elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworks.com kaboom. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. What are you doing? Are you doing the cheeks? Huh? Yeah. Have we ever captured that? Yes, we did it once, and then people have asked occasionally, like, do the cheap thing again, and I want to do it once every 150 shows, literally. It's a good pace. Don't want to overdo that. So that'll be the third time soon. Coming up? I think so, yeah. Show 450. Right around the corner, right around the company. Chuckers, have you ever had kaboom cereal? No. That was such a thing. Good. No, it wasn't good. The marshmallows were good. It was basically like lucky charms. I don't know who ripped off who. Right. But it was clown themed rather than irish themed. That's genius. Yeah, but there's a clown on front, and you had a cannon, and that's where the name came from. Kaboom. It was a circus clown. Circus cannon. Kaboom. But then they realized clowns were scary as heck, most people. So it failed miserably. I wrote this blog post recently. Did you read it? I did, yeah. That's a good one. You said clown giving clown therapy. Yeah. People seem to like it, too. Yeah, I thought it was a nice one. That wasn't my intro. My intro was about 100 t. Oh, let's hear it. Do you remember? Well, sure. You're probably going to reference his death wish. Yes. So he comes down with the cancer and shoots himself in the head. And regardless of how you feel about suicide, what happened next was his, as you said, I guess, his death wish, which he made in life. Ironically. Yeah. There's two kinds of death wishes. There's a wish that you make upon your death that you would like for things to happen after you die. And then there's the jolly brunson death wish. Nice. Good. Chuck bronson. Well, that's the simpsons character, too. But it's the simpsons character, right? The mustachioed sales clerk. Yes. But he clearly references gerald bronson. Yeah. Anyway, what happened to hunter t was he was cremated, and he had his remains shot out of a cannon. Have you seen it? Yeah, thanks to Johnny Depp helped that dream come true because he has tons and tons of money to make that happen. Yes, he does. It is quite a canon, too. And we've talked before about how I want my dead body shot out of a cannon. We have, indeed. I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe. Who knows? After reading this article and the physical requirements, it would be kind of gruesome. It wouldn't be like unless they stiffened you up somehow, you would come out in a dead bodywood. That's what I've always imagined, though. That's what I see flying through the air. Oh, I thought you saw yourself, like, shooting through no. A rocket toward the storm. No, like flopping through the air and doing, like, half somersaults and twists. Going to be naked, too. I was going to land on the Kansas prairie and let the vultures finish me off. All right, we'll see. Coop, an idea. Bring it. I got a backyard for you. I think that's how we met Cooper. He offered. He's like, hey, I live in Kansas and I want to get this done. All right, so we'll see. But I think that's an image that people can have in their head while we talk about how human cannonballs work. Right. Because like you said, there's a lot to it, but one of the things that's not to it and I think it's funny that people wonder how you can shoot somebody out of a cannon and the gunpowder doesn't blow them up. There's no gunpowder. Of course there's not. I don't understand how someone cannot understand that intuitively. Yeah, because I think people want to believe that they're being fired out of a cannon instead of a long piston enclosed in a tube with a fake boom and a flash. Yes. For a fact. Okay, so I guess it's the fake boom in the flash. They're buying it. Yeah, that's the idea. From the beginning. That was the idea, yes. It has long roots indeed. Back to the 19th century, back to the UK. Which, by the way, I've noticed did you notice from this article and doing any supplementary research, the UK is big into human cannonballs? I think they're big on just this whole circus experience. Okay. They were the original showman. Yeah, sure. They own the world. Yeah, that's true. And they sold it. And when you own the world, you have an obligation to entertain the world. And they did so by human cannonball. That's right. Specifically, something called a projector is the I guess the grandfather of the human cannonball. Cannon, right. Yeah. The Furni Projector, 1871. George Farini. Basically, it was more like a catapult, like a spatula that would just flip people and stop and people would go flopping and flying through the air. Yeah. And they go, oh, God, I regret this. Yes. Specifically, Lulu, who was a man dressed as a woman. That always adds to the comic effect. Right. Put a dude and address, and he was the first person in America to get flapjacked with Furini's contraption there. Yeah. And not only did he do that, he sailed 25 30ft into the air and was caught by someone on a trapeze. So as we go through this, I don't want you to just think about my dead body being shot onto the Kansas prairie. I want you to think about how difficult it is to catch somebody on a trapeze who's just been shot out of a cannon. While you're on a trapeze, you're swinging at just the right point, hitting them just the right way, and then taking their forward momentum and yanking them another way on the trapeze. Yeah. Well, in fairness, Lulu wasn't caught by someone. He just actually grabbed hold of the trapeze. But there are people later on in this article who were caught by people on the Trampis. Right. I just want to get that. So someone out there was like, no, Lulu. I wonder there'd be one person who knew that. So the Furini Projector was invented in 1871. It was obsolete by 1880 because this is the year that a 14 year old girl named Rosa Marie Richter, whose stage name was Zazzle. Right. Great grandmother to Andy Richard. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. Great stage name, though, right? Sure. Zazzle. She's 14, and she, at the behest of one PT. Barnum, climbed into the first cannon, human cannonball. Cannon that is designed, like, today's modern cannon. Yeah, sure. And she was shot out of it. And shortly after that, within a few performances, she broke her back and was the first casualty of the human cannon ball. Yes. In this first cannon used the springs, and they employed the blast, the fire and the boom to make people think. And back then, they probably really bought it. Oh, yeah. People are so dumb back then. There's a very famous picture of her climbing into the cannon. It's called a Beautiful Girl and huge Gun or something like that. I thought that our forefathers, like, invented everything and built the world, and we're like, they're so dumb. What a bunch of stupid people. Yeah. Well, it's harder and harder to build and discover new things now, because that was all the easy stuff. Like, you and I could have discovered all this stuff. Right? Yeah. Now it's just more and more difficult. You have to really look for subtleties. Right. So we say thanks to no one. So the late 19th century is just the human cannonball idea just takes off. Right. Thanks to Dazzle. Thanks to George loyal. He was the one who was shot out of a cannon and would be caught by a woman on a trapeze. That's right. At the Yankee Robinson Circus, right? Yes. That's incredibly difficult. It is. And you think about it. I think I've even seen that before in person at a circus when I was a kid. But now that I've researched and read this, I'm like, I can't imagine how difficult that has to be, how everything has to be totally precise and that these circus performers must spend, like, all day practicing every day just to make sure. Yeah. And not just the timing. There's a lot of other stuff that you have to take into account. Right? That's right. It's not just, get in this cannon, we're going to push you out. No, Josh. Because the little sled that you're basically in goes forward at a force of 3000 to \u00a36000 per square inch of pressure. Right. We should say compressed air is now the preferred means of shooting that little piston forward. Right? Yeah. And you're in a little capsule like imagine Mork's egg, but with the top cut off. So you're in the barrel in what amounts to a barrel, a bullet with the top cut off. And that bullet is attached to the cannon. So when the compressor shoots it out, the cannon stops, but you keep going. That's right. But it shoots you out at, what did you say, like 3000 to \u00a36000 per square inch of pressure. Yeah. That produces some force. That's a lot. And that's why you can't just be like, all limp. That would crush you. You have to be extremely strong and rigid, and your legs have to be taught, like you can't just be like, all right. Chewed it off. Right. Or like your dead body. That's why it would be so gruesome. Yeah. I wonder if I just explode in blood at the end of the cannon. I don't know, maybe it would be sweet. 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, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff, all lower case 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.com stuff right now, but with the big Daddy cannons these days you can go horizontally about 200ft or vertically, which they say that's where the ooze and odds come from. As high as 200ft and then speeds up to 60 to 70 miles an hour. Right. So you're Holland. You are Holland. You're also under some tremendous force, right? Oh, yes. You've got about nine G's during launch and twelve G's at impact. And we'll talk about that later. But Chuck the Dodon. Paul right. Yeah. It's a roller coaster in Japan. It has the highest acceleration, it's 2.7 GS. You're putting this human body under a lot of stress, right then yes. And you fly out a long way. And that's why you have to take into account the things we briefly mentioned, like wind speed, body weight, obstacles like the guy wires and the tent for the net and the poles for the tent. And we mentioned that in Sniper, remember, we're talking about the bullet trajectory and they have to take into account like humidity. Yeah. So do people who set up human cannonball cannons. And usually I get the impression the human cannonball is the manager in charge of this whole act. They don't just come out and they're like, all right, I'll get in all right, did it, right? Yeah. And some carney like, puts out a cigarette and it's like, it looks good to me. Right? No, that's not the case. A lot of planning goes in because they make a point. It's pretty easy to get into a cannon and get shot out. Although, like we said, you got to be really strong and stuff. But the landing part is the crucial part, obviously. Right. Because a 50 x 25 ft net might look pretty big when you're standing on it, but when you're 200ft away and 200ft up, it might look like a postage stamp to you. Right. And I mean, this is a big deal and you want to hit that net, you want to hit it in just the right place too. Sure. Yeah. So to make sure that the person hits the net, test dummies are used. A test dummy is a human cannonball's best friend because you can shoot a test dummy out as much as you want until you figure out whether or not you've got the barrel trajectory just right. If the temperature is a problem, what have you make adjustments early. Right. And so they just shoot a test dummy@the.net until they have it just right. And then I guess they feel that they're confident they're going to try their luck at it. Yeah. And like you said, you got to hit the net at the proper place, too, which is generally the rear third, because when you hit something going down an angle like that, you're going to bounce backwards, not like pop straight up or go forward. Right. So you don't want to hit it on the first 3rd because then you'll bounce backwards off the net. So yeah, it's pretty specific. It is. So, Chuck, who does this? Crazy circus people. Circus families. It's always families. Yeah. Once you get into circus, then you've almost guaranteed that your kid is going to do that. So you want to talk about some of them? Well, yeah, I think I'd heard of these people even before this article. But the Zucchini family zacini Zucchini zucchini. Zucchinis have been doing well. They've been performing in circuses since the 1920s, and apparently they stopped in the 90s. They're like, 70 years is enough for us. The Zucchinis are hanging up our little fancy shoes. Right. And in that time, there were seven brothers in the family. Five of them became human cannonballs. And that's just the brothers. There was also a sister, too, who did human cannonballing. Yeah. I'm just dying to know those other two dudes. It's like Eli and Peyton Mannings brother that most people go, there's another brother. Right. Well, what does he do? He's the oldest, wasn't he? And he was like a big man on campus at Old Miss, but that was it. He just parted. Doesn't play football, though. No. So he's not beloved by his father, Archie. So not true. Probably they worked with the Ringling brothers, the Zucchinis did, who obviously big name in circuses, and they sort of pushed the envelope. Hugo and Victor, the brothers did a little double barrel gag that went over pretty well. And Mario would get shot over Ferris wheels. Like two Ferris wheels. Mario Zucchini, two Ferris wheels. Not on top of one another. No, one after the other. Right. It's weird. Quite a feat. And then john Weiss. Human bullet. Yeah, he started out as a clown, apparently. Oh, really? He did five years as a clown and then made the very rare jump to human cannonball, from clown to cannonball this year. And apparently his first shot sent him 6ft. Yeah, that was his first one. Did he do it as a clown, do you know? No, I think that that would have been a mockery. That human cannonball tradition. Okay. Yeah. Don't want to do that. And then there's the Smith family, also a very popular circus cannonball family. Well did you talk about John Wise? Well, he was one of the most prolific cannon ballers. Yeah. Did he die doing it? No. Okay. Did you mention how many times he's done it? No. 5000. That is a lot of time to be shot out of a cannon. I did just kind of breeze over that 5000 times. And he started in 1987. Yeah. So he was doing it for a little while there. For years, I guess he was doing it once a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year. Yeah, you're right. That's a lot of blast. That is a lot of I mean, especially what we know about what the pressure it exerts on a body. Yeah, sure. That's rough work. Yeah. And we pointed out how it's safe, but more than 30 people have died doing this over the years. Okay, so that pops up in this article. 30 people have died as human cannonballs. There's a British historian who died a few years back. His name is Ah Cox. He says that there's been only about 50 people to ever be human cannonballs and 30 have died. Really? Yeah. I thought that's kind of significant enough to be put into this article, enough to ward me off of human cannonballing. So 30 out of 50 have died, and that's just who died. Others, like Brokerback zazzle brokerback, yeah. We'll get into that gruesomeness soon. Where is the Broker? Back. All right, so back to the Smith family. They are the modern Cannonball family that are pretty awesome. David Cannonball Smith Jr. Has spent much of his life inside of a cannon. Yes. Have you been on their website? No. It's pretty funny. He's described as having a dynamic personality. I like that instead of saying he has a dynamite personality, that'd be pretty bad. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. Isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an evergrowing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. You can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. David the Bullet Smith Jr. Is the son in? I'm sorry. He's the one with the dynamic. Okay. His dad was a real snooze. I don't know. He bested his dad's record of by flying 193ft. Yes. But his dad still holds the highest, I think 203. 201. Yes. 201 ft. 61.2 meters. And that's when outside of America. Yeah. That's one of those over two Ferris wheels. Yes. That's crazy. Yes. Oh, should you mention the DARPA thing? I thought that was completely stupid and ridiculous. Did you think so? Yeah, I think it's kind of cool. I think if DARPA could perfect this, then it could take the human cannonball art to a whole new level. But basically, DARPA the defense research project, right? Yeah. There's an A in there somewhere advanced. Yes. Thank you. They were looking at I think they filed a patent for a basically a human cannonball. Cannon that has, like, a sled chair, right, that shoots you up. I think they said they can get a first responder, special ops, a firefighter on top of a five storey building in 2 seconds. So basically, the idea is to take the human cannonball concept and just shoot people on top of buildings to go fight fires or to go snipe people or whatever. So I get that it's the landing thing that they say is the hardest part in real cannonballing. So what's going on? Well, that's what I'm saying. I have no idea. I don't know if they were like, well, we've got this part, now let's go figure out the other part. But that's kind of the big joke or the big underscore among human cannonballers is it's not a problem shooting somebody out of a cannon. Right. It's the landing that's the important part. Yeah, right. Or in this case, if you're shooting someone on a building, if you're off there, then all of a sudden you're a cartoon and you smack into the building and then slide very slowly down. Except, unlike a cartoon, you leave a trail of blood when you slide down. Yeah. And you slide down fast. And then there's more blood and body parts on the street. Yes. Which has happened. I'm sure it has. There's been a lot of accidents. As we said, out of 50, 30 human cannonballs have died. Right. That's a lot. And to prevent this, these people stay in tip top shape, right? Sure. You have to work out your core. You have to have a strong back. You need to be able to brace yourself, like you said, and really just go totally rigid. So when you're shot out, you're not crushed. Crushed. You need to become a projectile. Right. Because all you're wearing is a helmet, maybe a little padding. Yeah. But how much is not going to do much if you miss your net. No. And the net is very important. A lot of people use airbags as well. Right? Yes. There is a guy who's named Elvin Bail, and it's the human space shuttle. Poor Elvindale. He used airbags and he is a victim of circumstance if there ever has been one. Right. He was big in the until, I believe, when he went through all the tests, shot his crash test dummy out, it landed fine in these airbags where he calculated they should be. And what he didn't know is that his crash test dummy had gotten wet, which made it much heavier, which completely changed the dynamics of its test run. So when he shot himself out, he missed the airbags, right? He did. He would. He sailed right over him. This is in Hong Kong. And he said that he knew I could see where I was going and that it was too far too fast. So he knew in mid air he was conscious enough to be like, oh, crap, I'm not going to hit the airbag. And apparently the dummy, because when I read that, I was like, well, how does this happen when that's the only safety thing you can do? How do you have a soaked dummy? Apparently it was left in the rain. They're filled with sand and so the outside of it dried, but the sand was still wet on the inside, so it didn't feel wet to the touch when they were testing it. And he said he remembered it feeling like it was in slow motion and that his brain actually thought he could solve this problem in mid aerodynamically, like do something like, I can do this and shorten the trip and land upright, which might save me. But instead he overshot it by just a few yards and slammed feet first into the floor, shattered his ankles, knee, a leg and his spine, and he's paralyzed from the waist down. And that is very sad. Yeah. He mentioned the aerodynamics. Right. Like there is a specific way you want to land. Yeah. You want to do that little easy somersault and land on your back. Yeah, that's the way to land. You also said something that brought to mind the idea that this G force that we talked about earlier, that's been shown to produce a loss of consciousness in people. So that's another danger. When you're sailing, you want to stay like a projectile, and if you're blacked out, you're going to be like a dead body. Like you. Yes. And Elvin Bell is not the only person that something horrible has happened to, obviously. Yeah. Matt Pranch just this year. Yeah. A few months ago in April. Yes. And this is just a nightmare scenario. He got blasted off and right after he blasted off the net, collapsed. How does that happen? I don't know. That's probably what he's asking. Well, he died. He landed on his head and died. He did die. So that is not what he's asking. That is what his family is asking. Probably via a lawsuit, it would be my guess. That was in Great Britain, too. Very sad. And remember, I mentioned a Zucchini sister. The Zucchinis used to do these double barrel stunts where they too would be shot out at the same time, usually next to one another along parallel to one another. Well, she and another brother had an act where they'd be shot in the same direction as one passed by and like high five. Yeah. Well, they collided and she broke her back. That's just a bad idea. That was a bad idea. But the sad thing is if you look at modern people, like modern cannonballers, they are safety conscious. They were just like a neck collapsed or their dummy was wet, which that makes it even sadder to me. If you get shot 200ft into the air at your brother at 60 miles an hour, I wonder how close breaker back then something that was part of the equation. I wonder how close they intended to go to one another because obviously the closer the better. Like if they were 20ft apart, it's not as impressive. So they probably wanted to get it tight for the effect. But can you imagine all of a sudden when you see that coming straight at you, you probably have the same realization like, oh crap, I'm going to die by hitting my brother sister brother. Very sad. Yeah. Anything else? That's it. Man. Do we ever did the thing on Daredevils? No, I wrote an article on Daredevils and maybe we should do that at some point. Or we've been talking about our evil Caneval podcast because he's a big part of that one. Maybe we can just cover it all human cannonball. Yeah, we've got that one covered. Done. Okay, well if you want to learn more about human cannonballs, including how long it takes to accelerate the human Cannonballer to their top speed, do you want to know? One bit of a second. Really? Yeah. You can find all that by typing humancannonball onto the search bar@houseofworks.com. And from what you say, Chuck, it sounds like that'll bring up more than just one article. Yeah, my Daredevil thing might pop up. I said handysearchbar@households.com. That means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this underground railroad I'm writing in about underground railroad. I wanted to share a little bit of my childhood summers in upstate New York. My great grandfather, Louis Loveland made a home in Johnsburg, New York, in the Adirondacks. That's so funny. Like you know him. Yeah. Louie the home itself is incredibly cool and haunted. There's a very cluttered and dimly lit room hidden away behind the kitchen, which has a small organ buried beneath a decade of stored and forgotten items. Family legend has it that the organ would mysteriously start playing at all hours of the night thanks to spirits. As if that weren't enough, there's a very large barn behind the home which has seen its better days. My sister and I were always warned to be careful when we went near the barn. Reason? Because the earth beneath our feet could give away at any moment. Well, that sounds like a terrifying summer house. But there's a hidden tunnel beneath the barn because there's a hidden tunnel beneath the barn running from the back of the home, below the barn and out into the mountains, right next to a strawberry patch that my great grandfather planted 100 years. Ago, the tunnel was a part of the underground Railroad, and I've been told it's one of the last stops in the Adirond deck that is still intact today. Although it varies. The tunnel is roughly three to 4ft below the ground, about 5ft tall, 4ft wide, and 75 yards long. Packed with dirt and rocks and an absolute death trap to navigate without a flashlight. Jeez the entrance from the home is just too dangerous to use anymore. But there is a way to drop into the tunnel via a hidden door in the barn, as long as you don't mind a mini landslide of dirt and hay following you into the tunnel, which I would. That's it. Once you carefully make your way through the tunnel, you emerge into sunlight and a strawberry field. Nice little treat if you're somebody can do a warm wet towel, moist towel, refresh. And that is from Alice in St. Louis. Wow. Thanks, Alice. You could do that, couldn't you? Chuck, go and caving before I could do that. Not me. As long as it's buttressed. I wonder if it is buttressed if Charles Bronson had anything to do with it. If you have a great recipe for fresh strawberries, we want to hear it. You can wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, kiss it goodnight and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find US@amazonandtalopets.com." | ||
93f9fa1e-335f-11e8-9083-ff146608dc2b | What are false positives? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-are-false-positives | When getting a medical diagnosis, it's important to understand the terms. Negative is good, positive is bad, false positive is great in a way, but false negative is the worst. Learn all about false positives, when your tests indicate you have a disease... | When getting a medical diagnosis, it's important to understand the terms. Negative is good, positive is bad, false positive is great in a way, but false negative is the worst. Learn all about false positives, when your tests indicate you have a disease... | Thu, 29 Mar 2018 18:20:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=18, tm_min=20, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=88, tm_isdst=0) | 42736821 | audio/mpeg | "Binge. Listen this and all your artist stations, plus any song from our library of millions of songs all ad free. Get your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. Now. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryan. It's just us. There's no producer. There's no guest producer. There's no nothing. Just a ghost in the chair. Why is it whenever we're in this room, just the two of us, I go back to elementary school or middle school and feel like we should just start drinking whiskey or something? Isn't that weird? Yeah, well, I guess Jerry kind of provides like a teacher like presence, and I guess Noel is kind of like a substitute teacher like presence. So I didn't ever have the urge to drink whiskey in elementary school, but I can see where you're coming from. It was 8th grade before that started for me. I did drink till college, but I don't know. And neither one of those Jerry or Noah would care, even. It's just some weird thing about the teacher leaving the room after all these years, I'm still like, all right, I need to act up, right? My thing went more towards paper airplanes then breaking out the pint bottle of whiskey I have in my sock. Now, again, I didn't even drink until college, so of course I wasn't doing that. I just probably started joking around. No, I know what you mean. But today's Chuck would hit the bottle, right? Actually, today's Chuck is all business. Because I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you're doing your job right now. That's true. We both are. Because this is our job to podcast. It's funny, during the Emily and Chuck pre Oscars Mini Crush show, it was kind of dragging on. She's like, this is starting to feel like a job. And I was like, this is my job. This is the job. The job. We talk about it like cops talk about their job. We're real podcasters the job. Remember that show, the Wire. Have you ever heard of it? Oh, sure. I'm just kidding. We've talked about it before. Yeah. Remember they called that one cop real Police. Yeah, Real Police. I can't remember her name. Yeah, they said that a lot on that show. Yeah. But they mostly talked about one officer in particular as Real police trying to think of yeah, the real podcaster. Right? There you go. I love it. So let's start real podcasting. Is this one going to be a stinker? No, it's not, actually. Really? Do you know why? Because it has the hallmarks of a good episode. And I'm going to peel the curtain back a little bit for everybody. Chuck. One of the hallmarks of a good episode. At least of Stuff You should know. Is that there is controversy associated with something even where there doesn't seem to be. And that there are people who are either getting screwed over. Suffering. Being neglected. Being abused. There is some group of people who the rest of the world aren't really thinking of. Who are suffering at the hands of other people. And actually, this episode has all that. All right, surprisingly. I'll let you guys guess where that stuff comes in. All right, so we're talking about false positives. And here's what that is. If you've ever been to the doctor, got a medical test done generally well, not generally, always. You will get one of four results. Yeah, good point. You can get a true positive. And remember, when you're getting a medical test back, positive is negative. Yeah. Usually means bad news. The positive is not good. They don't say, I have news, I have good news for you. Your results are positive. It's a little bit of a mind trick that you need to perform. But positive is you have this condition, right? It means that the test that searches for a condition found a result. Yes. It is confirmed as yes. Right. So that's a good thing. That's a true positive, right? Yeah. Then you got a true negative, which means you don't have this. However, if you're like me or probably you and most people, you say, that's good news, but I'd sure like to get a confirmation on that. Yeah. How do you know? How do you know, doc? Then you can get a false positive, which is what we're talking about here. Which is they say you have this condition, like, let's say you have cancer. I'm sorry to tell you, but you don't. As it turns out later on, which is great. False positives are kind of they should call it the new lease on life result. Right. The Daphne Coleman out of time result. And then the worst of all, probably, is the negative. Agreed. Man, I'm glad you said that, because this article just walks right past that fact. Yeah. That means results say you're fine, but it turns out that you're not. Yes, you're toast. So whatever the not even good avocado toast. You're bad. Burnt toast. Right, exactly. Terrible stuff with that really cheap sliced cheese that nobody would want to eat. What's the opposite of lease on life result? Early death. Sudden early death. Out of the blue. Although there is something to be said about that. About just not knowing. Right? Just out of nowhere, bam, you just fall over dead. That's not necessarily the worst way to go. Yeah, I guess I was thinking more in the play on words of instead of a new lease on life, something to do with renting and your landlord. We'll figure this one later and dump it in wait, what's it called when you get kicked out of your apartment? An old eviction of death. We did it, Chuck. Oh, man. So if you take a test at the doctor. Those are the four possible results you can get. Right. What's really interesting here and this is something that you're going to want to remember, and after you hear the rest of what we have to say, you're really going to want to remember this. But when you hear something like this test that I'm about to give you is 99% accurate, it doesn't mean that if it comes back with a positive result that says you have this thing, it doesn't mean there's a 99% chance that you have that. It just means that when they say a test is 99% accurate, that if you do have that disease, there's a 99% chance that this test will catch it. Okay. Huge difference between those two things. Yeah. Okay. That's step one. So really what this is saying is that this test doesn't let very many false negatives get through. And if you look at the numbers, this is how that works out. If you have 10,000 people chuck okay. And they take a test, it's 99% accurate. And this is so 10,000 people and 99% of them don't have this, and it's a 99% accurate test, there's going to be 100 that come back positive out of 10,000. Okay. 99 of those positive results are going to be true. One is going to be a false negative. 9900 are going to be negative. They're going to come back negative. 9801 are going to be true negatives, but 99 are going to actually be false positives. Right. Okay. I know this is really mindbending, but if you take the numbers like this, that means that only one out of 9802 people had a false negative. So that's a big deal. As you said, that's the big daddy. That's the one you've got to really watch out for. But 99 out of 198 are false positives, which means that this 99% accurate test has a 50% chance of giving you a false positive if you come back positive. Should I just not even have said any of that stuff? No. I think it's just funny that after ten years, it's dawned on me that you have two true talents. One is explaining extremely complex things in a very easily digestible way, and the other is completely confusing me with the words that come out of your mouth. Well, this is very confusing stuff. I mean, it's not just me. This is Bayesian statistics. Basically, the point of all of this is that, first of all, if your 99% accurate test comes back that says you have something, it doesn't mean you have a 99% chance of that you have it. Yeah. Very important, number one. Number two, if it does say you have it, there's a 50% chance that that test is wrong, even if it's a 99% accurate test. Okay? That's a big thing to remember, that if your doctor doesn't explain that to you, you punch him or her in the arm, and you say you're not doing your job fully? Because I'm scared, buddy. I just got a positive test result and I'm scared out of my mind. So if your doctor's not going to come for you, hopefully Bayesian statistics well, and don't listen to me, go look it up yourself, because I'm sure someone else on the Internet can explain it better than I can. Perhaps Mr. Billy Bays and his whole statistical model. Was he a character on Melrose Place? I think so. He's a pool cleaner. All right. So with medical testing, period, like you said, if your doctor is not telling you that with any tests that you take, not all medical tests are created equally, some are really accurate, some aren't as accurate as they well, that's what it says they could be. They're as accurate as they can be, which is to say, maybe not as accurate as you would like it to be, sure. But you really need to talk to your doctor and hopefully they're offering this up anyway, like, hey, what's the deal with this test? How reliable is this? Do I need to get a second test? Because the whole thing with false positives and false negatives and even true positives and negatives is there's a bunch of different reasons why followup testing is both good and bad. Sometimes these procedures, like the follow up isn't like a pin prick. Sometimes it's an actual surgical procedure that you may not need a lot of times, and we'll get into these more specifically, but there's expense involved. A lot of times you didn't need to spend that money. But it's hard to say because you should be your own medical advocate and spend whatever money you can to ensure that the testing is reliable. And then there are things like the time that it takes between these things, like, all right, we'll see you. We need to follow this up with another test, but it's going to take three months to get you in. And in the meantime, in those three months, you're stressing out, you're up all night, you can't sleep, your sex drive is out the window. That sounds like a silly thing to talk about, but it's a real thing, especially when you're grown ups like us. Yeah, it's important. But here's a study from 2009. So granted, this is a little old, but it's from the Annals of Family Medicine. And when it came to test for prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancers, they found that false positives after four tests, they did test either four test or 14 test. After four tests, you had about a 37% chance for men and a 26% chance for women for false positive. And then the more test you got, the more that went up, which is distressing. It is something like if you had 14 tests, all 14 of the tests that they studied, you had a 60.4% chance for men and 48.8% chance for women of coming back with a false positive. And again, this isn't just like, yes, you have that new lease on life on the other side. But studies have shown like these getting a false positive result from a test, it can be emotionally devastating and it can have an impact on your finances. If you're a scrooge McDuck type who's only moved by the idea of money and your physical health because of stress. Yeah, because it's not like you're not addicted to man, which in the time, just because you're stress eating the whole time. So that's not good for you. What was manwich? Man, which was a can sloppy joe starter. Okay, I know it's a meal. Well, it's more than a meal. A sandwich is a sandwich, but a man which is a meal. Oh, that's right, I got it wrong. You're like, no, it's more than a meal even. It's even greater than the ads prophecy. So the financial cost, like you were talking about, scrooge McDuck, they did another study of about 1000 people, and this was in December of 2004 and the issue of cancer epidemiology, biomarkers and prevention. That is a legit journal just by the title. Oh, for sure. Oh wait. And then it says wakeboarding. More than 40% of participants had at least one false positive. 83% of these people went on to receive additional care at a cost of about $1,000 for women and about one 10 for men. So that's not jump change. No, it's not. And a lot of people say, well, who cares? I got insurance. Well, healthcare spending is kind of a problem in this country. There's apparently in 2005, the national academy of sciences, big shout out to them, they found that there was 30% of healthcare spending was wasteful in the United States, 30% in 2005. And the idea of that gave rise to something. There's a campaign called choosing wisely. Have you heard of that? No. So it's a campaign called choosing wisely. They have a site called choosing wisely.org. It's a joint effort between the American board of internal medicine, so it's physician based and consumer reports. And they're basically saying, like, there are a lot of unnecessary tests being performed out there that are leading to these unnecessary surgeries, unnecessary expenses, unnecessary anxiety, and we want to figure out what they are and we want to start advising people against them, or at least advising doctors to advise their patients against them because they might be unnecessary. And so this campaign has really kind of had a big impact. As we'll talk about in a little bit, the idea of breast cancer screening has changed, the recommendations have changed. From what I understand from this, choosing wisely campaign has really kind of just shifted things from, well, this overabundance of caution can't be harmful to actually there are some harms involved in an overabundance of caution. Let's kind of streamline our caution and make it a little more laser focused. Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, we'll take a break and I'll hit you with a stat right out of the gate when we come back. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, so before break, you were talking about breast cancer and mammograms in particular. And there was a study a few years ago in 20 15 20 15 20 15 about false positive mammograms and breast cancer over diagnoses alone at $4 billion a year. Billion. So it's just such a fine line of striking the right note with preventative care and over diagnoses. Yeah, and here's the problem. It's not like they are not out there saving people's lives. Yeah. It's not like the people like Dr. Papa Nicolau who came up with the PAP smear said, oh man, this is going to be like a cash register for Western medicine. Right? That's not what these tests are designed for. Unfortunately, they are used in some circumstances like that. In probably more circumstances than that. They're used again out of an overabundance of caution because no doctor wants to be responsible for missing something in their patient and leading to their patient dying. So they're using this overabundance of caution. The problem is that the tests aren't 100% infallible. They do have accuracy problems and some tests are better than others. Or another way to put it, some tests are worse than others. As far as false positives go and take the PAP smear in particular with the PAP smear, it looks for precancerous cervical cells. Right. 3 million women in the United States get a positive PAP smear result. From what I understand, every year, only 30 of them have a deadly cervical cancer. And that 40% of women will get a false PAP smear in their lifetime. But here's the thing. 4000 women who die in the US every year from cervical cancer, most of them did not have a PAP smear or hadn't gotten a PAP smear in the last five years. So there's a tough relationship between using the tests and overusing the tests. And for every, say, I think 2000 women who undergo a mammogram, one woman's life is saved. Well, those 2000 women, they didn't know whether they were going to be the one whose life was saved or not to them or to their doctor, it was worth it. Unfortunately, 200 of them will get false positives, and ten of them will undergo unnecessary surgeries, painful unnecessary surgeries to remove non cancerous suspicious cells in their breasts. So there's this idea where, yes, we need to use these tests, and then there's also this idea where we need to use these tests better or come up with more accurate tests. Yeah. I mean, in particular, mammograms and screening for colorectal cancer are two of the big ones that can show a lot of false positives, and they're sort of under the microscope as to how we can correct this moving forward. For instance, mammograms correctly identifies breast cancer 84% of the time. However, if you're younger, if you're a younger woman, or if you have very dense breasts, you're more likely to have a false positive. And so because of this, over the past even ten to 15 years, they've changed the recommended age a few times for when you should start getting these mammograms. It's gone from, I think in 2009, they recommended between 50 and 74. Then I think it went down between all the way down to 40. At 1.40 was where it started, I think. Oh, where it started, then up to 50. Right. And now, I think this is the latest. As of a few years ago, the AC American Cancer Society said if you are an average risk, and this is probably how they should do it, and not just a sweeping age, but if you're an average risk, you should start at 45 annually, but you could begin as early as 40. And I would guess that means if it runs in your family right. And then after 55 every other year, like, Emily's mom and my mom both went through breast cancer. Oh, man. So Emily started getting mammograms, I think, maybe even at 40, because she was in the higher risk group. Right. Smart. Yeah. And they're no fun to go through, but she is I think Emily has a good head on her shoulders as far as advocating for herself, but also not going off the deep end. Yeah. That's similarly through and through. Yeah. She's not just going to sit there and be like, oh, whatever you say, doctor, and she's like, that actually doesn't sound quite right. She'll stand up for herself. Yeah, for sure. Advocating for herself, it's important. It is. So with mammograms, Chuck, from what I've seen, nobody's saying, well, this is a kind of X ray, so you don't want to build up the radiation. That doesn't seem to be the problem with overuse of mammograms. What seems to be the problem is that a mammogram is an X ray, and the X ray is handed off to a radiologist, and they apparently are like some high 80% effective at finding cancerous tumors in breast. Looking at an image of a breast. This trained human being can say yes. There you go, right there. Circle it, initial it, go. Follow this up. The follow up results in a biopsy, usually a needle prick biopsy to remove some of the cells. Those are examined, and if those come back as suspicious, a doctor might say, we need to get those cells out. Most of the time, those aren't actually cancerous cells, but they're still being removed surgically, which is painful, costly, and can be a problem emotionally. To have to go through that surgical procedure, to have cells removed that you didn't need to have removed. That's the problem with mammograms. As far as getting them frequently, and supposedly between ages 40 and 50, a woman has a 50% to 60% chance of getting a false positive result from a mammogram. Yeah, man, I mean, a 60% chance. Yeah. And again, no one's saying, oh, don't get a mammogram, they're going to just totally screw you up. It's more like medical community. We need a better way to keep an eye on breast cancer. I mean, they're trying. Sure they are. Of course they are. And colorectal cancer is a perfect example. It is the second leading cancer related death in the US right now. Was it, say, 132,700 new diagnoses in 2015. And one of the big problems with colorectal cancer is that not a lot of well, I'm saying a lot of people, but I think about 50% of people don't follow up on a recommendation to get a colonoscopy because they don't want to get a colonoscopy. Yeah, so that's a problem. Have you got one of those? Not yet. I haven't either. I'm really not looking forward to it. And I was researching it today and just almost fainted like three or four times while I was reading about the procedure. Yeah, it's hardcore, man. There's like a finger width tube that they stick in your anus pasture, rectum up to your colon, the sesame, I think it is, which is the top of your colon, which is basically where your rib cage ends, on your left side. That's your Cecil. So they go all the way up there and it has, like, a camera and a light on the end. And basically what they're doing is visually inspecting the inside of your colon. If they see something that they find suspicious, they can put forceps through the tube and take a sample of it and then just come on back out. Normally they'll give you a sedative for this. They also give you I can't remember the name of the drugs, but it basically makes you forget that it ever happened. Like, it prevents you from forming memories during the procedure, but most people don't want to go through this, even though it's extremely effective. It finds 92% of colorectal cancer, from what I understand. Yes. It's amazing that with all the advances of medical science, they're literally saying, like, the best way is to really just get on up in there and take a look. Just jamming up there. Get up there. However, they do have some because, like we said, about 50% of people won't even get a colonoscopy when recommended. They have other tests. Now, they aren't as accurate, but at least they're trying to get another test on the table for people that are reticent to have the tube duck up their butt. Right. And some of them work there's. This one called Koligard from Germany. Yeah. They have an accuracy rate of 92%. No, this one is yeah, co lagarde was 92%. That's high because I'm sorry, I misspoke earlier. The colonoscopy catches 94%. So this stuff that you just poop into a cup and mail it in some poor schmo tests, it right that's 92%. That's really great. Well, it's not quite it showed 92% of the cancers that a colonoscopy would uncover. Okay. So that's not 92% overall. Oh. Okay. I got you. But it's still pretty good. Right? But it has a high false positive rate of 13%, which, I mean, if you think a tube up your butt will make your rectum pucker, so will a false positive of colorectal cancer. Yes, the German one, although that might be german, too, but there's another German actually, this is a German study about stool tests, and that's when you literally are just looking at trace amounts of blood in the stool. Well, some do that had accuracy all over the place. That was from 25% to 72%, which, I mean, that's such a wild swing, right, that I don't know if I would opt for that. Some of them, I should say probably most look for blood in the stool. Some look for DNA or genetic material of cancer in your stool. And another one looks for chemical changes of a certain gene that could be present in your stool. And by stool, of course, I mean poop, by the way, everybody and they analyze them for this. And again, they're pretty good at catching the stuff, but they're also pretty good at giving false positives. That's just a great the idea that we can catch like, 94% of colorectal cancers with colonoscopy, but 50% of people who need one don't go get it because it's such an awful procedure, like you were saying at the outset, like that begs for something new. Yeah. You want to take another break? Yeah, let's go. Prepare the finger width tubes. We'll talk about drug testing right after this. OK. 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.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. All right, so we've honed in on mostly medical testing up until this point. But if anyone has ever taken a drug test, there is always the risk of a weird false positive. You can be clean, liver and still get a test that said, hey, it says here that you smoked marijuana. And you can be like, dude, I don't and have never smoked marijuana. And then you have to plead. Like, basically every athlete ever this tested positive for anything says, I didn't do it, man, this is false positive. They're like, whatever, Stoner. But that's like, the same thing with my Twitter account was hacked. Like, really, every time something awful came out on your Twitter feed, someone hacked it. Yes, but Twitter hacking does happen. And true false positives and drug tests definitely happen. Yeah, it depends on what you've been doing. Like, if you are using seeing a prescription medicine or even some over the counter medicines, you can come up with the false positive on a drug test. Yes. It says between seven and 15 million people a year in the United States get a false positive drug test. That's a lot because think about it, if you're applying for a job and you go do the drug test and you go home and you hear that you got passed over for the job, I don't know if they tell you that it was because you failed your drug test. And even if they do, they're not going to be like, well, we want to hear your side of the story, Mr. Candidate Number 927. Yeah, you just lost out on a job because of a false positive. You lost out on a sports scholarship. You lost out on, I don't know, getting to deliver Meals on Wheels. Who knows? But you're going to miss out on something because of a failed drug test when you didn't do anything. You've been a straight arrow your whole life. But again, you made the mistake of not keeping up with what prescription medicines can give you false positives. Yeah. And here's the thing, parents, if you drug test your kids I'm not weighing in on that one way or the other, but if you drug test your kids and they return a positive test for marijuana and they say, mom, that's because I was in the car with some people who are getting stoned. That's how it showed up. It's not true. I hate to break it to you, but that is not I don't think you can ever get a false positive for marijuana from second hand smoke, right? That's not your cue to. Burst into tears and grab Todd and go, oh, Todd, I knew you would never use drugs. And Todd's winking at the camera and breaking the fourth wall and winks at the camera in Ferris Bueller style. Yeah. Todd Stoked. It did kind of remind me, though, because it said here that cocaine is one of the drugs that routinely do not come back with a false positive or a false negative. Yeah. It's kind of on the money. That means they have a good test for it. Well, yeah, but that made me remember that old thing I used to hear that like, whatever percentage of dollar bills has cocaine on it. And I thought, that's totally not true. And one of those things that you just hear in school. But I looked it up and apparently that is totally true. There was a study just a few years ago in New York City by NYU, and they found that 80% of dollar bills had trace amounts of cocaine. Yeah. Some ridiculous amount of euros do, too. Yeah. And not just cocaine. It's like there was some morphine, heroin and meth in lower quantities, and then all manner of disgusting, gross things on paper money. Right. Which apparently people were using to roll into a tube and sticking into their nose to ingest drugs with. Not worry, but kind of always have. So the idea that you can find drugs on money, have you heard that there are local laws around the country, in the United States that say that police can confiscate money as drug money if they test it and it turns out that there's drug residue on it? Well, it sounds like it's 80% of money. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Not too cool. What are some of the other things that can give you a false positive aside from just jamming dollar bills in your nose? Yeah. So remember that seinfeld where I think Elaine was supposed to go on a J. Peterman trip, but she got disinvited because she turned up positive for heroin, but it turns out that she was eating lemon poppy seed muffins every day? That apparently is true. Although this article or How Stuff Works article, gets it wrong. So the poppy seeds don't actually contain opium, but when you're harvesting the seeds, opium can rub off onto the seeds from people that were doing opium. No, they're harvesting opium from the poppy and then they're harvesting seeds later. Got you. And then the seeds can come in contact with opium residue from the poppy plant. And then, however well they're processed or not processed, by the time you eat them, they might have a substantial amount of opium on the outside of the shell, which will show up in a drug test. Crazy. Seinfeld was correct. Seinfeld was correct. Apparently, ibuprofen can come back with a positive for marijuana. Barbiturates or Benny's. That was Jack carowick's. Drug of choice. One of several. Yeah, that's fair to say. I remember him writing about the Benny's a lot. Yeah, that's how he wrote that book in, like, 48 hours. Didn't he write that on, like, one long, scrolling piece of paper? That's what I've always heard, but last time I heard that, I was, like, 20 years old, so I never looked into it since. I think it's true. Jack carwick, let us know. Some OTC cold and allergy medications apparently can result in positive tests for, like, amphetamines. It's crazy. Yeah. Well, you know that if you're making bathtub crank, you can use pseudophil as a precursor or an ingredient in just crank, and that's why you're only allowed to buy, like, one box at a time with a driver's license, such as 70s. Well, yeah, if you're using over the counter pseudophil to make your meth, that's crank. Yeah, it's crank and then tonic water. Surprisingly, apparently, quinine contains a little bit of the real quinine, which is a drug. So here's the thing. I looked into this. I could not figure out why quinine would result in a positive test for heroin. Here's why. Chuck, are you ready for this? I'm ready because, you know, gin and tonics are my jam. Okay, well, just be careful because tonic water does contain sometimes like, 83 milligrams of quinine in it, which was a malaria drug. Right. Well, back in the 30s, supposedly, heroin dealers started adding quinine to their heroin to combat malaria. That was the urban legend. It turns out that's not the case at all. But Quinnine actually interacts with heroin in a way that kind of boosts it. And it also, more to the point, mimics heroin's bitter taste. So somebody would taste the heroin, and what they were tasting was quinine, but they thought they had, like, some dynamite skag on their hands. So it was really just kind of to take terrible junk and make it seem like it was much better by adding quinine. Apparently, this has been going on for so many years that drug tests test for quinine because they consider that an indicator of the presence of heroin. I think my big takeaway is here. Is it quinine and not quinine? I've heard both. Okay, that's your big takeaway. I was laying down gold. Well, here's my deal. Lately, I've been buying the real deal tonics. Yeah. Like fevertree. I hate to use the word artisan tonics. You should. But I've been buying the artisan tonics because they're delicious, and I've really embraced bitter as a taste that I can enjoy. Now here in my late 40s, I've never liked bitter at all, but I have come around to it a little bit. Yeah. It is, like, the definition of an acquired taste, isn't it? Yeah, but now I really like it. And these tonics that they make are, like they're made from the real what's the root? What is it? Chinchilla. Chinchona? Is it chinchona? I believe so, yeah. And that's, like, the key ingredient, right? Yeah. From what I understand, it is the key ingredient in tonic bark. I'm not an artisan tonic maker. Cinchona bark? Yeah. I don't know if that's the key ingredient or if it's one of them. There's also like in white willow or something in that like an ingredient in aspirin is also in tiny water. Yeah, I don't know. I enjoy it though. And the thing is, you don't use a ton of it, you just use like an ounce and then some club soda or whatever. Artisan soda water. Oh, I see what you're saying. So you're using artisan like tonic? Not with any kind of fizz. You're using like the tonic tonic? Yes. Oh, wow, man, that's hardcore. It's like dark brown. I got you. And then you pour that in, it's like a couple of ounces of gin. An ounce of that and then top it off with some soda water. Give it a good shake, man. That sounds great. It's really good. Can I come over today? Sure, come on over. I started gin and tonic season early this year. That's great. Which is not good. No, it's great. Okay. Yeah, it's not good. It's great. Artisan tonic made from doomed goats. They have one kind downstairs at the 1821. Yeah, the Bitters Place. Yeah. And I like theirs. Okay. But then there's another one in Avondale Estates that I think I like theirs a little more. So is there like a specific tonic or just like the general tonic that they have? Well, the one in Avondale states is one called Dry Tonic and one called Robust Tonic. And I think the Robust just has a little more lime citrus, but they're both delicious. Let's try this stuff, man. Nice work, Chuck. Trying. Yeah, steer clear of the drug test. I'm pretty sure they're going to start instituting them at Stuff Media any day now. You know, the only drug test I ever had to take my entire life was when I went through the adoption process. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Never had to take one for work or anything. Nor have I. Not that you mentioned it. I think we're in the minority. You never had to drive a bobcat for work? I did, but the guy I worked for couldn't have cared less. He was insured to the teeth. Before we go, you got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, so before we go, I found one test that is just supposed to be it just seems to me like it's the gold standard for test. It's an HIV screen and it's called the enzyme linked immunosorbent essay, or Elisa. I think we talked about it in our HIV two parter. This is how this test is performed. So you get this one screen, the Elisa screen. If it comes back positive, a second Elisa screen is performed. If that's positive, a separate test that uses an entirely different technique is performed. All this is in the lab before you ever hear your results. And that means that one in the United States, one out of 250,000 tests show a false positive. That means that has a .004% chance of returning a false positive. That is a bomb test. Yeah, that's all I got. I got nothing else. Go check out. Choosing wisely.org, it seems pretty interesting to me. And in the meantime, how about some listener mail? Yeah, I'm going to call this email from Mr. Sweden's class. All right, this is actually from Mr. Sweden and not his class, but we're going to shout at his class in hopes that he starts incorporating this into his class. Hey, guys, love the show on Walruses. Wanted to chime in regarding reproductive isolation or reasons why different species don't mate. I have taught biology for several years, and evolutionary biology is always my favorite unit. Remember when we talked about reproductive isolation and what other different types of like how that would manifest itself? I remember. So he says there are several types of reproductive isolation, and geographic isolation is one of them. And here's a little breakdown. Geographic isolation, when species live in different geographic reasons sorry, regions. Ecological isolation, same region, different habitat. Okay, okay. So they're in the same big city. They just don't hang out with the same clubs. Different neighborhoods. Different neighborhoods. Got you. Behavioral I always have trouble with that word, isolation. One species mating behavior won't work on another. For instance, a peacock won't attract a chicken. Right? Because the peacock can't do what does the peacock say? Help. That's right. Temporal isolation. Same area, but breed at different times. And that can be everything from the season to literally the time of day. That's called two ships passing in the night. Reproductive isolation. And that's like, I like morning sex. And the other one is like, shut up. I only like to have sex at night when I'm drunk. Then there's gometic isolation. Mating can occur, but sperm and egg won't mix. No, not you again. And he says in this case, it's usually the egg releases a toxin that kills the sperm quidine. That's right. And finally he said my students favorite type of reproductive isolation, mechanical isolation. Sure. That's when the parts don't fit. Hold on, just give me a second. Wait. I can do this. And then nothing. He says, Think square peg, round hole. Sure, that's a really good way to put it. Way better than what I was saying. So there you have it, guys. All the types of reproductive isolation. Now you know and knowing is half the battle. GI. Joe, nice job. Don't stop believing or whatever journey lyric guides your life. That is from Mr. Baird. Swedman. Thank you, Mr. Schwedman. I was looking to added a ch. What is it? Sweden? It's just Sweden. But I like Mr. Schwedman. I have to call him Schwedman. You know Mr. Schwedman from PS. 122, right? Exactly. That's how I'm doing it. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Schwedman. I'm sorry I got it wrong the first time, but Chuck said behavioral wrong, so we're even. I could never say that, right? If you want to get in touch with us, especially if you are one of the fine teachers instructing America's youth or any youth of any country around the world, because we think everybody's great, you can tweet to us. We're at Sisk podcast. I'm at Joshua Clarke. Chucks@facebookcom charleswchuckbryant. He's also on Twitter at Moviecrush. You can send us all an email to stuff podcast@housestuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffbychano.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.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 death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
What is stagflation? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-stagflation | When high inflation, slow growth and high employment combine, they result in an unfortunate economic situation known as stagflation. But what exactly is stagflation, and how does it work? Most importantly, how can we prevent it in the future? | When high inflation, slow growth and high employment combine, they result in an unfortunate economic situation known as stagflation. But what exactly is stagflation, and how does it work? Most importantly, how can we prevent it in the future? | Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:13:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=18, tm_min=13, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=55, tm_isdst=0) | 23785711 | 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. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. And we are going to be talking today about Econ 101. That's right. This is Chuck's favorite subject, I think this in physics. I know. I know why I hate econ. Why? Because money. I hate money. And some tough economists beat you up once. Just money. The whole thing. Emily pays all our bills. If I had to do that you said she's the CFO, right? Yeah. If I had to be the CFO, then we'd be in big trouble, because I don't like it. I don't like anything about it. Well, this is less household economics, more macroeconomic. Yeah. This is interesting. I thought there's a historical battle involved. The 70s, people in Bellbottoms, probably jimmy Carter made an appearance. Ronald Reagan, everybody. That's the whole cast of characters. Let's do it. Stagflation. Well, Chuck, I was reading an article, as is my way, about rampant inflation in 2011, and basically this guy named Michael Snyder is warning that we're going to see, I think, as he puts, an inflation that we've never seen before in the US. Inflation is this huge boogeyman where money buys less because prices rise, and there's all sorts of reasons that comes about. But if you look at classic economics, the reason why inflation tends to happen is that there's too much of something. Right. The old supply and demand. Right. In this case, too much money on the market. Therefore, since money is subject to supply and demand, more money there is on the market, the cheaper it is, because there's more of it. Demand goes down, prices go up. Right. For the cost of goods and services. Exactly. And you have inflation. Yes. What this guy is warning about is that airline fares for the past holiday season were 30% more than they were the year before. I noticed price of food has been increasing. I've noticed there's been double digit health insurance premium raises. I haven't noticed. I don't think that has anything to do with inflation. I think that's just the insurance companies punishing the US. Okay. He gives some other steps. Cotton, 40% increase. Beef up 23%. Pork up 68%. Hides or up 25%. Did you know that? I didn't know. Running for the hills. Hides are up 25%. And food prices especially are kind of a problem when inflation occurs because you need food to eat. Sure. That's very sensitive. And the USDA released their figure saying basically, like, yes, pork is going to rise some, beef can arise some. But overall, the food cost inflation is going to be like 1%, which is definitely doable. If you look at the government statistics. Right. Our inflation is pretty much at zero, maybe 1% right now. Yeah. Which is actually less than healthy. You want things to increase. You want inflation to take place, but you wanted to plot along at a very slow, steady rate. Inflation is the reason why, up to, say, 2007, a house grew in value over 30 years thanks to inflation. You paid X number of dollars for it, and it increased in value in large part because of inflation. So inflation is good as long as it's under control. Hyperinflation is really bad. The worst thing of all, though, is stagflation. And if inflation happens right now, we are prime, in a prime seat for stagflation, which would be very bad. Do you want to tell everybody what stagflation is? Can I give a couple of stats? Sure. Because these one form later on when we're talking about inflation, july 2008 is when it peaked in the last, let's just say decade inflation. Yeah. July 2008, it peaked at 5.6%. So keep that number in mind. Okay, I'm going to write it down. And December of last year, so just a couple of short months ago, it was about 1.5%. And the average for 2009 was negative point 34%. Right. It's a negative percentage in 2009. And there's something to be said about deflation as well, because that money that you do have, if you have any, becomes much more valuable. That's right. So keep those numbers in mind as we proceed here. Negative 00:34 in 2009 and we peaked in 2008 at 5.6, which was a staggering number. I got them. Compare everybody. You can ask me if you need a reminder later on. So stagflation, Josh, is not something that we made up, even though I thought it was something you made up. It describes a really bad, perfect storm of economic news. It's when you have high unemployment. Right. Slow growth coupled with high inflation. And this is something that people didn't think was possible. No, let's describe that. Let's point that out. Where we are right now, we have very high unemployment. I think it's at 10% nationally, pretty much getting better. But still yeah. Slow economic growth, for sure. We're in a recession after all. Still crawling out of it. Trying to at least. Right. We're in basically a stagnant economy, which means it's growing very sluggishly, are not growing at all. Yes. But our inflation is pretty good, right? Thankfully. But since we have those other two, like I said, we're in a prime spot. Four, if inflation does come along, we're in a prime spot for stagflation. The reason stagflation is so insidious, Chuck, is because it forms a vicious cycle. Right. Yes. So you've got you have high prices because of inflation, which means that people can't spend as much money, or when they do spend money, it doesn't buy as much. Yeah. Your dollars shrinking, essentially. Okay. So you have a shrinking dollar. You have high unemployment, which means people have less money to spend. Sure. Right. Means your savings aren't worth as much. Right. Which ultimately leads to a sluggish economy, so there's no way for this thing to naturally cycle out of it. Right. Like this could keep going indefinitely, this horrible plodding along. What I think Carter called malaise. Is that what he said? I think so. I believe it. Economic slowdown is normal. A lot of people freaked out with the recession, but people who really knew about it, economics, said recessions are kind of what corrects it in the end. We've talked about that. Yeah. So don't freak out too much in our audiobook. Yes. We talked about how if you look at the economy is made up of, like, a forest. There's the big, heavy, huge trees which represent really well managed businesses, and then you've got the underbrush, which are just kind of add ons. They're artificial almost. They shouldn't necessarily be there. They're kind of sucking off of the bubble speculation and artificially inflated economy. Right, right. And then when the wildfire comes along, which is the recession, the underbrush is burned away. Right. And things correct themselves. Sure. It's a pretty dehumanizing way of looking at things. So is economics. Yeah, you're right. In part of the 70s, people didn't think this was possible because of our friend Mr. Keynes, john Manner Keynes with stagflation. Yeah. It wasn't even a word before the well, we should point out, too, it's a contraction of stagnant and inflation, if you didn't figure that out. Yeah. So there that. Is somebody thought a stag party and inflation oh, really? Someone out there went out there? Well, a lot of people thought Bartering was Bartending. I noticed that. We got a lot of suggestions for Bartending podcast. All of a sudden, after the bartendering podcast, people got their whistle wet. So if you're a Keynesian in your economic theory, you're going to favor supply and demand and you're going to think that's pretty much what it's all about. Demand is high, you got a booming economy, prices are going to go up, inflation is going to rise some in relation to the economy rising. Right. What you're talking about is the Phillips curve. Right? Yeah. Was that the Philips curve? Yeah. So the X axis of the Phillips curve is unemployment. Yes. And then the Y axis is inflation. Right. Yeah. And that happened from about 58 to 73 post war boom, things were rising sort of not a one to one ratio, but evenly. It even happened before then. Like phillips curve is vetted. It is correct. Basically, as unemployment rises, inflation goes down naturally. And if you have low unemployment, inflation rises. It's a conversation. True. Supposedly. Right, right. And the reason why is because when unemployment is high, demand is low, therefore inflation is down, prices are low. So inflation is down. Right. And historically, this holds up if you go back and charge all this up to the was the case. And that's how it is, naturally. The problem is the Fed in the 60s thought, well, if we just keep unemployment artificially low. We'll trade that off for slightly higher inflation, but we can keep on top of that. So we can expect high inflation and act accordingly. But we'll have artificially low unemployment or near full employment, which is where everybody's employed. Yeah. They basically thought the rate of inflation would rise in a safe manner that they could keep up with. Yes. Do you remember I don't know if I've used this before, but do you remember that Simpsons, where Homer brings home Pinchy, the lobster? Have I used this one before? I think so, but I love that it puts pinchy in the fish tank and pinching needs salt water, but the goldfish needs fresh water, so it keeps adding salt and then like regular water until they're both like, half floating in the middle of the balance it and you end up killing both. Right. But that's kind of what you have to do if you're going to get in and regulate the economy, if you're not just going to let it do its own thing. That's the trick you have to do. What? He's a scary job. Oh, yeah. It's going to be terrifying. Imagine the pressure that Bernanke and those who preceded him are under. Yeah. Because, I mean, history will make a villain or a monster or a hero out of you, depending on what you do. Absolutely. You're not going to just do nothing. You're going to leave an impression depending on what you did. Like, you can't go in and leave the Fed and be like, I'm not doing anything. You know, his two thumbs and wouldn't want that job. This guy right here. So you said they got it wrong. Yeah, they got their interpretation of the Philips curb wrong. Yeah. And what that produced is called a wage price spiral. And we can get into more detail, but the long and short of it is that inflation rose faster than wages. Did you want to know how? Let's hear it. Well, this is what basically bucked the Philips curve, is that through government spending, like the government can spend on infrastructure or the public sector to create jobs. Right. Through government spending and through tax policy that forms the way the government can create or manipulate aggregate demand. Okay. If, say, for example, you keep taxes low and you increase consumer spending, you can kick start an economy, right? Yeah. You keep unemployment low, you trade off for a higher rate of inflation, like we saw they did. Right. That's fine. That can conceivably work. The problem is they put too much money into an economy. They kept pumping money into the economy no matter what. And what they found was, like you said, the wage price spiral, and basically it's where prices rise. So the Fed knew that inflation was going to happen, but when inflation happened, prices rise. Right. When labor is sitting there working their tail off and prices are rising, they make the assumption that means that industry, their bosses, their employers are making gobs of cash. Well, labor says, we want some of that cash, so give us higher wages. Yeah, which they did to a certain degree, but they couldn't keep up. But the problem with that, if you're a captain of industry, is that if you pay more, that raises your cost of production, which means that you have to raise the price, which means that your employees need more money because of inflation. And it creates this, again, another vicious cycle that's the wage price spiral. It spirals upward. And basically, eventually, employers stop increasing wages and inflation just takes off. We might have survived that, Josh, in the 70s, as bad as it was, we might have eked through if we're not for the oil embargo of when everyone knows oil went through the roof. And that's not just Sally at the gas pump. That's across all industry. Yeah. And that coupled with everything else going on all of a sudden, in 1970, inflation was at 5.5%, which in July 2008, I said it was 5.6%. So in 1970, they thought it was high at 5.574 12.2. And then it peaked at 13.3%. 1970, 9%. And again, most economists agree that you want an economy that's inflating at about 2% a year. This is 13%. Yeah. I mean, in July 2008, at 5.6%, people were freaking and imagine 13.3%. So basically, Carter is just standing around just getting it from all sides. He's got hostages in Iran that he can't get released. He's got Malays forever. He got a stock market that basically stopped working. Right. He's got brownouts and lines of the gas pump and yeah, he's got an economy that's out of control of inflation. He has no idea what to do. Right. Then in steps this guy named Paul Volcker. Can I throw in one more stat? Yes, please. Talk about the stock market. From 70 to 79, the S Amp P 500 returned an average of 5.9% annually. Not too shabby. When you've got the inflation you subtract, you're actually losing money. The entire market is losing money. 2.6%. Right. 2.6 percentage points lower than inflation. So basically everybody was throwing in on the stock market during that time was paying 2.6% in losses. Yeah. Not good. No, that's very bad. Especially coupled with inflation. People like you said, we're freaking out. Right. Okay. So bring us onto the savior of sorts. So Paul Volcker comes along and you might recognize that name, Chuck. He's an economic adviser to Obama. That's right. But he got his chops as the head of the Fed. And in 1979, he basically says, okay, Keynesian liberal monetary policy is done. It's failing us or we're falling apart right now. We have to try something else. And basically what they tried was the stuff that was created. It's called neoliberalism. It's created by a guy named Milton Friedman. Yes. And his basic formula was, quote, too much money chasing too few goods. The Feds free up too much money to circulate in the economy and that's not a good thing. Right. So everything we see the Fed doing now is based on Friedman's economic policies. Right. Remember we said that with the Fed in the then the their whole thing was throw more money at it because that will increase spending, which will increase demand and everything will be fine. Sure. In the midst of this emergency, what's considered the fatal flaw they made was that rather than start sucking up some of this money to make it more scarce and to hence making it more valuable, they pump more money into it. Well, Volcker comes along using Friedman's ideas and says we got to get some money off of the market, so we're going to start buying it up. And what they did was they started issuing treasury bonds, they sold TV bills. That's how the government issues and purchases debt and that's how they control the amount of money on the market. You know that. Yeah. That's Friedman's ideas. So when the economy is good, they're going to raise interest rates to slow down the flow of money? Basically. Yeah. Because a bubble is no better than a recession. Yeah. And the same in reverse. When the economy is tanking, they're going to lower the interest rate and say, hey, go out and buy a house because look how low it is. Exactly. Which is exactly what they're doing right now. What we're seeing right now. It was started in 1979 and it didn't really exist, at least in practice in the United States before then. Right. Apparently Friedman and his people tested out these theories. This neoliberalism in Chile when Augusto Pinocchet US backed CIA coup took over the Freedman Chicago school, people went down there and like, hey, let us help you set up this new economy and test it out. Yeah, that's what happened in Iraq. Apparently. It was designed to figure out how to get the US mitts in other countries coffers by setting up an economy that was very friendly to capitalism. It happens here now too. One of the results of it, Chuck, is when you cut off the flow of money. And this is the reason why the Fed in the didn't think to do this. When you cut off the flow of money, that means companies have less money. Right? Right. Demand goes down and people get laid off. So since the focus of the Fed during the post war boom and up into the late 70s was to keep unemployment as low as possible yeah, it was all on jobs at the time. Right. The way Freeman looked at it was the opposite. Like, no, you don't focus on that. You focus on keeping the economy growing at a manageable pace. Maybe don't worry quite so much about unemployment. As a result of that, you took off money, unemployment goes up. So inflation in fact, is what the current standards think controls the economy more so than the joblessness rate. Right. Interesting. Well, there's less focus on it. Although it is a factor and a cause for concern. It's nothing like it was as far as Fed monetary policy went in the Is. Friedman gets tons. Friedman and Volcker get tons of credit. Right. But they fix the economy by kicking in, like basically kick starting a recession. And the recession was painful, but then inflation stabilized. So it does work. But you're going to have to go through a recession. Well, yeah. And the trick is the Fed has to predict the short term and the long term, and they have to identify where that exact point is, or maybe not exact, but they need to ballpark it pretty close when they need to start controlling that money flow again. And the interest rates and good Lord, it's on the hands of a few, isn't it? Right. Well, if you raise interest rates too early, what you're going to do is stop borrowing. You're going to stop growth. Right. So if your economy hasn't really been kick started and it's on its own, then you're going to push it right back into a reception double dip recession. Right? Yeah. If you wait too long, then there's going to be too much money on the market, which is what that guy I was talking about at the beginning is worried about. That there's a lot of money in like, cash reserves and banks and people hoarding it, but once it eventually hits the market, our inflation is going to just go through the roof. Is he worried about stagflation as he think it's coming? He's worried about inflation. And if we remain in these factors, then I'm saying that would cause stagflation. Right. But I guess I got one last thing. What you got? The irony of Friedman's success proves that Philip's curve works. Yeah. When his policies carried out by Volker kicked in, unemployment rose, inflation went down. Yes, you're right. I've never felt so helpless in my life. Yeah, we're in trouble. We're just a small but small little pieces in this whole puzzle. Yeah, we are. That's why they call it macroeconomics. And that's why you're concerned with microeconomics. Well, yeah, because you love your CFO. Exactly. My house rate just reset lower, so I'm all happy right now. I said the end. Oh, sorry. If you want to learn more about stagflation, can I borrow some money then, Chuck? No, because that's going to be used to pay down other debt. Okay. It's all a big vicious cycle, like we thought. Well, while we're on it, while you're talking about debt, FYI, if you have fixed debt right? Yeah. Let's say you owe somebody $12, best time to pay that money off is when inflation is high. Money is cheap and abundant. Oh, yeah, good point. It's best to save when money is cheap. Right. Or when money is expensive. All right. So that's it. Right. True words have never been spoken. That is it. If you want to learn more about Stagflation and see a really sad line of auto workers in Detroit, you can type in Stagflation in the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, we encourage you to read all of our economics articles because they are fascinating. I said search bar, right? Well, that means it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. This is from Jason. Hi, guys. How's it going? I hope all is well. Catching up on the podcast, and Chuck mentioned that he had a big wheel but wanted a green machine. Well, my first memory actually is of the green machine. My friend. Boomer got one. And my mom Dot, who is the greatest mother ever, by the way, and I lived in an apartment complex. She was sitting on the bench outside with her neighbor, and I went to the top of the hill to try this green machine out. Came down as fast as I could because that's what you do. And I figured I would skid right out in front of the bench. I was going very fast, though. Pulled the handbrake the last second, and the handbrake came off completely in my hand. And I remember thinking then I was in my neighbor's arms running for the car as I crashed into the bench. Busted my face and eye wide open. At the hospital, they had to put me in a straitjacket in order to stitch up my face. She's freaking out, I guess. So my eye was stuck shut for a few weeks. And my very next memory is the night my eye opened. I was at my grandmother CIS house. What? He's either talking about his great aunt or his grandmother was named SIS. Okay. When it opened, I was really excited. I showed my grandmother. She told me to shut his tic TAC dough was on. Remember that show? I love that show. Lol. He says these moments made me laugh so hard. Thank you, Chuck and Josh, for talking about the green machine and letting me reminisce it's from Jason in Baltimore, Maryland. Way to talk about the green machine, Chuck. It was the best. It's good news. I bet you can find those on the ebay. They'll cost you some money. Maybe. I got nothing. Do you have one? Oh, I don't know. Jerry got my green machine. How about if you've got a story about someone you're nemesis getting something that you deserve? Good one. Very good one. Okay, what Chuck just said wrap it up, spank it on the bottom. Send it in an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.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 by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
How Lie Detectors Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-lie-detectors-work | Instead of actually detecting lies, polygraph machines sense physiological variations, ostensibly brought on by guilt. The results are subject to interpretation, and therefore controversial. Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the polygraph. | Instead of actually detecting lies, polygraph machines sense physiological variations, ostensibly brought on by guilt. The results are subject to interpretation, and therefore controversial. Join Josh and Chuck as they investigate the polygraph. | Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:21:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=17, tm_min=21, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=244, tm_isdst=0) | 26642882 | 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, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetophoscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, wire. You could tell. There's a way you can find out, Chuck. Sure. We'll get to that in a minute. This is stuff you should know. Let me finish. Okay. And it's you lie. Remember that guy? Yeah. Joey Pants, or whatever the congressman's name was. Yes. Saturday Night Live had a funny skit that he had gotten a whole group of people to allstate up at once. Wasn't it the deal? You tell it. Well, yeah. And he supposedly had a whole group of senators that were going to all stand up and yell, you lie. And he was the only one that did it. Yeah. Because he was out of the room when they were like, no, we can't do that. Yeah, I think that I'll do that. That's funny. We're talking about lie detectors. But let me take you back. All right? There's a little place in time and space called the Jazz Age, early 1920s. Yeah, no, that's the Beat Nicks that did that. Okay. I'm sure a jazz person snapped their fingers at one point. Sure. Okay. But not like that, all right? It was more like Coltrane style. Just like that. Got you. Anyway, this is Chuck in Berkeley, California, at UCLA. Berkeley? And there is a place there called the College Hall, which was a women's dorm. And in that year, there was a string of thefts, cash rings. Pretty much anything of value went missing for a little while there. And there's a man working at the Berkeley Police Department. This is in the girls dorm. Yeah. Okay. Called College Hall. Got you. There's a man working in the Berkeley Police Department. His name is John Larson. And John Larson was the first cop ever to have a PhD. And he had gotten interested in this device called a cardio Pneumocychograph, which had been invented just a few years before by another guy named William Marston. And William Marston was a lawyer and a Harvard shrink. And he also, as an aside, a creative Wonder Woman with her lasso of truth. Really? He's the guy who invented what's now called the polygraph. But what about the Wonder Woman? He created Wonder Woman. The character. Yes. He was kind of a renaissance man, but that's William Larson. John Larson works at the Berkeley Police Department, and he's become interested in this thing, the Cardio pneumo psychograph, and he realizes, okay, this is a perfect chance to apply it. So he rounds up some suspects. He does some normal police work and finds out who the suspects are in this hall, right? And he rounds them up, brings them down the station, and he starts hooking people up to this machine. And he gets to this one woman. Her name is Helen Graham. And guilty, yes, pretty much is what he does. He goes, Ms. Graham, this machine is saying that you took this, that you took the money. Did you? And he said that he noted on the machine a sharp drop in blood pressure followed by a sudden rise. And then after that, this woman flew into a rage. She tried to attack the machine. She went crazy. So they basically string her along for a few days, and then finally, she confesses. And it's the first time that a polygraph was ever used to solve a crime, ever. That was probably the heyday, because before the people knew what it was, they could just say, this machine says that you're guilty. And they would be like, oh, my God, how does it know that's? Exactly. Right. Very early on, some of the early proponents, specifically a guy named Leonard Keilar, recognized the placebo effect value before anyone knew there was a placebo effect. But the placebo effect value of a polygraph, just the idea, if you believed in this machine and that it could ruin out lies, then it could force you to confess just being hooked up to it. Right. You weren't going to pass it. They should have called it the guilt box. They called it the magic lie detector, is one of the things that they call it. Yeah. Leonard Keeler. Call it that. He worked with John Larson at the Berkeley Police Department. And eventually, over time, John Larson saw what he considered the truth behind the lie detector and the fact that it kept being cold lie detector, which is driving him crazy. Sure. And he eventually distanced himself from it later on in his career. But Leonard Keeler ran around marketing it to anyone and everyone saying, just having this is going to not only help you hire more truthful forthright people, but it's going to keep them in line while they're working for you because they know you've got access to this thing and you can strap them to it at any time. So that's where the polygraph came from. Yeah. There's a little pre history, too, just to give them their due. In 1895, he's an Italian criminologist. He measured changes in blood pressure for police cases. Okay. And in 19 four, a device by Victoria Benussi measured breathing. They were early 1900, late 1800s. They were kind of on the scene of measuring these things. And Dr. James McKenzie in 19 six first mentioned the word polygraph with his instrument that he didn't use to root out the truth. But he did use it when giving medical examinations, though. And then right before the polygraph was the Unigraph Unigraph, which was part of what's still used today in the polygraph. It measured respiration. Pretty cool. Yeah. But then you add to it a couple of other things and you got the polygraph. We could stop here. This is interesting enough right now. Really? No. There's no one walking the planet who has anything to do with polygraphs that call them lie detectors. And anyone, even the most ardent defender of polygraph technology, would correct you if you called it a lie detector. They would be like, it's not a lie detector because you can't detect a lie. It's possible. The whole basis of a polygraph is that it is a set of medical instruments that are used to measure changes in things like your heart rate, your respiration, and sweatiness. Basically. I would fail. Well, a lot of people do fail, and we'll get to that because you're sweat. Okay. They wouldn't even hook me up. They just thought, dude, you look so you're so sweaty right now. So when you're hooked up to this machine, the whole point is that it measures these physiological changes. And the idea that you're going to undergo a physiological change is based on the concept that a person hooked this machine who is guilty will experience fear that they're going to be detected. Right. So this machine is designed to detect that fear. That's right. Which is really round about, but for a century, almost, these things were used and abused, and it took a while for people to kind of catch on that. There's a lot to criticize here with polygraphs. Yeah, for sure. But they're still used. 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 an 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. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Afflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. 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 Afflac 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 Affluex 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, so let's get into this. First of all, we need to point out that analog polygraphs are what you have long seen in movies and TV. When they have the little jittery, looks like a seismograph on the paper scrolling by, and you're hooked up to all these different things on your chest and your forehead and your fingertips. These days, they do that digitally, but it's basically still the same technique. They just don't use the little scrolling needle. Do they have a name for that? It's called an ink filled pen. It is, yeah. Okay. But the three things that they do, Josh, they measure your respiratory rate, as he said. They take pneumographs, which are rubber tubes filled with air time around your chest and your abdomen. And that is going to measure whether or not you start breathing heavy. Essentially, when you get nervous, it monitors your breathing pattern and any changes to it. And it does it pretty cleverly, right? Yeah. With bellows, they're filled with air. So when you breathe in really deeply or have a change, it's going to displace that into the bellows. And originally that was attached the bellows were literally attached to the mechanical arm. Right. That showed the change. These days, it's a transducer that converts it digitally. Electronically, right. And converts it to an electrical pattern. Right. Yeah. But it says the same thing. Yeah. No, I think it looks a lot like it. If you look, there's a picture of a modern one and the graph, same thing. But yeah, it's not a paper read out any longer. Right. Which is kind of interesting. Like, this technology hasn't changed on a very fundamental basis for like, 100 years, almost. Yeah. I mean, the early one for McKenzie in 19 six, they say that a lot of the same components are still very similar today. Right. So you're going to have two tubes, one around your chest, one around your abdomen that's keeping an eye on your breathing. You're going to have a blood pressure cuff, which keeps an eye on your heart rate and your blood pressure, and it does it through sound. Right. Yeah. I didn't realize this. So when the blood comes in and out of your veins, it creates sound. And sound can also be used to displace air, causing the bella's to contract, which again, move the arm on the scroll and now is created or turned into an electrical pattern. But it's the same thing, but it's sound, which I just think is very neat. Well, and what's also neat is the sweat one. I figured they would have some sort of like a moisture amater just to detect moisture. But it's called galvanic skin resistance or GSR or electrodermal activity. That's right. And they hook up these finger plates to galvanometers, and they are basically measuring the skin's ability to conduct electricity. And if your skin is moist, it's going to be able to conduct electricity easier. Yes. And that's what they're measuring there. It's like the ones the little heart rate monitors that they clip to your fingertips in the hospital. But these things measure electricity instead. Yes. Which if you are dry, you're going to conduct less electricity. If you're wet, you're going to conduct more. So since you have so many pores on the end of your fingers and you sweat when you're nervous, there you go. Done. So you put all this together and it paints this picture the ACLU, among other people, have decried as just what are you doing here, basically, is what the ACLU says. Right. What you have is a picture of a person who is undergoing stress, maybe feeling embarrassment is maybe just scared to be there, maybe doesn't like having things wrapped around his or her chest. Maybe doesn't really like the person asking the questions. The results of these changes in pattern, the data is totally subjective. That's right. Which makes polygraphs totally subjective, which takes it in large part out of the realm of science. Yes. Voodoo science is what they call it. And although proponents will say that well trained forensic psychophysiologist, which is the examiner, can get through all that to still get a good result, they're like, yeah, they know all this stuff. And if you're good, then you can factor that in and still get a good result. So let's talk about what the forensic psychophysiologist does. Apparently I've seen anywhere between 5010 thousand of them in the US. At any given time. Yeah. And some of them belong to professional organizations, I think probably maybe half or a third, depending on where you are on that estimate, belong to any number of professional organizations. Some have no accreditation whatsoever, but are still able to open up shops depending on the state they're in. Some states have zero laws about being a forensic psychophysiologist, aka a polygraph examiner. That's right. But there are programs out there who wrote this article, kevin Bonzer? No. I think so. He interviewed a guy who founded the Exodon Academy. Exodon is a manufacturer of polygraph and they founded this academy as well, where you go through a certain amount of training to become a forensic psychopysiologist. And he actually interviewed that guy? Yes. His name is Bob Lee. That's Lee. Lee. And Lee says that if you come to their academy, you have to have a baccalaureate degree. Bachelor's. Right. Or you have to have at least five years investigative experience and an associate's degree. You have to take a ten week course, and after you complete the ten week course, you have to carry out 25 polygraph examinations and submit them to be reviewed. So these are like real life ones, I guess. You're working with your local police department or whatever. Maybe you're already a cop and you have to submit it to the Accident Academy board for review. And then once they're all reviewed and everybody's all thumbs up, you are a licensed, I guess, but you're not licensed because there's no licensing body. You graduate, I guess, is what they call it. Right. So that's as accredited as it gets, I guess. And like you said, proponents of polygraph testing say that if you're a good FP, you're going to be able to structure everything correctly so that you can see past somebody who sweats a lot, like you, or who gets stressed out easily like me, and design your questions appropriately. And you're going to be able to figure out whether this person is deceptive or not. Yeah. So how would you do that, Chuck? Well, we should talk about the test itself, I guess. You're going to go in and you're going to get a pretest before you get strapped up to anything. It could take about an hour. This is just you and those are the only two people in the room. You're not surrounded by folks like in the movies and stuff, although the movie sometimes it's just two people, I guess. But the pretest, you're just going to get an interview, basically, about why you're being investigated. They're also going to be profiling you and checking you out and just seeing what kind of questions you respond to and what might make you nervous, just so they'll be better informed about how to properly question you. Once you're all strapped in right. And the pretest where you're just kind of hanging out with them casually. The examiner is also kind of getting info out of you that you might not be aware of if you talk leisurely about your favorite beer at one point and how you like it a lot and then later on it also comes up that you have to drive a lot. They might use that for a control question, which could be something like have you ever driven under the influence of alcohol? And a control question is something where you would have to admit guilt and you may not want to, but it's such a broad question that just about anybody is guilty of it. Like have you ever lied to somebody? Have you ever stolen anything? That kind of thing where if you say no, they now have a baseline for what it looks like when you lie, that they can make a reasonable assumption that you have just lied. And any of the data captured on the polygraph they're going to use to analyze everything else off of. That's pretty much it. That's the test. And afterward you have the post test where they look at all the data and chart out whether or not they think you're deceptive and aware, like on this question you were deceptive, on this question you may have been deceptive. It's kind of hard to tell on this one. You definitely were deceptive. And it's all in relation to that control question. That baseline, right? Yeah. So if your deception on questions where they're going to have to talk to the police as well too, and say, what do you want to know out of this person? So they'll design questions around that as well. So they may have a question like are you wearing a blue shirt? That may be question one. That's irrelevant. Right. Question two is have you ever lied to your boss? That's the control question. And then question three is something like did you steal the cookie from the cookie jar? Like that's the one that the cops want them to ask. Right? They'll compare the results of Q Three against Q two and if they're the same or you can't really tell, that's an inconclusive test. So that's it like you said, that's polygraph. It's pretty easy. It is. It's jarringly easy considering that it's used in legal cases a lot, right? Yes, that's true. People try to battle the lie detector in various ways. There are little tricks that the internet says works like taking a sedative or putting any perspirant on your fingers which seems like they would make you wash your hands, putting a tack in your shoe. And anytime you get asked a question every single time, you stomp on the tag. And the idea is that you're just going to skew the test so they all look the same. So your body has the same reaction no matter what's going on. I guess if you press on the tag, your physiological response could overwhelm any response to the question. Right, exactly. Like I said, these things are used in legal cases, but with caveats. Right. If you undergo a polygraph, whether you fail or pass it doesn't really matter, legally speaking. Right. Unless you're in New Mexico. Yeah. It's the only state that allows it just openly. If you take a polygraph, it's admissible in court. Yeah. Every other state, usually both sides have to agree on it being admitted or the judge has to say, yeah, we're going to admit this one. Right. Yeah. And federally, the judge decides whether or not they're going to admit it. Right. And I guess state judges kind of follow that federal ruling of polygraph. Yeah. And it's sort of a crapshoot if a federal judge is going to allow it or not. There's no precedent, really, to where they say, we have to or we don't have to. Right. So what are the problems with this? There's the problems with a polygraph or that it's subjective. Right. That's a big one. But also, because it's subjective, you can get what are called false positives and false negatives. Yeah. And you don't want that because then the test itself is just not valid. Right, but I mean, a lot of people use that as evidence that polygraphy shouldn't be done at all. It's not valid. Yeah. False positive and polygraph thing is when you find somebody who is deemed deceptive but was telling the truth, false negative is when somebody who wasn't telling the truth is deemed truthful. Like Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer. They had him for a little while and gave him a polygraph, and he passed and they let him go and he went and killed a bunch more women. All right? That's right. I didn't know that, actually. Yeah. Well, good for him. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, 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. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have aflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover so those, they ensure, 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 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. There's also the federal government is the largest consumer of these exams. And if you work for the federal government, you've probably had one to get the job. But you can't do that in the private sector, thanks to the Polygraph Protection Act, employee Polygraph Protection Act. In the late 80s, they said, you can't force your employees to do this. You can request it, but if they don't want to do it, you can't fire them because of it. You just can't do it. Right. Not in private land. Right. Unless you have a contract with the government and then that's not valid. Right. But yeah, the federal government is the largest opponent to them in court, but also the largest consumer. Imagine that. And there's been a lot of cases that shaped its admissibility or not, but the polygraph, it seems like it's kind of on its way out. I wrote an article about MRI being used as lie detectors. Oh, really? And that's starting to kind of come into fashion. The more we start to understand, like, how lies are born in the brain, being able to see it and saying, this is the pattern that will happen if this person is lying, and then that pattern happens. They say, well, we know you're lying. We just saw that live form in your brain. That makes sense. Yes. But at the same time, people who understand MRIs say it is way too early to be doing that. And even if we can do it with 100% accuracy, there are a lot of moral and ethical questions to it as well that we need to address first always. And then penile plasma. What's that? So remember the pneumographs that go around the chest and the abdomen? Imagine one of those that goes around the penis and it does the same thing. It detects changes in traction at Girth. It's a perfect way to put it, yeah. Wow. And it's used to detect arousal. They use it for sex offenders. It's under at least as much attack as regular polygraphs. But I wrote this blog post called Using Science to root out Late homosexuality among homophobes. A study at UGA used penile pleasmography to find if anyone who they had deemed homophobic became aroused when exposed to homosexual pornography. Wow. Yeah, it's one of the better posts I've ever written. Cheese. All right, that's our future, I guess. Penal pleathersmography for everyone. Hey, Pete. Everyone with a penis, at least. And then Chuck. Lastly, I want to encourage everybody, if this has piqued your interest about lie detectors, to go watch the Shoe Court shoe store job interview clip from Mr. Show on YouTube. Oh, yeah, you remember that one. That is very good friend Paula Tomkins, and he has a breakthrough. Oh, is he in that one? Yeah, good old PFT. Yes. And that's it for lie detectors, right? Yeah. I want to take a test if there's someone in the Atlanta area that administers these and would be willing to give me a lie detector test. I would love to do that. Okay. And I'll watch. Yes. As long as I can approve the questions or not approve them. But I don't want to be rooted out as some miscreant. It's a little late for that. Just keep it above board. If you want to know more about lie detectors and play with some lie detector flash animation, you can do that by typing in lie detector in the search bar on Housetofworks.com. And that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is from Brad. And, Brad, if you remember, we had a list of suggestions from a listener not too long ago that thought our podcast could be a lot better if we changed a few things. Brad has some suggestions of his own of how we can make the podcast better. We should both have nicknames. We do ZAZ up the actual name. Like welcome to Stuff You Should Know with JC and the Dingo. Sit back while getting a big helping of knowledge from Chucko and the Duck. I second the suggestion to remove the personal anecdotes should be moved to a separate podcast called The Josh and Chuck Memoir. Daily 1 hour podcast can recount your lives from birth to present, focusing on depressing stories that are marginally factual. It's in development. Chuck, please raise your voice one octave. Josh, lower yours one octave. What? Okay, so now this is how I talk. The opening of the podcast should be a description of what each of you ate that day and the number of trips to the bathroom. This allows the listener to keep track at home. Hedgehogs, brain surgeons, arcades, and Bolivian politics are underrepresented on your podcast. At least 20% should be about these subjects. Do not exclude listener mail. Instead, create a quieter audio track, reading the listener mail and overlay it on the rest of the podcast. That way, Listeners can hear both the mail and the main content at the same time. This is pretty good idea. Why not set the podcast? We would literally drive people insane if we did that. Why not set the podcast to a backdrop of tribal drums and jungle animal noises? Would give it an exotic feel that's over the listener mail track over the whole thing. So that'd be three track feet? Yes. And it would lead to suspense for the listener to wonder if you'll be eaten by jaguars. And it was clear from the podcast on mummies neither of you had ever been mummified. Please refrain from explaining topics that you don't have personal experience with. And then the final suggestion just retail episodes of this American Life. That last one went down like the Dave Letterman Top Ten list. So that's Brad. Thanks, Brad. Those are all great ideas. Three tracks all in one, streaming at once together. Listener mail, quietly, the podcast and tribal drumming and jungle noises. Yes. Let's see if you have access to a polygraph and want to hook Chuck up to it, let us know. Yeah, you can let us know on Facebook at facebook. Comstuffysheno. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast and you can send us a regular old email at stuffpodcast@houseoffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House of Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you grow RAL back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | ||
8a707954-4a58-11e8-a49f-97f08ea0d9e6 | SYSK Selects: Is lethal injection humane? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-is-lethal-injection-humane | Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. | Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. | Sat, 06 Oct 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=279, tm_isdst=0) | 42937875 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everyone. It's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK Selects have chosen how lethal injection works in the holiday spirit. We release this around Christmas of 2013 and it can be a hard one to listen to, but since into, whenever a person is executed, the state is actually doing it on your behalf. Since you're a member of the public, it's probably best to know what they're doing in your name. It's an eye opening one and a sobering one, and I hope it means a lot to you because it did to me. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetaffworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and this is Charles debut, chuck Bryant. And this is Stephanie Chanel, the podcast. Greetings. This is not a capital punishment show, although we will deal with that, obviously, but we at some point will probably do a full episode on capital punishment, I would guess, don't you imagine? Because we have an article on it and we're going to touch on it here with lethal injections. Yes. And just coming across some stuff on the electric chair that to me seems like it deserves its own episode as well, because it's so nuts. Sounds like we're cooking up a sweet. Yeah, the Capital Suite. We come up with the best suites, don't we? Well, it's a big deal. It's important I agree to cover. Chuck, about 14 hours ago, a guy named Joseph Paul Franklin, I can't remember what his birth name was, but he legally changed his name to Joseph Paul after in honor of Joseph Paul Gerbils, the Nazi propagandist. What a nice guy he must be to change his name to that. Right? So Missouri just executed him at twelve one Wednesday, November 19, today, the 19th of the 20th, I don't know one of those two. And actually, Hustler publisher, Larry Flint, was making a big hubbub trying to keep the man from being killed. Which is somewhat ironic, although not really if you followed Larry Flint's career, because he was the man who supposedly shot Larry Flint and paralyzed him for life. Supposedly? Was he not convicted of that? No, he confessed to it and it was quite possible. The reason that he gave for doing it was because Hustler had some interracial spread that the guy didn't like. Oh, yeah, sure. And he was targeting interracial couples. He shot a couple of black kids in Ohio. I believe he was killed in Missouri because he randomly picked St. Louis out of the phone book and went and found a synagogue and just sat outside and took shots at people as they came out of a bar mitzvah. So he's racist. He's an antisemite. He also had serious mental health issues as well. And he shot Larry Flint. Okay. But he was executed. And the whole reason that Larry Flynt was creating this hubbub about not killing this guy, one, Flint had a famous quote from the last news cycle that he didn't think the government should be in the business of killing people, so he's against capital punishment anyway. You're going to say it like Larry Flint. I don't do a very good Larry Flint. He put some marbles in your mouth, right? Yeah. You're going to try? No. So he just doesn't think that the death penalty is a good thing anyway. He's an abolitionist, you would say. And then secondly, he filed a suit to have the name of the supplier of the drug that was going to be used in the lethal injection revealed unsealed because it's secret and it's not supposed to be secret. But as we'll find out, states recently have had to scramble to come up with the drugs to execute prisoners of the state. Yeah, there's a big thing going on that we'll talk about, but that was the most recent execution in the United States, which makes 35 for the year. And all but one of those were lethal injections, the other one being the electric chair. Yeah. It is fast becoming the go to method for most states in many countries. If you're going to get capital punishment going, then probably going to do it by way of lethal injection these days. Yeah. But it's also the newest one, too. And it came out of this well, basically what amounted to an abolitionist movement in the 1960s and 70s that sought to just get rid of the death penalty. And that was the third major movement in the United States since the late 18th century where people were just trying to get rid of capital punishment altogether. Yeah. They did halt at 1972 after Supreme Court ruling furman v. Georgia. And they remember reading about this later. Obviously, I didn't read 1972. I was a very advanced one year old. But they said it was cruel and unusual under the 8th Amendment, violating the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. And then but four years later, they reversed that and Greg versus Georgia and said, you know what? Maybe that is cruel and usual, so let's come up with a way that's not. And they came up with lethal injection. Yes. And the reason why that cruel and unusual had a lot of traction was because there were hangings before. And hangings are very messy. Sure. If the noose isn't right, the head can pop right off. Or if the neck isn't broken, the person just hangs there and suffocates for a minute or two and then dies. And then electrocution is really awful, too. I was reading a list of botched executions, and electrocutions are very frequently botched people. Their heads catch fire, blood comes out of their eyes. It's really awful stuff. So there was this idea that the whole point of this is retributive. You did something so bad that we as a society have decided that you can't live any longer, but we as a society aren't as cruel as you are. The point isn't to make you suffer it's just to take your life and to do it in the most humane way possible. Well, electrication hanging, gas chamber, none of those really fit the bill. So somebody came up with the idea of lethal injection, but this wasn't the first time that was proposed. The first time was in the 19th century, I think. Oh, yeah? Yeah. There was a guy named Julius Mount Breyer, and he was a doctor out in New York who said this would work because it would be efficient, humane, and it would keep the person from having some sort of hero status develop around them. That sometimes comes from people who are hanged. Got you. But they went with electrocution instead. Well, in 1982, the US Became the first country to use lethal injection, and like we said, since then, it's really become predominant. I think the current number of states that have the death penalty is 32 as of today. Yeah, but it's tough because states have been repealing it. It's dropping like flies. Not about like flies, but maybe like honeybees. Right. And those are states that have taken the possibility of capital punishment off of their books. Right? Yes. 32 is the number that have the death penalty. Right. 32 have a death penalty. Not necessarily. Meaning that they use that in the past year. Right. Necessarily. There's something called de facto abolition, which is basically like, yeah, it's on our books, but we haven't used it in so long that we might as well not even have the death penalty. So, Chuck, like we said, lethal injection is the most frequently used method in the United States, and it's fast becoming the same around the world. China picked it up after the United States, and they replaced their shootings, and that kind of led to it seems like almost a domino effect throughout Asia of other countries picking it up as well. Yeah. The Philippines? Taiwan. Guatemala. They're in Central America. They have all gone to lethal injection. And right now, in 20, 12, 58 countries used lethal injection in 2012, down from 67 in 2010 and 63 in 2011. And 140 countries have outlawed the death penalty worldwide. And like you said, states are kind of starting to abolish it. Executions are down in general. In the United States. Last year, there were 43. This year, like we said, there's been 35. And we're fast closing out the year. But lethal injection is the go to method of execution, and so we're going to figure out how it works. That's right. Right now, there are 3108 people as of spring of this year on death row, 98% are male. Of course, because you don't find a lot of females on death row because they're smart enough not to kill other people, generally speaking. Is that what it is? Yeah. Women are much smarter. A lot of these folks have been on death row for decades waiting to die. Maybe they're working through the appeals process because that all has to happen first. Some will die on death row without ever going into an execution chamber. Yeah, it happens. Some people commit or try to commit suicide before they can be executed after their appeals run out. Sure. There's a guy in Georgia who almost successfully killed himself. He cut his carotid artery. Wow. With what, I wonder? A razor that started giving them, I guess, to shave with us sensibly. Here, take the razor. And the guy they rushed into the hospital, saved his life, and then executed them a week later. Wow, it's a funny country. So you're on death row, you've exhausted your appeals, you're finally going to get that execution order, and a date will be set in place for that execution. At this point, you're going to be moved from death row to a place called death watch. And that is basically that's the last stop. That's your holding area for the last days or weeks. Right. So death watch is both a physical place, like it's frequently in the same part of the prison that the execution chamber is located, or it might be in another prison entirely. Some states just maintain one execution chamber for the whole state of a certain prison. So you'd be transferred to that place. And then death Watch also is supposedly they're supposed to watch you so you don't commit suicide and I think writes kind of open up a little more. You get visits from people. Your treatment is a little better, I think you get a room with a view, as it were, and you start the preparation of dying and saying goodbye and of coming to terms with the fact that it's happening. Yeah. You know, the state of Texas has these death watch rooms on highway exits. Most highway exits. You've got your gas station, your subway in your death bunch room. I believe it. I'm kidding. But Texas executes a lot of people. It does. Texas Bears, they execute a lot, but they're not the only ones that have all sorts of weirdness going on. Apparently, 2% of counties account for 50% to 70% of executions in the United States. It just seems like Texas comes up all the time when they're like, the last time this method was used, or the first time this method was used. Texas. Well, Texas was the first one to use lethal injection, like you said. Exactly. They kill a lot of people there. Yeah. Not picking on you. Texas. I love you guys. No. Here, I've got one. Alabama. Okay. In Alabama, it takes a unanimous jury to hand down a life sentence, but it takes ten or twelve to hand down a death sentence. Really? Yeah. And a judge can overrule a jury, a life sentence jury. Yeah. And say, no, this person needs a death penalty. And they do it frequently. Interesting. We'll pick on Georgia, too, in a minute. Okay, well, Georgia was the one that executed the guy after saving his life after the suicide attempt. All right, great. I just wanted to make sure we DOL out enough embarrassment for each state. So you're on death watch. You can be visited more often, generally by friends and family. We're in, like, the last 24 hours ish now, right? Yeah. Your attorneys, spiritual advisors, you're going to get your last meal. That is not a fallacy. Whatever you want, they'll prepare for you. No, that's not necessarily true. Well, it depends. Generally, they satisfy your desire, but when does it not get satisfied? What state doesn't do that? Texas. Really? Yeah. There is a legislation that was passed after this one inmate ordered a meatlovers pizza, like 24 tacos, like this awesome spread that just reading it, I was like, oh, man, I'm kind of hungry for this. Reading about this man's last meal. And they didn't eat any of it. Even still, there's probably $200 worth of food. Sure. But it caused enough outrage in the state legislature that they passed the thing where it's like, you can have whatever the prison cafeteria is cooking that night. That's your last meal. Really? Yeah. There's a really great article in Lapam's Quarterly online for free called Last Meal. Go check it out. It's just basically this awesome history and contemporary evaluation of last meals. That's pretty sad. It is. But it's really interesting what it says. There's a guy in Arkansas who was executed in the 90s. His name was Barry Lee Fairchild, and he pointed out that it doesn't make a lot of sense to give a condemned person a last meal. He said it was, quote, like putting gas in a car that don't have no motor, but you have no need to take in food because you have no need to derive the energy from it any longer because you're about to lose your life. Well, it's not about deriving energy. It's about enjoying one last thing. Right, but if you look at the capital punishment system, it makes no sense. It's interesting. I say go read the article. I'm not getting the point across very well. Well, I mean, I see what he's saying, but it's not like you got to fuel up for the big day. It's like, here, enjoy a steak. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying, like, it flies in the face of the rest of the criminal justice system. Oh, well, sure. Enjoy the steak then. And time was they used to get you drunk, like, beforehand. That's what I'm saying. If you're going to get hanged in London yeah. Like, from the prison to the gallows, they would stop and they'd let you drink as much as you wanted and then would take you super drunk and kill you. Yeah. That's interesting, because that could provide a more docile victim or a really weepy one, which would be really someone who starts causing lots of trouble. Yeah, he wants to fight one last time. Exactly. Right. But apparently I read somewhere that they sedate criminals or they condemned here first. Right. So that's kind of like a modern incarnation of taking them and getting them drunk, handing them a volume. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so you've had your last meal, which may or not be awesome, depending on where you live. Yeah. Your warden and your chaplain are going to visit. They're going to stay with you until the end, unless you don't want them there. You can probably refuse any kind of religious associations if you want. We'll get to all that. But the witnesses arrive at this point. They're kept away from you, though. They don't get to walk by and say things to you? No. As a matter of fact, most witnesses are required well, in Texas, they can take potshots at you. Sorry. Texas. The witnesses pretty much across the board, I'm sure, are required to be totally silent the whole time they leave and are brought into the execution area. Yeah. Not like the people outside of prisons who are making lots of noise, usually. Right. One way or the other. Protest or kill them. Kill them, yeah. That's as ugly as this country gets, man. When you see the footage of people outside prisons at controversial executions yeah, it's pretty bad. And then your final preparations. They're going to give you clean clothes, but you take a last shower. Sure. Shower, get dressed, and then connect you to the old EKG, which is going to let everyone know if you're gone or if you're still with them. Yes. They hook the EKG up to you. It's not hooked to anything yet, but they've got it like you're pre wired. Exactly. Basically. And then once you're showered and dressed and wired up with an EKG, the warden and the chaplain are hanging out with you. At the predetermined time, they will start to move you into the execution chamber. Meanwhile, the witnesses are there. And let's talk about the witnesses. The fact that there are witnesses at executions is actually the modern incarnation of a very long tradition. Like, we used to have public executions in this country. Yeah. Like, thousands of people would show up. Sometimes they would charge admission, and eventually that stopped and only a select number of people were allowed to witness. But they're still witnesses. Have you read about the last public execution? I did. You read that book? I didn't either. Okay, so I thought you were asking. No, just about it. Okay. There was a guy named Rainy Bethea in Kentucky who is hanged in 1936 for rape and murder, I think, and his execution was attended by, like, 20,000 people. Wow. The big reason, was it's not because they knew it was the last public execution. I think they decided to stop that after this execution. There was a Kentucky basketball game after. Yeah. Is that it? The sheriff was a woman. So this is going to be the first execution in US history ever conducted by a woman got you. And people wanted to go see how badly she was going to screw this up. And even though she didn't, the press fill wrote that she'd fainted, that like everything had been botched or whatever, but that's why everybody turned out. But there were charges from out of town reporters that people were having hanging parties, that they were drunk in the streets partying, that basically there was just a sense of revelry that shouldn't attend an execution. And that was the last draw for public executions in this country. But it got the idea that you need to have other people witness a death when the state is executing somebody just to make sure it's totally transparent. That was carried on with witnesses today in execution. Yeah, that's part of it too. And part of it is also to give victims closure. The families, that is, the victims. Sure. There will be sometimes family members of the prisoner too, and they are generally kept apart. Not always. Generally. Yeah. The prison warden is going to be there. You're going to have medical people on hand, of course, to make sure it all goes as planned. It's pretty controversial as we'll find. You got your spiritual adviser, like we talked about, you got your guards, state selected witnesses. Maybe there might be members of the state government there to watch it all go down. Yeah. You got media there. You also have what are known as reputable citizens. And those are basically just average everyday citizens that witness executions. Is that like a lottery or something? No, it's like you contact your state doc and say, hey, I want to witness an execution. And they send you an application form. You explain why you have to be over 18, you have to explain why you want to do this. But apparently the pool is thin enough that they're not real selective. As long as you don't say like, because I want to see them bleed or something like that, they will let you do this. And apparently when there was a surge in executions in the 90s, truck departments of corrections were so hard up because a lot of state law says you have to have six reputable citizens or twelve reputable citizens, that their pool was running thin. So departments of corrections were actually advertising looking for people to witness execution. Why do you have this silly law? It's just that holdover from it's antiquated having the public be a part of this state monopoly on violence. It's stupid, but so much so that they're trying to force it now. Well, I don't think it's a problem anymore. It was just in the 90s, like they were killing everybody in the 90s. Yeah. All right, so you've got your witnesses there. Your execution chambers may have clear glass with a curtain pulled. It may be a one way mirror where you can only see into the executed, into the condemned. It all depends on your state, basically, but it's generally going to be a pretty quiet thing. Oh, yeah. No matter where you are, it's a whole group of people that are just being utterly silent watching you. Or if there's too many family members, they might have a closed circuit feed going on in another room if it's not roomy. And apparently in Illinois, if you're a family member, the only way you can witness it is via closed circuit TV in another room. In Illinois. In Illinois. All right. That's another state. It's a new one. We haven't mentioned Illinois. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't really make fun of them, though. I guess they're excuse me? Chambers small. We can make fun of them. There are seats in there. Nice state budget. You've got, your timeline of events. It's all very much scheduled, like, down to the minute. You're going to have your person properly dressed, you're going to escort them into the chamber. I was thinking about this when I was reading this article, Chuck. Imagine just taking a shower too fast. And so you just kind of have to sit there on the edge of the bed with the warden and whatever spiritual advisor they throw at you waiting to go be executed. That has to be the worst wait ever. Yeah, I can't imagine it being much worse than that, because they can't be like, wow, we'll just get this started early. No, everything is on a very delineated schedule, and they're just going to have to sit there until the time comes to go to the execution chamber to get started. So take a long shower. That stuck out to me. Yeah. Okay. The longest shower of your life. The saddest shower of your life, for sure. You might be rolled in, restrained beforehand and rolled in on a gurney. Sometimes you're allowed to walk there yourself, and then you're restrained once you're in there. And at that point, they are going to go ahead and pre rig you with the IV tubes to lead you in there. And then those, once you get in there and you're strapped in, they will be fed into what's called an antar room, where the actual death cocktails await and the executioner awaits. Yeah. It's like an enclosed room away from the eyes of everybody, including the condemned and the witnesses. Oh, yeah. But you have two tubes. Most states require there's a backup to one to serve as a backup. At this point, you have your final statement, if you so choose. They'll read that out loud on the news that night. Yeah. Just be careful what you say. You can go on to are we giving advice to throw in there? It just occurred to me that we yeah, you can go on to departments of corrections websites, and most of them have last statements on there. Some of them are what you'd expect. Some are eerie, I'm sure. No. And generally the head is unrestrained, so they can look around and stuff. Although sometimes they do have, like, a hood or a sheet. Again, it depends on the state and how they do it. Yeah. So the condemned is strapped into a gurney, strapped down, but their heads under a strain. They've got tubes leading into the IV. Needles ready to go. Yeah. I think now is a good time for message break, and then we'll get into the actual process after selfish. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, so, like you said, it's go time for a solemn moment. Yeah. For a long time, states were using something called, basically, an electronic lethal injection machine, which makes sense. It was what Kaworkian came up with, basically, if not directly based on his model, it was at least very similar to it. But then they worried about mechanical failures, so they said, no, humans need to do this. I think they had mechanical failures. I can imagine. Yeah. And so in some states, you have one executioner, in others, you have a couple of executioners. And again, they're in this anti room where the actual drugs are that the ivy tubes are leading to from the execution chamber into the anteroom. And if you have a few different ones, a few different executioners, they're all putting drugs into IV tubes, but none of the executioners know which one is the real IV tube and which ones are leading. Isn't actually a mannequin. That old trick, like, they used to do the same thing with flipping the switch, too. I think they had, like, several switches. Firing squads. Yeah. Because they don't want any one person to have that weight. They can always think. I guess I had a 33% chance that it was me, right? Yeah. All right, so I guess we should move on to the drugs that are used. It used to almost always be a three drug cocktail, but things are getting weird these days, I've noticed. Yeah. Originally it was three drugs. You would have an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent and a toxic agent, and those were used for years and years. And then due to some circumstances, a bunch of different circumstances that converged were in some cases down to one. Like Joseph Paul Franklin was killed with just one drug. Well, I looked up almost every single execution in 2013 used a single drug, pinto barb at all. Okay. Which is an anesthetic. Yeah. And it's basically a substitute when they're in short supply of other ones. But I did see that it's actually illegal to use this drug this way, and the manufacturer is Danish and was like, oh no, you can't use our drug that way. Right. They started fighting people who sold that drug to state agencies. Exactly. Very controversial. And states were trying to get this stuff anyway they could. So since it was banned for use by correctional facilities for executions, the ultimate correction, the DEA was actually rating departments of corrections and taking their drugs because of this ban, because of the drug maker. And so first you had the drug maker that was making penthol. Right? Yeah. And then people were like, well, how about this? We have Propyphol that's the anesthetic pinethol is right. Yeah. And so what they were replacing it with was Propafol, which was Michael Jackson's milk that killed him. Did we get it right this time? Yeah. Okay. And then the maker of Propafol said, you can't use that to execute people. It's not what we made this for. Right. And they said, well, TS, we're going to use it anyway. And so the maker said, if you use that to kill anybody, we're going to cut off supplies to the entire United States, including hospitals, and you're going to have an enormous problem on your hands. Yeah. And so all the hospitals contacted the departments of the corrections and said, do not use that. Like we can't have a proposal. False shortage. Yeah. Like we need it. So now they're turning to compounding pharmacies, which are generally regulated mostly by the state, not so much by the feds, and trying to get their hands any way they can on some sort of general anesthetic. And the anesthetic, ideally, if they were using penthol or penobarbitalol pintobarbital, yes. If you were in a hospital and you were put under general anesthesia, they would use about 100 milligrams of this stuff delivered over ten to 15 seconds, and you would be out. It's an anesthetic. You wouldn't be asleep, you wouldn't be unconscious. You are under general anesthesia. You're not feeling anything, you're not anything. So that's 100 milligrams for just general anesthesia. When you're given a lethal injection of penalbarbital, they give you 5 grams, 5000 milligrams. Not 100 milligrams, 5000 milligrams of the stuff. Yes. And that's enough to kill you flat out. And proponents of lethal injection will say they don't feel anything. After that. Right. And, again, that should just be enough to kill you, which is why a lot of states are just using that one drug now. Yeah. In the original lethal injection cocktail, that was step one. Yes. Once they administered the anesthetic, they would flush the lines with saline solution, and then they would introduce the next one, which is the paralyzing agent. Yeah, that's basically the heaviest duty muscle relaxant you could ever imagine because it relaxes your muscles so much that your diaphragm and lungs don't function any longer. Yeah. That's a serious muscle relaxant. Right. So you stop breathing. So that's way to die number two now. Yeah. And that takes about one to three minutes for that one to take effect fully. So then that one's been kind of abandoned because it's been criticized or the use of it's been criticized because a lot of people point out that that's really for the witnesses, because without it, when somebody's dying, a lot of times they will rise. They will gasp for breath. Their back will arch as much as it can when it's strapped down to a gurney. When you administer a paralyzing agent, none of that happens. So the witnesses are like, oh, look, it looks like he wanted to die. Look at what a peaceful death that man just went through. So it's for the witnesses. And then, number two, it could also conceivably mask pain. Sure. So if it's masking pain, then it's also masking a possibly inhumane method of execution. So they kind of discontinued the paralyzing agent, but that was traditionally step two, and then once that one was administered so are you getting the point here? That they're really going the extra mile to make sure you're dead in the 90s through lethal injection? Yeah, and you know what? I might as well go ahead and get into this. We just put our dog down two days ago, and they do the same thing with that. They're like paralyzing agent. Three different things were injected into her. It's like the first go to sleep thing, and then the second paralyzer, and then the final thing, like, she's gone. But, hey, let's just inject this just to make sure the heart is stopped. Okay, so, it was the toxic agent, potassium chloride. I'm not sure. I mean, they said it was a trade concoction for their company. I got you. Okay, so then it probably wasn't potassium chloride, because I don't think probably not that's proprietary. But in some states, the use of potassium chloride, the toxic agent, which is the third one, that's not even allowed for use on pets, but they were using it on inmates because it induces cardiac arrest because it could conceivably cause pain. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. I'm sorry about your dog, buddy. That's right. I appreciate that. And, hey, thank you to everyone. I put that on. The stuff you should know. While people are super supportive and told a lot of their own stories of their pets passing. So I think maybe at some point I might put together a little like you did the pet costumes. I might do, like, a pet memorial thing where people can send in that would be very nice. And memorializer pets stuff. You should know. Anyway, I did find it interesting, though, a, that I picked this topic. Yeah. I kept wanting to send you stuff about it yesterday, and I was like and I picked it knowing I guess it was just this weird subliminal thing, like maybe I was trying to work through it or something, I don't know. Yeah. But I did find interesting the triple drug cocktail and similarities. I don't think it was the exact same stuff, but it's the same process, basically. 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 death, from beginning to end, five to 18 minutes after the execution order is given. Kind of just depends. Okay, so that's ideally, remember, the execution order is when you've moved into the execution chamber. Yes. And the warden says the phone is not ringing, the governor's not calling. Right. So that's when they start working on you, like putting in the IV tubes and all that stuff. Right. Now, remember, the whole point of execution in the United States criminal justice system is not to inflict pain or cause suffering. Right. It's simply to take that person's life in the most humanefficient means possible. Right? Yeah. So what happens if you can't find a vein? That happens very frequently. Yeah. There's a lot of cases of the condemned hopefully saying, well, try this vein over here. I think this one feels pretty good. Try this one. Right? Like helping these people stick them to put these lethal drugs in them. Sure. And that particularly is the case with IV drug users who have lots of collapse veins is also part of the problem when you don't have experienced medical personnel, which is one of the big controversies of lethal injection, because if you notice, it has a lot of the trappings of a medical procedure, but it completely flies in the face of medicine. Sure. Because the Hippocratic oath says, first do no harm. Well, carrying out or even assisting in an execution is doing harm. So the American Medical Association tried to pass a resolution saying, we're going to take the license of anybody who is involved in an execution. Right. And all the states said, no, you can't do that. We're going to protect the doctor's licenses because we need these people, and that's kind of a conundrum. Do you not have anything to do with an execution and let some prison guard try to find a vein and stick this person for 60 minutes and prolong the point from, okay, start executing, to death so this person is more aware and anxious and thinking about it? Or do you kind of throw your Hypocritical oath to the side and help this person's execution go as painlessly and humanely as possible? Yes. Finding a vein is not too tough, though. I was reading like Botched. Really? Executions, and that's the number one that they can't find a vein? Yeah. What are they feeding these people? Because they're not using heroin in prison, are they? Or are they? No, but I think if you use heroin for a significant portion of your life, your veins are collapsed forever. Oh, really? Yes. I don't think they grow back. Okay, so it's generally, though, a prison guard or somebody that works for the prison, though, that actually administers it, right? Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. And plus, also, there's another thing, too. If they're not good at delivering the drugs, if they're not practiced at that, the flow of the drugs, if you push it in too fast, can cause a lot of pain and suffering. That's one. Right. That's another one, too, which is another reason why some states require that medical staff be on hand to assist with these things. Yeah. I mean, there's really no humane way to put someone so that's kill somebody. Like you can't affixiate someone with feathers. Okay. No, and it's true, but I was looking around, like, okay, if lethal injection isn't even considered humane, which a lot of people say it's not, right. It's possibly there's a lot of pain. One of the drugs that's being used these days is called Medaza Lamb, and it's a sedative. It's not an anesthetic. So if you put somebody out with it, that doesn't mean that they can't feel pain any longer. Right, but that's due to the shortage of Petobarbital. People are using that. So they're saying, wait, we're using untested drugs. These people are possibly feeling excruciating pain, but you can't tell because we're using a paralyzing agent. There's got to be another way to do this. And some people recently have been speaking up and saying heroin. No, but I think there's probably a few seconds when you're introducing the pentobarbital, where they're like, all right, this feels pretty good. Yeah, no, it's called inert gas asphyxiation. Okay. So when you suffocate, apparently the pain and discomfort is caused by not being able to expel CO2 with inert gas asphyxiation you are inhaling gas. That's not oxygen, say, pure nitrogen gas. But you're still capable of exhaling CO2, which means that the whole process should be painless. Right. And unconsciousness takes effect in a couple of seconds, death, a few more seconds after that. So they think it's possible that they may have figured out the most humane method of capital punishment around, inert gas asphyxiation. Are they, like, practicing that? No, but I suspect that if this kind of reform thing continues going on, we'll see inert gas chambers pretty soon. Yeah. You know, the old firing squad is instantaneous, probably. No, it's done right. Yeah, but it rarely is done right. That's the thing. What do you mean, rarely? It's done right? Give me a statistic. Okay. How many shooting firing squads, percentage wise, aren't done properly? So I would probably say the vast majority. Really? Yeah. Trying to again, if you're doing something humanely and efficiently, you want to remove human error. So finding a vein, introducing the drug at a proper rate, like, all of these things are subject to human error. Right? Yeah. Shooting a bullet at somebody from 50ft or whatever, that's got all kinds of human error involved in it. I would say go read a and I'm not an activist. I'm not being an activist here. Go read this article called on the possible pain from various Methods of execution. I believe it's what it's called. There's a guy in the 80s who basically went around and said, let me get all the evidence I possibly can from the different types of execution that people are put through to figure out how much pain and how frequently they feel pain, how much they feel as well. And he came up with this amazing study, and firing squads are not good. Well, I know they're bloody, but I didn't know that they were botched so that people lived most of the time after being shot by eight dudes in the head. But that's another thing. They don't aim for the head. A lot of times, only one guy has a bullet where they aim the chest. So you're shot through the heart. Is that, like, all countries across the board, or I don't know. I'm just curious. I'm just saying. I would say go read that study. My money is on inert gas. Inert gas. Definitely not on firing squads. The guillotine well, that came out of that one reform movement from the late 18th century. That's as instant as it gets. No, it's not. Do you not remember our yeah. We said it's possible that the head is alive for a couple of seconds. 4 seconds. Yeah, I feel like I don't even know you right now. I got one last one. All right. So there is a huge disparity in the death penalty as a whole among races. So it turns out 89% of capital cases feature a black or hispanic defendant. And then with victims, there's a big race disparity, too. In death penalty cases in the United States, I think either last year or in the last few years, 77% of the victims have been white, 15% have been black, 6% have been hispanic for the victims. Right. So it's disproportionately doled out against people who have killed white people than it is to people who have killed black or hispanic people and other was like 2% or something like that. Interesting. You got anything else? I got nothing else. So, lethal injection. Man, that was a weird one, huh? Well, I mean, this is touchy stuff. If you want to learn more about lethal injection, you can type that into the search bar@housetepworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener, mate. I'm going to call this what a long, strange trip it's been because that's what Whitney called it. Hey, guys. I'm Whitney, and I'm a 20 something band teacher from Provo, Utah. My husband, also a band teacher, introduced me to your show in 2009 when he was commuting 1 hour each way to park city every day. When I started my current job last year, I started listening to you guys after I realized how crappy radio was and I exhausted the music on my ipod. I started one on episode one and just today caught up with a werewolf podcast. Wow. Yeah, not bad. I was excited and sad all at the same time. We hear that a lot, actually. I know you get lots of emails and you're probably sick of them, but I felt like I had to write once I caught up during the last school year, I had my first child, started my new job and moved twice. The second move being into our first home. Needless to say, with all this change, I started to get pretty stressed and even depressed. On top of all this, I teach beginning band the 6th and 7th grade kids. My job is very exciting. I love it, but I can get frustrated and even develop road rage at times. Stupid kids. Your podcast was my sanity. Through all this, dude, I was able to focus my mind on exciting things like Barbie dolls and serial killers and it all made my day a little bit brighter. So I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the podcasts. I feel like I'm learning, keeping my mind engaged and enjoying your banter. And I think my 18 month old daughter also enjoys since she's heard your voices, since she was just a tiny thing. I hope you keep making them. Whitney Werner. Thanks a lot. Whitney from Provo, Utah. Band teaching and we are shaping young minds. 18 month old minds. Yeah. In utero even we've heard, yeah, people, for some reason, play us. Forget teaching your kids sign language. Just have them listen to stuff you should know. Exactly. Yeah. If you want to let us know how we have helped your life out or how we've influenced the development of your child, it's a good one. You can tweet to us at Syscape podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshoodnow. You can send us an email. And as always, check us out at our awesome website. It's called Stuffyousherno.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 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 all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
c5cc97fa-5460-11e8-b38c-3ff2dddb391d | Selects: How Hoarding Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-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 stuff. Find out all about it in this classic episode. | 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 stuff. Find out all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 20 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=324, tm_isdst=0) | 59092820 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, its your long lost cousin Josh. And for this week's select, I chose our 2018 episode on Hoarding. This is one of those eye opening topics for me because I only knew of Hoarding through pop culture. Those portrayals are typically accurate to an extent, but the problem is they usually miss the profound distress and sadness that Hoarders feel about their disorder. So prepare to have your empathy cake put on for you with this one, and enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. 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 collection 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'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 the works 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. It's a 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 windows about once every two weeks. We all shamefully toss in dozens of bottles of empty wine. So much dead yellow tail. Yeah. And no, I don't drink that stuff, but it's nice. It's sort of like a wine meeting. So much Dead Palmissan. 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 win out. 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. Let's 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? 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 it's wine. Like malt liquor is beer. It's related, but liquor, too. Drinking college. Sure. Remember the Nikki's big mouse? Yeah. And cold 45 came in, like, gigantic bottles. That was one of the big attractions of it. Yeah. 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, the question or 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. Full 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 coal 45 out of a chilled glass. Now I got a nice whiskey bar set up at home that's separate from the regular bar oh, wow. With just, like, rice and bourbons and Scotches and Irish. It's very nice. And a bunch of little additional. I've gotten down 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 one, and it's actually worth the effort. Yeah. My buddy Eddie Eddie, he actually does it in the bottle, but he'll do, like, a cherry bourbon or an apple. Oh, like infused bourbon. Yeah. Those 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 if she took her husband's last name. I thought you 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 can see that. Because then I would no longer be able to call her Kongs, 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. And this is a great 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 and 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 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? Now, 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 is 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. 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 eight seven central, that'd be very David Lynchian. Just this mute woman walking around poking with the boxes, blackout bar over most of her face everywhere. She'd be great. Yeah. Alright, so we'll go ahead and get it going with a stat here. Back in the day. I was Stat Man. Remember that? 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 broad fellow 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 that say anywhere from zero 4% to as many as 5% of as high as 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 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 a 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, go listen to the comas episode. That will 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. Do they 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? They have the ability to part with this 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 uncenimental 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 jump. No, not at all. It was just was he ashamed of his bucket of nails? No, he would occasionally get out of 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 is one of the myths that all these people just grew up in the Depression, so they value things more. That is not the case. There is no tie to that. But he is one of those gentlemen who grew up in the Great Depression, and I love that attitude. We're 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, 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 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 Hartle 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 their 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, they basically won't pass up a bargain. It's one of the ways that they might acquire something. My mom has a little bit of that. 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, like, an addition to their attic in their garage top, and it was just filled with 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. 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 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, like, warehouses with stuff. Wow. He's like the dream hoarder. Yeah, 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 a 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, right? 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. Literally, it's 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, well, no, this means a lot to me, or another explanation or another rationalization among hoarders is that like they're just kind of stockpiling, they might need all these clothes one day. That's the thing. They might be 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 be very and 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 would 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. 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 yeah, 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 Chuck's Dumb Opinions. That's a good one. Just to follow up each week to this. Yes, I get it all out. Number three, did you get a little what Josh said? Stupid. 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 trapping 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 the stuff. So then you start hoarding more. And 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. Stay loop. Like alcohol is through 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? And 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. Yeah, well, that's what I mean. I'm not saying you seek treatment and you still can't stop. All right, 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. Like I can't take a bath because that's where I keep the packing peanuts. Or I can't use a stove because it has seven microwaves that I bought that are still in boxes stacked on it. And a lot of times they will, like a snow plow, just dig a path through their home just so they can get around where they can get around. Yeah. Apparently among hoarders are among psychologists who study hoarding, it's called they call them goat paths. And they can be dangerous too. Hoarders have been known to have died from walking along their gopads and the stuff on either side just coming down on top of them and pinning them and suffocating them. Yeah. And this is the point too, 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 be in disrepair, 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 a 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. Say Ed 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 takeout, 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? Yes. 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 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, you know, 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. And then 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, I think, 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 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, a close family member, some sort of loss of love can trigger hoarding behavior in some people or has 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, 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 for 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, because this is a disease, 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 says, 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 it'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 emailed this woman named Lisa Hale, founding director of the Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment and also at Junk, associate professor at University of Missouri Kansas City fighting haseeds Hayesds. I think Hays, isn't that a derogatory name for a canson? It depends on whether they own it or not, you know. 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 as 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 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 like, that they would stick these poor people into the Wonder Machine and talk to them about getting rid of their possession, 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 own 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 de escalation 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 adolescence? It's just too new. Like, 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 anxiety inducing mental illness. Right. Like, we're getting rid of this thing now and I'm sure they just 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. No, 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. Like, 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 a 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 say 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 cutoff point where we know, I don't need anything more than this, or anything more than this is irrational. And people who 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 the stuff. We live in something year old craftsman. And those houses just don't have the closet space and the storage space. We don't have a garage. We do have an attic that has some stuff. And 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. But I mean, 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 guests, they are invariably very close friend or family member, and so they understand. And we clearly go 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 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. This will be the second time we've covered them. When do we talk about them before Bizarre Ways to Die. Oh, wow. 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 Call Your Brothers within that 25 minutes episode, then you would probably appreciate a more fleshed out version. I would love it, but just the broad strokes of it, or the 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 Brothers 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 name 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 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's 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 said 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. Yes. The problem is, again, it is very sad because there's that extra component, that extra very important component of suffering animals. And when people hear about this stuff, you just immediately kind of hits 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 are 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? Yeah. 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 pick through 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 disease dying or dead animals on the premises at the time. It can be comorbid 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 once 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 said, well, really, what you just said, even if they did happen, even if that negative outcome did happen, is it 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, your therapist knows exactly how you feel. Every Thursday at 02:00, you're there for an hour. Probably more than that if you are a diagnosed order 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 need 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 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 Edgarbanowski on householdforce.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. 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. Yeah. 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 Radiohead's 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, a communist? Between that and Chuck baking in 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 schnongo board is ready. Travel safe. And that is Jen Hunt. Jen, 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 junk cooking. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know how we crack you up, we'd love hearing about that. You can tweet to us the SYSK podcast. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the webselfysheeko.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 Extinction Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-extinction-works | Scientists believe that 99% of the estimated 50 billion species that have ever lived on Earth have disappeared through extinction. This is a natural process typically, but it can also be cataclysmic and it's becoming clear we are amid a massive one. | Scientists believe that 99% of the estimated 50 billion species that have ever lived on Earth have disappeared through extinction. This is a natural process typically, but it can also be cataclysmic and it's becoming clear we are amid a massive one. | Tue, 21 Oct 2014 14:55:20 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=55, tm_sec=20, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=294, tm_isdst=0) | 45365361 | audio/mpeg | "The Neogen device developed by Rst. Syndnexis is a Wellestablished advanced quantumbased medical device using electric cell signaling technology. Treatment is noninvasive, safe, effective and used in managing pain associated with neuropathy and other painful conditions. It helps improve circulation, offers better rehabilitation through pain relief and activates the recovery processes giving better patient outcomes. Visit Neogenreleasepane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen system. Come chat with us. That's Neogenreleavespane.com. Your patience will thank you. What if you 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 real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM's let's create learn more@ibm.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Tucker. Bryant. Jerry is over there. I almost said your last name. Jerry. How weird. And then today we have a fourth character in the studio with this Chuck coming together to make like a Changeable human being. So you are wearing patchouli. Not wearing well, you have patchouli on you as a result of one of Emily's Sugar scripts, right? Yes, mama. And It's Loveyourmoma.com. Yeah. Okay. And then Jerry is contributing to that with an enchilada. So all of them combined, I would say there's an extra person in the seat right here. What kind of person is that? Just another person. Okay. A viable living organism. One that, when we leave the studio, we'll probably become extinct. That's a good one. Did you like that? Yeah, I've had that plan since probably two weeks ago. Nice. How are you doing, man? I'm good. I've been thinking of Buster rhymes all day. Why did he have a song about extinction? He had an album called Extinction Level Event. Oh, yeah? Yeah. That was in one of the songs. This sounds super 90s. Well, it's busted rhymes. It has to be 90s. But, I mean, even those words. Extinction level event. People were worried about stuff because of the turn of the millennium. You remember Exile is a huge hit. Sure. Deep Impact and Armageddon came out on the same day, basically. And both were hits. People were just nervous. And as a result, Buster Ryan's is very popular. That's right. Although he's not anymore. He's still good, though. He hasn't been doing much. No. But his body of work is still sure leaders in the new school. And his early work with Tribe called Quest. Oh, yeah. He guessed it on one of my favorite songs. Yeah. What's the scenario? Was that the one? I think so. I mean, it was definitely on that one. Yeah. But that was the one also where I think yeah. He makes fun of people with saggy pants because it was so new. Right. Apparently, Buster Robins wasn't down with it yet. Yeah. It's pretty ironic because he got hardcore into that. That was raw. Like a dungeon dragon. Right, right. It was pretty awesome. It's a good song. Yeah. So extinction is clearly what we're talking about today. And I guess we should probably give a shout out to some of the extra reading material yeah, man. That we picked up on. There's a woman named Elizabeth Kolbert or Colbert, depending on if you watch the Colbert Report. Yeah. She is basically a leading expert as far as journalists go, on extinction. She wrote a book called The Six Extinction. It's a good article. Yeah. She wrote an article in The New Yorker. She's a New Yorker journalist that was basically the predecessor to the book. They do like, I need an extra 20 grand, so I'll write a synopsis of the book I'm writing, and it's a good article. And we work from that. There's another one from the New York Review of Books called They're Taking Over about the explosion of jellyfish on how stuff works. There's one that I wrote years back called will We Soon Be Extinct? And there's another house stuff works, one that we've done an episode on called why is Biodiversity Important? Yeah. And I found one in IO Nine for animals that we thought were extinct but miraculously pop back up nice. Which is always a good story. Oh, yeah. It's a heartwarming story of triumph, of adversity, and coming back when everybody thought you were down. Yeah. Some of them, like, basically Rocky hundreds of millions of years later, even. Yeah. It's crazy. Like, the silicone I think that's one of them. Was that the big fish? Yeah. They just caught that thing one day yeah. And said, hey, wait a minute. Yeah. This thing is extinct. It's supposed to be. We'll talk about how and why things fall off, but things do fall off. And it seems that the whole thing is a very natural process, extinctionist. But for a very long time, I guess, scientists believed that God created all of the animals on Earth and that his will was too perfect, his creation was too divine to even allow for extinction. So because they were aware of the fossil record, they rationalized these huge bones of animals that you didn't see anywhere, as we just haven't found them yet. Well, yes. And this is all the way up into the 19th century. And some really smart people, like Thomas Jefferson thought, for instance, when he sent Lewis and Clark out west that they might come across the great mastodon. Right. He's like, It's bound to be out there somewhere, guys. Be careful. But there were some other smarter people, like George Cuvier in 1812. He was pretty ahead of his time. In fact, in 1812, he was way ahead of his time because he published an essay called Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe. And he kind of asserted that now things can go extinct. And he called them a species produce lost species. Right. And basically hypothesized that there have been cataclysmic events that have caused extinctions in so many words. This is basically flew in the face of this that not only was their extinction, but there were huge events that caused it. And so the religious thinkers of the day said, okay, wait, we can work with this because, buddy, what you're talking about is like Noah's flood. So you, my friend, just proved the Bible correct using science. Yeah. Darwin wasn't on board, though, although he did believe in extinction. He thought it was the only way it could happen is the gradual extinction. That is also true. And we'll talk about that as well. And of course, Darwin is this huge hero of biology surveys. Well, Darwin's right about just about everything. So literally until the 1990s, darwin's view that extinction happened extremely slowly, slower than speciation events. So ultimately you should always have more species, new species coming up than you have going extinct. Until the 1990s. That's the way it seemed. Yeah. So, Chuck, like I said, all of this stayed around until 1991 and it was a result of like think about it. Think about how you think of mass extinctions now. You think of an asteroid hitting Earth, destroying everything. And it wasn't until 1991 that that view became widely accepted. And it was because of this dude named Alvarez. He was a geologist, I believe, Walter Alvarez in the seventies, he started studying this clay layer that was basically in the fossil record right at the time the dinosaurs suddenly died out. Right. And no one could quite explain what was going on here. They just knew that this must have happened gradually. So it must be a problem with the actual fossil record, not our way of thinking. Yeah, and there are plenty of problems with the fossil record which we'll get into as well. Right, but Walter Alvarez said, let me look at this in a little more detail. And he looked at the Iridium and found that the Iridium levels were off the charts, which shouldn't be because it's very rare. And we associate iridium on Earth as being brought here by, say, like an asteroid or whatever. Yeah, it's super abundant in asteroids. So all of a sudden this guy goes, wait a minute, maybe we can explain this dying out of dinosaurs where the dinosaurs went 65 million years ago by an asteroid. And that was in 10 00 19 80 that they proposed this hypothesis and they ran into a lot of resistance. Sure. And then finally, in a year after a crater was discovered under the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, they dated it and said, yeah, it just so happens that this crater was formed just at the moment the dinosaurs died out. So the Alvarez hypothesis is probably right. And extinction can happen on a mass sudden scale just as it can also happen on a very long term scale, too. Yeah, that crater was 112 miles wide, so it fit the profile and basically ended the Cretaceous period in the Mesozoic era. And for a while they called it the Cretaceous Tertiary Event, but now they call it the Cretaceous Paleogene event. And did you notice that the Kpg right. They noticed the Cretaceous, which is spelled with a C, is denoted with a K. Yeah, I did. Did you see why? It's just German. It's just a German translation for it. I figured it was something like that. Yeah, it was just bugging me. So now we now believe an asteroid brought us into the Cenozoic era that we enjoy today. Love the Cenazoic. It's pretty good. It's pretty awesome. It's a good era. I mean, it's our era. Yes. So you got to love it. You got to love it. So, Chuck, like I said, the extinction can happen, and it does happen, and it's a natural process. If you talk to people about extinction today, though, they say, yeah, we're kind of in a huge extinction event. Yeah. And it makes sense when you look at our past. They estimate maybe up to 5 billion species have lived on Earth, and more than 99% of those are gone. And I love how the New Yorker put it. I think that there's an old joke that all of life on Earth today could be accounted for with a simple rounding error. Yeah. Like everything we know. Yeah. We've lost 99% of things that have ever lived on this planet due to extinction. Right. Which, again, it has such a terrible connotation these days, extinction. Extinction. But it happens naturally. Apparently, what they've found from looking at the fossil record, from studying life on Earth, is that a species tends to have about a 10 million year lifespan, and a speciation event occurs where it branches off from one species and produces an entirely new species. And that species, on average, will stick around for about 10 million years, and then something happens and it dies out, and other species take its place. This is the natural course of life, from what we can tell. The thing is, it normally happens on a very slow time scale, like when it's what's called background extinction. Right? Yeah. The background rate is supposed to be between one and five species per year, but they think that now it could be like, 100 times that I've seen up to 1000 times the normal rate. And I saw another study from 2014, so it's fresh, and it said that these researchers calculated the normal rates, and they found that there's between 00:23 and zero five extinct species per million species per year. Doesn't really mean much. It means so much that it boggles the mind. That's a really strange way of putting it. But basically they're saying, like, for every million species on Earth at any given point in time, during a year, as low as 23 species will die out. So in a year, you shouldn't necessarily have that many species. In current times, though, like you said, between 101,000 times that rate is what we're seeing right now, which is, you could say, alarming. It is alarming. The reason they don't have hard numbers on this stuff is because, like we said, it's a tough thing to study because the fossil record is well, there's a lot of problems. One is it's incomplete. We don't really know how many species have been on Earth since the beginning of Earth. It's just impossible to tell. Fossils form under really specific condition. So you may think something is gone because it has disappeared from the fossil record, but all that means is there wasn't a fossil. It doesn't necessarily mean it's gone. Right. So that's why things will pop back up. They'll think, hey, we haven't seen a fossil, this guy in 2000 years. But here it is all of a sudden. And even if it has gone extinct, just where it stopped showing up in the fossil record doesn't mean, like you said, that's when it went extinct. Right. Then it could have been millions of years later. Well, because then you're supposing that the last thing of that species happened to make a fossil, which is just silly. Yeah. And also it makes you wonder how many species have lived and died on Earth that just never showed up in the fossil record. Yeah. Just weren't fossils at all. Right. Yeah. Well, if it never crawled into amber or was buried by ash or something, that's luck. Or got trapped in broncosaurus poop. I don't know if that's good luck or bad luck. It is what it is. It's nature. So because of all these gaps in the fossil record, these researchers that love this topic tend to do a lot of math right. And a lot of speculating with algorithms and mathematical formulas to figure this stuff out. Sure. And that's the only way to do it, really, is to speculate with numbers. It also helps them define things like the minimum viable population, which, if you go below that, then it's bad news for the species. It's the minimum amount you can have to still be considered to have a bright future right. As a thing, or to just survive as a species. Right. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. Dim future if you're not surviving. Yeah. Math is pretty grim. It can be in this case, for sure. So we'll talk about exactly what makes an extinction and then what makes up mass extinctions. But first, let's do a little breakage. 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 to 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. Okay. So, Chuck, you've been talking about animal species going extinct and then showing up again like the sea, lake, ant. Yeah. Or at least disappearing right, from the record. But we as humans assume they were extinct. Like, again, the Sela cant is this fish that they caught off the coast of South Africa. When did we talk about it? Was it in this day in history? I don't remember. We definitely have hit on that, though. I think it was because it's huge, right? Yeah. It's a big, ugly fish, and it looks like an old dinosaur. But they thought it had died out like, 50, 60 million years ago. Actually, way longer. They thought it disappeared 400 million years ago. Even more impressive. Yeah. So then they caught one off the coast of South Africa in the they caught another one a couple of decades later in Madagascar or Mauritius or something. And that made the Seal of Cancer a Lazarus species, even though it hadn't really gone anywhere, we just thought it did. So we humans having the most important perspective on the entire planet, possibly in the entire universe, it was a Lazarus species to us. Yeah. Lazarus from the Bible. Right. Raised from the dead, like the sea, lake, and again with the biblical connotations with extinction. Yeah. There's a lot at stake here. That's true. Another way something might disappear and you might think it's gone is if it actually evolves into a new species. That's called pseudo extinction. And that's a great success story as well. It is. But also, I don't understand why that's not just a speciation event. I mean, why is that pseudo extinction? Why is that any different from regular extinction? Yeah. Maybe just because it didn't die out, actually just changed and evolved. Those are two different things. Yeah. It seems like a gray area to me. Yeah. But for the most part, when an animal just disappears, and we should say that even today, we're still finding things that we thought were extinct, so called Lazarus species. Which goes to make the point we have no idea how many living species there are on the planet today. Yeah. Or have been. It's all just a good guess. It is using math. Yeah, grim math. But for the most part, we understand that when species goes away, suddenly it went extinct. And as we've been saying again and again, extinction is kind of this natural process, or it is a very natural process, and it typically results from a change in the habitat of species and it's inability to adapt. So it dies out. Yeah. Competition with other species, hunting by humans, or perhaps the environment has been tainted by humans. Humans or a new bacteria or a new virus. Yeah. The thing is, though, is these big factors habitat loss, competition with new species, hunting and contaminants in the environment, those are the big four reasons that something goes extinct, right. Yeah. Humans can and are responsible for all four of those. Yeah. This is the extinction that happens over time. Obviously. Not a big asteroid hitting the planet. No. But it can happen pretty quickly. And this is a Tracy Wilson joint, and in the introduction, she mentions the stellar sea cow, which was an Arctic resident. It was a big old manatee, basically. Yeah. And they were first described by Arctic explorers in 1741. By 1768, they were extinct. So it can happen on a pretty rapid scale, especially when you introduce humans. Yeah. And it has a domino effect, too, because we talked about, and everyone knows about the dangers of losing bees. It's not just like, oh, well, there are no more bees. That's going to affect pollination and plants, and those plants are being fed on by other animals. And it tends to have a snowball effect. Like, for example, at the end of the last Ice Age, mammals, small mammals, started to go extinct. And because of that, large animals started to go extinct. Because they like to eat the small animals. Exactly. Which is the answer to the question, why is biodiversity important? Well, because ecosystems thrive and survive on a wide number of species that exist pretty much naturally in balance. Yeah. A pretty good example of that stuff falling out of balance is the passenger pigeon. Are you familiar? Yeah. They're trying to de extinct that thing. Yeah. You want to talk about de extinction? Yeah. Well, de extinction is exactly what it sounds like. It is sort of Jurassic Parky. In 2003, some scientists revived the Bucardo, and that's a Spanish mountain goat. And they did it just sort of like Jurassic Park from DNA that was frozen in time. Unfortunately, although it did work initially, the DNA only survived a matter of minutes, but they did count as a de extinction. I think there was a live birth that survived a few minutes, wasn't it? Yeah. The animal itself only survived a few minutes, though. Right. It was like, I should not be that's true. They basically said, it's happening now and we have the capabilities, and we may not be able to bring the woolly mammoth back, but we might be able to bring back something kind of close. Right. And that raises in this article that you sent, this moral question, like, should we be doing this just because we can. Does that mean we should? And so if you bring back an animal that has been extinct for so long that its habitat is now gone, where are they going to live? Exactly? Where are you going to put it? A zoo. That doesn't seem like a good reason to bring an animal back. So we could put it in a zoo. This is my opinion here, which we don't do a lot of, but it seems like concentrating on the problems we face now with the extinction rates is something that we should concentrate on not bringing back the woolly mammoth. Right. And that also kind of dovetails at the point that if we have this ability and routinely exercise it, we may be less inclined to protect the stuff we have now for, like, it's important enough, we'll just genetically reengineer it and bring it back later. Yeah, I think in the CNN article, they liken it, just thinking we have an undo button right on the world. Control z. Yeah. No good. And it's funny because the author doesn't realize that Control Z works outside of Microsoft Word, too. He specifically mentioned Control, Z and Microsoft Word. Specifically Microsoft Word. He said it. Yeah. That's a little weird. He could be a shill and he was just working it in. Maybe. Well, on Max, though, it's not control. Maybe he just met Microsoft and awkwardly put in Word. Maybe. Or maybe that's the only program he knows. How do I work this? So you're saying that they're trying to bring back the passenger pigeon, right? Yeah. So the passenger pigeon is this really neat example of what happens when you have a lack of biodiversity. There were when European settlers came to the New World, apparently, like one out of every four birds in North America was a passenger pigeon. A quarter of the entire bird population was passenger pigeons. It's a lot of pigeons. There's a ton of pigeons. There are so many that you could just shoot into, like a flock and you would kill a couple of hundred. Literally. There were that many. The thing is, if you read 1493 or 1491 I can't remember which one it is, but both are excellent books by Charles C. Mann. He talks about the passenger pigeon and how they've recently realized that there were so many passenger pigeons because a century before, one of their great predators, the Native American, had been wiped out by disease that had been introduced to the continent about a century before that. So by the time the Europeans got here and really started to settle and encounter the passenger pigeon, they're like, God, look at all these pigeons. And didn't realize that the pigeon population had exploded because their natural predator had died off. Right. And so we in turn, hunted them into extinction. So because of one near extinction, another species was allowed to thrive and explode. And then when they were faced with their predator again, humans, they were eventually wiped out and went extinct. Yeah. The American buffalo. We almost hunted them out of existence. Yeah. We're not for Ted Turner. Yeah. We tried our best to they were just shooting those things for fun at one point. Man, it's disgusting. It is disgusting. You hear about the trains just going through the west and just shooting out the windows at the buffalo for no reason. Yeah. And doing nothing, just leaving them there to rot. Unbelievable. Remember we did an episode on the buffalo? That was a good one. So sad. No, it was good. If you want to talk about extinction level events, that's a whole different deal. You want to talk buster ride, that's not a slow, gradual extinction. That is some big thing that happens that wipes out a lot of living things all at once. And they estimate there's been more than 20 of these in the history of the world, but five of them, they call them the Big Five for a reason, for good reason. And we'll just go through those kind of quickly. Now, the Ordo viscean extinction is about 490,000,000 years ago, and that wiped out about half of all animal families. The reason it wiped out about half was because at the time, most of the stuff on Earth still lived in the sea. Glaciers formed at this time, lowering sea levels, which meant that animals that lived in a certain depth of the sea, usually toward the surface, lost their habitat, boiled. Yeah, maybe or were brought down to the level where their predators like to hang out, and we're eating en masse, but that accounted for that extinction, which is kind of rare, because as you'll see when we're talking about the Big Five or mass extinctions in general, it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened. So that's one of the rare ones that were, like, pretty sure this is why all this life went extinct all of a sudden. Yeah. And one reason it's difficult is because it was almost 500 million years ago. That's another reason that's kind of tough here in 2014. Number two, if you like lettering number two on the top five extinction, the late Devonian extinction. They're still debating about that. And about a quarter of the marine families. And by the way, we should mention, when they research these things, they home in on family and genera in the big classification group. Right. They don't say, like, oh, look at these kingdoms that have disappeared, or these phylum. They go down to the smaller levels. Right. And family and genus are just above species as far as the taxonomy is concerned. Exactly. So what I say about half of the marine genera, and that was 360,000,000 years ago. Right. No idea what caused that one. No idea. At least you and I have no idea. Yeah, I don't think they care about that one too much. Yeah. The Permian triassic extinction. This is a pretty big one. This is the biggest one ever. This is the one they call the Great Dying, right? I think so. I've seen estimates of as much as 95% to 96% of all life that's crazy. Died off during this extinction event. In this article, it says 85% of marine genera and 70% of land species went extinct. And that was 250,000,000 years ago. There's a lot of people who have different ideas about what did it, but they think it's possible as volcanic activity creating acid rain. Yeah, that's a big one. That possibly happened more than once. Was that the one where I don't know. I think that was the Kpg event, was the one where they think they're not exactly how it happened, but they may have been just broiled and then awesome broiled on the face of the Earth. Yeah. Which would have happened pretty quickly, too, actually. And I think that one is because they think it may have burst through the atmosphere. Right. Yeah. Rained hot debris everywhere. That's the one that got rid of the dinosaurs. Yeah. 65 million years ago. What is it called? The Khyphen PG. Yeah. The Cretaceous paleogene event now. And that's the one where they are pretty sure that an asteroid hit Central America and sent all of this rock, like, basically vaporized rock away from Earth with so much force that this stuff made it out of the atmosphere and then started to come back down. And as it did, it generated thermal heat enough to bring the broil down on Earth. Yeah. And that's one of two sub explanations. The other is that the old familiar ash basically kept photosynthesis from it. Like it blacked out the sun. Yeah. Like a nuclear winter. Yeah. Pretty nuts, though. But we skip number four for no good reason. The End Triassic extinction killed about 20% of marine families, about half of marine genera. And that was 200 million years ago. Yeah. And again with a mass extinction. There's no real definition for it, I found. I was looking to see, okay, who's the body that says, like, okay, a mass extinction event took place again, the fossil record is incomplete enough, and we're making guesses and mathematical guesses, but still guesses to the extent that we don't have a real definition for what constitutes a mass extinction. But those five were so massive that there's virtually no debate whatsoever that those account for mass extinction events. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know it when you see it kind of thing. But there's no agreement on how fast pretty much. Yeah. There's no agreement on how fast it has to happen or how widespread it has to happen. But typically, it's like a large percentage of all of the animals alive. Something like 20%, say, of all living animal species. Not just animals. Animal species just die off, and it's worldwide. That seems to be another factor in defining a massive species. Sure. So these events were pretty big. Yeah. And I think one of the researchers in the article you said made a pretty good point that the current mass extinction that we're in now. Which we're going to talk about in depth here in a minute. He said these are way more dangerous because in the event of an asteroid. Let's say while it might really suck. It's one bad event and right afterward. The world starts to try and recoup. It may take a million years, but it tries its best to start reforming life and get going again, wherein now there's no stress relief. It's just a constant. There's no recuperation because it's not over. Right. Or the recuperation will come, but we won't be around to see it because the breaking point will be us wiping ourselves out by wiping out the biodiversity. And there is kind of this whole moralistic thing to the idea of extinction. There's this whole human guilt. But if you just kind of take a step back and look at mass extinction intellectually, it doesn't wipe out life, it just changes everything. Right. So for one species, it might be a boom time, for everybody else, it's a dying off time. But it's all in your perspective. Oh, yeah. This beautiful earth that we know and love now isn't anything like it was 100 million years ago. Exactly. And there's not necessarily a set level or a baseline that earth is supposed to be at. Right. Because nature doesn't care. Right. Nature is not like, oh, well, we got all these people here now and things seem pretty modern and they got smartphones, so maybe we should just protect this version. They're like, what's the cycle every what, 10 million years for a species? For a species, okay. That's a lifespan of a species on average. So basically every, what, 10,000, 10 million years. The earth just doesn't care. No, the point is, for a species, it's lifespan is 10 million years. And the earth is not caring every day of that. Yeah, it doesn't care. It's just stumbling toward the next event basically. Exactly. That will one day probably happen. The thing is, all of this is not to say that humans are off the hook. All evidence that's coming in now is showing that we are doing a lot to speed up extinction events and create a mass extinction. So much so that the big five is possibly the big six. And we may be in the very beginning stages of the 6th one. And we'll talk about that 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 home page and enter code stuff. So, Chuckers, we've been talking about mass extinction events. There's a big five and a lot of people are saying, no, there's six, and the 6th one is human caused. So much so that geologists are proposing that we call our current epoch the Anthropocene because humans are having such an impact on Earth that they imagine 10,000 years from now, geologists will be able to look and point to this layer and say, here's where humans started. Yeah, let's get in the wayback, machine. Oh yeah, let's crank this baby up. Does it have enough kerosene? Oh, it's got enough kerosene, buddy, because we're going back 50,000 years, okay? We're bringing spirits and we're going to go to Australia even, because it's just nice down there. And what I see around me are these huge wombat like things that are as big as hippos huge. And I see a tortoise over there that's the size of a VW beetle. And this weird short face kangaroo, and it's 10ft tall. 10ft tall kangaroo. Look at the size of that thing. And everything is crazy. But let's just unpack here and let's start propagating, you and me. Okay? I'm going to make a fear just for safety. All right? And it sounds like I needed to fend you off, too. And you know what? It's weird. Things are starting to disappear around us as we grow and as we expand, can we get out of here? Because that ten foot tall kangaroo is eyeing us. Well, not anymore, but he's dead because they believe. A lot of people think that around 50,000 years ago when humans started expanding their footprint, there was a very inconvenient correlation with species dying out as we spread about the Earth. Yeah, this 6th mass extinction, I apologize for not being able to say six correctly. No, that's right. But there's a huge debate and it's still it's not settled. Both sides are like, we're right. Another one is like, we're right. The thing is, both sides agree, like, yeah, we're in the midst of a six mass extinction and isn't that what matters? But is it human caused or is the result of climate change? And just because it's the result of climate change doesn't mean that if you take the trail back far enough, it isn't necessarily human cause. But these are the two debates. So one is the theory of overkill, which is the one you were just describing. Yeah. And that was describing Australia 50,000 years ago. If we want to get back in the way back machine and go to North America 11,000 years ago, three quarters of our largest animals started to die out, like the mastodon and the woolly mammoth and the giant beaver sabertooth tiger. And not coincidentally, probably, that's right around the time where we first walked over the Bering Land bridge and set up shop here in North America. Yeah. The thing is, you can also say, well, that kind of gives or takes a few thousand years and yeah, that's definitely stretchable, but it's just not been proven. So there is a huge correlation between the spread of humans and the death of what are called megafauna, huge land animals. Yeah. And they say that theory of overkill says that we came along with our smart little toolkits, which included like, spearheads and arrows and axes and clubs and domesticated dogs after a certain point in time. Sure. And over hunted either these huge hippo sized marsupials yeah. Or we hunted things that were slightly smaller that the huge hipposized marsupials eight. Either way, we contributed directly to their mass extinction. Yeah. And they think generally that over hunting isn't the very least, it's not the sole cause, because you probably just can't hunt enough. The amount of people that we had, especially in a place like Australia, which wasn't super heavily founded, it wasn't like 10 million people moved to Australia overnight. Right. So they say over hunting is probably not the sole cause, but maybe a factor. But other things humans did, like maybe in Australia, they started burning shrubs to clear land and maybe those shrubs were eaten by certain species and then that caused that domino effect. Again, the other camp that basically says, no, it's climate change and it's fairly natural. Other people might say it's human caused climate change, but for the most part, if you are a climate change extinction proponent, you probably just believe that this is a natural process that the Earth is undergoing and humans didn't have enough of an impact early on to account for the loss of a lot of these species. Yeah. This one study pointed to a place called Sahul, which was Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, all joined together in this mega continent. That was a crazy place. It was several tens of thousands of years ago. And they were saying that by the time humans arrived in Sahulu or Australia, most of the megaphone was already gone. It was gone as a result of climate change. And there's no evidence that we have a toolkit capable of killing these animals at this time. Yeah, true. So the debate still rages on. Yeah. And there's been several ice ages that didn't make things go extinct. Right. So people point to that as maybe another counterargument. But the researchers you sent along did this pretty cool thing. They did the first global analysis of mapping large animals during this period 132,000 to 1000 years ago. And it was the first time they were able to really get a fine point on this geographical variation in species loss. And they did find that 177 species of large mammals disappeared during that period where we were starting to spread out as a species. Right. Which apparently, as it's put in this article, a massive loss. Yeah. And they said they expect these kind of things to happen on an island. Like if you go to Hawaii or any island, they say that survival is the exception when humans invade an island. Exactly. But for it to happen on like, a continent, it's pretty amazing to think about the human impact. Still an island. Well, yeah, I guess it's a good point. But the jury is still out, though, on exactly what's causing this. Most scientists agree that we are in a mass extinction event and it's happening pretty quickly. Something like, I think a third of all coral reefs are in danger of extinction. A third of amphibians, I believe. Yes. And a quarter of all mammals and an 8th of all birds are all classified as threatened with extinction. And this is happening around the world. So it's fitting the criteria for a mass extinction. Yeah. They're basically chalking up to the pace of human expansion. And if you consider that farming and logging and building roads and buildings and most of the world's waterways have been diverted or damned at this point, or manipulated somehow, only 2% of rivers in the United States run unimpeded. 2%. Everything else has been altered in some way. Chemical plants affecting CO2 in the atmosphere. It's having an effect. And the CO2 actually in the atmosphere is having another effect called ocean acidification, which has been described as global warming's evil twin. As more and more CO2 gets released in the atmosphere, the oceans scramble to keep up by absorbing more and more. And it stores some of that by turning some of it into acid, which lowers the PH of the ocean, which is making the ocean unfit for a lot of life. But as to kind of demonstrate how mass extinction is bad for one species, great for another, jellyfish populations are booming. Oh, really? Because they like the lower PH. Yeah, they like it more acidic and they're like, seriously starting to cause some real problems. And we're just seeing the beginning of this. So it's entirely possible that the next thousand years we'll see the rise of the jellyfish as the rest of life on Earth starts to die off. Well, here's a staggering stat. The drop in ocean PH levels that have occurred in the past 50 years they think might exceed what has happened in the past. Previous 50 million years. Wow. So in the past 50 years, they've basically changed the chemical makeup of the ocean more than the past 50 million. And speaking of 50 years, apparently in the next 50 years, an estimated half of all species on Earth could be extinct. Sucks, man. I want to see a sloth as big as an elephant hey. Get into the extinction. Well, you just saw when we were in Sahuel. Well, yeah, it was nice, but I wanted to come in the way back machine and bring it to Atlanta. No, I don't think that's a good idea, man. That thing looked like it would go berserk. And finally, unless you have anything else. I don't think so. I'm looking at everything. We have a few highlights of extinct animals that have been rediscovered, which is not the same thing as being reengineered. What was this? An IO nine. Article nine. And some of those are pretty good. Sure. The Bermuda patrel disappeared. They fought in the 16 hundreds, but rediscovered 1951, there's about 180 of those alive today. Let me see here. What else is good? Well, we already talked about the seal of camp. The Cubanodon, excuse me, discovered in 1861, has only been caught 37 times in the history of the world. In 1970s, they thought it was extinct. It's like a weird rat like species, but then they found one in the another one in 2003. So, like, welcome back, Cuban solenodon. So it's like caught during the during the period of the 70s revival in the early 2000s. That's right. Nice. Gilbert Poturu. And these have weird names. That's why they went extinct, because you couldn't say, we should save the what? This is a rabbit size Marsupial in Australia, and it last appeared in 1879. And they thought, well, this thing's gone up until 1994. Came back out and poked his head around and got caught in a few traps, but currently less than 100 of those in the world. So those are just a few of the ten. And there's more than ten, obviously, but it's always a good story. Sure it is. Heartwarming. We think this thing's dead. It's like, yeah. Welcome back to the mass extinction still going on. If you want to know more about extinction, you should read each and every one of the articles we cited. And you can also read this article on howstofworks.com by typing extinction in the handy search bar. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this police interrogation follow up. Okay. From Matt Pope a in Victoria, British Columbia. All right, thank you to Vancouver, by the way, for two great shows after our great shows in Toronto. Yes in Toronto and Vancouver. Very supportive people. And boy, that second crowd in Vancouver was drunk and rowdy. Hey, guys, just listening to police interrogation, I thought I'd share a couple of quick personal stories that illustrate the pitfalls of relying on nonverbal cues to see if someone's guilty. I've never been in trouble with the law myself. But several years ago, I witnessed a crime, called 911 to report it. Cops snapped the perpetrator and a few days later asked me to come down to provide a witness statement. When I arrived, an officer led me into a tiny room that was every bit as bleak as the ones you see on TV. It was a weird experience, even though I wasn't accused of a crime and the cop was polite and is questioning, the interrogation room setting and the power differential between the uniform cop with a gun and my unarmed self made me feel really nervous. I started sweating. My voice shook, and if you've been watching my body language the one way mirror, you would have thought I was guilty. Well, he was just a witness. The second story is very similar. Every year, our local courthouse has a public event where they give tours and put on a mock trial and actually hang someone. Kidding. I made up that part. That was pretty good. It's supposed to be educational and fun. My father is a lawyer and one year asked me, I'd like to play the defendant in the trial. I'm no actor, but I said sure. My character was accused of a minor drug offense, and I went through the whole ordeal being on trial and testifying my own defense. I'll spare you the details. But afterwards my mom said, wow, you looked really guilty up there. I hope you never actually are on trial for anything, because they'll lock you up and throw away the key. I learned from these situations the very act of treating someone like a criminal to make him appear guilty reminds me of the Stanford Prison study that we've talked about. And there's a psychology of nuts about that. Psychology is nuts. Video on our YouTube channel about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Yeah, that's a good one. You should check that out. I hope you guys never have to find out the hard way you'll react to police interrogation. If you do, I hope you find a good lawyer. As for Matt Pope, once again in Victoria, BC. Well, thanks a lot, Matt. That's kooky about your town doing mock trials and stuff like that. Yeah, like hanging a guy. Yes. Crazy. It's fun. The only thing that's okay about it is they make the guy look like Hitler. Right? So it's like hanging Hitler every year, which everybody can get behind. Yeah, they call it the Hitler hang. If you want to send us an email that Chuck feels the need to make up stuff about, you can send us an email. You can also tweak to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstofytnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffarks.com. And as always, check out our home on the web stuffyoushenknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.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. 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Are there people who can't feel pain? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-there-people-who-cant-feel-pain | There are less than a hundred documented cases of people who cannot feel pain and suffer from a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain. Josh and Chuck discuss the dangers and symptoms of CIP and related disorders in this episode. | There are less than a hundred documented cases of people who cannot feel pain and suffer from a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain. Josh and Chuck discuss the dangers and symptoms of CIP and related disorders in this episode. | Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:10:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=17, tm_min=10, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=110, tm_isdst=0) | 29485171 | audio/mpeg | "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 gonna take you on a dive with to 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 Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsyssk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I can feel pain. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he hold on. Chuck can feel pain. Okay. As well. I just tested him. I wanted to make 100% sure that's the second take, though, and you didn't really have to do it twice. We could have faked it this time. Yeah. I wanted a realistic response. Well, that's real. Josh pinched me a hurt. Yeah, you could tell. You all right? Yeah, I'm fine. Okay. How are you doing? Besides the throbbing forearm? I'm great, sir. And you? I'm doing pretty good. Everything's just peachy, including with my hair. Josh, he goofed. He shaves his head, and he kind of Goofed it so he looks like the patient from some ward where he had surgery or something on his brain. I didn't goof my hair. That's right. Yeah, the lady did. I have an Eastern black hair cut now. Right. Yeah. So other than that, I'm feeling pretty good. You're right. So you felt emotional pain with your odd haircut? I did. Which, by the way, Chuck, is different from physical pain. It is. You knew that because of a yet to be released audiobook. That's right. It's forthcoming. It's a little teaser for everybody. That's right. But there are actually people out there, Chuck, who cannot feel pain. Straight up. Don't feel pain. Yeah. It's amazing. It is very rare, but it happens. It is rare, Chuck. Actually, the only hard number that I've seen is 60 reported cases worldwide. 60 since 1983. Actually, I've got 35 in the United States as of now. Yeah, I saw that number as well. I've seen people who just plum said, we have no idea how many could be underreported. Sure. Especially with younger kids. What we're talking about is called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhydrosis. Right. Otherwise we're just going to call it sepa for short. Right. Because that's much easier. And that is actually part of a subtype of a larger disorder called hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy. And this is actually the type four SIPPA is type four H-S-H-S-A-N right? Yes. And it's the most severe? Well, we'll get into what it all means, but it's the most severe. We will. There's actually kind of a recent famous case of it. There's a British physician named Doctor Joffrey Woods. You heard of him, chuck. No, but is he one of the geof guy? Yeah, he's British. He spells program with two Ms and an E. But Dr. Woods travels to Pakistan fairly regularly, and while he was there, he heard about a kid who used to pass, like, thick needles right through his arm, walk on hot coals right. And showed no signs of feeling pain whatsoever. And he wasn't in the gym? Rose Circus? No. Okay. He wasn't, actually. But he probably could have done a lot better for himself than just on the streets of Lahore. Right. What Doctor Woods heard about this guy, this little kid? I was kind of interested and finally got around to trying to go see him. Right. Before he could see him, the kid around his 14th birthday died, actually. I don't know if he was dared or he was doing it for money or whatever, but he jumped off a roof and died. But Dr. Woods got a hold of this kid's family and actually found out that a bunch of them have no sensitivity whatsoever to pain. Oh, really? Yeah. Which is also called analgesia. That's the other word for it. I didn't know that. Yeah, painkillers are called analgesics. Sure. So this would be like the state of not having pain or having reduced pain would be analgesia. But this isn't just reduced pain is a chuck no, we're talking about no, you can feel pressure, but you can feel no pain. And you can feel no heat or cold. You can feel no temperature on your skin either. Right. That's the one with anhedrosis. Yes, exactly. Okay, let's talk about the pain part first. Let's talk about pain in general. Okay. How do we feel pain? Well, Josh, your nervous system is where all this happens, and we're talking about your brain. Right. This is your brain on pain. Yeah. Your cranial nerves, spinal cord, spinal nerves, and other things like your gangly and receptor sensory receptor, stuff like that. Right. And your nerves carry messages to your spine, through your body, to your spine. Spine carries it to your brain, and the receptors, if you burn your finger or something, will send a message up through the spine to the brain that says you get burnt. It hurts. Right. And it sends a response message that moves your hand away real quick, touching a hot stove or something like that? Yeah. You can take it from here, though, because you're Mr. Doctor guy. Dr. Clark. Thank you, Chuck. Actually, the sense of pain, the experience of pain is called nociception. Right? Yes. And this is the experience of physical pain as a response to noxious stimuli. And there's actually four categories of noxious stimuli. There's mechanical, electrical, thermal, and chemical. And we have actually specialized nerve endings receptors called nociceptors that are responsible just for sending pain signals. They use peripheral nerves. Right. Thank God for that. Yes. Actually, as painful as pain is, we have it for a reason. Like you said, you're touching a hot stove and your brain says, Get your hand off of it. Right. Right. We also developed one theory of how we develop fear, which is good in and of itself as well, is through direct conditioning. It's one of three ways we learn fear responses, is through direct conditioning. And part of direct conditioning is experiencing physical pain. Right. Because once you've hit the hot stove, once you know that the stove is always going to burn you. Exactly. Or if you're a dumb kid, maybe two or three times, but eventually you're going to pick it up. Right. Now, what happens with SIPA, as far as I understand, and actually, did you notice as well, there's not a path explanation of if you have SIPPA, this is exactly what happens to you? Yeah, well, probably because it's so rare. Right. But wouldn't you think that if they could get the group of patients together, they would find, like, oh, okay, well, all of you people are lacking nociceptors. Yeah. In some patients, the nociceptors aren't there. In other patients, the peripheral nerves that the nociceptors are attached to or uses the information highway aren't there, or else they're not innovated. There's a lot of different ways that this can come about, but it all results in this cardinal diagnosis or diagnostic tool of SIPPA, which is you feel no pain and you aren't responsive to temperature either. Right. But nerve conduction is there, right. It depends on some of them, there's innervation. In others, the nerves aren't conducting or they're not capable of conducting. And specifically with anhedrosis, I think there's no innervation of the nerves in the sweat glands. So when you start to get hot, there's nothing sending your brain the message. Right. Hey, you're getting hot. We need to start sweating so we can cool down. Well, yeah, we should go ahead and say that that's the A is anhydrosis after the sip part, and that's the most severe case. And that's when you don't sweat, which you know how I sweat. You definitely don't have an hydrosis. Remember at the aquarium, I sweated underwater in, like, 40 degree water, too. I mean, there was, like, little chunks of ice floating on the surface of the water and sweating. You had cartoon sweat jumping off your forehead. I did. So I could handle the anhydrosis part, or at least a slight version of that. I could deal with that. Right. And these are our Ecron sweat glands, or echoing glands that are responsible for regulation of body temperature. So what they found with the anhedrosis, it seems fairly uniform in that respect that Sip of patients don't have innervation meaning. The nerves aren't becoming activated in their sweat glands. Yeah, especially. I mean, it's bad enough because you can overheat just as an adult, but it's really scary with babies with SIPPA, because a baby can overheat and die very easily. Well, yeah, actually, I think 20% of people who have SIPPA die or by the age of three. Yeah, that's all that's that and I think another quarter of those deaths are from sepsis, from an untreated infection. Right. One of the things about not being able to feel pain is you can cut yourself. And if you're a kid, you don't think, well, I better treat this cut. Right. And at the same time, you're not crying, so your parents aren't alerted, and so this cut can go untreated, become infected. When the cut is infected, the body's immunological response raises your body temperature. Right. It can lead to a fever. And unchecked, this fever can actually lead to brain damage. Right. So a lot of patients with SIPA who have made it past three or so have some form of mental retardation. Yeah. I also saw where we'll get to the tips later, but since you brought it up, one of the tips for small kids is they'll teach the child to recognize blood and teach them what that means. So if you see blood, you need to come find Mommy and Daddy real quick, because, you know you're hurt, but that's a bad thing to happen. So come find mom and dad. Yeah. And I thought these tips that, like you said, we'll get to in a minute. They're pretty clever. Right. Or come find mom and mom. Or dad and dad. Thanks, Chuck. 21st century guy. Aren't you open minded around here? Or just mom? Or just dad? Or Uncle Charlie. Grandma or Grandpa? And Grandpa. There's all kinds of scenarios. The first person to be legally pronounced asexual was legally pronounced asexual in the last couple of weeks, I believe. Really? Yeah, it's true. Very interesting. Where are we? Chuck? Let's talk about SIPA, the medical history of SIPPA. Okay. Okay. As far as I could find, it was first described in 1847 and described as what is going on here? Yeah, exactly. And actually, in the read an article in 1960 that was based on a hypothesis that people who feel no pain were actually it was actually a psychological disturbance. There had been such a massive affront to their ego that as a response, the response to their ego mounted, resulted in a loss of the sensation of pain. That's such a 60s notion. It totally is. That cat just can't feel pain. He is so out there. He's so far out. There's a doctor who is surveying this literature of certain patients, and he was describing, like, how the diagnosis went. The diagnosis went. And there's this one poor guy in the 50s who he was described as a pretty nice, upbeat, bright guy. And he goes to the doctor, and it's like, I can't feel pain. And the doctor's like, oh, yeah. So you can see this half drunk doctor, right. He's got, like, a glass of scotch in the other all right. And the little reflective thing on his forehead. And he ran this guy through a battery of tests, including squeezing his testicles, running an electrical current across his lower teeth, and, Chuck, it gets worse. Taking a skin and muscle biopsy without anesthetic. Did he do each of these? And was he like, what about that? No, I feel that. Yes. Can you imagine, like, this doctor's like, oh, yeah, that didn't hurt. Well, try this. It keeps ratcheting it. Exactly. Wow. Yeah. So the psychological idea was discarded pretty quickly, and now, because we're in the age where the genome has been cracked, it's all genetics. Right? Yeah. And I guess we should go ahead and mention, too, that they think they have narrowed it down to a mutation of the TrkA, parentheses NTRK, one gene, which appears to control nerve growth. But again, they don't know for sure. They just think that might be the culprit. Right. Chuck, that seems to be the, likeliest, candidate, because that gene actually is responsible for producing nerve growth factor right. Which goes and recruits neurons and nerves. I guess it would be neurons to become nociceptors. Okay. So that wouldn't happen. Right. But they're kind of speculating still a little bit right? Yeah. We still don't have an idea. I mean, 60 cases reported worldwide, 35 in the US. Maybe. Although it does seem like it would be genetic. Like that kid in Lahore, Pakistan, when he died, and the doctor went to go see his family and found out he had siblings that had the same condition. Sure. That suggests either something environmental close to the home or genetic. And that's kind of what they're leaning to. Yeah, just the genetic part. Right. Josh, do they know for sure that it's an autosomal recessive disorder? I don't know how they do, but that's how I take it. Right. Which means that both of your parents must pass down a copy of this gene. So each one of your parents has this mutation, and it's not related to gender or anything, but they do know that both of your parents have to give it to you. Right. So that's probably what makes it rare as well. Well, yeah. Both of your parents have to have this really rare thing. Apparently. Also, it doesn't affect every ethnic group. Oh, really? Yeah. But I was reading another study on this from I think 2000, and it was in, I think, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, one of the two. And they got together a bunch of kids who had zipper, and some of them were related, and they took a family history and found that I think nine of the 13 participants parents were first or second cousins. So I wonder how much that has to do with something, too. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, very interesting. So should we talk about some of the problems? I mean, they're pretty obvious, but there are some that I didn't actually well, yeah, let's talk about raising a baby with SIPA. How would you first start to recognize that your kid has SIPPA? Well, that's a problem because the first way you would probably recognize it is witnessing an accident that should cause your baby to cry. And your baby doesn't cry. Right. Have you ever heard the discovery of ether and nitrous oxide as anesthetic? No. Right here. Well, actually, it happened in New York City, but a physician from our fair city named Doctor Crawford Long yeah, I did a little book report on him when I was in the fourth grade. He was like our 1960 scotch and cigarette doctor, and he liked to party. And he noticed that people on in the depths of an etherbender would run into walls and gash their foreheads and not have any response to it whatsoever. Aside from laughing hysterically. Right, exactly. Look at all this blood. Wow. Yeah. So there's a similarity there for me to add that tangent. We have Crawford Long Hospital here, too. I know. Look at you with the sidebars. So, like I said, the first thing that will happen is a parent sees an accident and the child doesn't cry. So you're going to have some problems getting diagnosed because it is so rare. In the meantime, the kid could end up with an infection sure. And die of overheating or suffer some sort of brain damage. Yeah, true. One of the other big problems with a baby is when a baby tease. A baby just gnaws like crazy, but if they don't feel pain, they may gnaw straight through their little baby finger without even realizing. Right. Or their tongue. Or their lips. Those are common injuries as well. Yeah. Which is just awful. There's also eye scratching. Yeah. Well, they said that on the teeth, they said that some parents elect to have the teeth, baby teeth removed altogether right. And wait for the adult teeth to come in at which they're an age where they can understand, like, don't bite through your finger. Yeah, but that's not good either, because then your child has no teeth and it makes it harder to eat. Right, but it's like eat baby food for many years or chew right through your tongue. Right. So what was the one you just mentioned? Eye scratching. Yes. If you are just rubbing your eye or whatever, you pretty much know when to stop. Right. If you are a sip of patient, you don't know when to stop. I was reading about this five year old girl who blinded herself. She can still see shapes, I believe, but she had one eye removed and scratched the other eye. Well, and she was five and could barely see. She done it to herself. Well, another tip since we're there, a lot of parents like to have little baby goggles for their child so they can't get to their eyes. Right. Which is sad. Yeah. Hunger pains. This is interesting. They don't feel hunger pains, so eating isn't something they realize they should do. So sometimes sip of patients will set a clock to remind them to eat or to use the potty. Right. Because one of the ways that you know that you have to go number one or go number two is from the discomfort involved. Your body is alerted, like you need to evacuate your bowels, and so you go evacuate your bowels. But if you don't have any sense of discomfort whatsoever, you aren't going to go to the bathroom. You can suffer constipation, all manner of horrible results from that, from holding it too long. Yeah, for sure. Fractures are very common. Obviously, you can slam your hand at the door, won't feel the pain, won't realize you got a broken hand. And joints, too. This is something I hadn't thought of either. Yeah, me too. But consider this. How many times have either one of us moved in our chairs during this podcast? And the reason we're moving, shifting is because it's become uncomfortable to lean on that joint. So we move and put our weight on another joint. Yeah. That's your body telling you to shift, so you're not putting too much stress on anything. Right. If you don't shift, then all of that weight is on that joint. And this can actually result in Charcott joints. These are joints where basically you can't feel pain to develop tarcot joints because it's the result of a prolonged and repeated destruction of a joint or several joints. And what happens is little bone fragments break off and then you have bone pieces grading in the joint. It fills with fluid, and there's definitely a point of no return that can lead to amputation, limb replacement, that kind of stuff. Jeez. Well, since we're kind of doing the problem tip thing, one of the tips well, we have so far, one of the things that they recommend is occupational therapy. So they can teach your child different ways to sit and do physical tasks to put the least amount of stress possible on those joints. Right. Or they may say your kid needs to be in a wheelchair a little more than here she is. True. And again, very sad. This whole thing is just one of the most depressing rare disorders I can think of. If you have a baby that has SIPA, you should probably do a regular check over your child. Like you need to baby proof the heck out of your house. Like it's baby proof anyway. But you really need to go overboard with softening corners and things like that, making sure the stove and anything dangerous isn't accessible. The knife drawer, that kind of thing. Right. But you should also check your child until they're old enough to do this on their own. Check them for injuries a couple of three times a day. Also, because of the anhedrosis, a lot of families opt to move to cooler climates just to protect against overheating. Yeah, and Katie Lambert wrote this article of stuff you missed in history class, our Cohorts. And Katie supposed that as far as getting exercise, which everyone needs, that swimming might be a good thing for them to do. And that kind of makes sense to me. Yeah, but have you ever swam and sweat it underwater? Well, you know, I have. Yeah, but I wondered about that because if you think about it, if you are sweating under water, then your body's saying you need to be cooler than the ambient water temperature. Yeah, true. So it could still lead to trouble, I guess. Get in cool water and maybe don't swim so much that you're going to be sweating. Could be my advice, dr. Chuck's advice. That's good advice, Dr. Chuck. Although the water is a good medium because it's easier on the joints. Yeah, well, I think that's why she recommended it. Sure there is no cure? No, that has happened yet. And it's so rare that it's one of these things. It's hard to get a cure when you don't have anyone to test it on. Although, Chuck, don't you think the advent of stem cells will probably cure everything? I hope so. Well, I mean, think about it. If it's a genetic flaw, usually that means that an enzyme or protein isn't being produced, right? So you just use stem cells to generate that enzyme or protein and booya. Doctor Clark, no more SIPPA, says booya. There are a couple of websites. Should we go ahead and plug those? Sure. Gift of Pain is a website set up by a family whose daughter has SIPPA. And if you want to have your heart broken and learn a little bit, you can go visit there and help. Roberto.com is another one that details a young boy with SIPPA. And Chuck. Also, there is, from what I understand, a pretty good documentary called A Life Without Pain by director Melody Gilbert. And it's about SIPPA. Really? It's supposed to be pretty cool. I haven't seen it, but anybody interested? Want to rent that? Yeah, I'll check that out and I say look for a paying podcast in the future. I think we should do one on pain. Josh and Chuck's house of Pain. Do you know how many times I'm going to pinch you during that thing? It's going to be rough. Hopefully no more than once. It would be more than once. All right. All right. If you want to learn more about SIPA, type in CIPA in the handy search bar@housetopworks.com. That means it's time for listener mail. Yes, sir. Exactly. Chuck, I want us to give a special shout out. That's right, the three sisters. Triplets. In fact, we have triplet listeners. Yeah. Helen, Spence and Echo. And they all three are voracious stuff. You should know, listeners. Echo is a cool name. Yeah, I like it. Spence goes by Zebra. Apparently this came in when I was on vacation. Yeah, because you replied. I did. And he promised a shout out and never gave it. Yeah, we didn't do a shout out. And we are now, though. I mean, come on, they break me over the cold and I responded. Yeah, and you know, we typically don't do shout outs because we get requests and there's just too many of them. Yeah, but how many triplets do we have listening to? Exactly. So if it's something remarkable, or if you want your name read so bad, just tell us your quadruples and make up three names. So you guys keep the ports. Thanks for listening. Thank you, girls. And we'll get the listener mail eventually, I think. Yes, but we should probably plug Facebook and Twitter tweet. We are children of the next generation. I don't know why I think no, you're X. I'm Y. No, seriously, that says it all. We're definitely not Millennials. So, yes, we are on Facebook now. For sure. We are on Facebook. We've consolidated. We had multiple pages. It was kind of a mess. But now we're all consolidated. We are personally putting stuff on Facebook and talking to people. It's kind of fun, actually. Yeah, it is. You're doing a heck of a job, Chuck. Thank you. You can type in stuff you should know on Facebook's. Handy search bar. And that should bring up our page. You go ahead and join. I'm very curious to see how many people join. Yeah, as long as we have more than all the other podcasts combined, I'm fine. And the same goes for Twitter, too. Do you have that same desire, that same goal? Yeah, I've embraced Twitter. I can't believe it. Yeah, I'm tweeting. Yeah. Chuck's first tweet was hilarious, as I imagine all successive tweets will be. Our Twitter name is SYSK Podcast. That's our Twitter name. At. Yeah, SYSK Podcast. Right. The little at symbol for those of you who don't know how that works. Right? So you can check those out, join up, follow us, and we will be interacting. Right? You're going to come down from our I Free tower, right? Yeah. All right, so, Josh, I'm going to call this earthquake survivor. Did you read this one? No. Pretty remarkable. You're back. You're not on vacation anymore. Hey, Josh and Chuck. I just wanted to email and say thanks for unknowingly doing a lot to keep things normal for me in the least. Normal of times. Let me explain. I live in Santiago, Chile, and in late February, I was invited to the camping trip in a place down south called ESLA Mocha. Do you like my phonetic pronunciation? You do? It's nice. It was all really last minute, but before leaving, I managed to grab a hold of your latest podcast, which was how braille works. Put it on the old ipod. I thought I might need it for the long bus ride, and I only grabbed that one because, being a true fan, I had already listened to the others, so good for you, Ignacio. On our second night camping on the island, we had an 8.8 Victor earthquake, if you remember, and we were pretty near the epicenter. We had to run from a tsunami, which only gave us about seven minutes to get to higher ground. After the earthquake, our tents and all of our stuff was washed away. We never saw it again. Turned out we had it easy. Most of the homes on the island were taken by the wave. And we camped without tents. Of course. With the locals up on a hill for a couple of days before being able to even take a plane to start our journey back home. Which was difficult. Josh. Because the bridges were down. Streets were cracked. And there was no gas at the gas stations. That kind of thing. For. Like. Five days. In the middle of it all, I was feeling really bad about everything, though. Grateful for being alive, and I was not really knowing about my friends or family since cell phones were down and I was in the middle of the least normal situation I'd ever been. Then I remembered I had your podcast, pulled out my iPad, which I'd saved in my fanny pack, and just listened with my eyes closed, really happy, because that was, for the first time, the only connection to normal I had. That is awesome. Really cool. Well, it made the hugest difference. So I wanted to say thank you so much. I'd like you guys to stop and think what a difference you can make in the listeners lives. So let's stop and think for a moment. All right. That feels good. How often do we just sit and be quiet? Ever? You have a loyal listener for years to come. That is from Ignacio. Thanks, Ignacio. Who's alive and well, thank God. Did you hear about the Desiresey family? Or the Desires? No. They're a family from Haiti who survived the Porter Prince quake, and they had a son who lived in Santiago who's, like, come live with me. You're kidding. They moved to Santiago just in time to survive. The chiliquake. Survived both, though. Yeah. Wow. And since you said that way, what did you say the name of the place was? Santiago Prince. The Desires. Yeah. They're the family de Plain, Illinois. We should say we goof that one. We didn't know it's. Apparently death planes. Death planes sounds very strange because it would seem like it would be silent, but everyone made fun of me, saying you sounded like tattoo with playing. I think I said it. We're the same. We're interchangeable. My pain is your pain. You can switch our guts, right? Our belly. So, officially, I would like to switch belly. Yours is slightly smaller than mine. Thank you. Officially, we'd like to make that correction. It is destroyed, illinois. And it's e o clare wouldn't come. No, it's not. In Canada they call Canadian bacon. Bacon. Yes, Canadians. We have corrected that for two years now. So we can stop the the emails. It's a joke. If you have a correction, you want to send Chuck or me or you want to get into some email combat over a topic and issues, something like that, send us an email. Do not cite Wikipedia to support your claims or else you've lost right out of the gate. Yeah, do better. Wrap it up. Send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the houseofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pets. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. 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How Hate Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-hate-works | Hate is generally defined as an extreme hostility to something or someone, usually stemming from fear, anger or a sense of injury. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck as they dig into the nature of hate. | Hate is generally defined as an extreme hostility to something or someone, usually stemming from fear, anger or a sense of injury. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck as they dig into the nature of hate. | Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:06:27 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=15, tm_min=6, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=186, tm_isdst=0) | 34449515 | 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. 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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, the chipper and cheerful Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Man, I'm going ten different directions, buddy. Yeah, I'm a little screwy. Are you? Yeah. Well, focus on this one, okay? Because we're going in one direction, and that's hate. I hate to focus. Okay. You hate broccoli. I do hate broccoli, and you know that. I also hate peas. Like split peas. I remember declaring as a child that peas are some of my most hated enemies. I think a lot of kids don't like peas because they're mushy. Yeah, that's the problem with all vegetables, really. Mushy. They're overcooked if you cook something. No, I've had pretty nasty broccoli, but broccoli is all that's separate. It's just disgusting in every single way. But cream spinach, I love that. It's awesome. Yeah, that's good stuff. You and I shared a cream spinach at Morton Stake just recently. Like two ladies. Yeah, it was something we couldn't even finish. It was so rich. It was really good. So, Chuck, we don't hate cream spinach. No, I hate broccoli. And one of the things I hate more than anything else is not having an intro, which I don't, because I was looking online. And strangely, the online world is a repository for hate in a certain way. As in like neonazi punk bands, pop music. Pop bands. This article calls it pop music. Pop music, yeah. Or Facebook groups dedicated to hate. Like Holocaust denial and that kind of stuff. Sure. But this word is so ubiquitous in our culture that there is nothing there. Like, I found a guy in Dairy and Mass who was accused of a hate crime. Everybody wants to know why Cleveland fans hate LeBron. I can answer that. But I mean, we throw this word around like some reality TV series was the show you love to hate. Right? We use this word a lot, but yeah. I found a study out of the University of Texas that asked people how often they hate it, and nobody said every day. It's not an everyday thing. So we hate things correctly. But we also realize that there's a real distinction between hating something and experiencing actual hate. You hit it on the head and this is a pretty old distinction. Right. Philosophers have been aware of this before. I think Aristotle was pretty sure he hated peas, but he really hated hemlock. Yeah, and he's not Webster, so I will read his definition. Because he's Aristotle. Yeah. He said it was a dislike for someone based on our negative perception of that person's nature that is so intense that whoever feels it wants to cause real harm to another. Like, I really want to harm you. Yeah. So that's the difference. Like you said, people throw that word around. I hate Broccoli. But you're not going to go out and try and burn down broccoli farms. No, I know that's silly. I'm not going to go burn down Cubby broccoli's family, broccoli farm that was used to fund the James Bond movies. But Josh, I think and this is me surmising in my own personal purview, I think there are kind of two types of hate. Well, three types, really. Then one type that you just throw the word around, like, I hate that show, I hate Broccoli. One that is real hate, which I think is fear based, when you don't know someone personally or a group personally, where you hate a group of people. Right. And then there's like, the anger, retribution based hate. Like someone personally has wronged you so badly that you hate them and either want to cause or which ill upon them. Right. Well, you just brought up a huge can of worms by using the word anger. Like, there's a real debate over whether hate and anger are the same thing. Right. They say they're not. It depends on who you talk to. But the people who say they're not say things like hate is brought on by humiliation or ill treatment or being devalued, where anger is brought on when you're treated in a way that you consider unfairly. Right? Right. Anger is the result of not having any recourse. Right. Frustration perhaps coupled with that. Right. And that kind of dances along the border because people who hate other groups often are frustrated. Like when we talked about the fascism in the Fascism podcast, getting groups all riled up against a scapegoat is one of the tenets of fascism. Right. So these people are frustrated at their lot in life. Their unemployment is high because of the Jews or something like that, right. But really, they're angry about their job while they hate the Jews. So the two are really intertwined but a lot of people think if you look at them deeply enough, they're not one in the same. Right. Well, I think a lot of times that kind of hate is displaced anger and frustration at your own lot. Like what you're saying. Yeah. But there is also a very strong physiological basis to it as well. I mean, it's an emotion, supposedly. Although it's not one of the basic emotions anger is. Yeah. What are the basic emotions? Anger, joy, fear, disgust. peckishness. I thought it was Joy, Pain, sunshine and rain. Now, here's the Rob bass. No, I can't remember. I could sing it, but I can't remember singing it. No, I think it's Rob based. No, I'm thinking of. I want money. Lots and lots of money. That was a duo best song to be rich. Remember that stupid song? Yeah, kind of. They wrote a song about being rich. Yeah. How great it was. And that was their only song. So unless they were already rich than they never were from that song. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It just blew my mind, buddy. So, do you hate that song? I do now, because it's in my head. Sure. So, Chuck, what is this physiological basis of anger? Well, it's pointed out in the article within an Iron Maiden song, which I thought was an odd choice. There's a thin line between love and hate. Yeah. There's a whole other song called there's a Thin line Between Love and hate. Well, there's a much more popular song, I think. The Persuaders. Which was? It's A Thin Line Between Love and Hate. The old Motown song. Right. Have you ever heard The Pretenders version of it? No. It's hands down the greatest version ever. Really? Between Love and Hate. The Pretenders cover. The Persuaders. Yes. All right. I'm telling you. All right. So apparently Iron Maiden actually listened to that song on YouTube the other day, and it's an Iron Maiden song. Yeah. No, I looked it up to make sure that Iron Maiden hadn't covered the persuaders. And now Bruce Dickinson came up with his own lyrics. His own version. He's like that one's. Fine. I'm doing this one. That's right. So the point of all this, Josh, is that there is a thin line between love and hate as far as the brain goes. Because in 2008, there was a study at the University College of London, and that's in the UK. And they got 17 people. Not very wide ranging. I had a lot of problems with this study. But they got 17 people who said they hated someone else. Maybe that's why. Maybe they have a hard time finding someone who hates someone else. Maybe not, because I don't hate anyone. I was about to ask you that. Well, we'll get to the personal stuff in a minute. Okay, so this study, what they did was they found 17 people who hated someone else, threw them under the old wonder machine and showed them pictures of the people they hated to record the results, I guess they're like, you need to bring pictures of people you hate for this study. Yeah. They could have just said, think of the person you hate. I think it would achieve the same goal. I guess. So. Anyway, what they found out was that a couple of regions in the brain, there's, like, a hate circuit. They call it the putaman putamen put amin. Okay. And the Jerry laughed at that. And the insular cortexuer both fired up with pictures of people that they hated. Right. And the significance of this is that both of those regions also fire up when you see a picture or think about someone you love, which is the longest way to say it's a thin line between love and hate. Right. And I think everybody kind of senses that. It's like passions flaring. It's virtually the same thing. They're two sides of one coin, in my opinion. If you truly hate somebody, the real hate to fear is not one where somebody's like, oh, I hate you so much, because that can be turned true. That means that they have some sort of emotional connection to you. The one to be afraid of is the detached, calm, cool kind of hatred, because that's the one where you end up dead somewhere. Like I'm the Green River Killer, and I hate prostitutes. Well, that brings up an interesting sidebar. Right. Do serial killers hate their victims? No. End of sidebar? Well, they have long said that serial killers don't experience emotion on that scale, but they're starting to change their thinking in certain cases, because a lot of serial killers suffer from antisocial personality disorder, and people who suffer from that experience a range of emotions. So I think it's both. You can't say every serial killer is the same. Well, they've been saying that for a long time. They've been trying to find the threads that connect them. And I told you about the sociologist I talked to. He was just really up in arms that psychology had spent four decades or so looking at serial killers, and best they could come up with any social personality disorder. It's like, of course they have a personality disorder. They're serial killers. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So back to that study, though, about the brain and the difference between love and hate. They did see a key difference, because the areas of the frontal cortex associated with judgment and critical thinking become less active when you see someone you love on the fMRI machine. Right. But when you saw someone you hate, most of your frontal cortex cortex cortex is active, remains active. Yeah. So that's a big difference. But that makes sense as well, Chuck, because I know you don't hate anybody, so you wouldn't understand this, but when you see someone you hate, you just say that like it's a personality flaw. You tend to criticize them in your head, like, oh, you're wearing that sweater day. You look so fat and stupid in that sweater. I hope you somehow strangle yourself on that sweater. Yeah. So the point is that it takes, like, hatred as an active thing. It's an active rumination on this. It's not a knee jerk thing, like when you might see a picture of someone you love. Right. So that's interesting. Right? That's what that study came up with, the 17 people? Yeah, you couldn't get 20. The other problem is I'm sure they were weird Western educated, something rich and developed. I can't remember what the I stands for. And what would you spell? Weird? It's basically like, the idea that all of these studies that are cited, a lot of them, they're just college kids, so it's like this really narrow niche of the human population that they extrapolate onto, and in this case, they just use 17 of them. But we're here to report it and then criticize it, and we're done. We did both. That's right. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. 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No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the homepage and enter code stuff. What's the deal with old hate, though? Don't they have some inclination of early hate with cavemen and the like? Well, yeah, because the closer to the center or the brain stem that you get in the brain, the more ancient that part of the brain is. And if there's a region like the putaman that's associated with a certain thing eg hate. Right. Then that means that hate has been around for a very long time because our part of the brain has been able to carry out that function for this long. Or should, ostensibly. Got you. Right. But then it's also new with the prefrontal cortex, which is a fairly newer aspect. So maybe we just hated, but we didn't criticize, we just hated. And they think possibly that we developed hate as a species or capacity to hate as a survival mechanism way back in huntergatherer days, where we could feel justified by, say, taking food from another group because we hated them. Which I actually found that's a pretty inspiring idea yeah. That you had to work up hate enough to go and pillage. Yes. Okay. I think that's kind of neat because it makes it seem like we aren't naturally hateful beings, and I don't think we are. I believe everybody has hate, and everyone has a vast capacity to hate, but I wouldn't characterize this as generally hateful. That's good. Thanks. I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that. It's true, though. All right, so it's in the Bible, Josh. It's an ancient texts all over the place. Hate has been around a long time. Right. Are we going to talk about Carthage? Yeah. Because I know you love this. The Carthaginian general hannibal Carthaginian. You got to stop that. Hannibal pledged to his father, dad, I hate Rome, I hate Romans. I don't like the Italians. I hate them forever. And I will swear retribution because they have seized our provinces. Yeah. He said, Father yes, son, I'm going to kill the Romans. And he did. He made good on that. Invaded Italy and did quite a bit of damage. Of course, the Romans fired back because they hate the Carthage. Why can't I say that word? They hated people from Carthage, the Cartagenes, and in 146 BC, they did some pretty bad things, like burning them in their houses while they screened. But is that hate? I don't know. And I think that's an issue that I have here there with this. Is that's kind of a jump to conclusion? Like, is it hate? I don't know. Does hate form the basis for war or horrible acts of war? Well, I don't know because it's condemned pretty much in, like, the New Testament in the Bible, it's condemned in the Quran. Let not hatred other people incite you not to act equitably. And in medieval and Renaissance Europe, you came up in you. But in Italy, they came up with the vendetta. Right. Which is very much retribution for hatred. There you go. That's what I'm saying. Like, I think let's say a Roman soldier comes to your town while you're away using the latrine pit that your village has dug, and they burn your family alive in your house while you're using the bathroom, and you come back and you see the Roman legions going away and your family's dead, burned a crisps right. I don't think the Romans necessarily felt hatred to commit that act, but that act would incite hatred in the person that it befell. Right? Sure. So I think vendetta is an excellent example of hatred because somebody done you wrong and you're going to get back at them. Right. Or they did something to your father or something. The vendetta is very long lasting, from what I understand. Yeah. And it's not I mean, this is obviously we're talking about mafia vendettas and war vendettas, but it can happen on a smaller level. You might not think of it as vendetta, though, but if someone done you really wrong, I'm going to get that person back by doing this in six months when they least expect it. That's a vendetta. Yeah, but you don't call it a vendetta. Well, in Italy they do. It's just come up. I'm going to get you soccer. Yeah. Bad people do that, though. There was a word for it, though, in medieval and Renaissance Europe, in the Messiah, which is Latin for unfriendship. It was a legal term for hating somebody. Okay. So what we've done is established that hatred is definitely a thing that's been around a long time. Is that what we've done? Yeah. And Chuck, of course it's still around in recent modern history. There's other examples that we could go into, like hate groups. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the Nazis real quick, because, again, we talked about fascism, and one of the tenets of it being, I guess, inciting other group to hate. Yeah, group hate. That's where we are, for sure. And that gave a lot of a body of data for people to study and that they're still studying. But one guy in particular named Martin Oppenheimer, who's a sociologist from Rutgers University, basically said, like, look, the Nazis are proof positive that you can, number one, get an entire group to hate another group. Right. And that you do this by identifying and exploiting the group that you're with their frustrations, say, unemployment, joblessness yeah. And then basically saying, those are the people who are at fault. That's how you stir the pot. Exactly. That's how you incite hatred, which has got to be one of the worst things you can do. One of the worst nonviolent acts I think a person commit is incite hatred. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also, I thought what came to mind to me when I was reading this was some of the same tactics, like a margin. People, people who are insecure, who are seeking safety somewhere, it's also the kind of the same thing they do with the cults and the brainwashing. They're seeking out the same types of people and saying, hey, you feel marginalized. You feel like you're not loved. You need a safe haven. But they're not saying, Go hate someone else. They're saying, Just come and be with our group. Well, our association of ingroup and out group is like this emotional, psychological razor blade that can be exploited in any number of ways. Yeah, exactly. But it's always a marginalized people, it seems like. Yeah. You mean the people who have hatred stirred up in them. Yeah. Or go join a cult or something like that. Yeah. You mean teenagers. Yes. And well, a Stanford study in 2010 basically said, hey, if you want to teach teenagers to hate, here's how you do it. You can't just overtly say, go hate this group. Hate Muslims, hate black people, hate Jewish people, hate gays. You can't just say that. It's not good enough. But if you tell a story, that basically implies these are people you should hate, and here's why. Right. Like, homosexuals are pedder ass, and so you can't let them into certain groups, and by the way, you should hate them because of the story. Right. Then that works. I think that I had a problem with that one because it was like that's true for everything. If you tell a story, it's going to hit home more personally to somebody. Yeah. You can say, hey, go love Sea Biscuit because he ran a horse race. That was pretty neat. But if you tell the story of Sea Biscuit, all of a sudden you're going to leave that thing going, man, I'm getting my butt to the Kentucky Derby next year because I love me some horse racing. I love sea biscuits. See, you saw the movie, right? No, I didn't. But the funny thing is that all that study made the careers of two Stanford researchers. Right. But they do have a point, because they point out in this article, or they don't, but we do. D. W. Griffith's awful movie. Awful. On content, birth of a Nation from 1915. It's no Sea Biscuit. It's no Sea Biscuit, but it did a really good job of getting people to hate black people in the United States. Yeah. Doesn't it feature, like, the well, since it was 1915, it's like the first and everything, but it's like the first on screen rape or implied rape. There was a rape of a white woman by an escape slave, I think by a white actor and black face. Yeah, of course, at the time. Yeah. And it was a big, huge movie. It grossed $10 million in 1915. That's $216,000,000 today is what it goes. Yeah. And it was based on a play. Yeah, it is. It's based on a play in a book called The Klansmen. And D. W. Griffith felt so bad about this afterward that he made a follow up film that year called Intolerance, which was a three hour silent film meditation on four parallel stories of man's intolerance throughout history. Oh, I didn't know he did that. That's good. Yeah. Because I want to. Like DW Griffith. Yeah. I mean, he didn't write Birth Venation, so he directed it not like getting him off the hook or anything, but I think at the time he was just trying to make a movie that sold a lot of tickets, got you. And that was the way to do it. Yeah, that's the way to do it. And then the Nazi, of course, anyone who saw Inglorious Bastards knows that Joseph Gerbils was in charge of the propaganda department with feature films. And they had one called Judsoos. Probably. It would be judso. So you're the one who speaks German. How did you say judsoos? I don't know. I was concentrating on the, UMLA, part in the sus. Okay. So, yeah, it'd be judsos. Okay. But that featured a main character, a Jewish main character, who was shunned by a gentile woman. And so he raped her, among other things. Yeah. And it was required viewing for the stormtroopers. Right. To get unrialed up. Yeah, they loved it. And then they give them crystal meth. Really? Yeah. From what I understand, that'll do it. And that didn't just go out with the Nazis. Media has been playing, like, more and more of a role among, I guess, hate groups. Hatred as a concept and as a practice. Right. Yeah. Because I think in the 90s, bosnian Serb TV showed something that's kind of referred to now as, like, basically hate mongering series called genocide that stirred up emotion against the Bosnian Muslims. Right, yeah. Well, you know what happened with that? The Balkan war. Yeah. Al Qaeda has done similar things on the web. Obviously, the web is a good place to go try and get this thing done. These days they have chat rooms. They have chat rooms with Facebook's becoming increasingly available for people who have heat based Ideologies. And Facebook is like, look, we'll find them and shut them down when we can. But they're all over the place. Are they? Yeah, they are. And then also, Chuck, pop music. They call it pop music. And the reason I know I can't call it pop music is because I've seen some of those specials and I saw a really good one I can't remember on neonazis. And they have musical groups that are neo Nazi songs, and they just sing about hating other people. And it's aggressive music. It's not no sense. No, it's not. Handsome. So, Chuck, the article begs a pretty interesting question, I think. Is hate a mental illness? Because don't you have to be slightly mentally ill to burn down a house with an entire family trapped inside? Maybe. Or maybe you're just following orders. Okay. Yeah, excellent. I think you just hit upon it. Our understanding of hate is incomplete because our understanding of the things that we do that we associate with hate is also incomplete. Right. Are you just following orders? Are you being whipped up into a mob mentality? Do you actually hate this other group because you lost your job? Or is this emotion just being exploited by someone else, a third party? And also, I think our understanding of mental illness isn't refined enough to say yes. Hates the product of a mental illness? Sure, because they reference Hitler and Osama bin Laden as two people they suspect might have been mentally ill or at least antisocial. And they also referenced the columbine shooters as one of them suffered from depression, and they had these hate filled rants that they ended up finding. And was there a link between that depression and hatred? Right. And I guess that begs the question, was Osama bin Laden and Hitler and Dylan Klebold so wrapped up in hatred that they were crazy? Or was hatred a byproduct of any mental illness they may or may not have had? These are questions we don't know. But my whole idea that hatred is brought out when you are mistreated by someone else, is backed up by a 2000 study of people from Kosovo and those who'd gone through the most trauma and stress hated the Serbian troops who'd born that out on them more than other people who maybe had pleasant exchanges with Serbian troops. I guess that makes sense. Yeah. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolatecovered goodness with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. Hey, everyone. 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Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. We got to mention hate crimes and hate groups briefly. Hate crime is obviously a crime carried out against somebody based on their skin color, their ethnicity, their national origin, their gender, disability. Sexual orientation is one you hear a lot about. Yeah, disability is a sad one because it took a while to get that into hate crime bills. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. But. The congress has passed legislation now that makes hate crimes more serious offenses than just, like, a regular assault. Well, yes, which is pretty awesome and how it should be. I remember when there was a child safety law that was being passed in 2006, and there was a hate crime language that was attached to it that made sexual orientation crimes hate crimes on a federal level, and there's a big outrage about it among religious groups. Do you remember that? I think so. Yeah. They were like, wait, we have a first amendment freedom to hate gay people. It's part of our religion. Right. So you're saying that in and of itself is a hate crime by saying, like, no, these people are wrong. Homosexuality is bad, it's wrong, that kind of thing. And they thought that that kind of infringed on it, which I don't think it does, but that was their argument for a while. I don't think it worked. Interesting. Yeah. So I have a list here first, Josh, and then we have a couple of more little stats about hate groups. Since 2000, the southern poverty law center claims that hate groups in the US. Has grown by more than 50%. Since when? Since 2000. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they had the top five states with the biggest concentrations of hate groups. And this one was continued on the next page. And when I was reading it, I was like, please, Georgia, don't be on there. Please don't be on there. And it's not and we will count them down from five to create suspense. Idaho is number five for hate groups, evidently. Wyoming is number four. You got arkansas is number three. Mississippi is number two, two from the south, and then number one, according to the southern poverty law center, is montana. Yes, that's Montana. Grabbing guns, fellas. Yeah. There's a lot of militias in Montana. Yeah. But there's also a lot of super chill, cool, like fly fishing, microbrew drinking hippies out there. It's an interesting mix. I spent time there, and I saw both in this town. I could feel the friction even between those groups with an Indian burn. Yeah. I was out in a saloon and having a good time with some locals, and then a couple of cowboys came in that didn't like the people from La. Being in there. And you could, like, definitely sense there's two different types of people in Montana. There's probably more than two, but I'm generalizing. No, there's two. There's just two. Okay. Hate groups and hippies. So, chuck, you got some stats for us? Yeah. You dug this up right on who people hate. Yeah. Acquaintances, 24%. Friends, 23%. Family members, 12%. That's sad. exboyfriends and girlfriends, 12%. And within the family, it's fathers are hated the most at 45%, mothers at 23%, in laws at 13%, and siblings at 3%. That's kind of sweet. That's surprising to me, though. I would think siblings would be the highest because they're the ones that beat tar out of you most frequently in most families. All right, so do you hate people? Let's finish up with that. I have found that the best way to hate somebody is to just check them off. You'll write someone off, but not have that actor of hatred. I don't generally like. I will just be like, I can't believe you wore that sweater, you fat pig idiot, in my head. But it's usually because I'm in a bad mood about something else. I don't walk around just actively hating people. It's a waste of time. It's a total waste of time. Yeah. I don't think I've ever hated anybody. I had a situation that an ex girlfriend shacked up with one of one of my best friends after I moved state, and we were broken up, quote unquote. But I also was like, I'm coming back for you. This isn't over. Were you going to find work in California? I was going west in my wagon, and they shacked up pretty quick after I left. And I had a few years of bad dreams and periodic bad dreams. I wasn't like every day I woke up thinking about it, but it faded away. But it was never even hate. It was just like, oh, man, I've got to do that. Really? Yeah. That sucks. Don't do that. That's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is, like, people who go and kill those people. Those two people. Oh, yeah. That's like, former famous football stars. And I think it's all in the wiring. You're wired a certain way, and I'm not wired to indulge those kinds of things. I suspect it all has to do with the amygdala. Yeah. All right, well, if you want to learn more about the amygdala, you can type that word into the search bar@howstoughforks.com. You can also type in the word hate to bring up the article that we worked off of today, I should point out, too, Josh, that I made right with the dude years later and never made right with a girl. What does that say? I think it says that you hated the girl more. I just never felt the need to dredge that back up with her. Got you. But the dude, I was like, man, you can't have, like, an old friend that you're not friends with anymore. At least I can't. I like that stuff. Yeah. No, man, I don't like that hanging over my head. Okay. Try to make it right. That's what I say. You're done now I'm done. Sorry. Anyway, I think did I even say handy search bar? You totally threw me off. All right, well, handysearchpart households.com. I said that, Chuck, so that means it's your turn for listener mail. Yes, josh, this is on suicide bombing, and this Nick, brings up a very good point that I think kind of fits in with this podcast. Okay. Hi, guys. And Jerry, I think you all are very brave for taking on the issue of suicide bombing. I don't know about brave, but I appreciate it. I don't want to contribute too much to the deluge of emails, but I would like to say you could have more explicitly underscored something that I believe is key to understanding suicide bombing and terrorism in general. Both are weapons of the weak and the belief, sort of like our hate them. Do you agree? Yes. Well, I mean, we even said a suicide bomber cost about $150. Exactly. He points out, if Palestinians, for instance, had access to Predator drones and guided missile systems rather than rocks and slingshots, I don't think that Palestinians would resort to martyrdom. I would also point to suicide bombings carried out by the Viet Minh during the French occupation of Vietnam, or the example of Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, both of which movements were secular in nature. All I want to say is it seems like suicide bombings is a phenomenon often arising from situations in which there's a huge asymmetry of power between an occupying or apartheid regime or a native or oppressed population. You guys did mention this, but I think this dimension is at least as important to the issue as religion or notions of martyrdom. That is sincerely for Nick, and I kind of agree. Nick nick is a sharp tack. Yes. It's like right on the money. Yeah, thanks for that one. Wow. Okay. Well, if you think you're a sharp tack, we want to hear from you. Right, Chuck? That's right. Send us an email about anything at all, anything at all to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, 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." | ||
Chuck and Josh Make It Through Female Puberty | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/chuck-and-josh-make-it-through-female-puberty | In part two of the SYSK puberty saga, Josh and Chuck venture into new territory as they explore all of the amazing changes girls face when they come of age. | In part two of the SYSK puberty saga, Josh and Chuck venture into new territory as they explore all of the amazing changes girls face when they come of age. | Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:30:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=272, tm_isdst=0) | 52122532 | 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. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there to oversee this one in particular. Yes. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, I'm glad Jerry's here for this one, because if it was guest producer Noel yeah. This is on female puberty. Jerry went through female puberty. Noel did not. He did not. Although Noel has a daughter, so he might listen to this. Yeah. So this one is for Noel. Yes, exactly. And for all you families out there. All your kids. All your parents. Just like with the male puberty episode. We hope that this serves as a springboard to conversation. Because from what I found in research. And I'm sure you did as well. That one of the big things that you need to try to maintain. Which is exceedingly difficult. Is open lines of communication with your pubescent daughter. And if you're the pubescent kid turning into a woman, you need to try to share your feelings and talk to your rent if at all possible. Yeah, that's tough. And this is very similar to male puberty, I found. Not completely. Well, I mean, obviously, physiologically it's different, but going through a lot of the same stuff. Yeah, for sure. You're right. There will be that point as a parent. And I've heard this from friends, where they finally look at their teenage daughter, who you were once their hero, and now you are just a big Lameo. You're a zero. Yeah. You're not funny, you're not cool. And why should I listen to you about anything? Because you're also a big fat hypocrite. Right, exactly. Just get ready, folks. Yeah. Get rid of you. Well, yeah, true. Yeah. But then after the age of 13, you're going to be friends again when they're like in their mid twenty s, and they're going to think you're great again after the age of 13. I don't think that's the way it works at all. No. Between 13 and like, 23. Oh, yeah, got you. They're probably going to think you're super lame. That's called the wasteland years. Yeah. And then they think you're cool again. Well, I was talking to you about this then you feel bad about how you treated them from 13 to 20, you realize, yeah, they're not so bad after all. That is right. So, female puberty and girls, if you're listening to this and you are going through puberty or about to go through puberty, let us just be just one thing that you turn to to find out more about it. Sure. Talk to people. Like I said, there's also a ton of stuff on the Internet that has some really great advice. Suggestions. Just basically type female puberty, and anything that looks like it was compiled by a doctor or reviewed by a doctor is probably fairly trustworthy. Yeah. And here's a piece of advice. Go to itunes and subscribe to stuff mom never told you. Oh, yeah. That's a good advice from our colleagues, Carolyn, Kristin, because it is great, and especially at that age, they will help you through a whole host of issues hormonal and emotional and physical and empower you. And it's a great show, and they even have covered this probably better than we will, but at least let us get you going in the right direction. I'm tittering nervously over here, I think you can imagine, but I'm strangely calmer with this one than I was with the male puberty one. Interesting. I don't understand why. Yeah. I could tell you since that you were more nervous than the other one. So it's great you know what it is, because I got to come to this one from the same research perspective. Like, I'm researching. I'm not an expert, I'm an outsider researching it. And here's what I came up with. With Mail Pewberries. I went through that. Sure. I get it. So I think it was just more personal, maybe. I hear you. Okay. So let's get this started. Right. Okay. Chuck. Yes. Let's say you're a little girl. Okay. Right. About age eight. Yeah. Loving it. Things are great. My beard is nice and long. Maybe you got, like, your knee skinned sure. Last week. And that's bumming you out still. But for the most part, you're pretty happy with everything. And then all of a sudden, things just start to get a little weird. You can't quite put your finger on it, but what just happened was the GPR 54 gene sensed that you have reached the minimum amount of fat in your body. Leptin is what it monitors, and it caused the hypothalamus, which is acutely gland in your brain, to distribute a chemical that it's just been holding in reserve basically since you were born, called gnatotropin releasing hormone GN RH. That's right. And you know that game Mousetrap, which no one in the history of Earth ever actually finished before they just set it off and made the whole thing go, I didn't know there was a game attached to it. Right. Set it up and did it over. That's pretty much what it devolves to. This is basically like mousetrap for your body. Yeah. And that fat that you were talking about and the leptin that resides there, that is a little bit of a newer finding. Previously, they thought it was a critical weight theory of puberty, basically, just once you reach a certain mass. Right. But now they're thinking it actually has to do with the fat itself. Right. So that's why if you're a little girl that's overweight, you may go through puberty a little bit earlier. Yeah. They think that's one reason why early onset puberty is becoming more common. That's right. Which we'll talk about also later. Right. Yeah. Which is not the same thing as precocious puberty. That's an actual medical condition that you should see a doctor about. Sure. But between precocious puberty and, hey, I'm just a little bit on the early side, there's a very fuzzy period now where there did not used to be right. That is not fully understood. No. They're still figuring it out. So don't feel bad if you don't feel like you have anything figured out either right now. Okay. So the GnRH hormone, the ganatotropin releasing hormone, comes out of your hypothalamus and it slides its way down to your pituitary gland and it sets off in your pituitary gland the release of two really important home runs that are going to be important for the rest of your, I guess, productive life. Reproductive life. Yeah. LH, the luteinizing hormone, and FSH, the follicle stimulating hormone. Right. And so these things start coursing through the body, entering your bloodstream. And what just happened to you, my young friend, is you hit puberty. Yeah. That just started. And at this point, you could be somewhere around age 8910. This is the first stage of puberty. Basically anywhere between ages eight and eleven, I think is considered in the normal range. But like Chuck said, right, you can go earlier, you can go later. Slapping the term normal onto that is a really touchy thing, and for good reason, because this is a very self conscious time in people's lives. So the idea that you're outside of the norm on top of this process of being abnormal or feeling abnormal, that's rough. But say on average that you're between eight and eleven when this first happened. Yeah. I sent you the New York Times article. It was really good about the onset of female puberty. And since there was a landmark study in 1960 from the UK, where they basically said the average age is eleven, and that was always sort of the common thinking. But there was a woman in the 1980s at the time, she was a physicians associate at Duke named Marcia Herman Giddens, and she said, I'm noticing a lot of eight and nine year old girls in my clinic that are getting pubic hair that have their breasts are butting. What's going on here? And she started writing about that, and a lot of endocrinologists were saying, no, that's not right. And for about 25 years. There was a big debate about it until finally. In 2010. Three major institutions cincinnati Children's Hospital. Kaiser Permanente of Northern California and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York published a study in pediatrics saying that by age. 710 percent of white girls. 23% of black girls. 15% of Hispanic girls. And 2% of Asian girls were developing breasts by age. What. Seven? And that's budding breasts. That's not necessarily puberty. No, but that was the marker for the onset of puberty. That's a long time. So basically they're saying now that they don't know quite why this is happening, but they do think that if you're overweight, that can set it off, like we said. And really interesting that family stress, they think, can take off puberty earlier. Right. They've done studies where they found if you're from a broken home or if you're without your biological father, you are more than twice as likely to go into puberty early. Same with childhood depression as well. Yeah. Or if your mother is suffering from depression, it might kick that off. So I think just all these family stresses can just kick puberty in at an earlier age. That's one of the theories at least. That makes sense, too, because what seems to be the increasingly prevalent attitude toward what constitutes the onset of puberty is that once you get out of trophy, hormone is released, then you're in puberty. Everything else is just kind of symptomatic or markers of puberty. Right. So if you are undergoing a lot of stress, well, that can lead to hormonal release, right? Well, yeah. Plus the last little point they make in this article was it makes sense in an evolutionary sense, as far as the theory goes. They think that if you have a stressful childhood, you're inclined to earlier reproduction, so you can survive. Yes. We better get this underway. Yeah. Like, my family is stressed. I don't know if I'm going to survive, so I need to have a baby at, like, ten. That is hardcore natural selection thinking, right? Yeah. Pretty interesting, I think. Yeah. So the pubescent markers, right? Milestones that you go through typically go hormone release breast buds, the pubic hair. Right. And then those are the three things that happen in that order. Typically it can happen out of order, but with that hormone release, the first thing that starts it out, which is first stage of puberty, what's happening is the womb, right? Which includes the uterus, the cervix, the fallopian tubes, ovaries, all this stuff are starting to develop. You were born I keep saying you I'm not talking to you, Chuck. I'm the little girl in this experiment. Right, okay, so you are. I'll just stay the little girl. That's right. You have your skin. I forgot. Yeah. You were born with about 2 million to 5 million undeveloped eggs, which are called follicles. Yes. And remember, one of those hormones that gets released is follicle stimulating hormones. So when your follicle stimulating hormones get released, it goes down to your ovaries and all of a sudden your engine starts revving. As far as your reproductive ability goes yeah. It's your body saying, let's get you ready to have a kid at some point. Right. At some point, yeah. This is a year's long process. But the point is, the first part of the whole thing is that the cervix, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, the uterus, all start to change internally and grow and develop. Sure. Typically in the past, the beginning of puberty is said to start with monarchy, which is weird, because that word, that term has a long history with stuff you should know. Yeah. Because I remember on the totem poles episode, was that with the first appearance of it? I think so. Because they would often build monarchy totems that's right. As a celebratory thing. When a young girl has her first period, that's called the monarchy. Right. So typically that was always thought of as the first sign of puberty, or the first step. But as we know, by the time monarchy comes on, you have already been undergoing puberty inside your body for a little while. Yes. It's kind of stupid to mark the onset of puberty with monarchy, because monarchy actually represents the end of your first reproductive cycle, even though you probably wouldn't have been able to conceive in that first attempt at it. It's your body, like, kind of going through a few dry runs, but it doesn't make any sense to say, well, you had your first period, so now you're in puberty. You've been in puberty for probably a couple of years by then. That's right. And that monarchy can vary wildly. They've done studies where they found an age difference of about three and a half years, or it could be as great as three and a half years. And it all depends on how fast your body is maturing. Well, they found a developmental difference up to three and a half years in girls the same age. So some girls were three and a half years further along in puberty, even though they were ten years old. Right. So they figured out that hormones, probably the release of hormones, mark the onset of puberty. One of the other things that comes along, like minority, you notice it. Right. It's a very noticeable point. Sure. The thing that happens, and that's why for so long, they used to say, well, now everybody knows. We know you're in puberty. Right. Yeah. Even though it doesn't make any sense. As we said, another thing that happens fairly early on in girls in particular is a growth spurt. Yes. But like a cartoon growth spurt, like Roger Rabbit growth spurt. Because the hands and the feet grow first. Yeah. They can grow about three and a half inches in a single year, which is a lot. Not your hands and feet. Well, yeah. Your height, but the hands and feet are going to grow such that you might be a little clumsy because you haven't gotten used to these big banana boats at the end of your legs, right? But fear not, because eventually the rest of your body is going to grow in sync with it. What's weird is that girls grow through these growth spurts before boys do. Yeah. Do you remember being like a boy and the girls all of a sudden in your class from fifth grade to 6th grade? It's like, what happened here? What's going on? The giant. Exactly. Yeah. It's a short last year. Well, and I was never like, at the head of my growth chart, so I was definitely like, staring up at girls wondering why they were taller than me. Why are you mad? Why do I have special feelings about this tall girl all of a sudden? And why are you so angry at me? And we're going to talk to you boys here as well because I can definitely dole out some advice on how to treat your classmates. So I'll be sprinkling that in here and there. Oh, nice. Your Uncle Chuck and Mr. Clark. That's right. So you're going to have your big hands and your big feet. You're going to be tripping, you're going to be dropping things, but everything don't worry, it's going to even out. Your body's going to catch up. And even though you may be taller than some of the boys in your class, they're going to catch up to you're just a little bit ahead of the game. Nothing to feel bad about. But you should also not feel bad about this break right now. And then we're going to come back and talk about more of this stuff. 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. So, Chuck, we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but let's talk about the actual stages of puberty. Okay, so we've mentioned stage one is when the hormones start to get released from the pituitary gland, the follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and these along with estrogen for the rest of your reproductive life, which goes from the time of your first period until menopause. Right? Yes. Those three hormones are going to be really important and they interact with one another, and one triggers one and suppresses the other. And all of them cause those follicles. Remember those tiny undeveloped eggs that you're born with about 2 million with to develop into eggs about once a month. Right. And this is your menstrual cycle. That's right. So by the time you enter puberty, the 2 million follicles, those 2 million eggs actually have dwindled down to about 400,000. Yes. And every time you menstruate, starting with that first time, about a thousand of those follicles get stimulated and start to turn into eggs. But one of them is just like the runaway standout, the head of the class, the A plus students, and that one will develop into what's called an ovum, which is a matured unfertilized egg. Right. And as your estrogen levels grow throughout the month and increase and increase, they hit this peak level. And when it peaks, it triggers the sudden release of luteinizing hormone. And that luteinizing hormone causes that egg to pop out of your follicle and enter the fallopian tube and travel down to your uterus. And that is called ovulation. That's right. This is probably not going to happen on the first period. Minor key. Right. But it's entirely possible. But when you have minority again, it's usually like a dry run, like your body is figuring it out. Yeah. Second stage. Are we there yet? I think so. Okay, I guess you should ask me. I'm a little girl here. Are you ready to move on to the second stage? Yes, Mr. Clark. Okay. Man. Weird. It's getting kind of weird. The second stage of puberty, again is going to vary in age, but we'll go ahead and say like eleven or twelve years old. This is when your breasts are going to begin to grow, or bud, as they say. And budding is when the areola is going to darken and rise some and you're going to get some of that breast tissue. It might be at that point that your parents say, all right, well, maybe it's time to go to the store and introduce you to something called the brazier, which no one calls it anymore. Right, it's called a bra. Yeah. And getting fitted for that thing I've heard is not a lot of fun because it's like some big mystery and it's hard to get it just right. But hopefully mom and dad will take you in for a cool older sister. Yes. And hopefully Dads can be involved in the stuff, too. But since mom has the experience, they can probably lend a little more, like insight, I would say. Right. And speaking of your mom, if you have a wish to know probably what your breasts are going to grow to in size. That sounded like a joke. Like an elementary school joke. Speaking of your mom yes, sure. Your mom's breast size is probably a decent indicator of what yours is going to grow to. Sure. But you're made up of your mom and your dad, right. He just throws the whole thing off. So really, ultimately, the best resources to look at your maternal and paternal grandmother's and see what their breast size looks like. Right. And don't freak out if theirs are around their waist, because breast fall over the years. You don't need to sweat that just yet. Maybe you could look at pictures of them when they were younger. There you go. All right. That's a good idea. We finally hit on that might be horrifying. The third stage. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Second stage, you're going to start getting some of that pubic here. Right. And that's when the growth spurt is going to appear as well. And your bones are growing really fast, but they're not as dense as they would be normally. They're not calcified fully, so they can break pretty easy. So you need to be careful here. Yeah. That's why you see a lot of little girls and little boys walk around in arm cats. That's right. Although I have never broken a bone. I think it would you better knock on wood. I'm knocking on wood. Do you still have that knock on wood present I got you? I sure do. Nice. I do it all the time at home. Good. Third stage, pubic hair is going to continue to grow. The breasts are going to continue to grow. Hair actually shows up all over the place. Yeah. Just like little boys all of a sudden, like in the armpits, it's around your growing area. Like a jungle. Yeah. It's just growing all over the place. Your vagina is going to grow in size, and this is usually about the age of twelve to 13. Right. By this time, about 70% of girls that have hit stage three have already had monarchy. That's right. And you might say we should probably pause here for a second. Chuck, if you are a girl listening to this, there might be a burning question, like, what is going on? Why? What's the teleological reason for all of this? Right. So that's what they're saying. What has happened is your body has sensed that you have enough fat to sustain a child, a fetus, and your body is undergoing the necessary changes to allow you to conceive a child and then carry it to full term. That's what's happening with your body right now. Yes, that's right. Another thing that's going to happen is you're going to start sweating and becoming a stinky little monster. Stinky. And that's probably when you're going to say, hey, while we're at the store getting my first bra, how about a stick of deodorant or antiperspirant? Those days of chasing fireflies all night and not taking a bath for eight days with no repercussions. Right. And not smelling at all. Smelling like a daisy the whole time. Those days are gone for the rest of your life. That's right. And parents, be sensitive to this. Don't make fun of your kids. Tell them they're stinky monsters like I just did. Well, yeah. You're talking to other people's kids. Yeah. Be nicer about it, because some kids might laugh and think it's funny. Some kids might be very sensitive to that thing just a tad, which is normal. Stage four, around the age of 13 or 14, the height that you're growing is going to slow down a little bit. You're not going to be growing as tall. Boys are going to start catching up to you in height and your fat levels. Your body fat is going to basically reach your adult level. Like, in just a couple of years, you could have gone from somewhere in the neighborhood of like, 8% body fat to 26% body fat. And you do not want to lose this weight. This is normal weight gain. That's right. That your body needs to be in reproductive health. That's right. If you've had your first period, that means you've had your second and third. By this point, your body is probably trying to work out some sort of a regular rhythm, although for the first little while, it's probably going to be fairly irregular. Oh, yeah. Your cycle for many times, and supposedly, girls who go through monarchy after 13 tend to have very irregular periods up until 18. Yeah. And even beyond that, even as an adult, you can go out of rhythm for all sorts of different things, including like birth control. Yeah, absolutely. And then stage five is when you have fully matured 14 to 17, all the way up to like, 19 years old. You are through the stages of puberty. You're probably as tall as you're going to get. Your breasts, you're probably as big as they are going to get without any kind of surgical help. And your pubic hair is hopefully as fully developed as it's going to get. And then finally, your skeleton and your muscles and your cardiovascular system, everything. You're basically an adult, a young woman. You can vote, you can't drink and you can't rent a car. Right. That's where you're at in life. Yeah, pretty much. So, again, one of the long time markers of pubescence and girls has been breast development, starting with breast buds. Right. And what's going on there is, again, your body's developing so that it can support a kid sure. Internally. And one of the things that you will have to do once you have a kid or be able to do is to nurse, right? Yeah. So your breast development is changing. There's more tissue there. They're getting bigger. And one of the reasons they're getting bigger is because they're actually structurally changing. So you're forming milk ducts in there and new layers of fatty tissue so that you can nurse. It's pretty cool. And actually, I read a really, really interesting article on mother's milk in The Stranger the other day. It's amazing stuff. Get this, dude. So apparently, mother's milk can change day to day and produce new antibodies based on what the infant needs. So, like, if the infant is battling, like, a little bit of a bug, the mom's body can produce antibodies that are transferred through the milk. Amazing. They're like, how does the mom know this? And they have figured out that the baby saliva communicates what antibodies he or she needs through the nipple. And then the mother's body analyzes that stuff and goes, oh, we need these new antibodies, produces it, and gives it to the kid in the form of milk. This is what you will be able to do in just a few years, girls. That's pretty phenomenal stuff. That's right. So as your breasts are getting larger, they may be sore, they may be itchy. If you have rapid growth, they may have some stretch marks. Don't need to worry about any of this stuff. They may be not the same size. One breast might grow quicker than the other. That's okay, too. This is all very normal. Yeah. And, Chuck, like you said, also, depending on your race, you may develop breast buds earlier, later. Again, totally normal. That's right. All right. So, Chuck, the breasts are developed, the hormones are raging. The womb is developing, right? Yeah. And as the womb is developing and it's learning to ovulate. Right. The menstrual cycle. Guys, you and I tend to think of it as basically this one week thing that happens, right. It's actually between a 20 and 30 day process. Yeah. And it's not just the part where you have your menses, which is the part where you're shedding the endometrium from inside the uterus, the lining. It's this whole process of the follicles becoming stimulated, producing an ovum. The ovum traveling down the fallopian tube to the uterus, hanging out there, waiting to see whether it gets fertilized or not. And then when the egg doesn't get fertilized, that endometrium the lining of the uterus, which has become rich with, like, these blood vessels as part of the menstrual process, gets shed. Right. But before it gets shed, one of the things that will suddenly appear about six months prior to monarchy is what's called a white vaginal discharge. That's right. It is completely normal. And it is the precursor to your first period. You don't need to stress out about. It. If you find that you're in your room and you're getting ready for bed and you see something you haven't seen before in your underwear, then don't freak out. It's all very normal. It actually means that you have a very healthy uterus. That's right. There are all kinds of discharge actually. And I did not know that there are all kinds of discharge. Are you referring to that one article we saw? Yeah, there's a great article on our podcast page that has photos of different types of discharge that says this is normal. This is normal. See a doctor. This is normal. Yeah. The normal types, light yellow discharge. If you haven't started your period yet, the white thick discharge is common at the beginning and end of the cycle, should not itch? If there is an itch going on, then you could have a yeast infection, right, which is basically just a bloom of candida. It can be brought on by things like taking antibiotics or something like that. Sure. The discharge can be clear and stretchy. That means you are ovulating that is fertile mucus. Right? That's the good stuff. That's the stuff that lets sperm get in there and really travel to the ovum. That's right. Clear and watery. That is not a problem either. That can occur at all times of the cycle. It can be dark yellow or green and that could be a problem. And that means there could be an infection especially. Like I said, if it's itchy or if it's clumpy or if it has a bad odor, then that may be something you need to get checked out. But for the most part, this stuff, it's called cervical mucus and you're going to be discharging it for basically the rest of your life. It's just a fact of life. And again, it means that you have a nice healthy uterus and everything's all well with it. Unless again, there's some warning signs to it. And if there are, just go see a doctor and get fixed up, you'll be fine. Yeah. And the last one I think we should mention is brown because that can probably be pretty stressful if you've never seen that before as a young girl. And that's after your period. And all that is, is your body just cleaning things out. And also, again, completely normal because blood, when it's old, looks brown. Right. So that's vaginal discharge, that's different from your actual menses, right? Yes. So with your menses, that is where you're shedding. Remember that really blood vessel rich lining that gets developed every month along the inside of your uterus that allows a fertilized egg to attach to it really nourishes it and lets it turn into a fetus and all of that. It's pretty great stuff. But every month you need to shed it and grow some more stuff. So when you shed it, that's what comes out in the form of your mentees, right. And it can feel apparently like a waterfall for a while, but it actually usually amounts to nothing more than four tablespoons, which is like a quarter cup at the most. Yeah. On average, it can last from three to ten days. Usually the heaviest part of that will be in the second and third day. And if you do feel like you're having an abnormally heavy period, then maybe you should call your doctor. Of course. And as you get to know your body, you're going to be very in tune with your cycle and you know best how you feel and whether or not you think something's going on. But the first couple will probably you out. Yeah, that's totally understandable. Yeah. And there's a long history of period shaming, which is terrible, and there are a lot of people trying to do something about that now. In particular, in Australia, there's this really cool thing called a celebration day for girls. It was founded in 2000, and it's a program, I think, founded by a woman that wrote a book called A Blessing, not a Curse, which is basically a guidebook about monarchy in the cycle. Nice. And said all these shameful, ugly attitudes about monarchy and the period are obviously going to have a really negative impact on your child. And so they're getting together now and they're doing these workshops where they get together with mothers and their daughters or fathers and daughters or both, and where they teach them about what's going on and basically saying, this is not something bad or dirty or ugly or shameful. This is awesome, this is like, you should celebrate this. You're becoming a woman. Yeah. When you look amazing, it's really amazing stuff. Yeah, it's amazing. So I think our audience is pretty sensitive and up to date and forward thinking, but if there are any dads out there, little brothers who are making fun of your sister's period or your daughter's period, just stop. Don't even make jokes, don't make cracks. You stand outside for a while by yourself. Yeah. It's a very rough time, or it can be. And they need to be celebrated for entering this period in their life, not ashamed. That's good stuff, Chuck. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of? There's these kids in the hall from years and years and years ago where Dave Foley was the boyfriend with the good attitude towards menstruation. Do you remember that one? That's hilarious. It's pretty good. Was there a counterpart? No, it was a little soliloquy. Okay. Yeah, it's good. I'm sure. I'm positive it's online. One of the things, though, even though menses and monarchy administration should be celebrated and investigated and understood and not poked fun at, is that there are some definite downsides to it. Apparently there is a poll of women that was carried out by the association of Reproductive Health Professionals, and only 8% of women said that they found something positive about their menstrual cycle. About menstruating. Oh, man. That's sad. They weren't very happy with it. Right. And I'm sure one of the big reasons is because it feels awful like you cramp. Yeah. And the reason why cramping is associated with it is because that endometrium is being shed, and the way it sheds is your uterus contracts. And it can be uncomfortable, to say the least. Yeah. It can be everywhere from uncomfortable to debilitating, depending on who you are. There is no single method to relieve cramping. You might try medications or just rest or certain diet or activity. Try anything. You can ask your girlfriends, ask your mom, ask your weird aunt, and they'll probably have some good advice on how to quell those cramps somewhat. Yeah. And then finally, of course, along with menstruation comes premenstrual syndrome. PMS. Right. Which we should do a show on at some point, I think. I agree wholeheartedly, man. I think there's a lot of weirdness, a lot of misunderstanding around that. Yeah, I agree. There may be some bloating going on, aches and pains, which you talked about, and moodiness, which can happen, and you may not feel like yourself. Oh, yeah. That's just the easiest way to say it. You're not a bad person. You may hate all boys. You might. Yeah. And again, Dads little brothers, stand outside. Go stand outside. Don't start making fun of your sister and saying you're acting this way because you're going to have your period. That is a bad road to go down. Yeah. Go clean dog poop up in the yard or something. That's right. And you think about yourself for a little while. All right, well, let's take another break here, and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about teenage moods and acne and all the other good stuff. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical goldmine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. 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. All right, we're back. And Jerry just gave us a stamp of approval that we're doing a pretty good job so far. I'm not sure if I buy. No, man, I think she doesn't lie to us. Terry lies. She's a publicist. Yeah, the publicist did not like that episode. Oh, did you hear bad things? All I've gotten is like, yeah, you guys hit it on the head. I'm a publicist. A lot of them are like, you really hurt my feelings. Really? Especially when they didn't make it all the way through the episode. Oh, where I say at the end, like, I'm just talking about big celebrity, which you probably should have front loaded because some people haven't made it through that, as I said. Oh, well. All right, let's talk about acne. We've been over acne a bunch, so I don't think we really need to talk about the actual process of acne. Haven't we done, like, a whole episode on acne? Yeah. Plus we hit it again in the male puberty. Oh, yeah, but you're going to get acne, little girl. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons why is because you're now producing hair follicles, and your hair follicles produce sebum. And sebum is a substance that mixes with all sorts of nasty stuff, including dead skin cells. And when that happens in the follicle itself, rather than on your skin, bacteria likes to eat that stuff and you get an infection. And that is it. And it's going to happen, but it won't happen to you as much as it does to boys. That's right. So much for not getting into what acne is. That was fast, man. I was like that old FedEx guy. So this is a tough time in your life. Your body's changing. You're going to feel weird. You might be cramping. You might feel physically odd, emotionally odd, hormonally off. And then on top of that, you're going to add acne. It's cruel and unusual punishment is what that is. And Tom actually wrote the male puberty and female puberty articles. Right. And in both of them, he says, just wash your face. And we said that in the Mail Puberty episode. And we heard from some people that are like, yeah, that's great. That works for some people. It doesn't work for everybody. Basically, like, dealing with PMS, there's a lot of different things. You can try and just go find out what's good for you. Yeah, absolutely. I got lucky. Some people aren't as lucky. I was not lucky. Did you have bad acne? Oh, yeah. Not on my face. I had back knee. All right. But even still, I get zits and you don't. It drives me crazy. Yeah, well, it drives Emily crazy just because she wants to pop them. Yeah. Yummy. Likes to do that too. She doesn't get any action. She's just like, come on, what's going on? Yeah. She looks forward to summer. I get more in the summer. If you are a young girl. One thing we didn't say in the boys episode, which we probably could have because little boys can wear makeup if they want, I guess, but take your makeup off at night. Yeah, I remember for some reason, this stands out my mind. I saw an interview with Stevie six years ago where someone was asking about her skin looking so great still. Oh, I think you told me this. Really? It might have been an acne episode. Yeah. Okay. But she said even in the height of my drinking and drugging days, at the end of the night, those were significant. I would take off my makeup. That's crazy. And she's like, that's why I have such great skin. Yeah, that and all the lacy scarves that I wear. That helps, I guess. Yeah. Protects her from bugs. Exactly. So we've covered pretty much everything physiological. This is all the stuff that's going to happen to you physically, psychologically. It's going to be a lot of changes too. Oh, no, nothing happens psychologically. Right. So, I mean, I would like to think that it's probably all based. You could probably trace every single change in emotion to hormone. I don't think that that's necessarily true. I think that really kicks it off, really gets things going. But it is true that you have to deal with little brothers and boys who don't understand and jerk dads and even a nice, supportive mom is going to seem like a monster to you. I think it creates something of a feedback loop for these several years of your puberty where you are way moodier, way more stressed out, and the world reacts to you as such. So you react to the world as such. And you just basically have to buckle up and hold on for this stuff. And there are a lot of really bad decisions you can make along the way because you start to have a lot more freedom. You get your driver's license. You are out there in the world, and people have just imbued a lot more trust and responsibility in you at the time when you possibly deserve it, though. Absolutely. But you need it the most because it's part of your development. So you really have to make some good choices at this point in time, at times when things don't quite make sense to you. Agree. So at a time like this, the best thing that you can do is turn to Judy Bloom. Yeah, man. Amen. She'll set you straight. She certainly will. You're going to be really self aware for the first time. You're just happy go lucky days as a little girl are going to be longed on, and you're going to be really aware of your appearance. Probably going to be worried about your appearance that is so normal as a parent. You may think it's self obsession. It is not. It is a young girl starting to become a woman and looking in the mirror and going, what in the world is happening here? Yeah, right. Look at my face. It just screwed a quarter inch while I was standing here. Exactly. This is when your daughter is going to start looking at her belief system and challenging yours and saying, like I said earlier about you, big hypocrite, that's when your daughter's going to become a vegan and yell at you for buying a dog from a pet store and become aware of all these social injustices and like, how in the world can you guys act like that? Like you're supposed to be my teachers. It's called working. Yeah. Put food on the table. That's all that matters. So, yeah, they're going to be challenging you and they're going to be erratic and moody and it's just going to be a big circus and there's no avoiding it. You just got to get through it. Yeah. And again, keeping the lines of communication as open as possible and not chasing your parents out of your room when they come and try to talk to you because they seem concerned, it's a really good move. And if you're a parent, it's a good move to try to address stuff, especially if you're noticing things that your kid didn't do before. There's a certain amount of healthy experimentation right, sure. With pushing boundaries and figuring out where the edges are, but that can very easily and very quickly change into really problematic, deviant behavior. These are the choices I was telling you about earlier, kids, that you have to make good choices. Even though some of your friends are not making good choices, you need to still stand up and do the right thing and the same things. And if you're a parent, you're noticing that your kid might not be making the good choices, you have to address that. That's right. And again, I think that the best line is talking to them, not necessarily locking them in their room for for the rest of their teenage years, because that doesn't work. I hate to break it to you. Kids are going to find a way. They're going to sneak out, they're going to do what they want to do. So if you stay there, buddy, as much as you can and keep those lines open, you're going to be ahead of the game. Your daughter is going to start caring about fashion and clothing a little more and boys going to go boy crazy. She might go a little boy crazy, but she's going to be looking around saying, where do I fit in? Am I going to follow the trends or am I going to have my own style and just be my own person and wear these weird clothes? I might get made fun of. Well, supposedly weird is like, where it's at these days with the kids. Did you know that? Sure. So then we're normal clothes. Right. Just like a young Republican. Exactly. Some potential pitfalls here, as your body is changing because of society's obsession with the female form and getting bombarded every day with how thin you have to be and how perfect your body has to be. It is fraught with complications as a young girl to look a certain way. And this is where you can set yourself up for trouble with eating disorders, or if you're not good at expressing yourself, you have no outlet to doing, like, self cutting and these bad things behind closed doors. All of that is very sad, scary stuff. But all of that can be overcome. And it is all very much treatable as long as you talk to your parents about it. Yeah. Get their help if they want to help you or somebody. Someone you trust. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I was looking into self cutting in particular. It seems like if you learn to express your emotions through something like that, it's tough to shed that. Apparently, like, 50 or 60% of people who self cut as adults all started at puberty, I'm sure. So that's not a healthy way to express yourself or to get the rage out or whatever it is that you're doing that for. So, again, you have to be smart during this time, too. Your daughter might be experimenting with masturbation early on and thinking about sexy things. It's all very normal, even at a very, very young age. There are young girls as young as four and five years old who find themselves simulating sex, like, with their pillow in their bed, with a stuffed animal. I've seen it with my own two eyes, Mr. Binkie. No, I don't want to embarrass anyone in my family, but I've seen it. You should probably stop there. And it's for a parent. If you've never seen that, it can be very disconcerting, I'm sure, but it's all super normal and you don't have to worry about it. No, but that said, you were not ready for sex when you're going through puberty or even right after you emerge from it. No, of course not. And that's not at four and five. They don't even know what that is. Oh, yeah. No, they know it feels good and they're messing around. And don't shame them. Don't make them feel like they're dirty or doing something bad. Everything I read just says just sort of wait it out and it should eventually pass. Okay. Basically isolated guess it'll pass. Yeah. Or maybe if you interrupt her, like, interrupt her to go do something fun. Play a game or I even saw one advice burst into the room dressed as a scary clown. That'll stop it quick. One advice thing I saw said, too. Sometimes if it's happening in front, like you're all sitting around watching TV and you see it's happening then say, would you like to go to your room and have a private time? And then they'll come back ten minutes later and be with the family again. Where did you see that advice? It was on a parenting site. What do you think it's bad advice? No, I'm surprised. I thought you were doling it out yourself. No, of course, I've never dealt with this, but I went to a lot of because I couldn't find any medical advice except from parenting sites. Yeah. The only thing that I saw was doctors was that, like, it's normal. It's normal. And it didn't go any further than that. Yeah. Basically, the root of it all was don't shame them and just let them do their thing. I mean, it makes sense. Sure. All right. Should we finish up like we did with the male puberty and talk about some puberty rituals around the world? You know, we have a future as, like, health coaches after this. I have a feeling we did pretty good here, but also the feeling we're going to hear from some people that are like, you know, you shouldn't say this these days. Yeah. I've been tense the entire episode because of that. Well, we tried to get it just right. We did. But also we're imparting some information here. Heavy, important information. I want to get it right. Yeah, but you can't beat the leading edge of every word. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. All right. The female puberty rituals. There is a great history, especially pre 20th century, of seclusion, at the beginning of monarchy. Yeah. Taking a girl out of the tribe, out of the village or out of wherever for a period of a couple of days to a year or more, secluded, away from everyone else. I looked it up and there's a couple of reasons they think sociologically. One is to act as a social preparation, where it's a good thing because they're secluded with their moms and their aunts, and they really say, all right, well, now we got to start teaching you all these things. Right? Yeah. And the other one was just superstition relating to blood, as ancient as it gets. Or fearing women who are going through their menstrual cycle for supernatural reasons, apparently. I like this one, the Arubu Kapur in Brazil, or Tribe in Brazil, when a girl goes through monarchy, they cut her hair and then she can marry once it grows back to shoulder length. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. It's almost like a preternatural understanding of the development that the body still has yet to go through before she can marry. Yeah, it's a good point. In Ghana, there are villages that for a few weeks, they separate the girl from the village and then they give her instruction, which we were talking about, which is a good thing, on social mores and sex ed and courtship. And then they have a big celebration, which is really nice. That is nice. Yeah. Same with the Jewish community as of the 20th century, with the advent of Bot Metzvas, which is like a bar mitzvah for girls. Yeah, but they didn't have them before the 20th century. Yeah. And I looked into other rituals and things, and almost every one of them I saw were sort of along those same lines, which is seclude them for a little while, teach them about things, and then throw a big party. Did you see the Apache one? The Morning Star Dance? No. When an Apache girl goes through monarchy, she's secluded from the rest of the village for four days, goes through this basically a period of fasting, getting very little sleep. And on the fourth day, while she's already basically starving and sleep deprived, she does a dance from sundown to sun up. Are you kidding me? And there's a really neat National Geographic video about it where this girl is so excited because this marks the transition to womanhood for her. But she learns a lot about herself, her tribe, her history during this period because she's hanging out with her mom and her grandmother and just being taught all this stuff. Interesting. Yeah, it sounds pretty cool. I saw some South American tribe. I think that files the teeth into fangs. Why? Do you got anything else? I got nothing else. Man, I hope we did something good here. I think we did. I feel good about it. If you want to know more about female puberty, you can type those words into your favorite search engine. It will bring up all sorts of stuff. You could also type it into the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. I just tweeted at you. You may have seen this, but I wanted to make sure you got my appreciation loud and clear. Just finished listening to the Autotune episode, which in my humble opinion, was one of the best you've ever done. A lot of people like that one. Yeah. And I wanted to thank you both for being so conscious about letting Tracy and Holly have the mic for your listener mail discussion. You let the women speak about their experiences instead of subtly making it all about the dudes in 2015. This should not be an extraordinary thing, yet it was indeed. It demonstrated that you both have an excellent grasp of what it means to be a male feminist and solid allies to disenfranchised groups. I wish more men in my line of work had your attitude and intent. I'm a lobbyist for a nonprofit, by the way, that works against domestic violence. So bravo. Three cheers and well done. And that is from Noel Duplic. Thanks a lot, Noel. Yeah. That's really nice of you. We try. We do our best. Yes, we do our best. Subtly making it about us? We didn't do that. Not this time. If you want to get in touch with us, to give us kudos or say you guys suck for whatever reason, or to let us know if we really missed the mark on female puberty, we want to hear all about it. You can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff you shouldn't. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyoushennow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun 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 Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands? Find Halo Elevate as TECTO pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
02f5bba2-3b0e-11eb-947e-2f123d515f25 | The Grand Ole Opry Cast | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-grand-ole-opry-cast | Josh and Chuck take a virtual walk through country music's legendary music venue. | Josh and Chuck take a virtual walk through country music's legendary music venue. | Thu, 01 Jul 2021 19:08:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=19, tm_min=8, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=182, tm_isdst=0) | 41556920 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio howdy and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there. There's Jerry. Jerome Rowland. And and this is stuff you should know, folks. Yeah. Can I do a little plug right off the beginning to sort of explain why I got this idea? Yeah, sure. Because this episode is on the Grand Ole operi in Nashville, Tennessee, the longest running radio broadcast in US. History. And they send you a check? No, I got an email. I feel like a long time ago from a Stuff You Should Know listener in a movie crusher named Joseph. I'm going to pronounce it ten Ltinnell. And he is the content and programming director of WSM Radio wow. Which you'll learn all about that here. And he runs the show. And he started a thing. We kind of had some back and forth over the years about me coming to The Ryman to see a show, and he's like, I have a mission on Movie Crash. He said, I can get you backstage if you ever want to come to Nashville and go to show at The Ryman. And so we've been communicating for a long time. And then this past year, he started what's called the WSM Playlist, which is they turn the radio station over to someone for an hour and let them DJ and program. And he offered that to me and I did it. Wow. When did you tell everybody about it? On stuff I'm doing right now. Oh, when is it going to play? You record it so they can release it whenever. So you did covers of all the songs that you wanted on the playlist? I just DJ, basically. It's going to air 05:00 p.m. Central time, july 1 at 05:00 P.m. Central on WSM Radio, home of the Grand Old Arc. You can find it online@wsmradio.com. Just hit the Listen Live button on July 1 at 05:00 PM. Central. You hear me spinning records from Uncle Tupelo and Bonnie Prince billy and Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash. I can't remember who. It's a lot of great stuff. That's awesome. Did you do that thing where, like, you just held the one like a can up to your ear from the headphones? No. I was a little nervous, though, and I felt I was a little stiff and loosened up and then sent it to him. And I was like, hey, I feel like I didn't do great at first. And he said, yeah, you were a little stiff. And he said, Why don't you redo the first they call him all these radio lingo's, like ins and outs and raps and things like that, because you got to talk about the last song and then the next song. So he let me redo the first kind of set of those, and hopefully I'm a little more loose. It's always better. The second take it. Is Willie Nelson's in there? I got some good stuff. That's really cool, man. Congratulations, Chuck. I feel like you finally made it. You're a member of the Grand Old Opera? No, we'll talk all about that. That's a whole different deal. So we are talking Grand Old operi, and now I'm nervous about it because the station manager is going to be listening and they're promoting this, too, by the way, this episode. What was his name? Joseph Tinnell. Joseph prepared to be disappointed. He's a nice guy. I'm sure he'll be his criticism. He's the stuff you should know. Listener and a movie crusher, too, of course. He's a nice guy. He gets it. So we're talking Grand Old Oprah today, and you said something that I find just fascinating, that it is I don't know if you said in the world, but it is the longest running live radio broadcast program in the entire world. It's been broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry, which is a radio show. A lot of people think it's a music venue, and it is. But really, the music venue kind of grew out of the radio show. It began as a radio show all the way back in 1925. So it's coming pretty close to its 100th anniversary. And all that time, it's only missed one Saturday night broadcast, one live Saturday night broadcast every other Saturday night all the way back to 1925. You could tune into WSM Nashville Am 650, and here the Grand Old Opera radio program, which is I mean, hats off to that. I don't care if you think country western music is as bad as experimental smooth jazz doesn't matter. You still have to tip your hat to that. Yeah, tip that. Stetson we should tell them why that they missed that one broadcast. That was after the assassination of Martin Luther King. The city of Nashville, I think most of Tennessee probably was under curfew, so they had to rerun a program. And I think they did a live show the next day or later or something during the day, earlier that day before Curfew, I believe they did a show. So they still did a show that day. They just missed the live broadcast that night. But all the other ones dating back to 1925, they made pretty neat. Yes. I actually went when I was a kid, it was an amusement park called Opriland USA, which is now, I think, sort of a shopping center mall kind of thing. But back then it was an amusement park, like a country. It was pretty doiwood. Oh, you went to the opera? Lane USA. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And so we also went to the Grand Opera House. And I don't know if it was a Saturday show. I know they do shows on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, but I don't remember much about it. But I do remember being in that building and seeing the sort of barn shaped motif stage, and that's kind of all I remember I was probably no more than six or seven. I don't know what it is, but there is nothing more cozy than a building within a building. Yeah, sure. A little far more cheap and cool looking. I definitely love the stage for the Gran Ole Opera, for sure. All right. So the Grand Ole Opry started out indirectly out of Chicago. There was something called the National Barn Dance, which was a radio broadcast out of Chicago playing country music way back in the day. And it had a really big following, but it didn't reach Nashville. So the former DJ from there named George Hay went to Nashville, became the station manager at WSM, and pitched what he called the Barn Dance. Yes. Which was sounded a lot like National Barn Dance, but he's like but here's the difference. We dropped the national? Yes. It was kind of like a proto Heehaw in that they had it was a variety show. They had music, they had dancers, they had comedy bits and sketches, all with that sort of countryside flavor. I almost wonder if he hall was influenced by the Grand Old Opera. I think a little bit. So it was on WSM, as you were saying, the Barn Dance is what Grand Old Opera radio program was originally called for the first couple of years. And that guy George Hay, who pitched it and hosted it had been at that radio station in Chicago. But now he worked for WSM, which was actually an insurance company's radio station. Yes. Very strange story. It is. But they were the headquarters in the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. And apparently one of the executives there was really into this new technology radio. And I was high enough up in the company that he got the company to start broadcasting from the fifth floor. And so that's where that first early program was broadcast from, was this insurance company's headquarters, like, office building on Saturday nights. Yeah. And if you're wondering what WM stands for, because it was from the insurance company, it stands for We Shield Millions, still known as WSM. It's really funny. I tried to find out who this executive was, but I couldn't. I couldn't look at it. Yeah. It's crazy how people can become lost to history even though their story is just so wrapped up in something that's everywhere, all it takes is for them to just get knocked out of one popular article. And everybody else who picks up on that after that yeah. They're not coming back. All right, so the Barn Dance they had their first broadcast on November 8, 1925, had Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who was a Tennessee musician and won a fiddling competition in Texas, was a big, big hit. And within just a few months, there were people literally coming down to this insurance building to watch live through the glass walls of the studio. Very cool. Yeah. All this reminds me of brother or Art Thou? When they go into the recording studio, I think it's very similar to that kind of thing, right? So they kind of knew, like, this might be a thing. People are showing up in person on Saturday night at an insurance company's offices to watch this stuff, and it kind of started to take off pretty quickly. And it was, I think, 1927 when George Hay famously said about this preceding, like, radio or classical music appreciation Hour, that we've been listening to music largely from the Grand Opera. From now on we will present the Grand Old Opera. And apparently everybody thought that was hysterical, and that became the name of the show from that time on, I think, in December of 1927. Very cool. It is pretty cool. Yeah. And so there were these weekly performances every Saturday at the National Life and Accident Insurance Company's headquarters. But more and more people started to show up. And I saw somewhere, chuck, I love this. It's like a full circle irony. But at the time, the leaders of Nashville, the heads of business and a lot of the other, the politicians, the wealthy people who are running the show in Nashville, were trying to move the city's image in the exact opposite direction of what they were doing every Saturday night at the insurance company's headquarters. Like they're trying to basically say, Nashville is not no mountain folk here, no hold downs going on here. We're like New York. We're the New York of the middle of America, that kind of thing. Interesting. And they really resented the Grand Old Opera because it was getting more and more popular. And then finally, the Grand Old Opera became so powerful and such an institution in Nashville that it in large part became the leaders of the city, and it shaped Nashville like Nashville wasn't Music City until the Grand Old Opera came along and they were trying to take it in a different direction. The Grand Old Opera took it in that direction of basically establishing, like, the headquarters of country western music and put Nashville on the map in that very legitimate way. It had three consecutive mayors killed it did, to accomplish this feat. That's right. All poisoned. Oh, no, that's not true at all. People who are in the granula that are listening right now, yes, I do feel like someone's looking over our shoulder. All right, so you know what? Let's take a break, and then we'll talk about kind of the change in venues over the years and how that represents the rise of the Grand Ole Opry in prominence right after this. All right, so you're throwing these how downs in an insurance building. It's going well. People are showing up. Mayors are dropping like flies trying to fight this thing to be big city, New York City in Tennessee. And so they said, we got to move. So they said, all right, first thing we'll do is we'll move. Into an actual auditorium space here in the same building that worked for a little while. Then in 34, they moved to the Hillsborough Theater community playhouse now called the Bell Court Theater. Started selling some ads, making a little dough, I think. Two years later, they outgrew that, moved to the Dixie Tabernacle, which was a religious hall, sort of an old timey sort of revival house. And they were there for a few years before they said, you know what? I don't like this wild audience coming in here on the drink and acting all crazy and dancing in the aisle, so get out of the Dixie Tabernacle. And they moved to the War Memorial Auditorium, which is when they started selling tickets for a quarter apiece in 1939 and started I think they even got a spot on NBC. They were in a movie. Things started happening in a big way. Yeah, it was a big deal in 39 when NBC started broadcasting them on the radio to a national audience, first of all. Now it's national, and that certainly legitimizes it. But the fact that one of the big broadcasters at the time thought it was an important enough show to pick it up and send it out to everybody else, that's huge. And this is less than 20 years after it's about 15 years after the Grand Ole Opry first went on the air. That's pretty impressive stuff. And then they moved on, I think, 1943, to the Ryman Theater, which is one of the places that the Grand Ole Opera is synonymous with. Right? Yeah. And I'm dying to go to a show. I'll make it there at some point and hopefully get that backstage tour from Joseph. But it's a legendary theater. It was there for 30 years, 2300 seats. It's the mother church of country music. And I think they raised the price to $0.80 there. We'll talk a little bit more about how the Ryman still figures in today. But that's when things really I mean, if you're in a 2300 seat venue filling it up a few times a week, that's your big time. At that point, I think the regular cast played Carnegie Hall in the 40s, went on tour in Europe, and they were starting to birth some real sort of superstars like Roy A. Cuff. Yeah. And Minnie Pearl came along in 1942. She's just as closely linked to that period of the Grand Ole Opera as Roy Auff is, for sure. I was reading about her. Did you know that whole thing was just a total put on? She was like a college educated woman from a well to do family. Yeah, it was a character. I mean, I saw for a hook, line and sinker. She was Larry the cable guy. Yes, exactly. She was. She was Larry the Cable guy prior to Larry the cable guy. But I was like, I know. She was in a commercial that I loved when I was a kid. I was like, I think it was spic and span. And I looked it up, and sure enough, was it. Thank you, internet. There's a 1982 spic and span commercial where she shows up and shows this lady that she can get her linoleum floors back to looking new with spic and span. It was great. That's funny what hangs in the memory, right? It really does that. And then my other association with mini pearl is that deb milkman song punk rock girl. They'll name their daughter mini pearl. All right. That's the other mini pearl thing. So there's a couple of ways you can get on stage and play at the grand ole opry. Most people are invited to play as a guest just on a random individual show, and that's a great honor. Then they have I mentioned the cast earlier. They have what's called members. They're the cast. They're these regular performers who are invited to become a member. I think publicly, once you're invited, an existing member will ask you to join them live on the air during a broadcast. Kind of is the big coming out party, I guess. And being a member, it's a really big deal. Like, they take a lot of time to add members. They only add maybe a couple of years there's, I think 65 current active members I'm sorry, 65 total, nine of which no longer perform or have officially retired. Okay. But they're still considered members of the office. I think you kind of have to pass away to officially be taken off, unless you run a foul, which we'll talk about that as well. I got you. Basically, to become a member of the grand ole OPA is an enormous honor. It's a really big deal. There are people who are just huge country superstars that are not members of the grand ole opry. They might be invited to come play a show or something like that, but they're not members of the grand. If you're a member of the grand ole opee, basically the impression I have is that you're considered the the guard of country music is one way to put it, in a really confusing way, yeah. I mean, there are a lot of things that go into it, and it sounds like they talk about you being successful and you being connected and you being committed. That's a big part of it, and we'll get to that in a second. But it sounds like there's not just sort of one set of criteria where, like, hey, if you have so many number one hits or so much music sales, it's like a bunch of stuff decided by people subjectively and objectively. Right. I think also, in some cases, it's a judgment that's passed on your style of country music. Like, they might not like it at the time, maybe think it sounds too poppy. Back in the day, they might have thought it sounded too rock and roll. There's a definite like you said, subjectivity to it as well as objectivity. But if you do get that invitation, you're expected to come play twelve shows a year, twelve Saturday nights, I should say a year to maintain your membership. And I think also you have to sell cookies in February to help raise funds. Is that true? No, it wouldn't surprise me. Man. That's the Girl Scout. No, it would not surprise me, because they do expect a lot of participation and not just on show nights. They expect you to go to a lot of shows. Yeah. They expect you just to kind of be there a lot, I think in the from its inception up until the they required 26 shows a year, which is a lot, man. That's like half your weekend shows, basically. Yeah. If you want to go tour, that's a significant amount of time that you have to dedicate. And they finally knocked it down to twelve, which is still pretty significant, especially if you don't live in Nashville. But that's much more manageable than 26. Yeah, they knocked it down to 20 and 1964, after they bought it, 26, and then I think in 2000, they finally knocked it down to twelve. Oh, really? It took that long? Yeah, it took a while. Wow. So over the years, the membership of the Grand Old Opera has been there's a lot of people that you would expect who were members, like, everybody from Roy Acoff, as we said earlier, and Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, patty Klein, hank Williams was for a while, Johnny Cash, barbara Mandrell, reba. Reba is actually playing. What's the date today? Do you know? Is it the 22nd? Yes. Reba is playing the Grand Olafri tonight. Isn't that cool? I love it. And listen to you going with just the one name. Oh, it's Reba we're talking about here. I watched her TV show pretty frequently, so I'm on a first name basis with her. I never saw it. Was it good? It actually was good. Yeah. She was a good actress for a non actor. Sorry? She was a good actor for a non actor. And she really I think I really came to appreciate Reeva first and Tremors. Oh, I love her in that. And we can say that because we were bad actors for non actors. Exactly. Yes. We know what we're talking about. Who else these days? Randy Travis, allison Krause alan Jackson brad Paisley, I think. Keith Urban. Darius Rucker and Blake Shelton. And most recently, the most recent addition is Lady A, which used to be Lady Annabella. That's right. Until the George Floyd murder and ensuing protests, they were like, no, we're going to drop Anabellum, which had to offer to them. But they went to Lady A, which they're probably like, this is cool, this sounds good. But then the Seattle blue singer Lady A, who's been performing for 30 years, is like, I'm not really okay with this, but I'm not sure that they're changing their name again anytime soon. That's right after you are invited to perform, now that you get your name on the wall. And I think it was Blake Shelton who actually started the new tradition of hanging his own plaque on the wall because he was so excited. Apparently he grabbed the plaque and went and did it himself during the ceremony, which is fairly adorable, I think. I don't know much about the guy, but I like that he's an excitable seller. Yeah, he's married to that lady. There you go. She's not a holoback girl, by the way. Was that one of their songs? Yeah, that was one of her songs. I don't know. D-A-N-A-N-A-S. Something like that. I have no rhythm. Well, you sang this episode. That's all I wanted. So should we take another break? Is the time yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk about just how this institution has evolved over the years. Okay, Chuck, so you mentioned how the institutions evolved over the years, and you can't really be like the ongoing voice or foundation or home of genre of music if the genre of music keeps evolving and you don't. Right. But there's like kind of this tension for the Grand Old Opera as well, because it is this institution. It can't and shouldn't just go chasing every trend. It needs to kind of wait and see if some change that comes along is real change, all while protecting the musical roots of this very proud tradition of country western music. It's not a really enviable position, and luckily they've had what seems to be a pretty good secession of members and management who have done a fairly good job of overseeing that task. But being an institution, it's also been kind of icebergian in its movements of change, especially when a major change comes along to music. Like when rock and roll came along. Yeah. You start out as folk music and Hodown music and bluegrass stuff, and then honky tonk stuff, and eventually the electric guitar is going to make an appearance. And they had a decision to make because drums and horns and electric guitars were all banned for many years. And I think electric guitar even was allowed before drums and horns were allowed. And all it takes is kind of one performer to break the mold for people to like it, which is key, and then for the management to say, maybe we need to start letting drum sets in here, because it was that flat base is kind of what kept that percussive time for that kind of music for many years. And drums were just not something they wanted in there. They were the tool of the devil. Yeah. So you can imagine when rock and roll comes in and people like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis come around, it's a big deal, and they didn't want any part of it. I think Elvis was invited to play once, but he certainly was never invited for membership. And then Jerry Lee Lewis, he got a little revenge and that he was not treated he felt like he was sort of shunned by Nashville and the country music establishment, even though he sort of did some country western, mostly kind of blazing rock and roll piano tunes. And so when he finally played there, I think in 1973, they said, all right, you can come and play. We're inviting you, but don't play any rock and roll. And he said, okay, just put me up on that stage. Got up on the stage and said, let me tell you something about Jerry Lee Lewis, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a rock and rolling country in western rhythm and blues singing M effort. Yeah. Mother Lover. Yes. And they did not take kindly to that. The only reason he wasn't banned is because the audience loved it, I think. Have you ever read the strange and mysterious Death of Mrs. Jerry Lee Lewis from Rolling Stone in 1984? No. You should read it. It's very eye opening and like one of those I think it was a disgraceland episode. I'm sure I heard the episodes on that. Yeah. But it's like kind of jarring if you're super famous. Just a different kind of treatment you get, even in a murder investigation. Yes. I'm glad that's all changed. Yeah. I know the 70s are crazy, but the fact that they didn't kick Jerry Lee Lewis out or allowed him to come back and play some more, I don't think he was never a member. Right. No, he was just invited to play. Okay. But he was invited back again was because he rocked that place that hard, apparently. But there have been other people who were kicked out for far less than that than what he did. So there is kind of this view from the outside of, like, what's the decision making process here in some of these cases? Some are just obvious. Other ones are like, I'm not sure about that one. Yeah, well, The Birds weren't kicked out, but in the 60s, with the hippie counterculture, obviously, that was going to be an issue with Nashville because they had sort of a no long hairs rule. But they did invite the Birds because they were that kind of new brand of country rock, and the crowd hated them. So I don't think they came back. But it wasn't like they were kicked out. They were more or less voted out by lack of popular demand. I'll bet that was not a comfortable show. No, I'm sure that didn't feel very good. But David Crosby had plenty of drugs to stab his. Right. So Hank Williams was very famously kicked out. He was a member of the Grand Old Opera, and he was kicked out in 1952, just a few months before he died. He was kicked out because he kept missing shows. He missed two shows in one weekend because he was off drunk. And they were like, we can't have this any longer. I think we should do a whole episode on him someday. Yeah, sure. I mean, anyone who kind of drinks themselves to get to death before they're 30 is intriguing, at the very least. Yeah. Very sad story. Yeah, great. And then Johnny Cash. He's very famous. He was kicked out of the opera as well. He met his wife, June Carter Cash, when they were performing, both of them separately at the Grand Old Oprie one night. And he became a member for years until 1965, when he went nuts and destroyed some lighting equipment because his mic wasn't working during a rehearsal, which is a little divaish. I think you could make the case. And they said, Bite your tongue. And they said that he could not be a member of the Opera anymore. And they kept him that way until, I think, the 80s, when he was finally invited back as a member. They said, okay, we think you've probably cooled down enough. Well, he got sober and I think saw the error of his ways and made a bunch of big changes for the better in his life. I suspect that it was when he covered that Nine Inch Nail song that the Grand Ol Opera was like, this is the bomb. You can come back. That's a great guy. He does some great covers on those albums. Yeah, very sad stuff. I think in 73, there was a woman named Skater Davis who had that really big hit, The End of the World. Great song. And she got a little political. Earlier in the day, she was at a shopping mall and saw some cops arresting some there were some church workers sort of witnessing and doing their thing at the shopping mall, which I guess you weren't allowed to do. So the cops either arrested them or at least took them out of there. And she got on stage that night and said, this is something I really should share. Didn't ask our manager if I could say this, but they've arrested 15 people just for telling people that Jesus loves them, and that really burdened my heart. She was a 14 year member and lost her membership and was banned. Reinstated a few years later. One year later. I was like, Why would they do that? It seems like the grandma offered to be way down with that message, but the cops were not happy and the police complained. And so they had to maintain that dim blue line. Got you. They had to back the blue. Back the blue. That's what it is. And then, Chuck, in 2001, there was a really, I would say, famous case when Nico case was banned. She wasn't a member of the opera, though, I don't believe. But she was an invited performer, right? Yeah. She played. Not in the opera house. So that the. Stepping stone is to be invited to play the party plaza outside. And she was playing in the sweltering heat and asked for some water. They couldn't get it to her. Asked if she could take a break. They wouldn't let her take a break. So she took her shirt off and finished the set in her bra. And they banned her for life. The only person to date was been banned for life because she showed a bra. Yeah. Which is I think she could totally turn this on them now. They would probably react pretty quickly to get her back in there and invite her. If you were like you weren't taking care of a woman's health on stage or performers health on stage by letting them hydrate themselves, then I think they would be like, oh, yeah, get her back out here quick. Yeah. And she said later in an interview that this is not a stun or anything. Like she was about to have heat stroke, and this is how she was coping with it, that she wasn't trying to be cool or anything. Or she said getting kicked out of the opera wasn't punk rock. It wasn't good or nothing good came of it. But she did say that they told her that she'd never play Nashville again. And she certainly has played Nashville, including at the Ryman a number of times, too, which is kind of a good comeback. Yeah. I actually just bought tickets to go see her in wine country in California in August at a winery. Very chic. Cannot wait. I can imagine. She's one of my favorites. I've seen her a bunch of times. It'll probably be a nice small show, huh? Yeah, it's like outdoors at a winery, sipping wine, listen to Nico Case. That's awesome. Really can't wait. But she has a reputation for sort of that outsider sort of punk rock attitude. And I think that's why they thought some people might have thought she was trying to just stick it to the grand. She's like, no, that's not the case. So we mentioned the Ryman, and obviously the Ryman is still around, but the Grand Ole Opie moved from the Ryman in this new venue, the Grand Old Opera House, that it's still in today. And it was a big deal when they moved because they've been in the Ryman for, like, 30 years. They started to hit, like, their peak of their popularity, which has plateaued really high since that time. And they had their last show in March of 1974. And I read this really great article from the New York Times, of all things, from 10 00 19 74 by Suzanne Freeman. It's called opriland is a dream to believe in. And it's about the Grand Old Opria and what it meant to her growing up as a kid in Pennsylvania and how she ended up going to this last show and what it was like. But as they moved to the opera lane. One of the reasons they moved was because of this amusement park. It was a radio show that started out playing Ho Downs in the headquarters of an insurance building in Nashville. Now had its own Disney designed theme park built in this huge 4400 person, cushioned seat, air conditioned venue to basically celebrate how far this thing had come. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Almost doubled in size from the Ryman. And they took a little bit of the tradition with them. They cut out the six foot circle there at center stage where the artist performs from the Ryman's floorboards, moved it over to the Grand Ole Oprye house, opened it big with Richard Nixon on March 1674, who performed. He actually played the dulcimer and the piano. Yeah. Saying happy birthday to his wife. Sure. The Ryman very sadly fell on hard times after that and hard to believe, but kind of like our fabulous Fox theater here in Atlanta was actually being talked about, being demolished in the they were like the Fox. A lot of fundraisers and a lot of people getting involved to save the Ryman. And now it's one of the oldest and still one of the most premier venues, which still hosts the grand. All operate from November to January. Every year they hold it at the Ryman. Oh, okay. That's pretty cool. It's called Opera at the Ramen, but it's still the grand old opera. Every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, February to October. It's called the Grand Old Opera House. And yeah, they don't miss those shows. Man, there was a flood. Cumberland river flooded in 2010. Yes. And it really damaged. Like, they had to do a lot of repairs. They even had to pull out that center circle, and that was really damaged, and they restored that, got it going again and kept that traditional live. So one of the things about the amusement park that I was looking up is that it was closed in 1997. And I was reading an article about it where they were saying that it was just a bad decision that this thing was closed because this amusement park was lucrative, basically, from the day it was opened to the day it was closed. It made money. It wasn't under water until that flood, but it was replaced in 97 by a mega mall. And even in 1997, people knew malls were starting to go away. So that was a really bad move to begin with. And then I found out the person who ran the company that owned the amusement park also at the same time decided that it would be best for their company to start cornering the market on online Christian music websites during the height of the.com bubble, just before it burst. And this was the same person that decided to shut down Opera Land USA and replace it with the mall. So it's not one of the great decisions of all time, but I thought that was super interesting that it was fine. It just was taken away from everybody. Luckily, they're still Dollywood, so don't panic. Yeah, I mean, Dolly partner is smart. She started playing the grandmother, and when she was ten years old, she saw the writing on the wall with Opriland and said, why don't I start my own country music amusement park? And I don't know if that helped drive copy of Land out of business or I guess you said they were still doing okay, but yeah, no, it was good. There was another article that basically said the Opera Land made more money than Dollywood. It's last month in existence. Wow. It was a bad move how old I was when we took that trip. That was us going to Opera Land, the Grandma opera house, doing that stuff. That was a Quintessential Bryant family vacation in the 19 seven S. That's awesome. Your dad was just C being with people the whole time. Totally c being with people. We probably camped because I know he didn't stay in a hotel because I've literally never stayed in a hotel with my family before. Wow. Yeah, dude, I didn't stay in a hotel except for, like, church trips till I was out of college. You were like tiny shampoo. It was weird. Like, they give you the stuff. That's funny, man. I love the Chuck Bryant saga. It's interesting and not too far from yours. I think it's something about growing up in that time period. We have some common DNA. Yes. I stayed in hotels, though. We had hotels. Well, the other street we were campers and we were also didn't have a ton of money and we're also kind of cheap. I got you all the things combined to enter the campground. What else you got? Anything else on grand old opera? I got nothing else. Just check out my WS and playlist hours on July 1 05:00 p.m. Central. Very nice. And hopefully this fattened up the WSM people to get you that backstage tour of the Ryman. Yeah, I mean, he even mentioned doing introductions at the opera house, and I was like, Dude, come on. Wow. You don't want to confuse and repulse the fine people of Nashville. Okay, do you have anything else about the opera? I don't have anything else about the opera. I would say go forth and listen to the Grand Olprie. It's still broadcast. This is how cutting edge it is. It's now on YouTube. But you can also go listen to WSM online every Saturday night. And they probably broadcast the Tuesday and Friday night ones, too. But definitely Saturday. And since I said definitely Saturday, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this nearly corrected, but not. Oh, I know this one. Hey, guys, I'm Sean. I'm a Chinese dude living in Milan, Italy, and I just listened to short stuff. Chinatown. Interesting and informative. And by the way, I picked this one because I had another listener right in who was not too kind about this correction, and it turns out I was right. That's why I'm reading it. Probably because of the different pronunciations in Mandarin Chinese, which I speak. Cantonese, Chinese and English. I thought Chuck was wrong when you mentioned the first formerly recognized Chinatown was called Little Canton at the time, and then today Canton is known as Little Gong Zhao. Okay. Is it Gong Chao? Is that it? I know I said it correctly the first time, but I looked it up recently, so just whatever I said the first time, I'm pretty sure it was Gong Jon. Oh, man. I hope it's Gong Joe. But go ahead. What matters is that you got it the first time. Yeah, screwed it up the second time. That's what Billy Joel always says. Get it right the first time. That's the main thing, okay? He's somebody to model, to follow. Base your life on, man. Why are you backing on Billy Joel? Hey, I know the Music Man. Piano man. I think I should have stopped talking about five minutes ago. Okay? So I immediately started writing a ha ha, you're wrong email to point out that truck was wrong. But after finishing right before clicking send, I had a gut feeling I should do a little bit more research. Luckily, I did. It turned out the joke is actually on me. I was wrong, and Chuck was right all along. So thank you much. Sir Chuck and Sir Josh. You two American gentlemen taught a Chinese boy lesson about his own country. By the way, Josh, you pronounced it super accurately. This is how you pronounce it. Guangzhou. Guangzhou. Good job. Thank you. One last secret before finishing the email. I don't like wearing headsets nor earphones. I always play podcasts on my Google home when I'm cooking, eating, doing dishes. Sometimes it's so noisy when I'm cooking and doing dishes that I can't hear it very well. So your show is one of only two podcasts that I actually listen to with headsets that I don't like, so I don't want to miss anything. High praise. The other one is crime junkie. Okay. High praise indeed. Yeah, we'll take it. And that is sincerely your big, if not biggest, Chinese fan, sean. Sean. Thank you very much, Sean. I appreciate that. And I think it's pretty sweet that you wrote in to not correct us, especially when somebody was mean to Chuck. Gosh, I don't know how that one slipped past me. Yeah, you know, well, if you want to get in touch with us and be nice, even if it is a correction, you don't have to be a jerk about it. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcast. Visit iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Health Care Systems Around the World | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/health-care-systems-around-the-world | In this final installment of their 4-part suite on health care, Josh, Chuck and Molly take a tour of health care systems around the world, from France to Switzerland. | In this final installment of their 4-part suite on health care, Josh, Chuck and Molly take a tour of health care systems around the world, from France to Switzerland. | Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:31:10 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=17, tm_min=31, tm_sec=10, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=279, tm_isdst=0) | 30763973 | 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. 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Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, it's Charles W. Chuck Bryant sliding into my seat. And with us is Dr. Molly Edmunds, M. D, esquire. PhD. LLC. Right. Yes. Did I get all of those? Molly. I think so. This is the final installment of our four part health care reform suite. We've reached the end of the final countdown. Can I just say, speaking for Molly and I thank God. Yeah. You're not speaking for me, too. I think I like this. Chuck. Are you ready to move on? Yes. Okay. Okay. So we've talked about healthcare reform. First of all, Molly, what was that statistic that you mentioned a long time ago in a podcast far, Far Away, where you said only one in eight Americans think that the healthcare system in the US. Needs reforming? Eight out of ten people are happy with their health care as it is. All right? So what we've kind of deconstructed is why healthcare reform is even on the table. We've talked about the uninsured, right? Yes. We've talked about the fact that America has really terrible, like, mortality rates or disease rates, chronic disease rates, that kind of stuff. So that in and of itself, makes the healthcare system worth fixing. Right. But one thing that hasn't been brought up and I haven't seen it brought up in coverage too much, is the fact that our health care system is actually keeping us from competing as well as we could on a global scale. Right. Okay. Which is why we would compare ourselves to other healthcare systems around the world. The thing is that no one in this country wants to become like any other system in the world. But I don't know if you could find anyone who lives in another country who wants to trade place with an American when it comes to their health care. Let's talk about competitiveness in the healthcare reform system via Dr. Michael Rosen, who you guys might remember, right? Yes. What is he? Dr. Roisin is the chief wellness officer of the Cleveland clinic and my hero and the co author of you the owner's manual book series. Right. With Dr. Oz. Here is what he had to say. Because health care is an expensive thing in America. And that we need reform for the economy to function. For jobs to be created. And for us to be competitive with Europe and Asia for jobs. And for us to not worry about a falling standard of living and for people to not worry. Not have the stress of worrying about will there be health care for me when I need it that I can afford? Okay, so if we're going to keep up with Europe and Asia like Dr. Rosen suggested we could by reforming our healthcare system, maybe we should kind of peek in on what other countries around the world are doing, whether for better or for worse. Molly, you wrote this article, ten healthcare systems around the world, right? Which is up on the site. Yeah, it's sort of, I think, a virtual hot air balloon ride through the world of health care. It was it was a delightful one, too. It was beautiful. I like it. So many bloody bandages. So was there any particular health care system that struck you as arguably better than the US. Or better than all the other ones? Actually, we let's talk about France. France transition. I got you. Yeah, I do. Now. We mean yes, she means touch. Okay. France, they apparently have the best healthcare in the world. So it says world health organization, right? Yeah. Hard to argue with who? All right, moving on then. What's that? No, that's actually, I think just because it's become a relic in the healthcare reform debate in the United States, that who 2000 report of 191 countries healthcare system rankings is controversial. I think we should say that. Yeah, we got that. Everybody's like, oh, well, who said that? So, okay, it must be true. But again, you can pick apart anything. So let's just stick to the fact that France was rated number one in the year 2000 by the world health organization's rankings of 191 countries. Right? Right. Okay. So all French citizens will put in money based on their income. You can't opt out of it, and then in return, they'll get about 70% of their healthcare paid for by the government. You can get same day appointments. You can choose any healthcare provider you'd like. But okay, so you said 70%. How do they pay for the other 30%? They all have supplemental insurance with either a public or a private plan. Got you. And that is more similar to how we have in the US. Where that supplemental plan might come from your employer. So there are a couple of problems with the French system, and it's not flawless. There is no flawless plan. We should go ahead and say that you lie. I saw one guy that said it like this. He said it's sort of like Medicare for everybody with the French system. Yeah, I got you. And he was a pro. So they make up the other 30% with private plans. Right. Private or public. And that's the problem, is if you have money, then you would probably opt for a private plan. So some critics would say that the French plan is too divided by class. People who want really good care and can pay for it get it. Those who can't, don't. Right. But they do that in England, too. You can also get your private insurance, right? Yeah. And we should say for a kind of a comprehensive rundown of England. Molly gave one in the third podcast. Right. So we're not going to talk about those. We're going to skip my land at night. Okay. I mean, it was a nice stop on the balloon ride, but here's how France got its awesome rating, okay? It spends 3300 per person on health care, while the US. Spends over twice that. So already they're using money pretty well. And if you get really sick, like you have just the worst form of cancer in the world, everything is paid for. Yeah, that's what I saw. Your article and some other stuff I read is that the sicker you are in France, the better off you've got it. Or the easier and quicker your claims will get paid as well. Exactly. But it's not just the really sick who benefit, because I think what's cool about France is they have the lowest rate of deaths that could have been prevented. Right. The US has the highest number of these preventable deaths, that they say. Or if you had had an early diagnosis, or if you'd had an early treatment or condition. Right. I did see also in another article I read that one of the criticisms is that there's not great coordination between the GPS and the specialists in France. But if you're talking about problems, that's not the worst thing in the world. That's better than being denied for a pre existing condition, I think, wouldn't you say? I would say, yeah, you guys don't have France because I'd like to get back in the balloon. Okay. And just set on over a few kilometers, a few clicks, if you will, to Germany, which is out of the healthcare systems. In the article. This one is my favorite, and I'm not embarrassed to say that one of the reasons why is because of the ample access to spa days. True. And even the public health insurance plans. Right, right. And there's 200 of them. Correct. And they're employer and employee funded, right? Yeah. And you know, where that comes from is actually in 1883, old Auto von Bismarck was like, I have the spikiest old auto, he was like, I want some health care like they had back in the days of guilds. And so he is basing all of this off the fact that when you were in your medieval guild for being the podcaster's guild, the Cloth Makers Guild, it was Germany. That was how they named them. Okay? They all pay for each other sick time. They all got together. And it would be like us saying podcasters, let's have to pay for Josh's care when he has a stroke from smoking. We can't even get podcasters to unite under this roof. I doubt if we can get it all around the world. You never know you're killed follow the Bismarck model. This is a pretty old system and it's been around for hundreds of years, but it's because they're always willing to keep performing it. Yes, I noticed in another article from Berlin University, actually, it was kind of a rundown of the German health care system. All these different years kept coming up, like they try new things, like every year or two. And it seems like that's probably what you'd have to do. I think the impression that a lot of people in America have, whether supporters or opponents, is that this healthcare reform is going to happen and that's it. Yeah. And I think you make a very valid point that it has to keep evolving and changing as problems come up or as things prove very effective, you put more money into this or take funding away from that. Right. So one of their cool new initiatives are these disease management programs where if the patient gets more counseling from a doctor. Like if a nurse calls them up at home to make sure they're taking their meds. Sticking with their diet. These people have much lower rates of hospital emissions and much lower rates of deaths from people than people who have the exact same conditions who aren't getting that counseling. So I think that's a pretty cool way to approach disease. I don't know, I could see like half the people in the United States thinking it's really nice to get a call and half the people will be like, stay out of my business, nurse. Right. How did you get this number? Right. Well, and it's not like the nurses and the doctors love the system. I would say that you read a lot of articles about how the German doctors feel underpaid. They're the ones who protest the most often, right. German doctors, it says they're paid about two thirds what American doctors make, but they pay less for malpractice insurance and some of them go to school for free med school. And you know, one cool fact that I did not manage to squeeze into this article. But those plans, those 200 plans that we were talking about, those plans get incentives if they get sicker people on their rosters. So instead of a system like in the US, people where we tend to deny people they get benefits for doing that in Germany, that's pretty cool. I also saw where in Germany, you can go straight to a specialist. Like, you don't have to go through your gatekeeper GP, which is kind of cool. Also, there is a private insurance market for people who make over \u20ac48,000 a year. Oh, really? It's not compulsory for those people. Actually, long term health insurance is compulsory for everybody, but basic health care coverage isn't compulsory for people who make over \u20ac48,000 a year. So there's another, I guess, accompanying private insurance market, but that's still regulated by the government. You can't deny for pre existing conditions, and apparently your rates are assessed when you enter that private system based on your risk. But that's it. There's like a one time risk assessment, and that sticks with you for the rest of your life. 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. 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 halolistic at chewy. Amazonandhalopets.com. I missed the deutschmark, too. I'm just going to go and say that. You missed the deutsch, mark. Yeah, I missed the deutsch, mark. What an odd thing. I missed the frank. I miss this whole Euro business. Yeah, but I hate to change money from country to country. I thought it was kind of thrilling. But then you're left with your leftover coin. Yes, but then you take them and you give them to your cousins and nephews and nieces. I'll have to give her a chuck. I actually haven't been to Europe since they introduced Europe, so I'd probably love it. Speaking of redistributing money oh, I know where we're going next. This is going to be kind of a long balloon ride. So let's fast forward to when we land in Cuba. So, Cuba, let's talk. They have health care for well, you get the skinny because I just read some articles where they say it wasn't so great. Well, the famous example, I think Cuba, if you're a Michael Moore fan is when he took people to Cuba so they could get better care than they could in the United States and meant to embarrass the US. Healthcare system. There are obviously a lot of critics, as with anything Michael Moore does, of how it was portrayed in the movie. And some people say that there is sort of one level for the people they're going to impress and then one level for everyone else. Right. But I do think that even those people who are in maybe that lower echelon get an immense amount of preventative care. That's pretty cool. Well, it sounds like they do a pretty good job with preventative care because they kind of have to. But you guys are talking about Germany and doctors or nurses calling you up, going, how are you doing? If you had a problem with that, you probably really have a problem with Cuba, because any person is subject to a surprise visit from their physician once a year. Yeah. They just are going to stop you show up at your door, see what you're doing, what are you eating now? Like, while we're here, what's under your mattress and what's in your closet? Well, see, that's part of the problem is that because they have good preventive care, because they may not have, let's say, a fridge or access to really fatty food or a really great car. Okay. So it's almost like what we would see is the deficiencies in Cuba have created a culture whereby they walk a lot, they don't have fast food. It's coming. They say that that might be sort of the next wave of obesity as Cuba is getting some fast food. Really? Yeah. Well, as a result, Cuba, I think they spend $260 a person on healthcare a year. A year? Yeah. All right. Because they're really good with preventative wellness. Right. But I do want to point out sometimes I believe you brought it up, Josh, there's the thought that if we spend a lot less on health care, we'll really skimp on our innovation. But Cuba, surprisingly, is known for its innovation and medical breakthroughs. I have heard that, yes, the medical sector is their 6th largest in exports, obviously not to the US. But they really got put themselves on the map with some vaccines they've come up with for meningitis B and then hepatitis B. And so they're really making a name for themselves in terms of their pharmaceutical and mechanical medical equipment exports. Chuck, you referenced some articles that you'd read that criticized the Cuban healthcare system. I think this is one of those systems where it all depends on what side you're reading. Definitely. Because I read a bunch of articles that said and a lot of these people interviewed Cuban refugees that were now living in America, and they said things like, there's two healthcare systems, one for health tourists, which apparently Michael Moore is a health tourist. And that's a big deal. It's got a camera because you're following yourself around. Right. You're going to get treated differently. But health tourism is a big deal there, and you can go and pay cash. And so there's one system for Communist Party officials and health tourists, and then one for the rest of Cuba. And they maintain that if you're the rest of Cuba, you can't get things like aspirin. You can't get antibiotics, unless it's on the black market, and you don't have access to a lot of, like, basic medical care. You have to bring your own sheep to the hospital, stuff like that. Well, I think there's also a concern that they get these really great statistics by fudging their numbers a little bit. Like, Cuba has really good rates of infant mortality. I thought that was interesting. But in the United States, if a baby is born and only lives a very short period of time, we count that. Whereas if it was alive for the same period of time in Cuba, they may count that as dead on arrival. Right. And didn't you also say that some doctors allegedly will suggest abortions in the womb? No, the government suggests they abort a fetus that might be developmentally disabled or something. Right, right. There's just concern that they have great numbers, but because we don't really know much about what goes on inside the country, we don't exactly know how to get them. Right. So it was really nice to visit. It can be hard to separate your opinions on the Cuban held system from your opinions just on Cuba, the country. Right. So I don't want to oversell Cuba. Okay. I'm glad I got to visit the balloon. I don't have any opinions on Cuba other than what I've heard from a couple of friends have traveled there and said it was really awesome and the people were lovely, and the country is beautiful. When politics aside, the country itself, they love it's. Illegal. It's illegal, actually. Not true. So you guys, let's head on over to China. Okay. Well, here we are in China, and this place is kind of screwed up. I don't know if I'd want to get sick here. It used to be pretty good, from what I understand in your article, that there was a cooperative healthcare system. Right. Right. And they dismantled it, and that just didn't go very well because no one knew where to send the bill, and the places they were sending the bill didn't pay up. Yeah. And the huge effect of this was that there's a giant divide between healthcare in cities and healthcare in the rural areas. Yeah. One of the, I guess, ideas for Chinese healthcare reform was that all farmers pay a dollar for health care in a year, and they bulked at that as being too expensive. Are the rural Chinese that poor really not really taken seriously over there or what? Well, I think they're also saying that, yes, the dollar was high, especially for the care they got. I was reading one article, I believe it was in the New York Times, about how you go to some of these rural clinics and stray dogs are walking the halls of the clinic, but it's not worth a dollar a year, stray dogs in your hospital. So they bring dogs into American hospitals to perk up cancer patients? Nice, healthy ones, not ones that look like they're going to die. You don't know whether they're stray or not? You're talking about the like they have different names at every hospital, I guess, but Love on Fore Pause? Sure. That kind of program. Sure. Stray dogs love to not in a hospital. Well, okay, so China, in addition to its riding the hospitals of stray dogs initiatives, they're planning on building 700,000, I guess probably pet unfriendly clinics in rural areas. Well, I mean, maybe they'll bring the nice dogs into those clinics, but yes, they are in the middle of funneling just a ton of money into their health care system in the hopes that they can eradicate this divide between ten years or so. 1011 years? Yes. But by 2011, 90% of the population will have health insurance. They're hoping 124,000,000,000 on it. Yes. \u00a5850,000,000,000 yuan. Yuan. I don't really know how to pronounce anything in China. Yuan. Yuan. That didn't sound like very much money to me. It doesn't. To build 700,000 clinics. Yeah. Well, the other problem is, Molly points out that 40% of that money is supposed to come from the central government, which means provincial governments are going to have to make up the rest. And right now, no one knows if they're going to pay up. Right. Sort of the problem they had when they first dismantled them. No one wants to pay for health care. That's true everywhere. But you know one place where they do pay? Are we going back to our blue now? Sure. Do we have enough gas? It's run on unicorn tears. Excellent. Okay. Do we have enough unicorn tears to make it to Taiwan, you think? Oh, I hope so, because Taiwan's got a pretty nifty system. I don't think it would work in this country. But, dude, the smart card. The smart card sounds so convenient. Although kind of nerve wracking for someone like me who has the tendency to lose things. Wait, you guys. We get to Taiwan. Okay, here we are. I wanted to brief check before we got there. There's no chatting along the way. Let's just all sit silently in our balloon. All right, so we're in Taiwan now. This is lovely. So back to the smart card. Yeah. Before we were exactly. Okay, so you get a smart card, it's got your entire medical history on it, right. And you can just show up to a doctor, give them your card, and they can pull up your entire medical history. And that is how they will also build a government. So it's like your health care credit card that you never have to see the bill for, and it's your entire medical history now. Of course, there are going to be people who say that's way too much information for any government to have about a person. I like the idea of the smart card. I wouldn't mind all my medical information being on one card, because I'm a little distressed every time I go to the doctor and I see them pull out a paper file in the midst of thousands of paper files. It seems very archaic to me. Well, I've moved quite a bit, and I just hate having to kind of start over every time with every doctor. What do you do? I actually haven't changed doctors much. Do you get them to send everything to your new doctor? I think you're supposed to. Really? Maybe I shouldn't reveal how poorly I manage my health. Switch over. I am a health writer. The smart card sounds worried. Well, yeah. Medical billing medical information is a huge problem in the US. Just in administrative costs and time. Yeah. And that's the thing that was cool about what Taiwan did, is that in expanding coverage to cover so much more of the population, they cut all those costs because now they have no administrative costs, essentially. Right. But the fact of the matter is that now taiwan doesn't spend enough on health care to cover their costs. Right. And the Taiwanese have gotten used to these really low health care costs, and people are afraid to raise the taxes. Age old story. Yeah. I saw where the average family premium is $650 a year in Taiwan. Yeah. I can't even get car insurance for that. So are we done with Taiwan? Is that smart car? This place is really clean, by the way. Have you noticed? I have the food's. Good. Yeah. Are we done? Let's go to Russia. Okay, guys, thank you again for not speaking during the balloon ride. So we're in Russia now, and unfortunately, this is not a good place to get sick, so no one drink the water here. Okay? Okay. Right. But you can't drink the water in Russia. No giddya. Okay. Really? Wow. I didn't know that. You think they would have had that worked out. No, it's not in a place that has one of the four worst health care systems in the world. Right. Is there another one we may have heard of that's in that list? According to foreign policy, the United States also makes that list. It was a foreign policy article, so it's not stellar. The World Health Organization that we mentioned earlier ranks them 130 out of 191. Wow. And they've got a fair bit of money. It seems like they should be doing a little bit better. Right. And this is another system, sort of like China, where they dismantled their old Soviet system, which was pretty well admired around the world, and tried to create a public private combo system. And basically this system works well in theory, but sucks in practice. Yeah. Financially, it doesn't work out. Right. I don't even think of financially, personally. Right. You got to show up with a pretty hefty bribe to see a doctor in Russia. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. In a donation on paper or spoken, 90% of the population is covered, but the government doesn't really pay up. And so to keep operating, hospitals and doctors go, I need you to give me a donation, buddy, or else I'm not going to quote you. It's extortion for health care, which is nuts. Can we just be careful? Because I don't want Vladimir Putin to listen to this podcast and come wrestle with Tiger. Yeah, he'll take his shirt off, listen to the word extortion. So let's make our stop here brief. I think what's good to know is that the World Health Organization, love It or Leave It, recommends that countries spend about 5% of their total spending on health care and Russia spends 3.4%. Okay, I don't want to alarm anybody. Some guys just pointed at us and they're starting to come over, so we should probably get back to our balloon. Okay. Peck aruba. Yeah. We had a lot of Canadians right in, so what about us? We have a lot of Canadian fans. And so we're going to talk about you all now up there in the Great White North. Okay, I'm going to let that one slide. We're here in Canada now. Thank you, Molly, for not speaking during the journey. I couldn't be quelled any longer. I was running a personal ad for a mounting so let's see if we can find you one here. But first, let's talk about the health care system in Canada. This is the one that the US is often compared to if we go to socialize management or something. Canada. I always feel bad for them because they serve as like some sort of cautionary tale for what we don't want. But from what I hear, it's not nearly as bad as we've been told by some. I've heard that too. Right. People are trying to treat Canada like the worst case scenario. And I think that this is due to a lot of commercials. And from what I can understand, I mean, I haven't talked to these people myself, but it seems like people are very good about going and finding the people who did have just staggering long wait times and put them in the commercial. Right. I have some Canadian friends who I keep up with on the blog and they've written me before and said, it's not perfect over here. Wait times aren't nearly as bad as you're depicted, though, and we'll take it any day. And I think wait times were really bad back in the early ninety s. And then in the 90s, canada invested billions of dollars to improve the statistics. And so now if you. Want to head over to a clinic before you go over, you type in which clinic you want, and they will tell you what the wait time is. Oh, cool. So, I mean, that sort of transparency, I think, is pretty hard to find in this country. And then the wait times are not for, like, basic care, right. Usually for like special elective surgeries and stuff. The waits are longest for knee replacement sort of elective things. And I think that one of the ways that Canada does keep their costs low in comparison to the United States is they don't buy every single new fangled machine that comes out in the United States. We have a tendency to buy every single cool gadget. It's pretty buy it. And that really can make our health care system seem like it's working really well. It really does provide us a great level of care, but it doesn't mean that the old machines were necessarily in bad shape. Right. But there appears to be something of an equally American sentiment among Canadians that they do like they're pretty machines, like an MRI and New York MRI, because you mentioned in the article there's, I guess, a subculture of rogue doctors who offer unlicensed illegal medicine for people who don't want to wait and can pay up, I assume. Right, right. I mean, I think that's sort of the message you can take from any of these systems, is the people who have money will use it. We should also say that if you're going to compare country with socialized medicine to the fear of what the US might become, you shouldn't point to Canada. You'd be much better off pointing to Britain. Because while Canada does have a single payer government system of health care, the hospitals and doctors are private entities. They are private enterprises. Right. In Britain, they run the hospitals and pay their doctors. But in Canada, it's just single payer. And let's talk about what that means, because single payer seems like such a dirty word to people. Here's how Canada pays for their health insurance. The citizens fund their health care by paying income taxes and sales taxes, and then all that money is sort of funneled through to the provinces and the territory. So it's not even like Canada as an entity is pushing out the money. Got you. Are you clear on that, Josh? I am. Do you want a fun fact? Yeah, please. Did you know the open heart surgery costs 30% less in Toronto than it does in Chicago? Really? Yes. That's crazy. Also, prescription drugs tend to cost a lot less in Canada, from what I understand from Roisin during that phone interview, because Canada promotes far more competition among pharmaceutical companies. The same pharmaceutical companies that might be based in the US are doing business here in the US. Or based on why their costs are lower for pharmaceuticals. Right. And also doctors and nurses make a fair bit less so I don't know if doctors want to go to Canadian system. Okay, kids, one last stop on our whistle stop tour. Making a good one. I feel like doing some skiing. Let's go to Switzerland. Oh, good, chocolate. Okay, here we are in our last stop. We're in Switzerland. It's beautiful. You see the red crosses everywhere, the Alps and the knives, smiling red apple cheek faces. I'm going to stay neutral and not give you an opinion on this. That's all. That one coming. Their health care system is really expensive. Really expensive. And yet Americans who are looking for alternatives abroad seem to love it. Both democrats are Republicans. It's a pretty good system, but it's just expensive, right? Well, they have free choice, but they pay for that. They do. What do you mean by that? Well, I will tell you. Okay. You know how everyone here is all freaked out about a public health option? It's all private plans in Switzerland. It's not tied to your employment at all. You just can go into a marketplace, let's say, for lack of better word, pick your private plan and make it as fancy as you want. And it can cost a lot. It can just be $750 per family per month. Not free. Yes. So generally, Republicans like the choice. You can have a private plan, and Democrats like the fact that even though that's expensive, everyone's covered to those who can't afford it to see places in government. But I don't know if you want to go from being most expensive healthcare system in the world. The second most expensive healthcare system in the world. One of the things I found significant in your article about Switzerland was that health care providers aren't allowed to make a profit off of basic health care. They make their profit off of, like, elective surgeries, optometry, things like that. Alternative medicine. Just the right to get a private room in a hospital that's a little bit extra. Right? Everyone's private plan is essentially the same, and everyone pays the same. That's the key thing. It's not tied to how much money you make. Right. Regressive, not progressive. Wow. I got a little effect for you, too. One of the largest insurance companies in Switzerland pays out claims in five business days. That's awesome. And people love it. They said, I'm sure. Clearly, you guys want to go back to the studio. You get your chocolate. I kind of like it here in Switzerland. I'm going to go back to the studio and wrap this up. All right, good knowing you. 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 want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid. Your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity. Support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. So I'm here with Josh. I couldn't let him go alone. Thanks, Chuck. We left Molly and her mountie in Switzerland. These two are a handsome couple. They are. They're going to live out the rest of their days in the Alps. She promises. Postcards. Yes. That's it in chocolate. Yes. We have finished the fourth installment of our podcast suite, which means it's the end of our special healthcare podcast suite. I have hot air balloon lag. I know you do, buddy. We'll get you to bed with some warm milk and a beer in a second. Chuck, let's wrap this puppy up, okay? All right. And Molly? She's really here. She is. She's sitting right there. I should stay dreaming about the mountain here. I like the life you pulled for us. Yes. Thank you very much, Molly, for joining us. I don't know that we could have done this without you. It wouldn't have been the same. Definitely. Agreed. No problem. Thanks for having me, guys. And thank you, of course, dr. Rosen, who gave us like an hour of his time quite generously and for free. Sure. Like, he didn't have life to say, I was expecting him to be like a Russian physician. Be like, I demand a donation. But no, he didn't. And thank you for tuning in to listen to our four part series on healthcare reform. It's an important issue, which is why we tackled it. Hopefully, you learned something from it, had some of your questions answered. If you have more questions, you can visit Molly's wonderful articles on the site@housestepworks.com. You can just type healthcare reform in the handy search bar. And if you have any questions that you want to direct toward me and Chuck, you can send those in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks. 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. 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." | ||
How Pinball Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pinball-works | Pinball was actually illegal until the 1970s in NY and other cities, hidden in the backs of pornography shops. The game was finally legalized, thanks to a Babe Ruth-style shot by the best player in the world. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck. | Pinball was actually illegal until the 1970s in NY and other cities, hidden in the backs of pornography shops. The game was finally legalized, thanks to a Babe Ruth-style shot by the best player in the world. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck. | Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:54:07 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=54, tm_sec=7, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=245, tm_isdst=0) | 42809538 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know. The podcast. What was that? A new desk. Oh, yeah. I thought you're making pinball pings and no bells and whistles. No. Sounds like Vegas. Vegas is like one big pinball machine. It is now that you walk through those casinos. Yeah. You just made my neck muscles tight now, man. I hate Vegas. I like Vegas. Yeah. I don't want to live in Vegas or go to Vegas every weekend or anything like that, but going to Vegas once a year, once every couple of years, that's fine with me. Yeah, not for me. I mean, I've been a bunch and I'm done. Oh, you're done with Vegas? That's what you're saying? I don't see any reason to go back. I guarantee somebody you want to see will have some sort of residency out there and you will be back in Vegas when I'm like 60. Sure, yeah. Like Pavement will have a residency in Valleys. That's exactly, I think, what's going to happen. Well, then you'll find me living in Vegas, my friend. There you go. Yeah. See, I got you back on the Vegas train. But that sounds yes, it's like a million pinball machines that take your money faster than pinball machines. Yeah. And that was an early worry about pinball, actually, as we will soon see, because I say, Chuck, let's dive right into the history of pinballs. So pinball machines actually find their lineage. Back in the 19th century, there were things called, I want to say baguette machines, but that's not correct. The bagatelle table. Yes, the bagitel table. Thank you. They were basically across between pool and pinball and use a pool cue and everything, and they sucked and nobody liked them. I think it looks pretty cool. Does it? It looks old timing and boring to me. Well, I mean, if you're used to modern gaming, I thought it looked kind of neat. So the bagatelle table was there. It was in place. In the 1830s, a guy named Monte Redgrove came along like, you can't not say that guy's name like that. No, he came along and said, you know what? People just invented a spring. How did you say his name again? Montague Redgreen. Like he's on LaDonna. Yeah. And he came along and said, somebody invented a spring recently. I'm going to add it to this bag of table, make it less sucky. And then all of a sudden we have the what did he call it? The ball shooter. Which makes sense. Sure. That's what you'd call it. And now we had the first introduced mechanism of pinballs. Things are starting to take shape a little bit here. Yeah. But you didn't stick a coin in the game. What you would do is kind of like pool tables these days at a bar. You would go up to the keeper of the balls and say, here's some money, give me my balls and let me go play the game on the bagatail table. Yeah. And then your guy would be eight. He would go, you know it sucks, don't you? And you would say, yes, but it's the 1830. Yeah. And if I play really well, then I can win free drinks and cigarettes. I know. And they said, exactly. Yeah. Can you see little twelve year olds winning cigarettes and then going back to play more baggagel. Sure. So this is the way it went for many decades. People were miserable until the 1930s. And there is this enormous explosion of innovation and pool table re in the 30s. Almost everything that you think of when you think of a pool. I've been saying pool table just for the last minute. Why didn't you correct me? I thought you were talking about pool table. No, I'm talking about Pinball. Anyway, in the 30s there was a huge explosion in pinballery. Pinballery? Yeah. And everything that you think of when you think of a pinball machine, almost all of it came about in the coin operation. Sure. The back glass, the thing that has like Kiss or Hugh Hefner on it or something like that, stands up off of the playing field. The table electric. Well, I guess an electric current running through it legs. Sure. The tilt mechanism. Bumpers sounds scorekeeping. And then bumpers, of course. I think I said bumpers, did I not? I don't know, maybe. But bumpers. And then most of all, most importantly, Chuck, was the 30s led to a huge surge in popularity because you had the Great Depression and pinballs were cheap entertainment that were widely available. You noticed one thing we didn't say, though, and all that innovation. What? Flippers. Because still, up until 1947, you just bumped the thing to make the ball move. Yeah. There were no flippers, which seems very counterintuitive to pinball. And the flippers really changed things. They fundamentally changed pinball. Heck, not just in the way you play, but in pinball as a game. Because before flippers it was a game of chance. It was the same thing as playing like high low, basically. Yeah. Like you had no way, really, of manipulating the movement of the ball. Like shake the machine. You could without tilting. I mean, that's what you did. Yeah. That was how you did it. Even still, the amount of skill it took was minute compared to the skill that could be used once flippers were introduced. Pinball wizardry. And it became a game of skill. Yeah. But before that, like I said, things were popular. Get this, in the early 30s, there were 145 companies making pinball machines. And the field became so competitive and ruthless that by the mid 30s, like five years later, there were 14. Yeah. And most of those were based in Chicago, which became sort of the pinball capital of the world. And I've never been there, but I bet you anything chicago still has a lot more pinball machines than elsewhere. You know, I was trying to think of this. Researching this made me want to go play pinball. Like researching sushi. Maybe we want to go eat sushi. And I was thinking, like, I have no idea where to go to play pinball. And we'll go to my brother's house. Does he have one? He's got three. Oh, I love your brother, but more now. Dude, he built a whole game room. Of course, because that's what my brother does. What does he have? He has a Tomcat F 14, which is the ripoff of Top Gun. I've seen that one. He said there's a lot of ripoff games for a while, of movies and actual movie tie in games. Yeah, he has Black Hole, but not the movie. Just another ripoff game. Okay, I would love that one, too. And those are both kind of old school. And then he has a Jurassic Park, which is newer, I think. Doesn't it have like a trex that comes down like each your ball? I can't remember. I feel like all three of them, but yeah, and he also kept this. He took an old video game, like, stand up video game console and removed all the guts, got a computer screen and computer and hooked it up in there to where you can play all the old school games, those programs they have now. And change the screen vertically so it just looks like a regular arcade game. And you can go up and play Frogger and Space Invaders scott, fight Me Over, please. And it's all free. That's so awesome, man. He's like Ricky Schroeder and Silver Spoons or something. But growing up. Yeah, pretty much. And I think the reason why I don't play more pinball over there is because we're always playing Ping pong. Yeah, that's a game of skill. And I love ping pong, but I'll try and get into pinball game. I want to play some pinball so bad. Let's just go out to roswell, dude. Okay, do it right now. And if I collected pinball machines, it would definitely be mid seventy s to mid eighty s for me, I would think the heyday, yeah, all the bells and whistles and all that, the new Fangled bells and whistles, they're fine. That's cool. But I, like, not so old that it's like electromechanical, but not so new that it's like nothing but, like, plasma screens and stuff like that. Well, mine in the middle. Sure. I'm the same way. My favorite game of all time, Pinball Wise favorite game ever, Galaga. But favorite game pinball Wise was Adams Family. Pinball and then I learned in this article that is the top selling game of all time from 1991. Yeah, I think it was either Bally or Williams put that one out and they sold more than 20,000 units of it. Dude, it's awesome. And it didn't surprise me. I have no affinity for the Adams family, but it's the best pinball game I've ever played. And when I saw it was number one, I was like, well, of course it is, because it's the best one. You don't like the Adams family? No. I mean, I like it fine, but I didn't play it because of the movie I Got You. I played it because it was an awesome pinball game. I Got You. And they had one at the mall. Not the mall, the bowling alley near me in Athens. Bowling alley. That's where I could probably go find a pinball machine. Yes, I could. Or maybe not. Sadly, I'm starting a quest. All right. So, Tony, let's go to my brother's house because we can have a Scotch. Okay. So, anyway, 1947 is when they finally invented the flipper. Dee Gottlib company, introduced a game called Humpty Dumpty. And that was where, what most people say the first modern game came about. Right. It took the lower flippers, all the innovations of the thirtys, and added flippers, and boom, you got pinball. Not pool table pinball. Pretty much. Although the flippers weren't the same. It was in the 1950s. The same person came up with spot bowler. And that was the first modern arrangement of flippers. Right. And they were longer with that introduction, or else a little later on the first flippers they introduced, they were shorter. Yeah. And they didn't face this. They face in reverse of the way they face now, which is weird. Yeah. They were working it out. Yeah. Beta. Pretty much. So it's funny that they introduced flippers in 1947, because by the time flippers came around, pinball was illegal in most of the major cities in the United States, and have been for several years. I think I had heard this once and forgotten it, but pinball was totally outlawed because they equated it to gambling, because it was not a game of skill. And I guess because you got prizes. Yeah. Mayor LaGuardia, who you remember from the Burlesque podcast, was a bit of a moralist. Although he was a wet politician, he was in favor of repealing Prohibition. He hated pinball. Hated it. He thought it was a Mafia racket. He thought that it robbed the, quote, pockets of schoolchildren in the forms of nickels and dimes, gave them his lunch money, and he got it outlawed in New York. And once it was outlawed, he ordered, like, really dramatic raids. Yeah. Right after Pull Harbor, he said, you know what we need to do? The Japanese have just bombed us. We need to get rid of these pinball machines. Yeah. And so let's go round them up, like, in a raid style. Let's smash them with sledgehammers. Let's dump them in the river. Here's what they did. They dumped them in the river after they smashed them. That's a very New York 1940s thing to do. Exactly. I bet you there's still pinball machines down there. If anyone is brave enough to get into the east river, I don't think they are. No. We should say also give a shout out to popular mechanics who were working off, in part, a really awesome article. They came up with eleven things you didn't know about pinball history. Yeah. So from the 40s until the mid 1970s, if you wanted to play pinball in New York city and Chicago and La. Most cities in the US. It was illegal. You had to go to a pornography shop, basically, and go behind a curtain and play pinball. Isn't that weird? It's the weirdest thing that we've ever said on this show until the mid nineteen s. Seventy s. And like, there are still raids and pinball operators. Like me, dude, little five year old Chuck. Yeah. I would have been dropped off at a porn shop to play pinball. Which I'm sure your parents would have been happy to do. Well, they did. And I played pinball. I didn't look at nudity people. Did you really know I was going to say, you just blew my mind. No. And get this, the city of Oakland oakland, California, oak down just this past July, overturned an 80 year ban on pinball. Free the pinballers. Yeah. Good for them. Pinball's ban. People are still playing it like crazy. And apparently the manufacturers realize this as well, because they're still innovating and adding and making new games and machines and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Well, this is after World war II, there were things really slowed down, obviously, because of the war effort. Pinball was big. Dent was put in pinball manufacturing, too. Yeah, like everything else. And then after the took off again, and it also became kind of a symbol of rebellious youth in this popular mechanics article points out, like, the fans and played a lot of pinball. I never considered that from the who's? Tommy the pinball wizard and Tommy both kind of rebellious, like stick it in your ear, LaGuardia. Yeah. I mean, it seems silly now to think about that, but when Tommy came out, it was illegal. So pinball was sort of I guess it was just the rebels. Yes. You're anti authoritarian if you played pinball. It was just an image of it. Yeah. And then the great Simpsons quote, sideshow Bob said, television has ruined more young minds than pinball and syphilis combined. That one flew right over my head when I heard it the first time. I just thought, oh, that's silly pinball. Right. But I didn't think about, like, moral turpitude. Yeah, I didn't get that one either, but I do now. So luckily, pinball was still widely available, albeit in the backs of pornography shops. And the reason we say luckily is because somewhere along the way, a young man, I think in his early 20s named Roger Sharp, who is a magazine editor, was called upon to save the pinball world at a New York city council meeting. Yes. They finally said, hey, City Council, can we get a hearing on pinball machines? You guys are being ridiculous, because it's a bicentennial of this country and we need pinball. It's as American as America gets as pornography. So they said, sure, we'll have a hearing, because their intent was to prove that it was a game of skill and not chance, which was the whole rub in the first place. Yes, they brought in their pinball wizard. Game of chance is gambling. Sure LaGuardia had a point. Well, sort of. I still don't get it. But this law was obsolete because they added flippers, and now it was a game of skill. But the law was still around. Yeah, basically. So they brought in their pinball wizard, Sharp, and they brought two machines, because if one broke down, they wanted to have a backup. And some jerk councilman, when he went to play the game, said, no, why don't you play the other game? The backup was the backup game. And Sharp started sweating because he was like, I'm not very good at that game. Yeah, he's never played it before. Yeah, I'm a master at this one. But he's a pinball wizard, so I believed in him. Yes. I didn't know what happened. Did you see the documentary special when lit? No. Oh, my God. It has footage of this. It's amazing. An amazing documentary all about pinball. I mean all about pinball is not so awesome documentary. I think it's one called Tilt as well. There is that's about a specific moment in history in pinball. I haven't seen that one, but it sounds pretty good, too. Yeah, but c special when lit. Amazing. Got you. NC tilt, too. What's the deal? So Roger Sharp is playing. He's not really impressing anybody, and things are kind of going bad, and he decides to do a Bay booth call. He pulls back the plunger, and before he releases it, he goes, I'm going up the middle aisle here. Yeah. And just so you know, if you've never seen a pinball game, you pull the plunger, it shoots the ball up the right hand side through a trough, and then it spits it out at the top. And what he was trying to prove is where I'm going to spit it out and where it's going to start its descent back to me is going to be in a very specific place, in the center of the board. Not on the left, not on the right, right up the middle. And he did it. And apparently, right afterward, the city council was like, okay, we'll repeal it. It's obviously a game of skill. Roger Sharp single handedly well, double handedly, because he was using the flippers save pinball from illegality. I wonder if they said, yeah, fine. Good Lord, it's legal. Get these machines out of here. Get this loser out of here. But he is not a loser, because he is currently still the number 536 rank player in the world. I'm surprised. I thought he went on to be I think at the time he was number one, which is why they chose him. He probably was, but he's been falling ever since. Man. That's another thing in special Winlet. Oh, man. There are some really good pinball players. Well, I've got the list. I'll quickly go over the top five. Number one in the world as of today, 2014, August, whatever it is. Keith Elwin of the USA is number one. USA. Yorin Ingelbrixton of Sweden is number two. Sweden. Zach Sharp. Recognize that name? That sounds vaguely familiar. Roger sun. Yeah. He's the number three player in the world. That's awesome. Number four. Danielle. Celestino. Axiari. What was that? He's Italian. He's number four. Jorgen home is also Swedish. She's number five. There's a Canadian at six, a suite at seven. And eight through 20, save one are all Americans. Wow. And number 20 is Josh Sharp. So his sons followed in his footsteps. That's great. And are both top 20 ranked players. That's good. And I bet Josh is super jealous. Zach maybe Josh is also he's like, I want to be a veterinarian, so I'm paying more attention to that kind of thing. Maybe. So Pinball was saved by Roger Sharp. Hooray. And pinball just kept going on and on. Apparently it had its golden day age, it's widely believed, between 1948 and 1958. But it was also huge in the 70s, huge in the then video games came along and all of a sudden pinball was like and it started to decline and decline and decline, decline. I think we were down to maybe five major pinball machine producers. And by major I mean the only ones minor pinball game. No. Because it takes a lot of time and effort to manufacture a functioning pinball game. Yeah. So by the 90s, there were just a couple left. Everybody was selling off their pinball divisions. And there was a company called Bally Williams, which were former competitors that have merged. And this is what the documentary Tilt is about. They went to their pinball division and said, hey, you guys are great in the pinball world, but the pinball world sucks. We want more money out of you guys. What are you going to do? Is that Pinball 2000? Yes, they came up with Pinball 2000. They said, we will give you a chance to save yourselves, figure out what will revive pinball for the 21st century. And they came up with Pinball 2000? Yeah. It's basically a hybrid of video gaming and pinball where you have a kind of a standard pinball set up, but a video screen that's interactive as the backdrop. Now on the playing field, too. So, like Holograms pop up on the playing board and run away from the ball and interact with the ball. Yeah. It stinks, though, and no one liked it. Have you played it? I haven't played it, but I saw videos of it and it didn't look like fun and no one liked it. So the thing is, this one article I read pointed out, like, it wasn't given a chance to flourish. Like the idea was great and the fact that they pull it off successfully was really something. Well, they built only two games, right? I think each one had a few thousand production run, but there was Star Wars Episode One, which here's my theory, the reason Pinball 2000 went nowhere. Charge our bins. Yes. The other one was revenge from Mars. And you can still find those used today. But despite the fact that Pinball 2000 was created, it was okay as far as successes go. Bally Williams pulled the plug, which left one company, Stern. There's a guy named Michael Stern, I believe, who inherited his father's business and became the only people making pinball machines in the world. Still no. Is there a new one now? Yeah, man. Good. Have we been recording this? Two years ago, we would have basically been saying, like, Pinball is dead. It's on its last leg. There's one company making it. They've started to lay off their designers because of the economic crisis. A year now, some of those designers went on, some of the Stern vets went on and founded a company called Jersey Jack. And for the first time in many years, there are more than one pinball manufacturer. There are two. Right. But the competition has caused Stern to go back and rehire. Some of the people they laid off come up with new designs. Oh, yeah. And there's a pinball renaissance, a nascent pinball renaissance, just beginning to bud. That could happen. Well, pinball is definitely sort of an end thing now. If you're super cool and you have some money, then you might have a pinball machine in your house. Like my brother. Right? It is. Apparently, Stern's ratio of home sales to commercial sales has risen from 35% to 60% of their total sales. So the market now isn't for arcades, because what are those? The market is for the person who has enough money to buy a pinball machine. I don't want the new one. Yeah, if you want a new one, it's going to cost you. But if you want, like, a vintage one, it's 1500 still. I mean, that's a decent amount of money. Like, the Addams Family runs less than $5,000. That's the one that you need in the house. Yeah. So I think my brother actually refurbished this. I think I'm right. I think they weren't even working and he was able to fix them. Very neat. Yeah. I imagine you can get them for way less because these are like fully refurbished, polished, ready to go ones. And a lot of them are starting to come from overseas because the demand in vintage collectors items are rising so much. Like 70% of them come from overseas. They're re importing them back to America. Well, and it's big in Europe, because as evidence from that top ten, two or three of them are European swedes. Look at them. So we'll get into how pinball actually works right after this. All right. So we've talked a lot about the history of pinball, which is way more interesting than I thought it would be, but we haven't talked about the game because I assume everybody has played pinball, but if you haven't, we're going to break it down. Yeah. And actually, it's pretty simple if you really think about it. There are two real components to the game now, ever since flippers and the ball. Yeah. Everything else is just kind of ornamentation or whatever. But to play pinball, you need flippers and a ball, because the point of pinball is to score points using the ball, bouncing off of obstacles and all that stuff, and then to prevent the ball from going down the drain, using the flippers. That's right. There you go. Flippers and the ball. That's right. You've got your flippers typically at the bottom of the playfield, which is what it's called, directly above the drain on both sides. A lot of games you'll see now have other flippers on the upper right and upper left that also do fun things like flip the ball. But a lot of times the ones at the top will flip it into the very special chamber where you can score tons of points. We'll get to the scoring here in a minute, and you basically want to propel the ball up with your little plunger, and then all the bumpers and ramps are there to score your points. And it makes a lot of noise, it's a lot of fun. And that's pinball. Yeah. I mean, that's it for me. This article on how stuff works pointed out, like when you're talking about scoring, which we'll talk about later, doesn't mean anything to people who are playing pinball, most of us, because I'm just trying to keep the ball from going down the drain. Sure. But the way that pinballs arranged, as you get better and better at it, you'll learn that there are all sorts of combinations and tricks and stuff that you can do to really score some points. We'll get to that later on. I get ahead of myself. That's right. The ball itself, if you want to just talk hardware, it's one and 116 inches in diameter. It's steel, and it weighs about 2.8oz and can reach speeds up to 90 miles an hour. When you see that thing shoot out of one of the little chambers, that will come back at you. It's going really fast. Yeah, it is. And that is sometimes it will use magnets underneath the table. Too. Because since this is a steel ball. You'll sometimes see a gain that has a spinning disk. Like a vortex in the center of the table that will start at any given moment. And it can catch your ball and keep your ball there with its magnet just sort of spinning in place. Which is no good. Or it could be super good. Depending on what you're after. Sometimes, though, they do use a ceramic pinball called the Power Ball, and it is lighter and faster and immune to magnets. So a lot of times when you have multi ball going on, some of those other balls are ceramic, and that's when things get crazy. So as the ball is going around the table, it's hitting the bumpers, it's hitting the targets, and they're sending messages. Well, if it's post 76 game to the motherboard that's keeping track of your score and all that jazz yeah. And you've only got the three balls. That's a game. Yes, but there are circumstances where you can get more, which we'll tell later. So, Chuck, there's also another component. You don't have to have to play pinball, but all pinball games have it now. It's called the black box. And if you look at a pinball table, you've got the field, right? Yeah. The play field, which is the board that has all of the bumpers and the stuff and the flippers and everything on it. And then at a right angle to that coming off of it, you've got what's called the back glass. And connecting the two is called the black box. And this is where all of your electronics and your Solid State stuff goes. Yeah. Your back glass is not only going to have your scoreboard and your information, they'll say things like aim for the canyon. They'll give you hints and little tricks along the way. Look out for the trex. But it's also to the backlash is where, like, if you're walking through your arcade and it's 1983, that's where you're going to see that's where your attention is going to go. So that's where you see the Playboy models on both sides of you, hefner or Kiss looking cool. So it's sort of an advertisement, hey, come put your quarters into me. Right. It's shiny, it's colorful. They spend money designing those things, and a lot of those have become art. Now they'll remove them and frame them and hang them on the wall. Which would be wicked cool, I think it would be, but I'd rather have the actual pinball game. Yeah, sure. So, like I said, back in the 70s, they introduced Solid State electronics. Prior to that, all Pimp machines were electromechanical. And at first when I was researching this, I thought like, well, okay, so Solid State took over everything. That's not the case. Solid State took over basically the back class. Everything else is still electromechanical or it wasn't up until the very recent times, although they still might be electromechanical. So when you hit a bumper with your ball and it makes it like bounce and vibrate and you get some points, that's because you set an electrical impulse using an electro mechanical assembly to the motherboard, the Solid State motherboard that's keeping. Score. So the motherboard is now keeping score. Now they can use digital sound so they could add speakers to the background and all that stuff. But the actual function of the pinball machine while you're playing is still electromechanical. Yeah, that's old school. And there's about a half a mile of wiring in each one. And if you come over to my brothers, he will show you the guts. That's neat. He has his rigged where you can pull down the back glass, look under the hood yeah, basically. And just looks like a huge mess of wires. Half a mile of wires. That's a lot. It's pretty crazy. Does he wear like a chain wallet when he works on his pinball machine? I don't know. Maybe. The playfield itself, which is what everything is on, is tilted at about six to seven deg toward you and it is made of wood and it's also very old school. At some point someone makes this a wood base, like cornhole and it's got holes drilled in it and it's got stuff painted on it and a bunch of layers of finish to keep it, to protect it and to make that ball go. Yeah, but I mean, that's basically it. It's pretty simple. Yes. Some of the very newer ones, I guess, from the 21st century replaced the wood playing field with plasma screens. Oh, really? Or LCD screens. Yeah, but kids today, no thanks. But other than that, it's like screws and glue and wood. It's fairly old school and still entertaining. Pinball is challenging. That's why you hate Pinball 2000. It was newfangled. Yeah, totally. Like, hey, let's take something awesome and make it new for everybody. I hate that. It's like taking some classic drink like you're a cocktail guy. Yeah. Let's add some new oxygenated something to the Manhattan you're like. No, Manhattan's perfect. I don't know. Oxygenated somethings are perfect the way they are and I think pinball is one of them. So, Chuck, you approach the pinball machine, you put your quarters in and everything and you press the start button or well, once you press the start button the ball should fall into the launch lane, which is at the back of the launch lane is the plunger. Yes. In some of the newer games, there's a solenoid which shoots it for you. Yeah, I've seen other things like a gun handle, trigger and stuff instead of the plunger. Very clever. But again, I meant I like the plunger. Sure. One way or another, you're going to launch the ball. The advantage of a solenoid that launches it for you with the press of a button is that if you are playing a game and you're pretty good and the pinball machine decides it wants to see what kind of a wizard you are sure it will send more balls into action. The way it does that these days is by using a solenoid. Yeah, in olden days, before the solenoid say, the 80s, there's a little man inside. Well, you had to pull the plunger back yourself, and that meant you had to take your finger off of a flipper button, which meant, hey, man, you better be quick. I kind of forgot about that or you're dead. Yeah, that's why solenoids, that's the advantage they have. Yeah, I'll take that advancement that passes my bar. Okay, the solenoid is good. So let's talk about actual pinball play after this message. Chuck Ping okay, scoring and pinball, like you said earlier, if you're a regular schmo like us, we're just trying to keep that ball on the table. But if you are a pinball wizard, then that means you know the game within the game and all the combination shots that you're specifically trying to hit in order to rack up the big points. This is nuts to me, I have to tell you. I didn't even know that this existed until yeah, I knew, like, that's how poor my pinball playing is. No, I'm not any good either. Is your brother good? So you've seen him? Yeah, he's better than me. They use this in this article. They use the example of a game called high roller pinball. Yeah. And basically imagine this. While you're playing high roller, you basically want to knock out some icons that are associated with poker. Once you've hit all the icons with the ball or something like that. So there are tiles that you knock down or whatever. Once you've hit them all, you've unlocked a game within a game. Yeah. And I think it starts with poker, and all of a sudden you're playing pinball while you're also playing poker on the back glass. Yeah. So, like, you're trying to hit a specific thing that will give you a specific card in a poker hand, let's say. Right. And you're trying to do this with your flipper. It's a game of skill, like we said. Right. But at the same time, you're still playing your pinball game, too, right? Well, I mean, it's part of the game, so, you'll know, you've got the cards up on the back glass. All right, I got to hit that bumper to get a king. Got you. I'm aiming for that king the whole time. Okay, so if your brain hasn't melted yet, prepare for the finish. Once poker is done, there's like four or five other casino games that you play after that, and you play them in succession. And as you win them, you get closer and closer to this special play mode called Casino Frenzy. That's what it's called in the high roller machine. Yeah. That's after you've won all the game, the poker games, right? All the games, yeah. And so you're playing Casino Frenzy, and that's what's called a wizard award, where it's like, okay, this kid's good. Now we're going to really let him or her up their points by playing a special round. And all of a sudden the field is like, flooded with balls, and every bumper you hit is worth, like, hundreds of thousands of points, and it's just scary and terrifying. Yeah. Multi ball is stressful for a guy like me. Stay here, man. I just try and keep what happens to me and multi ball is I usually lose them all pretty quickly. I can't even hold on to the one because it stimulates me too much. I'm like, what happened? Me too. And I'm like, as long as I've got one, I break even. But with wizard award functions, that's when you start to earn even more points. But imagine having, like, three, four, five balls on the field, and the computer in the machine is telling you, like, hit this combination, and we'll give you, like, 20 million points. Yeah. And if you're even in wizard Award ball, you're a pretty good pinball player, I would imagine. For sure. And that's just the high roller game, but most games have a couple of games within the game that you should look out for, and that's how you get your free game. If you've ever lucked up or been super good, they'll tell you on the back glass how much you have to have, like, replay value, 30 million. And that's what you're shooting for because you want to get that free game, not just because it's a quarter or whatever. Right. But because it's, like, a big award. It's like entering your name on the top ten in Gallagher. Right? Yeah. So I didn't understand this. When you get a free game, is that like, three free balls or one extra ball? I think it's three. I think it's a full free game. That would make sense. That's why they can and it keeps telling it doesn't reset. Right? Yeah. You can also fall backwards into a free game with something called match. Yeah. I had never heard of this. Every once in a while, the computer will just flash, like, a random number between 90, I think. Yeah. Multiple of ten. And if the last two digits of your score at that moment happened to match that number, then you win a free game. It's like a little auto game. Yeah. And I think I've gotten a free game that way because I remember getting free games before, but being like, how did I get a free game? I must have hit the match. You, like, just turned into Christopher walking in the dead zone. I saw that not too long ago. That holds up. Yeah, it does. But as far as replay goes, it says that most machines are set, so you have to be in the top 10% to get a replay, and you can get a second replay, but they have it maxed out at 150% of the first. So a double replay is tough. You're Tommy at that point, or your last name is Sharp. Yeah, I guess so. And then Tilt. Chuck Tilt. Yeah. It's synonymous with pinball tilt. Is where you are being well, basically where you've been punching the machine. The machine says, Enough. Hands off, man. And basically, like we were saying, early pinball machines, the only way you can manipulate them before the flippers was to move the machine. Yeah. Going to bump it. So the tilt mechanism has been in place to prevent people from overly cheating by tilting the machine. It's really old timing contraption, and I guess it's still in use. It's pretty funny how old school it is. Basically, they have, I guess, like a copper wire with a circle on the end, a ring on the end, and dangling in the ring, but not touching it is like a metal ballast. Yeah. Right. And it's connected to the machine. So as long as the ballast is just swinging around freely within the ring, you can tilt as much as you like. Yeah. And a skilled player knows how to tilt without getting caught. Right. It's part of the game. But once you tilt too far and the metal bowls touches the copper ring, a current is formed, and all of a sudden, it sends that to the motherboard. And the motherboard says, Tilt, this is your first warning. And apparently most modern games give you two warnings and then the flippers stop working and you lose your ball. Yeah. And that's just losing one ball. If you really get upset, if your ball is stuck, or if you're just having a bad day at the office and you pick up the front of the machine and slam it down, that's called a slam tilt. And they have these little leaf switches inside the machine for that. And if they touch each other, that means you have really taken things too far. And that is shut it down. No game not, we're taking your ball. They're saying, leave the machine. You're not going to win any cigarettes doing that. Exactly. And that's the slam tilt. That's pinball, baby. Yeah, I got nothing else. I don't either. This is very exciting. I'm glad we finally did it. It's been on my list for ever since I found out it was illegal. Yeah. You're like, oh, I got to get into that. But that was like a couple of years ago. I feel like, wow. Yeah. When I saw special Winlet. Nice, man. Everybody go see that. Is that on the old Netflix? I believe it is. Tilt definitely is. All right. I think Special Winlet might be too. I'll add that to the former queue, which they had to change because Americans are dumb. What do they call it now? It's called a list because people are like, what's a queue? Really? Why is it spelled like that? I hadn't noticed that they did that. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I've heard. That's the reason it makes sense to me. I can verify that, though. Well, if you want to learn more about pinball, go check out Special. When lit, go check out tilt. Check out the Popular Mechanics article we mentioned eleven things you didn't know about Pinball history. It's pretty awesome. And of course, check out the article on howstep works.com. Go to the search bar and type in Pinball and it will bring up this article. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this is via Facebook actually in regards to our Morgan's podcast, because one of our is it funny, I think it's morglons, but you are literally the only person on the planet that calls it that. Fine. Tyler Murphy are one of the generals and the stuff you should know army and Facebook and email friend Pinged, I guess a doctor friend of his name Chris Wells and was like, hey dude, check this out. Do you know anything about this? And so he commented on there. I was like, hey, this is a listener mail, can I use it? And he said yes. So he says he's only come across it twice. In both cases they brought stuff in telling me it was eggs and bugs. I, along with my Med technology, reviewed it under a microscope and it was mainly lint and hair follicles. One had some insight that it was not an actual infection and felt relieved. The other was very upset that I suggested otherwise. So you kind of got both into the spectrum. Yeah. I would never treat with an antiparasitic med if I didn't think it was a real infection. The risk of causing harm versus fixing anything is too high. Any parasite meditation can have all kinds of unwanted effects, from kidney and liver impairment, to lowering the threshold procedure, to potentially being carcinogenic themselves. For every case of monsters inside me on TLC that goes undiscovered and later is found to truly have a parasitic infection, there are many more where there is no physical evidence of infection because there's simply not one. You feel really crappy as a physician, though, when you have to tell someone that everything they brought into your office is all dust and lint, that there is no physical evidence for their ailments. The most important thing for a clinician to remember is that even if this is all in their head or imagine or however you want to word it, the patient is still experiencing it, which is what we pointed out. Yeah. So you need to try and treat the root cause, whether it be with continued reassurance and second opinion within reason, or cognitive behavioral therapy or other means. And that is Chris Wells, via our buddy Tyler Murphy. Cool, thanks guys. Tyler is a teacher and in the summertime he works at the Big Putt Chain. Putt Putt? No, it's like the Big Adventure land or I can't remember what it's called. Pirates Cove. Is that a chain? I don't know. Sounds like a chain. Anyway, that's what he does. It sounds like fun. I could totally do that. Oh yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, you guys and anyone else out there who has any further clarification on any episode we've ever done, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, you can send us an email stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and as always, go check us out at our home on the web stuffyoushow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com." | ||
3f9b009e-5461-11e8-b6d0-73429e55b673 | Selects: How Tupperware Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-tupperware-works | Tupperware won immediate design acclaim when it was released in 1947, but it took a pioneering female executive to make a line of plastic food storage into an icon of the American postwar boom. Learn about the surprisingly intriguing history of Tupperware, in this classic episode. | Tupperware won immediate design acclaim when it was released in 1947, but it took a pioneering female executive to make a line of plastic food storage into an icon of the American postwar boom. Learn about the surprisingly intriguing history of Tupperware, in this classic episode. | Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=107, tm_isdst=0) | 36079989 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, friends. Do you want to know how tupperware works all over again? But you're in the right spot because it is throwback time to May 28, 2015, how Tupperware Works. This is a good one. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry. So this is stuff you should know. Burp. Have you ever heard of tupperware? Burp? Yeah, sort of. It doesn't sound like a burp. It's just sort of like can you emulate one? Well, it's just like air. Just sort of it doesn't sound like a burp. It sounds like a toot. Yeah. Something different. Yes. But I don't think you could call it a tupperware fart, because it probably wouldn't sell us much. Well, even a burp is a little, you know yeah. Okay. So I guess I have heard one before when I was a kid, but I thought there was, like, a burp or something like that. Do you remember that cartoon? It might have been, like what was the droopy? I think it might have been a droopy cartoon, folks. Some sort of cartoon where, like, they had a machine that burped radishes. But I like it. I think it was, like, the kitchen of the future. One great cartoon. Wow. That's what I assume the tupperware thing was like. Yeah, I was a big droopy fan. That's why I was missing out. No, it's just a little air being expelled. But it was a very important bit of air. Sure. Because, Chuck, at the time that tupperware came out, women were using basically a pot that they cook something in, maybe a bowl, and putting a shower cap over it and storing it in the ice box. You know what they call that? Primitive. Yeah, that's primitive food storage. It sounds like Tuktuk would have done something like that. Not men and women in the 1940s. Right. Except he would have used, like, some sort of Madagascar type animal pelt. Sure. From the movie Madagascar. No, not Madagascar. Ice Age. That's what I'm thinking of. I haven't seen it once. They're very similar, set in, like, different climbs and different time periods. I've never seen them either. Different animal protagonists. I can get a lot from commercials. Yeah. So, yeah, tupperware. Let's talk about it. The original patent. I love the name of this thing, and it was created you want to drop this cool little fact by the name of the guy earl Tupper. Yeah. Never knew that. Yeah, I guess I didn't either. I didn't think about it. No, you think of tupperware as nothing but tupperware, and there's no tupper. Who invented it? It's crazy talk, right? Yeah. There was a tupper named Earl, and that tupperware. Yes. The Earl of Tupper. He has a patent called Hat. He doesn't have it anymore. The Es tupper open mouth container and non snap type of closure. Therefore, this is by the way. Yeah, that's why I read it like that. Right. I was explaining that to everybody else. They know me. This is going poorly. No, it's not. So you want to talk a little bit about Tupper himself? Yeah. He was a bit of a reclusive figure, as we'll find, but he was also, like he's a pretty sharp guy. A grouch, I think is a possible way to describe him. Maybe a bit of a mad, smart, tinkering grouch. Yeah. He disliked his father because he felt his father lacked ambition. And this is when he was like, ten. All you do is just go to the races and lay around. Well, his parents owned like a farm of sorts, but I think I get the idea it was like kind of a harvest, your own farm. And this kid, little Earl Tupper, when he was like ten, 1112, he was, like, pitching the idea to build like a children's playground on the grounds of this pick your own farm to attract tourists and stuff. And his dad was like, that sounds like a lot of work. Totally. Just go to school or something. Get out of my hair. Pipe down. And Earl was like, you're going to pay for ignoring me. But he was a sharp contrast to his father is what I'm trying to say. He was very ambitious, big tinkerer, came up with a lot of different patent ideas and apparently patents too. Yeah. He had a book of inventions. There was a better stocking garter, which is very sexy thing for a child to invent. Right. A better way to remove a burst appendix. Yeah, that's for real. A dagger shaped comb to be clipped to the belt. Pants that wouldn't lose their crease. This one of great import. Yeah. The customized cigarettes. I can't believe that didn't catch on. Like for real. You know how Coca Cola does those stupid cans and bottles now with names now I understand. Yeah. There were cigarettes that said, like, sporty or the Collegiate on the cigarette. Got you. So it would have, like, your sports team emblazoned on the side. Maybe the problem is none of these inventions took off. No. This guy literally well, he could give his inventions away, but he almost literally couldn't give them away. He ended up manufacturing these things and giving them away, like premiums for other stuff, like cigarettes and things like that. Yeah. So he starts a tree doctor business. Tougher tree doctors that failed after the Depression, people were cutting back on things like tree doctoring. So he went out of business and in a very fortuitous move, went and worked for Viscoloid Plant, which is a division of Dupont making plastics. Right. And this is where things going to start taking shape. Yes. So basically, he gets into plastics and this town in Massachusetts that he ended up in, where the Viscolloid Plant was. Yeah. He was all over New England, basically growing up. Right. This particular town was kind of like a mad scientist mecca where all of this stuff is going on in plastics, all these little tiny plastic manufacturing outfits. It's like a start up town for plastics in like the 30s or 40s because they're like, we have this new thing. What else can we do with it? Yeah. And which, by the way, plastic, especially polyethylene. Polyethylene was invented by accident in 1898, and by the 40s, they perfected the polyethylene or had come out perfect, but they hadn't figured out quite how to use it. And Earl Tupper was one of those guys in the 40s on the cutting edge of taking plastics and figuring out how to mold them in the right shape, how to keep them from being oily or sticky or falling apart when they were sitting out in the sunlight or all this stuff. This guy is doing all these tests and he ends up coming up, thanks to getting a block of this pure polyethylene from Dupont, the good stuff, the good stuff, the uncut stuff, and he figures out how to make this bowl a Wonderlier bowl is what he calls it. Yeah. And Dupont at the time didn't think that they could even mold plastic. He was smarter than their guys. Right, because he figured out how to do it. And then, along with the design, the patented Tupperware seal that made it so useful and famous, that made the what? Sound? That made the burping sound, or tooting sound. He originally got the idea for the seal from paint cans. Apparently, the fact that you could turn a paint can upside down and it wouldn't leak paint out all over the place. And he said, I guess we can do this with food. Yeah, like put food in here. It's sealed. Look at the demonstration. It's upside down and I'm shaking it, and there's none of that gravy coming out. Right? The gravy is not coming out. I can drop this bowl and it's not going to break because everyone knows how clumsy housewives are. Sure. It's breaking stuff all over. And the fact that you burp it right. Yeah. And it makes that sound. And you're basically preserving the food for many, many days to come true, which is huge because a lot of the people who were homemakers in the they had lived through the Depression and they remembered exactly what it was like. So preserving food was a big deal. Oh, yeah. And so this thing was like it's really easy to take for granted these days, but it was very cutting edge technology. Well, these days they have all those terrible cheapo I was going to say knock offs or not knock offs or major brands, but those little cheap plastic containers that are sold, they're not nearly the quality of Tupperware. No, tupperware started all that. Yeah. And this stuff is garbage. The lids don't fit right ever. They break. They don't do anything that Tupperware did. Like, I have a wonderfull from the do you really? That's still perfect. I mean, it's a little worn down, but it still functions perfectly. Right? Well, it's a testament to tupperware. Yeah. And that other garbage, that stuff, like, I don't have anything from last year. Well, it's made and it was made during a time of much more disposable thinking. Sure. At the time, it was like, we're going to make something that will last forever. Yeah. And I think they still have a lifetime guarantees on everything. Do they really? Yeah. Like, you could send in a tupperware piece from the if it's broken and it meets the requirements, like you didn't smash it with a hammer or something. I want to review one. They'll give you, like, credits or the equivalent of what you get today or something. It's like, well, you paid $85 for that. Let's see what the Westgate currency calculator has to say about that. So he formed Tupper Plastics. Things did not take off, though, like he thought they would. He put them in department stores and hardware stores for some reason. Oh, really? Yeah. Not a good place to sell your tupperware. Yeah. I mean, nowadays I can see that, but back then you probably just went to hardware stores for nails and hammers and stuff. Yeah, I'm sure there are home goods and stuff, too. It was probably closer to a general store in the hardware stores today, but even still, they weren't flying off the shelves at the point. They were not. So what he did was there was another timeline going on at the same time. Stanley home Products basically pioneered the non door to door sales in favor of hosting a party, for lack of a better word, in home demonstrations where you would gather people together. And it was guy named Norman Squires had garnered a lot of profits in this kind of sales, and they had working for them a woman named Brownie Wise. Right. And she was selling all kinds of stuff for Stanley home Products, and they called it the hostess group demonstration plan. And she was a great salesperson. Yeah. So these people at Stanley home Products basically found tupperware on their own and started selling it at these hostess parties. Right? Yeah. She formed her own company called tupperware patio parties. Oh, did she? Yeah, before she was hired. Before she was hired. Wow. And she was selling so much of it that Earl Tupper got in touch with her and was like, I can't sell this stuff in stores. Like you're beating department stores in New York City sales records. Yes, she really was. She had a lot of charm. She figured out that this burp thing that was so essential and made this product so revolutionary that it wasn't, like, intuitive. You didn't just understand how to work it, and so it wasn't helping sales. Which, again, seems weird today. Right. But back then, people were like, what is this weird colored thing. Right. Supposedly hold. How does it go together? And they're just banging them together in the aisle of a hardware store and crying. Yeah, she figured out that if you demonstrate this to people, especially in like somebody's house or whatever, and they've had a couple of martinis and there's orders. Yeah. People are apt to buy these things and yeah, like you said, she started out selling department stores, hardware stores, obviously. And she got hired on by Earl Tupper. Yeah, she was in Detroit at the time. I think she'd moved down to Orlando when she was hired. Oh, really? By that point, yeah. She was from Buford, Georgia, originally. Yeah, she was from rural Georgia and ended up being married and divorced, which was pretty unusual at the time. And she was a single mom. Yeah. The little Jerry Wise. That's right. Unfortunately, her husband was a violent drunk. I saw that, too. So that's not saying that it's PBS. Taking the fall for that one. Yeah. So she was only married to him for about six years and then was basically like, I'm going to make my own way. She only had an 8th grade education and she was killing it on the sales front. Yeah, she really was. So, Chuck, before we get any further about Brownie Wise great name, awesome name. Yeah. Maybe not a bad name, but a great name. The Browniewise would be a good name. Or the Browniewise Massacre. Yes, sure. There you go. Or brownie wise over drive. Yeah, both of those. Anyway, for one another, I guess the point I'm trying to get to is let's take a break. Okay. So Brownie Wise has her Tupperware Patio Parties company out selling stores she gets hired on. They literally divide the company into two sides. The tupperware manufacturing up in Massachusetts and then tupperware home parties down in Orlando. Down in Orlando? Yeah, where she lives. Basically. Earl Tupper comes to her in 1951 and says, hey, how would you like to be one of three female high level executives in the United States? In the world, I would guess. And she said, sure, why not? I'll do you a favor. And I said she was a very interesting woman if I didn't. I did my head and meant to say it, but there's apparently a movie coming out about her life starring Sandra Bullock. You did not say that. And I did see that. So there you go. I couldn't find any information on it except that I think it's in pre production right now. Oh, I see. I think it's going to happen, but yeah, I mean, she's one of the great woman entrepreneurs that this country has ever seen. The world has ever seen. Really? Yeah, because she took this Tupperware, which everyone except the American public agreed was great, in 1047, the year that Tupper invented this stuff, time named it this amazing thing. It won design awards. Yes. She was on the first woman on the cover of Business Week magazine. Right. But even before she came along, everybody, especially in the art world and the design world, said, this stuff is great, but it was just sitting there languishing. And then Brownie Wise comes along and just turns it into a blockbuster. Like, turns it into an American iconic brand, which it still is today. Yeah. And what she realized, which was a stroke of genius, was it's the suburbs are happening post World War II in a big way. There's a lot of women that are homemakers, right. I guess we could just say they were bored and looking for something to do. Well, plus, also, they have very real constrictions on their time. Sure. Like they're basically freedom of movement. They didn't have cars, they didn't have things like this. They didn't have a lot of ways to make money. Yeah, well, and again, they're out in the suburbs for the first time. It's not like many of these were connected by subway or anything. That was still an inner city deal. Right. But rather than view these places as vast, like wastelands of isolation, brownie Wise said, no, these are like little tiny social networks where people know and trust one another and they're bored out of their skulls and they're looking for ways to make money. So not only do you have a really great market to sell this to, you have a really great workforce that's just sitting there idle. And she said, how would you gals like to sell Tupperware? And they went, let's do this. That's right. And what she did was came up with a system where and you could work your way up the chain from sales all the way up. Well, let's just detail it, okay. What you are is your consultant at first, which is out there holding the party, hosting these parties, which we'll talk about. Everybody's chill. Yeah. And then you can work your up to manager if you organize a certain number of parties. And then managers were eventually recruiting other women. So if you recruit enough women and increase sales, then you could rise to distributor. And that was the highest level you could attain at that point. Yes. You could be a distributor. You have your own office, you have your network of managers, and then they manage the consultants or the party throwers party hosts. And basically she started her own army of salespeople. Yeah. So Chuck Incentivize. Salespeople right now there are two 9 million people in the world selling Tupperware. Every 3 seconds, there's another Tupperware party. Yes, but we're getting ahead of ourselves, right? Yeah. So she put together this workforce. And again. It was this guy named Norman Squires who came up with this idea that led to it being a huge hit for Tupperware. But also later on. Avon and Mary Kay and Pampered Chef and all of these brands that are sold through hostess parties basically get you in our house and get you drunk and sell you things when your resistance as well. Just leave me a blank check. Yeah, basically. But it wasn't invented by Brownie wise, but she definitely perfected it, for sure. So she tapped this workforce, and one of the ways that she kept people excited and loyal, not just the fact that they could rise throughout this hierarchy in the tupperware industry, but there was also, like, this thing that she created called the Jubilee every year down in Orlando. It was a big company party. It was. And they would just pull out all the stops. Like, they would bury fur coats, they would bury blenders. One of the buyers once said that he bought 100,000 blenders once for this Jubilee. Wow. They would just bring all these Tupperware sales associates and just basically throw them a party for a few days and let them just win free stuff and have a great time. Yes. And when you say bury, I think we should explain, because that sounds really weird. They would bury these prizes and people would go and dig them up. Right. It wasn't like, you can't have this. Look at what you can't have. We're burying it. It just sounded funny. Like, they bury fur coats. They bury anything that moves. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It was all part of the fun. Apparently, they lost a lot of them, too. Did they? Yeah. Years later, at the Tupperware headquarters in Orlando, they went to dig a pond, and they found a bunch of the prizes that had never been found. Yes. Some say there's still fur coats buried all over Orlando by the Illuminati. Okay, so those are the big Jubilee parties. The big company parties. Great for morale. The hostess themselves or the consultants percentage, they'd basically make a cut of what they were able to sell as well as get prizes, like these really neat prizes. And the more parties you hosted, the better the prizes would get. So it's like the Wild West. It's the heyday for these women. They're like earning their own money for a change. They're getting these great prizes. They're feeling great about themselves. They're not bored any longer. And their husbands are like, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? Yeah. Give me that money you made. Yeah, exactly. I'm the man. And things were so successful with this model. That was their only sales model up until the late 1980s. Right. You couldn't even buy the stuff in stores. No, he just stopped. It wasn't even worth the money or effort to distribute it to stores. They just did it through parties and home parties. That's right. Thank you, Brownie wise. All right, so like you said, in 1988, they started selling it through catalogs, I guess. Yeah, I think they have catalogs. I've seen older catalogs from the so I don't know what that means. Maybe over the phone you saw Tupperware one. Yeah. Catalogs. Yeah, it's on the podcast page for this episode. There's a link to this kind of design layout, and it has some catalogs, so it must have been like order by phone. Oh, yeah, maybe so. And then just about ten years later, in 1999, tupperware had their first website, which ecommerce in 1999 does fairly forward thinking. Yeah, that's true. So this caught wildfire today, it's not just like an American institution. There are Tupperware parties, like we said, at the rate of one every 3 seconds in more than 100 countries around the world. I had no idea that Tupperware was that popular in, like, Asia and India. And they said more than half a million every year in France alone. Yes. 91% of Tupperware sales are outside of the US. These days. Crazy. Yeah. And it's moving like gangbusters. Last I saw, it was trading at $63 a share. It was down from like, 100 in December, maybe. Oh, wow. It's a really set company again these days. It's been able to just be on the brink of utter irrelevance when it finds a new market, when it figures out a new way to sell, when it figures out a new product. Like, currently, right now in China, tupperware is making tons of cash selling $1,000 water filter, and they're doing it by traveling from town to town and setting up these in home demonstrations or public demonstrations and showing how to do it. So they're like taking the Tupperware model that brownie wise really perfected and figuring out how it best works in cultures around the world. Yes, I know. They make also, like, depending on your country and what they eat. Like certain shaped containers. Right? Like round bread containers for NAN in India. Yeah, how about that? So what happened to brownie wise? I guess she retired, was thanked, carried out on everyone's shoulders, and lived a great, fulfilled life until her death. Right. Well, we're going to tell you right after this break. All right, Josh, let's fast forward to the tupperware. Business is booming. Brownie wise is a bit of a celebrity. The twist is going like Gangbusters was it probably okay. People are still twisting the night away. Yeah, I mean, what was that, like, 1955? It probably started three years. Sure. There was some square still twisting. Yeah. They weren't doing the mashed potato yet. No, I think that was a little later. Okay, so business is booming. Brownie wise is killing it. She's a celebrity. Earl tupper starts to get a little jealous over the years. It's as simple as that. Yeah. As much as he, like, did not seek or want the limelight, he was still jealous that brownie wise people thought that she was Tupperware and that she started the company and started selling. Like, I can sell anything like this. So she didn't say that. Well, no other person in the media said she could have done this with any brand. She's that great. Yeah, well, she could have and Earl Tupper wanted to be like, well, no, I mean, my product that I invented is a big part of this, if not the thing, I'm earl Tupper. Right. So he apparently also she stopped kind of cow towing to him quite as much. It got great for a while. Yeah. And again, he had said to their PR department and to any media interviewer, like, yes, this lady is the face of Tupperware. Treat her as such, promoter, as such. And he just, like you said, ended up getting jealous. Didn't like that she wasn't cows out into him any longer. And in 1958, he said, you're fired. Yeah. The story I read was that he wanted to sell the company in cash in, and that he didn't think and was advised that it would be really hard to sell a company with a woman in such a prominent position on the board. Oh, yeah. And so he, like you said, just unceremoniously get rid of her. Gave her one year salary, like 30, 35 grand. Zero stock that she built almost from the ground up. Yeah. Or help build, at least. And I got to say that was her mistake. She should have gotten some stock along the way. Yeah, I guess so. She's too busy selling and exactly. She was imagine 35 grand a year was a pretty good salary at the point in 1958. Do you want me to look it up? I will. You can. Okay. So she got that small payout. She went, and what he said to her was that there were some accounting errors in the previous year. She wouldn't come to Massachusetts to talk to him about it and sort of dug in, says that she said that she had gotten sick or injured and couldn't leave Florida. He finally went down to Florida and basically said that these Jubilees are too expensive. The landscaping you've done here in Florida, the company headquarters, is too expensive. You're spending too much money on clothes. And we own all that stuff. We own all your clothing. What? Well, I don't know if he actually took it, but he basically was like, she paid for all that stuff through the company I got you as she should have to keep up appearances. Sure. But, yeah, that was it for her. She started a small company called Cinderella Cosmetics that folded after a year and sort of faded into obscurity. Sadly. Then Earl Tupper sold out the next year, I think. 16 million. Yeah. He sells out for $16 million. Nice. Cash to wrecks all drug company, which was eventually absorbed by Kraft, who apparently now owns Tupperware. Oh, they do. I think maybe it's the parent company. Probably. And, yeah, 16 million in 58. It's not too bad for a boy who couldn't get his parents to build a playground on the family. Pick your own whatever farm. Sure. Did you find out if she with 35 grand was a good salary? Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was, like, 200 and I think $32,000 back then. Yeah, that's good. It's not bad, especially for a woman executive. Yeah, but he sold the whole thing for 16 million, give her one year salary, moved to Costa Rica, bought an island, renounced his US. Citizenship so he didn't have to pay any taxes on it. Yeah. Got divorced before all that. Right. And said, cyanar, everybody, I'm going to Costa Rica to buy an island and keep a notepad in my pocket so anytime an idea for a new invention hits, I'll have it. And just, like, probably eight pineapples on his island. Yeah. He died in 1983 in Costa Rica, 76, and she died in 1992. And Tupperware has not gone out of fashion. It's been featured starting in what year was it? I guess when they first came out at the museum of modern art, and then again in 2011. I think I even saw this exhibit. In fact, I'm almost positive I did, because it was about just industrial design and things. And there's Tupperware all over again because of its gorgeous, of course. Now, that fifties era retro sign after the original line that Tupper released is called the millionaire line. And it came in six colors, five pastels and one white. Right. Yellow, blue, green, orange, and pink. And they're really pretty. Like, if you look at a set of these things in good condition, they're gorgeous. He went on to the plastics hall of fame, and now, like, this stuff from the you can get some decent money on ebay for that stuff because it still works, and people love that retro look. Did you know that he refused to have any pet bowls designed? He thought Tupperware was too good for pets to eat out of. What a jerk. See, I was all on board until that. Actually, I wasn't on board. I was off board when I found out that he fired brownie Wise. Yes. And then was like, okay, I've got some money. See you later, family. Yeah. I'm moving to Costa Rica. Would you be funny if he went down and started a cult with this one guy? So Tupperware stayed pretty much the same until 1990 when a designer named Morrison cousins basically kind of redesigned for the new era. Yeah. He was already a VP, I guess, at Tupperware, and he decided that it was a little difficult. He had an 82 or 81 year old mother at the time, 87 year old mother at the time when he was charged with redesigning the Tupperware line. And from that viewpoint, he redesigned it to make it easier for the agents to use. Right. So, like that burping lid that you had to, like, really kind of have some decent hands strength to put on. Sure. He figured out a way around it by using flaps that opened and closed to release the air. Didn't require quite as much hand strength. The lids were. Made in contrast and color to the bowls. So if you had low visibility, low vision, not visibility, that's totally different. Yes. If you're wearing all camouflage at the time, you'd be able to find the lid and the bowl that go together pretty easy. Yeah. So he made it easier for old folks. Yes. And he was the guy who brought it online. He did a lot of good stuff, apparently, with it. He also took the brand. I thought this was cool, and I would love to see this on video because I'll bet it's just so bizarre and surreal to watch. They broadcast a series of live temporary parties on some home shopping channel in the early 90s. That was probably the first home shopping experience. I think those were around in the think home shopping was already established. Oh, no. When did they do this? Early. Ninety s oh, I thought you said he did it, like, in the 60s. No. Got you. No, we should do one on home shopping. I'll bet that has an interesting weird history. You think? I'll look into it. I'll let you know. My mom's into it, man. QVC so did we talk about how to throw a Tupperware party? Yeah, we did. We sure did. Okay. Did we talk about Tupperware drag parties? We did not. We should. Yeah, because there's more than one. Yeah. Well, there's one person in particular, a guy named Chris Anderson, who performs in drag as Dixie Long Gate and sells, like, a million dollars worth of Tupperware in the process. Like, he gets paid to perform. Like, he got to pay $40 just to a person just to have I guess he still does house parties, but he literally does tours and does off Broadway shows and stuff now. Right, but the whole thing is Tupperware is a real Tupperware party where you can buy tupperware and he's demonstrating the Tupperware, and he's kind of giving his own take on what it's useful for. But he's not the only drag show in the country selling Tupperware. Of course not. Apparently, a drag queen named Aunt Barbara up in Long Island was, at least in 2012, the number one salesperson in North America for Tupperware. It all makes sense when you think about it. So 250 grand worth of Tupperware in one year, like the kitchen of the drag show, the kitchen of Tupperware parties, it all sort of goes hand in hand. Yes, it does. And I went to the website of Dixie Long Gate, and he has a pretty interesting bio. I have three kids winona Dwayne and absorbean Jr. It's all made up, I think. I think maybe, although you never know. But yeah. Now he has solo stand up shows and a recent theatrical show called Never Wear a Tube Top While Riding a Mechanical Bowl and 16 other things I learned while I was drinking last Thursday. And apparently that is selling out venues. That's selling out venues. We're not, but that is don't be bitter. We will one day. If we did it in drag, we'd probably well, no, that's not true either. One day, Chuck. Yeah. That's a weird way to end this. I think it was perfect. I thought I had something else, but I guess I don't. Yes, I do. PBS did a great documentary called Tupperware with an exclamation point. It's got a whole website online, and you can watch parts of the documentary, if not the whole thing. Yeah. And look for the Sandra Bullock, the Brownie wise story. Coming to a theater near you in a couple of years. Nice job. You said a theater near you. A theater you just said, coming to a theater near you. Yeah. That's like wow. Did you ever think you would grow up to say that in public? Sure. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about Tupperware, you can type that one word in the search barhowtofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. We call this the streisand effect. You ever heard of this? No. Hello, josh, Jack and Jerry really enjoyed the podcast on Internet censorship, although I was disturbed that SOP 303 exists. Sure. One thing not mentioned that I thought was relevant is when individuals attempt to censor specific things from their own life and the resulting fallout that occurs in 2003. And I remember this happening, actually. A picture of Barbara Streisand's home in Malibu appeared in a publicly available collection of over 120 photos of California coastline. The collection was documenting coastal erosion and not related to news, paparazzi or tabloids or anything like that, but Streisand's lawyers filed a $50 million lawsuit against the photographer, asking the picture be taken down for privacy reasons before stories of the lawsuit hit the press. The photo of the home had only been downloaded six times, two of which were by her attorneys. During the following month, after the whole thing became a news story, more than 400,000 people visited the website. They even coined the term the Streisand Effect, where an attempt to it really got out of hand for her. Yeah, it did. I remember this blew up in her face. An attempt at censoring or removing something from the Internet results in said thing being seen and reported on much more than if the person requesting it be removed. It simply let it fade into obscurity. Thanks for the podcast. Also, possibly a shout out to my wife Emily, who is nearly as addicted to stuff you should know as I am. Nearly. And that is from Brenton Krause in Mid Hudson Valley, New York, USA. So, Emily and get on it so you're equally as addicted. And thank you, Britain, for being fully addicted to the brim. I guess if you want to get in touch with us and talk to us about Tupperware or whatever, you can tweet to us right at Saskat. Yeah. Josh is manning that station. You can go on to our awesome Facebook page, courtesy of Chuckers Man, that station facebook. Comstepyshedon. You can send us an email. We both get those. They come direct to us. They sure do to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com and hang out with us at our home on the web. Studio stuffyshenocom. 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." | |
c2fbc5d2-5460-11e8-b38c-d7572cce9177 | SYSK Selects: Saunas: More Interesting Than You Think! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-saunas-more-interesting-than-you-thin | 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. | Sat, 02 Feb 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=33, tm_isdst=0) | 36725343 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. Happy Saturday. Chuck here with the stuff you should know. Select pick for the week from July 22, 2010. Saunas colon more interesting than you think? I think this was titled by Josh, if I remember correctly. That's a Josh calling title all the way. And if I am not mistaken, I did not know how to pronounce it back then. I think I pronounced it Sauna all through the episode and got a lot of email that it's actually Sauna. So I wanted to write that ship here eight years later, going on nine years later and do it the right way. So here we go with sound ins more Interesting Than You Think because they are. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuckers. 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 brought to you by Jolly Rancher. Have you ever mixed up with Zima? No, but you know that Oakland former Oakland Raiders quarterback jam Marcus 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. Yes. Okay. Plus, it's like that's what they do in Houston. Seriously, is that LS 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, he's a bust. He's nothing now. Well, he's a big wash. Really? Yes. He went to the NFL and got all fat and threw interceptions and he was great for the team. 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 Lamb, 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, Saunas. It's way cooler than you think. And it's dirty and filthy. And he was right. Steeped in history. Yeah. For my money, Robert Williams the best writer on how stuff works.com. But he wrote an altogether pleasant article that I've read, like, many, 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 are we'll 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 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 40 degrees 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 cools. It creates a 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 is 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, isn't there? Right. Yeah. If steam room is 104 degrees Fahrenheit average, you're talking 176 degrees Fahrenheit hot, 80 degrees Celsius in your average sauna. Yeah. 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 what 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 Calibella. This is a little side note. Never heard of that. It's their national epic. Very old. It mentions Saunas frequently. Well, of course. Okay. There's about one 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. Nestor. 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 spit? 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 ain'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 Saunas. And they have them in prison. Yeah. Finish prison. 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, it's 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 seventies, 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 in Andy Warhol, and it could have been Studio 54. Right. 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 I never really figured out and it's wood, 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 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 not 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 crack in the roof. Yeah. It's getting 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. I know, right? So they're generally left to sauna purists, and the rest of us just use regular sauna. It's just called the sauna. And this is the very recognizable sauna with spruce or cedar wood and a stove most of the time. The stove, called Kia, was electric these days, sure. Although you can have a wood burning kiwa. Kiwas. K-I-U-A-S that has a chimney. Right. You have gas, too. The main feature isn't that it's wood heated for a saba. 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 a steam room? It's heated by water vapor. You can actually use the same thing for a sauna. You take a little water to ladle from a bucket, splash it on the rocks, and all of a sudden you have, with the Finns, call loyally. Well, there's an umlat in there. I know. And I'm not big on Finnish pronunciation. I know how to say seamo hill, and I'm not even sure I'm saying that right. I'm going to go with lily. Lily. Swedish. I'm sorry. Yeah, I just said something in Swedish. So since we're talking about the rocks so 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 water on real danger. Exploding rocks are not good. Now, you need unweathered Corey rock, and he listed a few. Horn blender is my favorite. The one they like the most is what is it? Period, period, period, period. Because there's a semiprecious mineral called paradox. Yeah. So I imagine this is where it comes from. Peridotite, or old friend basalt, makes it basal basalt. 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, really hot. You can pour water on them. It'll steam. It'll hits. 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 lourde. Yeah. They don't have a name for the rocks. It's called the pile of rocks. Yeah. Interesting. I bet there's water on that pile of rocks and make it 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 actually penetrates into your bones, which it's good and bad. 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. Yes. 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. Yes. I think I would just like a regular sauna, not a Sabbath sauna stove. A Kiwas. Exactly. Kind of like they have at the gym. Yes. Or at the holiday without alito. The old naked men. Well, that is the thing about Sawing US 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 set 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. You just cover up with the towel. Yeah, but why is that not hygienic to wear? Like your speedo in there. Does a butt funk 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 now 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? A couple of guys. Yeah. If you haven't seen the movie for you, yes. 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. Because 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. We used to believe that pooping as much as we could was a good idea. Which ice 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, echoing glands, which are different from apocrine glands. I feel like I have more, but it's probably not the case. Mine are just overactive. That's possible. Hard working 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. That's a lot, man. A 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. This is 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. So almost like our sweat glands are set up to just do 1%. But people who use saunas 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, like, 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 is taking 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 feel 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 afterward. Right. You are. Josh, a great shower. Like a great sweat or a good steam. Good Fitz. Good Fitz does the body good. We were 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 vennic, 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. Right. And 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. Then you're in trouble. Then that shower doesn't work. Truck. 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 at 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's 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. Good. The lymph nodes, which are another internal waste system, a very important one, are flushed. Right. And you start to sweat even further. Yeah. But it doesn't increase your blood pressure. It increases your blood pumps 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 a 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 it is 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. Oh. The one reason they recommend heart patients not getting saunas 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. That's not true. No. 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 was Turkish path. Did not know that, far as I know. That's what I've always heard it. I had no idea. Chuck, I think it's high time we talked about the history of the sauna. And saunas are 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. Yeah. 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. Sure. 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 saviosanas, which, remember, they back at least to the 12th century. Right, right. That's probably a lot further than that. Apparently, as Finland settled by modern Finns, they saw, and it 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 have babies on. Yes. Prostitution. What they called the stews was the nickname they had. Yes. 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 the 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. Process 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 19th, 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 him 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 called it gay cancer. They did originally. Crazy. Yeah. And so the bathhouse is featured prominently sawn is featured prominently in the bath house. 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 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'd 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 incident, 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. Yeah. Just sitting there, just like there is something I see why the intercourse happen, 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. 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 a sauna, 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, and 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. 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 that are like, I'm the son of monster because I come here all the time, and it's like, no, I'm the son of minister. It just goes on like that for a long time. Yes. 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, butt naked? I know. And why are they always, like, 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. Yeah. A shower with denim jeans. No, but I'm not into that. Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No one can escape it. Yeah. 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 loyalty. Yeah. Do whatever you want. Somebody in there. It's probably one of the 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 CHOWDERHEAD 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, that just reminded me. I saw the wore the roses again the other night for, like, the 50th time. And 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 directly? Man, this is one of my favorite movies. Has a brilliant mind. Lastly, Chuck, let's talk about the world record for Sauna. Oh, yeah. There is a guy named Timo Kawan. 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 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 110 degrees Celsius for 3 minutes and 46 seconds. You 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 howstoughfworks.com typing in Saunas and just reading this really well written article by Robert Lam. I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah. Then informative. And since I said householdforce.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 householdworks.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. Oh, okay. You want to just go over and read Saunas@housedefirst.com? Watch it. 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. Oh, look, it's just Tampa. That's when you saw my search chiming all over the 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 work in 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 a 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. In Kelly. We're going to get a letter from the oil burning burning upward. Okay. Remind me to tell you about high fructose 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 it 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 and 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 S YSK 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. Orgteam stuffychildo. Chuck, we indirectly saved these people's lives. You realize we've 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 any. Oh, God. So off. You're so hooked on Todd? Todd solons right now. Love that guy. Todd stolen. If you're listening, I appreciate your work, buddy. Yeah, I do, too. If you are Todd Solens, we want to hear from you. Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffarks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog on the houseofworks.com homepage. 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 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 earlier, early on Amazon music. 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4265fe0a-53a3-11e8-bdec-bb9224805cc5 | The Ins and Outs of Beekeeping | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-ins-and-outs-of-beekeeping | Who wants fresh honey? We do! Learn all about the ancient art of beekeeping today. | Who wants fresh honey? We do! Learn all about the ancient art of beekeeping today. | Thu, 10 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=283, tm_isdst=0) | 61377806 | 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. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. The Mellow Gold edition. Were you talking about, Beck? Yeah, sure. But I think Beck was really talking about Am soft rock from the 70s, which I've got to say is, like, right up my alley these days. I know. I mean, I've always loved it, but I'm really on a streak right now. Yeah, you were championing the yacht rock thing. Yeah, I discovered Kenny logging. Like I knew Kenny Loggins only from the Top Gun era. Oh, wow. And then that one Caddyshack song, which I was not crazy about, but then even further back, before the caddy shack thing. It was just beautiful stuff. Yeah. Logan's a Messina. Yeah. I don't know if I've heard any Messina stuff, so I think I'm catching them right after the Messina part. Right before the caddy shack part. Okay. That's a pretty narrow Kenny logging window. That's nice right there. But anyway, I'm talking about Mellow Gold, because I think you and I can both agree, Chuck, that even just reading about beekeeping, let alone actually engaging in the act of beekeeping, is about the most mellow, just relaxing thing that you can possibly do on this planet. I think it's just above bird watching and birding because birds don't sting you. Okay, so it's less mellow than bird watching. No, no. Yes, less mellow. I think bird watching is the most mellow thing on the planet. Okay. And I think because there's a threat of stinging, then bees have to be just slightly more stressful. Yeah. We should probably just go ahead and cut to that particular chase. Like, if you are a beekeeper, you're going to get sting. Like the bees don't necessarily know you exist and they certainly don't learn to love you or anything like that. There's just certain tricks and techniques you can do to vastly cut down on the chance you're going to be stung. But you're going to be stung, like, from what I've seen several dozen times a year, from working very closely with these, handling them, interacting with them. And so if you have a bee allergy, you probably don't want to take up beekeeping. But don't turn this episode off because, as we were just saying, even just reading or hearing about beekeeping is relaxing. Yeah. And it's a great thing to do for the environment now because bees are super important to the environment and they're dying off because people spray for mosquitoes and use herbicides and things like that in their yard. And that's not cool. No, but it's not just that. Remember there's the Colony Claps Disorder episode that we did. No one ever got to the bottom of what has been the cause of this. There's, like, so many different culprits from roundup to pesticides to cell phone towers. Was the culprit there for a little while, or suspected culprit. But as far as we know, as far as I know, we don't know exactly what it is that's leading to call any collapse disorder. So, yeah, it is a good thing to say. You know what, I'm going to oversee a colony of bees and make sure that they are just in hog heaven as far as their little lifespans are concerned. That's right. And we did a full episode on Bees in January 2013. What else did we do on Bees? We did a TV show episode on Bees. And I sent you a clip from that episode today, and we both had a good laugh. I thought it was good. I was like, this is actually pretty good compared to how I remember it. Yeah. Wow. I thought it was so bad. Really? That's funny. That's how I used to feel about it. I couldn't watch 10 seconds strung together of that show. It was so cringy to me. I guess enough time has passed where now I look back on, I'm like, this is actually not nearly as bad as I remember it being. Nostalgia has kicked in. It's the Shawn ana effect, I guess so. That's funny you say Shawna, because I was just listening to Sean Anna yesterday. See? Yeah, it's that butter mine HOF effect. That's what's going down. Which is even more astounding because I was listening to Butter Minehoff this morning. So beekeeping in the United States is becoming more and more popular these days. Here's a stat, and this is an article from the Old House Stuff Works website, but it's from Dave Ruse. From Dave Ruse from our very own and that's how I found it, because I'm looking for Ruse specific material now. It's just bona fide good stuff. It is. But he had a statue from 2017 where there were about 2.67 million honey bee colonies in the US. And of course, a lot of these are from big bee, big honey. Right. But there's a lot of backyard beekeepers doing their best work and going out there with their mellow gold, smoking up those hives and getting out that sweet, sweet nectar. Yeah. And actually those are good people to buy it from, if you believe in immunotherapy like I do, which apparently is still considered unproven. Who do? But it makes so much sense that you could introduce small amounts of, like, local pollen that you may develop an allergy to to prevent from getting allergies. Which means that you want to buy honey that's been produced within 1020 miles maybe, of where you live. So you would want to go find one of those small beekeepers who sells their honey. Yeah. If you're on your Facebook neighborhood page or your next door neighborhood page, chances are you will see someone pop up every now and then that says, I've got honey or eggs or something like that, or goat's milk. Just go get that stuff and eat it up. Right? Who wants goats milk? Who wants goat's milk? You know, the traditional Facebook post group. That's right. You could also go to a street festival in your town or something like that, like a little community festival. You're probably going to find local honey there or a health food store, something like that. Or goat's milk. Yeah. And while beekeeping is for sure fun and this made me want to do it, and I may do it one day me too. But you got to have some time. It is not the easiest thing in the world to do. It kind of came across to me as one of those things that like a lot of stuff like this. Your first batch may not be the best, but you learn and you learn, and you get better and better at it. Yeah. And I want to shout out to also to some of the great resources in addition to this How Stuff Works article. I actually called a guy from Honey Harvest Farms in Glendon, Maryland. His name is Jeff. And Jeff helped me out with some info that I just couldn't find online. But some of the sites I came across include Carolina Honeybees, Iron Oak Farm and Scientific Beekeeping. And all three of those are great resources. But there's a lot of really good resources on the Internet to help explain how to do this and answer more like arcane questions. And there's tons of forms. People who are really into beekeeping, I found, are called Beaks for short, and they are definitely into this. So there's tons of resources out there to kind of get started and just kind of dive in. But yeah, I got the impression that there's always more to learn. Sure. And each colony over the years probably has its own personality, I guess, is how you put it. Yeah. Should we go back in time, though, and talk about the history? I think so. Because they found honey that is 5500 years old. Where? In Georgia. Not our georgia. The other georgia. Yes. And honey is very famous for not going bad. They say if you find old honey like that, you can just heat it up and it will go back to being just delicious honey. Even if it's crystallized. Right. Because the crystallization is just kind of an unavoidable consequence of aging. But it's easy to reverse. Right. Just with a little bit of heat. Yes. It's going to be honey again, flowing. Right. So did they taste that honey? I'm not sure if they tasted that honey, but they found other old honey that they've tasted, and it's supposed to be pretty good. It's honey tasted like honey, I think. Right. And it does taste like chicken. And it stores forever, like, literally, from what we understand, because it's sterile and it stays generally sterile. But the earliest depiction of actually rating a beehive or beekeeping is not really beekeeping. It's basically just a picture of a guy in a cave in Spain on the cave walls, sticking his hand into a beehive. And it's from something like, I believe, 110 years ago. Yeah, 9000 BCE, and sticking his hand in that honeypot. As far as real beekeeping goes, and on a domesticated level, we all know that they did it in Egypt and about 2500 BCE. But of course, people think China probably beat us or not us. Chuck cast is a lot with Egypt. Everybody, they beat us to it here in Egypt. So in Egypt, though, eventually they have something like in Hieroglyphs, they have, like, bee hives, clearly depicted honey pots. And then they've also found hives that were human built, clearly human built, made of clay and straw from as late as 2900 years ago in Israel. So we have been into honey for a very long time, and at some point, we figured out that you could probably suffer a lot fewer beastings if you kind of what's the word? Insinuated yourself into this b colony. And that's ultimately what beekeeping is. We'll see it's human saying, okay, I kind of get this lifecycle of the bees and the bee colony and what's going on here. I'm going to kind of manipulate this or oversee it, supervised, I guess, is how you put it, this natural process in order to basically steal the honey from the bees at the end of the summer. That's right. In a way where they can keep making honey. Because in the early days, the very first beehives that people domesticated were hollowed out stumps and tree logs and things, and they would destroy these they would get that honey and then be like, all right, let's just destroy it and kill everything that gave us this delicious honey. There was a better way forward later, but it also took the skip. Skep. If you've ever seen what looks like a turned over basket with a hole on the bottom as sort of the symbol of beekeeping, that's called a skeptic. And they still use them today here and there. I think, like the most hardcore old school naturalist beekeepers might use a skept. Read hipster. Yeah, hipsters use skeps. Or outside the developing world. We rarely use them these days, but they're still around, and you can find pictures of them. And if you look at images online and they have pictures of them turned over and you can see the combs stuffed in there, it's kind of cool looking, right? Yeah. And like you said, it's basically like the international kind of home spun symbol of beekeeping and honey raising. That's right. But that was not any better for the bee because you had to destroy the hive with those as well. Right. Which is bad for the bees, but it's also bad for the beekeeper because you have to re establish a new colony every time you harvest. And you can keep a colony going for a lot longer than just one year, you know? Yeah. And things really kind of took a leap forward in Switzerland in the 18th century with a man named Francois Huber, who had the first movable hive, the leaf hive, which was sort of like a book. It turned like a Bookwood. And this was a good design because you could get the honey and not the brood, and you can remove these leaves without killing the colony, which is a great step forward. But it still wasn't like the best design yet. And that one never really caught on. It didn't catch on. Despite Hubert's efforts to promote it. He would go into town and say, oh, well, let's see what's on the next page. Bees. What's on the next page? More bees, everyone and town folk just never really caught on. No. But in the 19th century, there's a guy named Thomas Wildman, and he started working with what are called bar hives, which I have also seen called Kenyan bar hive. So I suspect that Thomas Wildman got the idea from Kenya. But it's like basically a long trough, or like those standing planters that you can keep a number of plants in. But it's just basically like a long, rectangular raised box. Sure, it's like one of those, but then if you lift the top of the box, there's just a bunch of bars that stretch across the top inside, and that's it. They have, like a notch hanging down. But if you pull that bar up, you see that the bees have created combs dangling from those bars, which is this bar hive is still very much in use today. Sure. It's just not nearly as widespread as the one we're about to talk about. Yes. There would be a man from Pennsylvania, minister named Lorenzo Langstroth, who said, I will one day be the father of American beekeeping. The Denver one was like, what are you talking about? He said, Just pay attention, because I have discovered what's called the B space. And everyone was like, what are you talking about? Is this a sermon? He was widely questioned. Like, everything he said, he'd be like, I have to go to the bathroom. People be like, what do you mean? What's wrong with you? Langstrom so what he discovered is there's this magic space called the bee space, where bees can really do their thing successfully. And he found out that bees would not even build a comb in a space tighter than 1 CM. Right. And so he said, this is the B space where they can produce the comb in the right amount, and not enough bee glue is going to get in the way. Like, this is the magic area, and I shall declare it bee space, and it shall be fruitful. Yeah. And it was like, believe it or not, realizing that bees don't build comb or glue in anything tighter than a centimeter revolutionized beekeeping. Because now with that bee space, you could build these beehives so that on the edges of them, they were just a centimeter. Between the sides of, say, where the combs were built, you could keep these frames or these bars separated by a centimeter. So there's enough space, like you're saying, for the piece of work, but not enough for them to glue together, which was an ongoing, apparently millennial old problem of having to harvest and getting a bunch of combs stuck together at once with the space. Now all of a sudden, you had little bits of comb that you could manipulate a lot more easily, and that was like a huge contribution to be keeping, strangely enough. That's right. And he got the first American patent on a movable frame beehive in October of 1852. Hooked up with a cabinet maker from Philadelphia named Henry Borgwin and started building these things, started selling them and did okay, but he found out that his patent was way too hard to enforce. He tried to for a little while, but it was basically a waste of his time, and the patent was just walked all over, and he ended up getting no royalties, but did revolutionize beekeeping. So a Langstroth hive then, is a proprietary eponym, is that what you're saying? Well, I mean, he got the patent right, and he couldn't enforce it, so it just became like kleenex, sort of or aspirin. Yeah. I mean, if you buy a Langstroth hive today, then for sure he's not getting any dough. Long dead. Long dead in the ground, this hive. This is really cool. We'll talk more about it later, but just put a pin in it that this is the most widespread hive like Langstroth figured out how to make a bee hive that is so close to ideal that since the 1850s, it's gone virtually unimproved. It's pretty significant accomplishment, if you ask me. Yeah. And I looked at these war or where Hives? W-A-R-R-E right. Which is another kind, but I'm sure there are differences once you dig in there, but it didn't look that much different to me than the Langstroth. Yeah, I couldn't really tell much of this. I mean, I saw well, the Langstroth doesn't have this quilted thing of, like, cardboard shavings or whatever, so I think it's the very small differences that make a big difference in differentiating between these highs. Yeah. So should we take a break? I think we should. And then, Chuck, when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about B society. Okay, let's do it. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office, then? You could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so I would direct everyone to our ten of ten TV show Stuff You Should Know, or in particular the B's episode, which, by the way, I wrote. I have an executive producer credit on that show from writing that episode. You have an executive producer credit on every episode. That's true, because I really earned it on that one. Writing it. Well, listen, that's funny, because that's how it was explained to me at the time. But, Chuck, I just want to go on record here. I went to herculean links to keep you from getting stung by a B in that episode, and they said, Absolutely not. Chuck has to get stung just to make the episode worth watching, he has to get stung. And I thought it was a better idea if you didn't, if we kept building up to it and it never happened. But they said, no, we're not going with that. But I tried really hard to keep you from getting stung. That's right. And we had a little fake bees that they put on my eyeball. But I would direct people to the January 26 podcast episode instead. Why not? Both sure. But if you really want to learn about bees, that's where we dive into it super deep. So I guess we'll just consider this a bit of a recap. Okay, so in the world, there's something like 20,000 species of wild bees, but in honey, bee or beekeeping, you're going to find usually one species of bee, APIs mela FARA, which is either the European or the Western honeybee. And there's different varieties. They call them races with, like, breeds of dogs. We call them breeds, but they're all still the same species, canis lupus, but with bees, they're all the same species, APIs melafera. But the races are different. So you have like, the Italian honeybee or the Carnolian, I believe, Carnolian honeybee or the Russian honeybee, but they're all races of European or Western honeybee. That's what you're going to find everywhere. Yeah. And these things are amazing. I remember at the time, we were just sort of obsessed with bees after that episode, so much so that we wanted to do it for the TV show. And one of the main reasons is because they're what's called a superorganism, which basically means you take a Western honeybee out on its own and that thing isn't going to do anything worthwhile with it. I couldn't order dinner at Roy Rogers restaurant, it's so dumb. No, but when you put all these things together, all these bees have very specific jobs that we're going to go over here in a second and all these coordinated actions, and that is the superorganism. They are one whole, like 60,000 honeybees acting as one in order to produce honey. Hive mind. It's a hive mind. Right. I mean, we get so many hive mind, worker bees, all these things that are in our lexicon are all taken from the way bees do their thing. Right, exactly. And so when you put them together, this larger superorganism, an emergent property of the collective actions and the instincts that these bees are following, if you put it all together, they interact and form this larger whole, and that's the colony. And so on the individual level, you have three different types of bees. You've got worker bees, which make up the vast majority of the population. They're all female. They're all sexually undeveloped females. That's right. And they do almost all of the work, as usual, around the hive. That includes everything from raising the eggs to creating wax. What else do they do? They make the honey, they go collect the pollen, they defend the hive. They serve as guards at the entrance, like they do almost everything. Yeah, they take care of that queen, which is the biggest one of all, literally. So this all made me nervous when I was reading this again, because so much depends on the queen. It all depends on this one. B. Wait, it made you nervous? Yeah, because it's not like, oh, there's a bunch of queens, so if one of them dies or something happens right, then you're fine. You got to have the queen. And there's just one of them. I can't remember where we heard it, but somebody said somewhere that the queen is their slave. And that's actually kind of true because the queen's whole job, Chuck, is to basically keep the colony going and optimistic through this pheromone that she creates, but also to lay all of the eggs and fertilize them. But that's a lot of eggs. It's a ton. Apparently a queen can lay up to a million in her lifetime, right? Yeah. And that's over a few years. But that's about 1500 eggs a day. But my point is this. The queen is their slave because she does this for them. She keeps the population going, but they decide when it's time for another queen to be born. As far as I know, sure. Is that correct? I think so. Okay, we'll find out in the listener mail. Then you got your drones, of course. Those are the male bees. It is funny. You have one queen, you have these males that all they do is mate with the queen, and then these female worker bees do literally everything else. Right. But on the other end, the female worker bees are the ones who get to decide, like, who lives and who dies. Sure. And if you're a male drone, once you've mated with the queen, which happens in midair outside of the hive, very sexy. It is super sexy. The queen mates with multiple males at once, gathers their sperm and stores it in a little sack, which she then goes and lays eggs and fertilizes the eggs as she sees fit. Because I believe unfertilized eggs are drones and fertilized eggs are workers. So the queen is actually keeping an eye on how many of what are needed. But the drones, once they mate, especially when it comes time for winter, and all of a sudden, they're starting to hit up their food stores and things are getting scarce. The drones get pushed out into the cold to go off and die by themselves. That's right. That's a pretty ignomious end. Yeah. And it's a good time to point out that at different times of the year, bees are going to be more well fed naturally. And as you'll see, when you're beekeeping, you have to keep track of what time of year it is, because, like you said, in the winter, it's going to be super scarce. But even in the fall and early spring, you're going to need to supplement their food intake. Right, exactly. Because here's the thing. So just with this life cycle of bees, in the spring, when the flowers start to bloom and the bees are going crazy, it's what's called the nectar flow. They are producing honey in overtime. So what you're doing is the beekeepers, you're saying, oh, okay, well, here I want to make sure you have plenty of room to store as much honey as you possibly can, because what the bees are doing is storing honey, literally storing energy away to help get them through the winter. And you're going in and saying, I'm going to take these honey stores that you plan to use to make it through the winter, and I'll leave you some. I'll leave you, hopefully just enough so that you don't need any. But also, as the beekeeper, this human who's insinuating himself or herself, I'll hit you up with some food, too, to make sure you guys survive happy and comfortably through this winter in exchange for letting me take this honey. Right. Because I've got some toast inside that's just popped out of the toaster. Man, I had some creamed honey for the first time today. I'm a big time honey guy, but I had not had creamed honey before. Is that like spun honey or is that different? It is a combination of crystallized and liquid honey that's highly spreadable. Okay. And I got it. It's like just Trader Joe stuff. Who knows where it was made, but it's very tasty. At least it's doing nothing for my immune system, but it's doing a lot for my limbic system. Yeah, I mean, honey is sort of one of nature's miracles. It is when you start talking about manuka honey and things that have like these healing properties and it's pretty great. Stung by a jellyfish, put some honey on it. Oh, yeah. No, I bet it couldn't hurt. No. At the very least you can eat something while you're doing that and it makes things a little better. So should we talk about equipment for a bit? Yes, I think so, because this is about beekeeping. That was our brief bee overview. But again, go back to January 2013 if you want the full scoop on bees. But this is about beekeeping. And if you want to be a beekeeper, we also did a little short on beekeeping. One of our little shorts that we used for the car commercials when we would go around to different locations, we did a little beekeeping bit because I remember we had smokers and we wore the hat and veil. I remember that too. And gloves. I just had forgotten what the context was for. But yeah, it was for one of those shorts. I can't remember what we call them. Interstitials. That's right. The most dry, scientific, clinical name for those things. Those were good. Surely you like those. Yeah, I think those hold up. Those are fun. Okay, good. So here's what you're going to need is new equipment. If you're new to beekeeping, dave here recommends you get new equipment. Oh, yeah, you have to because if you get inherited equipment, like once you're on the scene, somebody might be like, hey, I got an extra smoker, or here's some frames I can't use. They open their trench coat. They've got a bunch of b boxes hanging inside. What do you have? What do you want? But as you will find out later on in our section on disease and bacteria and stuff, it's pretty prevalent. So you want to get your new equipment going if you're new to beekeeping. Just so you start out on the right foot. Yeah, because once a specific kind of bacteria that causes foul brood, once it's in your boxes, like your colony is toast and your boxes are done forever, you need to burn the boxes so they don't end up in somebody's hands because it'll just stay and linger and kill everybody. Not good. So as we kind of said earlier, far and away the most popular hive among beekeepers is the Langstroth hive. Right. So we're going to just kind of focus on that one. But it is a lot of fun to just go look at exploded diagrams of the different kinds of bee hives out there that beekeepers use and see all the different parts or whatever. But there's too many of them to really go into. So we're just going to focus on the Langstroth high, even though with. Just the length of this introduction to how we're just going to pay attention to the Langstroth hive. I could have covered two or three other hive, probably so, but we're going to stick to just the Langstroth hive. Okay. So you could build one of these things if you were good at this kind of thing. But what I recommend is that you go online or you go to if there happens to be a local Apiary store in your village, go buy one there. If you live in a village, there's an Apiary store for sure. But yes, they also sell mustache wax and beard oils, handmade axes. But it is true if you have like, a quaint hardware store, that's probably a good place to look. And then also, I guarantee there's a million places online to get them to. And they're relatively cheap, too. Yeah, not too much. You can get into bees for it seems like including the bees for less than $500, you can kind of get going. Right. That's what I'm getting. And probably if you really watch what you're doing, maybe half of that. All right, so you get your Langstroth hive, and this thing has a big box on the lower half called the hive body or the brood chamber. And this is where the bees are mainly. Yeah. And even below that, you have a stand that the thing is sitting on. It raises it off of the ground, and usually it's kind of angled so it's like a landing pad for the bees. And then it also improves circulation. Then you have the bottom board, which is the floor of the hive, which protects the hive from invaders from above. And then you've got the brood chamber above that the hive body. That's right. And that's where they're going to be building that comb. That's where the queen is going to be laying her eggs. That's where they're going to raise that brood up, and that's where they're going to store the honey that they think that they're going to be eating in abundance. Right. And then you've got a really important piece of equipment that would be very easy to overlook if you don't know what you're doing. But you're going to have issues if you don't get it. It's called the queen excluder. So you remember, Chuck, that you said that the queen is about twice the size of the workers. Yeah, but that is true. You definitely did. Okay. I'm here to tell you, when you add a queen excluder, all it is is basically like a mesh or slats or something like that that are space far enough apart for the workers to easily make it through. But it's too close together for the queen to make it through. So the queen won't leave the brood chamber to lay eggs. She'll just use the brood chamber for that. Which means, though, that the workers can go lay honey in the chamber above the brood chamber. Which is called the honey super. The box above that. That's right. The honey super. Not the supper. No, just the super. And I didn't see why they call it that, did you? No. The honey super position, maybe. I don't know. It's a nod to quantum physics. Maybe so. But this is where they're going to store that surplus honey when the plants are blooming and that nectar is flowing and you're skimming some off the top as the beekeeper. Yeah. And if you did not have that queen excluder, the honey super would be just another brood chamber, because the queen wants to use as many places as she can to lay eggs, and then they lay honey around it. So the eggs, which also serves as the nursery for the brood and the honey, they're all together in the same combs. But because you put that queen excluder, she's not laying eggs in that honey super, which means it's just sweet, delicious honey in all of the combs on the frames, which we haven't talked about yet. Well, yeah, these are the frames. These are the frames that you can take in and out, they hang vertically. And these days, it's pretty amazing how far they've come. They are actually pre printed with beeswax or some sort of foundation made of plastic that just sort of says, here you go, bees, here's a little head start. Right. But you found some extra interesting stuff about the bees and their wax making abilities, too. Yeah, I did, actually. So it takes about a tablespoon of honey to make an ounce of wax, and bees make wax through a gland. Right. They eat the honey and secrete wax instead. And so whenever they create a new brood chamber, they make it, they secrete it as wax and basically a circle, and then they use their body heat to shape it into a hexagon. And the reason they kind of make a perfect little hexagon, too. Right. And the reason that they make hexagons is because they don't know this, but structurally, it is the most structurally sound shape in nature that uses the least amount of material. Right. Which is just astounding that bees instinctually know to make a hexagon. Hexagon. Right. Not octagon a hexagon. Right. But they start with a circle and then use their body heat to melt it into the shape. Well, anyway, would they have to do this for each egg that they put in a brood chamber? They have to do this for each cell that they put honey into, and then they also make wax to cap the honey off. So it requires a lot of honey to make that wax. Which means, logically, if you can give them a leg up, either with preprinted honey or plastic, or leaving as much honey as you can from the honey harvest, or leaving as much wax there as you can after the honey harvest, they don't have to make new wax. They can reuse the old stuff, which means that's less honey that your bees are eating to produce wax, which means it's more honey that you're getting. Yes. And by the way, if you're typing an email to me right now because I said hexagons are five sided please stop it. Is six sides. Yes. Everyone knows that five sided structure is a circle. Wait, what is a five sided one? Huh? What's a five sided one? Is that a pentagon or pentagon? Yeah, you're right. Pentagon. I played enough Dungeons and Dragons as a youth that I should know this, but I don't remember. I get my gons confused sometimes. Everyone well, Chuck, I'll teach you a little cheat here. Refer to all of them as polygons and you're covered. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So like every hexagon it's a polygon, that kind of thing. Hexagon triangle anything with three sides or more. It's a polygon. No, not a polygon. That's a circle. But ask someone to debate you, it can't you'll just shut them down every time? Yeah. And also make new friends at parties. Right. Come at me. Fight me, polygon. So you're also going to have a feeder in this thing. We talked a little bit earlier about the fact that you're skimming this honey and taking some for yourself as it's made in excess. And at other times of the year, when it's especially late summer and winter, their pollen resources are going to be lower, obviously. Right. Because things aren't in full bloom. So you're going to have to help feed these little fellows and little ladies. There are feeders. Dave here says something about a Ziploc bag with sugar water with a slit cut. But I've seen that's the most rudimentary thing I can imagine. One small step up is like sort of an aluminum pan with sugar water that slides in and out of this box. Yeah. And you know those like, pet feeders, those pet waters that have the water? Some of them look like that. Yeah. So that's specifically called the boardman feeder. And it's just a mason jar filled with sugar water and screwed into the mason jar cap, which is inverted in a little wooden thing with some slots for the bees to get in and out of. And the cap is perforated, so the sugar water just slowly drips out. And so it's a long, steady supply of water that you slide the wood part that the cap is inserted upside down into into the front entrance of your beehive. So all you have to do is unscrew the mason jar and put more sugar water and every once in a while and the bees need it. It's a really easy way to feed bees. That's right. But specifically, you mentioned pollen. I saw something that I didn't realize. But when you reach about the fall, you don't want the bees to have any pollen if you're feeding them. It has to be like pure sugar water because if they eat pollen that will produce solid waste, and bees are really clean, and they won't go in their hive. They leave the hive to go evacuate their bowels, which actually ties into that yellow rain short stuff. We did remember that. That's right. But they'll go fly away from the hive. But if it's too cold, they can't leave the hive. So they will actually die rather than poop in the colony. Or some of them will be like, forget it, I'm living. I'm just going to go ahead and poop. But now the whole colony is spoiled, and the reason why is because they've eaten too much pollen and they can't make it until the spring to go outside and poop. So you don't want to feed them any pollen in the fall. That's right. And that is the opposite of our wives who would rather die than poop in a public place. Right. Exactly. Me too. I basically would as well. Oh, I'll poop anywhere. I know, man. It's an admirable quality. I mean, I don't love it, but I certainly won't put myself at risk. What's your technique? You go to, like, a happy place and just pretend you're not there? Like, you just leave your body for a little while? No, I just go kind of primal. Oh, yeah. Like a lot of grunting kicking at the wall. No, it's like you got to do it. It's the most primal thing you can do. Sure. To force feces out of your body. Jerry's eating. I'm very sorry. I know. Sorry, Jerry. The miso is just drooling out of the crack of her mouth. I'm not doing it. She is. So let's keep going here because we need to move on to the tools, because that's the box that's the Langstroth hive. Get a good one, make sure it's solid. Yeah. And again, you don't have to break the bank. A cheap, basic Langstroth hive isn't going to put you in the poor house. And plus one other thing about Langstrof hive before we move on that's so ingenious. Chuck is modular and scalable. So you can easily remove the top boxes and put another brood chamber on, put another honey super on, and harvest more and more honey. If you break part of it, you can replace parts. Exactly. Yeah. It's like a really good inventor. Like, it makes sense that it would have been invented in 1850 and not really have been changed that much. Yeah, agreed. So we talked a little bit about the protective clothing that is that veil. You can have the cool little sort of safari pith helmet with a veil, but usually they will just fit over any kind of wide brimmed hat. You want to make sure it's snug. Some people, it depends on who you are. If you're really used to this, you can build up sensitivity to be stings, and you're like, forget the gloves, forget covering my body. I'll just wear the veil. Some people might not even wear the veil because they're so cool. I think at least they wear the veil. Oh, no. I've seen people handling bees without veils, my friend. For real? Sure. That's crazy. Yes. You think old time beekeepers are putting on a veil? All the videos I watched, everyone was wearing veils. They might not have been wearing anything else, but they had a veil and they had the second thing, a smoker. Oh, yeah. You got to have that smoker. And that is a very cool device. And I always wanted to hold one. And finally we got to when we made that little video interstitial, and it looks sort of like they've compared it to an elongated metal teapot. Not a bad descriptor. It's just like a metal canister with a spout pointing upward, and it's got a handle that has a little bellows built into it. And what you do is and I always wonder what the heck was in there? You're just burning something. You're burning cardboard or you're burning leaves or something, and use that bellows just to pump a little smoke out. Right. And the reason you're pumping the smoke out is to calm the bees. And it calms the bees by masking the pheromones that say the guard bees are shooting out, which means that the other bees aren't picking up on this alarming pheromone, and so they're all remaining calm, actually. So it's an essential tool of the trade as a smoker. That's right. And you're also going to need a hive tool if you look those up. If you've ever used a Wonder bar, I think that's probably proprietary name, but it's kind of like a flat crowbar, right? That's exactly what it looks like. Instead of a beefy round crowbar, I highly suggest you get a Wonder bar, too, because those are just great to have around the house. Yeah, I have one of those. You got a wonder bar. I do. I don't know if it's Wonderbar trademark pry bar, but it is exactly that. Yeah. So this hive tool is sort of the same, and it is used I think I mentioned bee glue earlier on that's propolis, and that is saliva and beeswax and other materials from the garden, maybe. And they use that to seal up gaps in the hive. But you're going to need to pry open stuff like get that big glue loose. And that hive tool is what you use because it doesn't destroy your beautiful hive box. Yeah, because the frames are where they build these honeycombs, and you need to get the frames out to get the honey from the honeycomb. So, yeah, you're going to need to pry the frames out. Sometimes everything the bee is doing is saying, please don't take my honey. Exactly. And we're like, oh, but we have a tool that allows us to do that. Right? Yes. Including and up to stinging you to say, please don't take my honey. But yeah, we don't listen. Yeah. You want to take our second break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. We'll be right back. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right? So if this whole thing has really floated your boat as it did us, because, Chuck, I guarantee you, both of us are going to be country folk beekeepers by the time we're dead. Yeah. In our retirement. Right. So if you've been bitten by the bug, if you've been stung by the beekeeping, that's all that coming. Bug. There's actually just a few things you want to do to get started. It's not hard to get into. It's one of those things like, have you ever taken scuba diving lessons? No. You learn how to scuba dive and it takes about 30 minutes, and then the rest of the week long course is to teach you how to stay alive if something goes wrong. Beekeeping is kind of the same way. Like, it's really easy to get into and learn the basics, but it takes years of just understanding and learning and picking up new things to really become an advanced beekeeper. Yeah. And you can read books and you can go online and you can take courses, but like, with everything, there's nothing like firsthand experience. And like you said, it's going to be a while. Be a while. I mean, to do that. I'm sorry, but in a couple of seasons, you're going to really know what you're doing to a large degree. Yeah. Dave Ruse says, bank, go find a mentor. There's plenty of beekeepers out there who are they're not going to yell at you for asking. They'll probably be happy to pass along this knowledge and information, I think. So it seems like a hobbyjob that people want to spread the love of. Right? Like creamed honey. So Dave says, though, there are some basic things to start. You want to pick a location for your hive. And one of the first things you want to do is make sure that you're allowed to have a hive depending on where you live. If you live out in the country, there's probably very few ordinances. Most ordinances either say you can't have bees here because this is a city and within the city limits, no bees are allowed. They say bees are farm animals, so they belong on a farm, or bees are nondomesticated animals, so same thing. Or heaven forbid you have an HOA. Just forget about it. Yeah, literally forget about it. If you have an HOA, there's one place called Champagne, Minnesota, and they say at least as far as the University of Minnesota says that they allow bees so long as, quote, the neighbors are on board. That's the official law from what I understand. I don't know if that's in the city code or the county code, but that's how it was put on the University of Minnesota website. So that is a good point though. You want to make sure your neighbors are cool with it, or at the very least that you have enough land that your neighbors aren't going to be bothered by the bees. Yes, but if you have a neighbor that says, I'm definitely allergic to bees, and then, I mean, tell them to move. Right. Either that or it's time for you to get into like RC plain. That's right. So you get your local ordinances all settled, you pay off your neighbor, and then you want to direct that be traffic, like where you set it up on your property is important. You don't want to have the hive entrance and exit facing your neighbor's property. Right. You want to have it facing your house and you want it ideally facing south or southeast. Yes. And the reason why you want to have it facing south or southeast is so it gets all sorts of really good morning sun because that will wake the bees up and get them going and saying, get off your dust, lazy, and get out there and start foraging and make me some honey. That's right. They also say that it's goodbye if you have some bushes or a private or a fence near the entrance. Because when they leave the hive, that's going to encourage them to go upwards. Yeah. Rather than to your neighbor's pool. That's right. So in addition to making sure the beehive gets morning sun, you want to protect it from strong winds. You want to make sure that it's definitely protected from afternoon, the worst of the afternoon sun. So say like between two and four, you don't want unobstructed sun just beating down your beehive. It's going to cook them. And you also want to make sure that there's a good all weather cap on the beehive that's going to protect it from rain and stuff like that too. And speaking of rain, you also want a water source nearby. Yeah. You made a joke about going to your neighbor's pool, but that could happen because bees need water. They forage for water, and they cool the hive with it. They blend it with pollen to make bee bread, which is pollen, nectar and honey, and that's what they eat. And I think that's what the larvae especially feed on. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. That bee bread. So if you live near a pond or you grew up like me and had a creek nearby your house, and then you're all set. You don't need to worry about it. But if you don't, then you're going to want to put something in, like a bird bath might be nice. Or Dave even says you can just put a large platter of water. Yeah. Dave also says put a ziplock of sugar water on your beehive and cut a slit in it. So maybe go a step further beyond the platter. Depends on your aesthetic, I think. Put some water in, like, a tire that stood up on its side. How about that? Just do that in your yard. Why are you picking on day if he's the best? Because that was some just genuinely bad advice. Don't put a platter of water out there. Like, put a little more thought into this. Okay. All right. So you've got everything except bees, and it never occurred to me where you get these bees, right. I thought you just set this all up and the bees would be attracted to it and fill it up over the course of a decade, and then you can start making honey. No, you can actually buy bees. Yes. And they arrive via postal service, from what I understand, or probably FedEx these days. But I read a Mother Earth News article from 1974, and they were saying, your postman will love you for this, but they're going to arrive in a package, a box filled with live bees, probably somewhere around 100 of them. Yeah. And a mated queen. That's important. It's not like you have all this and you're like, now I got to go find the rarest thing in the world, which is a happily mated queen. Right. This is one of the reasons I called Jeff over at the farm at Honey Harvest Farm in Glenda, Maryland, because I was like, I couldn't find what made it specifically meant. It was called pre made it. That's what they call it premade. So I was like, does that mean a virgin queen that hasn't made it yet or has made it beforehand? That's what it sounds like to me. Right? Yes, the latter is correct. They have the queen mate with a bunch of drones, and they say, Yoink, and take the queen and sequester her so that she can't lay any eggs. And then they put her in a special container with the rest of the bees and shipped them to you. And then you put the bees together in your own brood chamber with the queen in her sequestered thing, and you peel back a little like piece of tape or something, and that exposes a little candy plug. And the workers eat through the candy plug to free the queen. It's pretty cool how it works. It really is. And I've also seen that the candy plug, which is meant to also keep the queen bee alive during transport, if it comes out or something, you can just plug it with a marshmallow too, which is the most quaint thing I've ever read in my entire life. You should also try and get your bees locally. If you get them locally, then you know A, that they haven't been shipped a long way, which is going to stress them out and be that they're going to be hip to your scene, they're going to be down with your weather and just cool with the bars and the restaurants that are nearby. They'll know all about the local schools that the parents never stop talking about and everyone's just going to be happier. Right. So also, hopefully you can just go pick them up. But I do have the impression that there's tons of mail order bees, too. Oh, sure. But whenever it is, you want to order them so that they arrive in early spring. Because your whole goal here is to get this colony up and moving and really healthy and well populated and rare to go by the time the spring flowering and the nectar flow begins. That's right. There's another way to do this, what I call the Chuck way. The Chuck version. Sure. And that's to buy a nuke. Right. And a nuke is a Nucleus colony. And that is just sort of like the lazy person's all in one solution. You buy a hive box. It's pre loaded, it's stocked, it's got an active queen, it's got eggs, it's got your brood, it's got your pollen stores. It already has honey, for God's sake. Right. And they call it, like I said, a short for Nucleus colony as a nuke. And you can get a nuke for not much more than this other stuff. Right? Yeah. So basically the brood chamber component that we were talking about with the Langstroth hive, that's basically what you're buying is they ship you like, you say a ready to go brew chamber, and then you just start putting a queen excluder and superboxes and all that stuff on top and there you go. It seems pretty smart to me to try starting with that as well. When I was looking at the price, I was like, geez, what are these nukes? Like $1,000? And it seems like it was all about $50 more than starting from scratch. But I think you can spend quite a bit on a starter kit of bees if you're say looking to have just purebred bees. Like something specialized? Yeah, like just Italian honey bees or just Russian honeybees because different races have different kind of tendencies. Like Italian honeybees tend to keep a larger population over the winter, which means that you need to leave them more honey or feed them more, but they're also friendlier more das, all that kind of stuff. But it's really expensive because those bees are artificially inseminated and really in a very controlled environment. Whereas with most of those ones that you're spending like 100, $200 on 10,000 of them, they're what they call MutS, which are just like a whole bunch of different rates of the same species of bee. And they have a lot of different characteristics, some of which may actually make them less susceptible to diseases than say, like purebreds are. It's like a normal person compared to British royalty or something. Is that too soon? Don't think so. Okay, so once you've got everything set up, your main job is going to be to feed your bees, try and keep them from swarming, and then making sure they stay healthy from disease. And mites, you're going to be harvesting that excess honey along the way, like we've been talking about, and going to be feeding them that sugar water to keep them happy. And as you're doing this, you're going to be learning more and more about just sort of the shorthand of it all. When you go to even lift the back of a box, you're going to know just by weight, like how heavy with honey. The thing is, you're not going to have to keep pulling stuff out and looking at it over and over. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, all these little shortcuts. But we need to talk about swarming because that's a big deal and something that seems like it could happen fairly easily. If you have a good, healthy hive going on and they're producing a lot of brood, it's going to become overcrowded. So you want to part of avoiding this is to keep your population in check. But if you don't, then they're going to swarm, which means half of your colony, and sometimes all of it, is going to say, come on, queen, let's go. Let's leave this place. I don't like this apartment anymore because it's too crowded. Right. Which is just an unavoidable natural process. Because if you think about it, what the bees are doing is reproducing and growing their population. And then eventually when things get crowded, they split into two and go establish a new colony or leave the old colony behind. Right. So you're artificially preventing that from happening by doing things like inspecting the brood chamber for signs of queen cells, like little queen larvae that are being grown by the workers, which means that they're preparing to swarm and start another colony. Yeah, that looks like a little peanut sort of hanging off of your comb. And if you just go through and pick those off, literally just get them out of there, then the bees are like, okay, I guess. We're not going to raise another queen now. But there's other things you want to do, too. Like you want to actually physically get rid of some of the brood to control the population. You're just basically saying this idea about swarming, we're not going to do that. We're going to make it so that you have more room by controlling the population. Yeah. When you say get rid of the brood, that doesn't mean take these frames out and burn them on the fire. You're going to be involved, hopefully by this time with other local people in the area that are doing this. You're going to be going to beekeeper meetings and getting hammered once a month on mead. Right. And you're going to trade with your friends. You're going to say, hey, I got too much going on here. I'm afraid I'm going to get a swarm happening. So here's some brood frames if you can take them. And people are going to be very grateful for that. Yeah, because it's kind of like getting a free nuke to supplement your colony that's maybe not doing so good, because there's two problems. One, your colony can be too healthy, and then it's going to swarm what you want to prevent. Or it can be weak, which means that it can be overwhelmed by robber bees, nearby bees that come through and just steal a bunch of stuff and basically kill off the weak colony. So, yeah, just to supplement your numbers with a brood frame that somebody doesn't want because their population is starting to swarm, that would be a very good thing to have. That's right. One other thing about swarming truck, that's how you make a bee beard. That's right. You take a queen and you tire to your forehead and the bees will come and form a beard around your face. That's what they're doing with the bee beard. It's pretty funny looking, and they will get stung. But the reason why they're not totally stung is because before they swarm, the bees gorge themselves on honey for their travel and to go establish the new colony. And they're just following the queen. And so if the queen is tied to your forehead, they're just hanging out, waiting to see what she's going to do. Totally. All right, we need to talk about disease because it is bad right now. There's something called the varroa mite, which is a parasitic pest, and it is very small, came to the United States in the 1980s and is the most common cause of bee death and colony failure right now. Because 42% of commercial beehives, almost half in spring of 2017, were infected with varroa. It's a bad problem. It is because they will lay their eggs. These mites will lay their eggs on the larvae or the pupa of the bees, and they will feed on the pupa and either kill them or deform them. They will also attach themselves to adult bees and suck their blood, they spread disease. It's a really bad jam being a beekeeper. You have to keep an eye out for any kind of mite infestation and then treat it accordingly. That's like a basic part of beekeeping, but also something that's a little more advanced than anything we could really go into now. It's just know that part of beekeeping is monitoring for diseases and pests and then treating them. Yeah, you don't want more than ten and there are various ways that you can test how many mites you have that once you get into beekeeping, you're going to learn all these little tricks. But you don't want any more than ten mites per 200 bees. Right. And if you have more than that, then you're in trouble. And when you look at a picture of these things, like sitting on a bee and feeding on it, you just want to pry it off of there and squash it. Right. Then foul brood, which we mentioned earlier, is another big problem. And it got its name from the sulfur smell that a brood frame will have when you pull it out. And once you have that, your whole colony is gone. They're goners. And you need to burn your wooden ware. Yeah, I saw dead fish because I saw sulfur and I was like, well, does it smell like farts? Right. But then I saw dead fish was kind of what a lot of people said it smells like. And if you've got that, then I'm sorry, that's what a letdown it is a letdown. Especially if it happens right around right before they really start producing honey. Right. And that's where we find ourselves. Finally, you get to that sweet, sweet mellow gold, which is what you're doing this for, not only to get the honey, but obviously to also do the right thing by encouraging bee populations. But harvesting honey is what everyone's really in it for, whether you're going to sell it or just give it away to friends or just have some for your family. That's really the end game here. And so when you go to get the honey, there's actually a pretty clever little thing you put in between the brood chamber and the honey super that you're going to collect honey from. That lets the bees out, but it produces a maze for them to try to get back in. So after 24 to 48 hours, all the bees will clear out. You can take your honey super and all of the frames laden with honey and put them into an extractor, which is definitely going to probably double the amount that you've put into your beekeeping so far. But from everything I've seen is if you're going to harvest honey, this is the way to do it. Did you see any videos on this? Yeah, I mean, you can get mechanical motorized ones. It's like a centrifuge. But the ones I saw were mainly very homespun, just sort of these hand cranked versions. Literally homespun. Yes. You uncap it and remove the wax. And you'll see in these videos, they hold up the frames and just take a knife, like a hot knife, and just sort of cut the wax away from the frame. And then you can literally see the honey there. If you don't have an extractor, you can just do it the old fashioned way and lay it down and just wait for the honey to flow. But you can also stick them down in the extractor. The one I saw held about eight frames and you just crank that thing and it just slings the honey out. And filters, you have to have certain size screens for honey extraction to filter out the wax bits and b legs and Anthony or things. B parts. Sure you want to get that stuff out of there, too. Yeah. But then at the bottom is the catch where between the extractor and the screen is a reservoir and there's a spigot on the bottom and you put it up on your countertop and pure honey just flows right out of the bottom. It's pretty awesome. It's beautiful and tastes delicious. The good thing about the extractor, too, is all you're doing is carving off the top wax cap, but you're leaving the wax part of the chamber, the bulk of the wax intact so the bees can reuse it and they have to eat less honey to produce more wax for the next season. It's pretty great. It is pretty great. That's beekeeping, which is pretty great, too. Agreed. Got anything else? Right now? I got nothing else. Well, we'll talk about this more later when we get into beekeeping as old men. Okay? Yeah, for sure. Not that you have to be an old man to be into beekeeping. It's not at all what I mean. No. If you want to know more about beekeeping, go on how stuff works and check out this awesome article by Dave Ruse. And there's also tons of other stuff around the Internet to help you. Since I said tons of other stuff on the Internet, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this something about our jingle, the theme song. Hey, guys. Been listening for about eight years, never had a reason to write in, and you get a lot of emails from couples who sing your jingle back and forth to each other. It's very cute. But my story is less cute. I just moved into a new house and it turns out we have the exact amount of steps on our stairs for me to stomp to your jingle. Oh, yes. Ever since I discovered this a couple of months ago, it's become virtually impossible for me to not stomp your jingle on the stairs. Sometimes singing along too. I can't imagine how maddening that is. A couple of days ago, I was thirsty in the middle of the night and went downstairs for some water. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Down I go into my front door, chipping a tooth. I was not guessing that that was going to happen. I wasn't going to guess that either. But Jamie, I'm very sorry that happened. Seriously, Jamie is from Sienna College, and I'm sorry it's the worst of all earworms. Right? But that was the email. It just kind of ended like that. Yeah, I went to the dentist, and the dentist happened to turn out to be a long lost uncle who put me in his will or something. But no, it ended with the chipping of the tooth. That's it. Sorry, Jamie, that's all we can say. Ended like many of my own stories. If you want to get in touch with us, like Jamie did, to let us know you chipped a tooth or just to say hi, or that an uncle put you in their will, you can go on to Stephashiano.com and check out our social links there. You can send us a good oldfashioned email, wrap it up, slather it on the behind with honey, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listened. New episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
875551d2-3b0e-11eb-9699-7b23ec607bb4 | How Snowmen (And Snowwomen) Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-snowmen-and-snowwomen-work | The details may vary but building snowmen is pretty much universal where there’s snow. Humans have probably been making them for tens of thousands of years. But it wasn’t until the last century or two that they have become the winter icon they are today. | The details may vary but building snowmen is pretty much universal where there’s snow. Humans have probably been making them for tens of thousands of years. But it wasn’t until the last century or two that they have become the winter icon they are today. | Tue, 21 Dec 2021 05:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=5, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=355, tm_isdst=0) | 40856848 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. My friend Charles W. Chuck Bryan is here too. And it's just the two of us rolling and and having some fun outdoors, making snow angels, and most importantly, making snow people, which means this is Stuff You Should Know. Snow People edition. That's right. And I just want to mention if you feel a presence among us because Emily emily is in the room with me. Oh, hi, Emily. She can't hear you. I told her she had to sit there and be quiet. We got a sauna finally because of her lime. Oh, nice. Well, not the lime part, but the sauna part. Yeah, she's feeling better for now, by the way, which is great news. But if you want to learn about the health benefits of the sauna, go back and listen to our episode on the sauna. That was a good one. But she was going to this membership place and driving like, 40 minutes each way, like four times a week. And so we broke down and got one. So she is quietly sitting back there, sweating, isn't it? Like have you used it yet? Yeah, it's so great. I love it. It's really nice. I do. And it's also the solitude and just 30 minutes of quiet time because you shouldn't take your phone in there and bake it out. No, but does yours have Bluetooth? It does. So I downloaded, like, a couple of bird song albums and nature song albums, and I'll just turn that on and attach it to the Bluetooth and just turn it real low. But it adds a little extra something to a sauna. Do you know what I do, is I put on so far music for Airports from Brian Eno and try to not fall asleep. I'm going to give that one a try. I'll trade you one of my Bird song albums for that Brian Eno album. Yeah. We'll meet in the middle and literally exchange records. There you go. No, we'll just swap phones for a few weeks. That's right. So, anyway, I have a hot, sweaty wife behind me. Okay. Got you. So speaking of hot and sweaty, we're obviously talking about snow people today. Snowmen. But you know what you don't want to do is put a snow person in a sauna. No, you don't. But that is a recurring theme of the legends and tales of snow people, Chuck, which we'll get to later. They all melt. They do. They're ephemeral, they're fleeting. And there's this guy who wrote a book. He's a humorist and a cartoonist. His name is Bob Eckstein, and he wrote, like, the book on snowmen and snow people is called The History of the Snowman. And he did the round. So there's like a lot of snow research, or snowman research brings up his stuff. It's kind of impossible to avoid. But one of the reasons why it's impossible to avoid is because he actually did some really good scholarship on snow people. And one of the things that he asserts it's probably true, is, like our early ancestors had an aptitude for art. A snowman or snow person is a pretty basic shape. And when you put those two together, there's a really good chance that humans have been making snowmen, snow people, snow, whatever, for tens of thousands of years, if not longer, most likely. That's right. And I think you didn't mention the book of ours just then, did you? No, not yet. Yes, that's from 1380, and that is the first known depiction of an actual in a manuscript of a snowman. That's a long time ago. And that was in the oh, boy. Do you want to help me out with this? Yes. It's Dutch. It's Connie Kruk Leyotte. It still cracks me up after all these years. People say, I'm happy to help you out with pronunciation. And we say no. Never. No, it's a part of the show. It's Kony Sue. Yeah, I looked it up. Oh, very nice. So why is that jay even in there? I don't know. Because the Dutch love their jays in Rando places. But what we're saying is the Kony whatever you said, Biblio Tik and The Hague, Netherlands, is where that comes from. And, you know, it's a snowman who was I guess you would have to say it's anti Semitic. Right. It's the traditional stacked ball snow person. And it has on a yamiche. How you say that? It's not a Yamago. It's something else. It's like a red cap with, like, a ball on top. Yeah, but apparently it was a very Jewish cap to wear at the time. Okay, but he's sitting there, back turned to the fire, and then aside, the snowman is text pronouncing the crucifixion of Jesus. So apparently what people think is that this was Europe during the plague, and they needed to take their frustrations out on something. So it fell to this little Jewish snowman. Yeah. And the book of ours is a really popular Christian devotional, too. And I guess in every copy of this, it was illuminated. So in every copy, that would have been the drawing next to that part about Jesus's crucifixion. So not the greatest start as far as the history of snow people or snowmen, but it gets a little better from here on out, if you ask me. Yeah, there was one built Michelangelo's commission in 1494 by Piero the Unfortunate of Florence. Love that name. That's going to be my new hotel. Josh the Unfortunate. No, Pirro the Unfortunate. Oh, I like Josh the unfortunate. No, it's a little too on the nose. Okay. It hits too close to home. Oh, no. You're the Fortunate. Yes. Michelangelo was commissioned to build this giant snowman in the Medici courtyard. I guess he put on his monkey suit and danced, did what he was told. Yeah, but the thing is, there are two things here. One, nobody bothered to draw or document what it looked like. We just know that Michelangelo built a snowman once, which is pretty cool, but it also shows like this. During the era, the Renaissance, the medieval era before it, the artists actually kind of used snow as a medium sometimes during the winter. Michelangelo wasn't the only one. That's right. And that is on evidence, actually, in another big moment in 1511 when a town in Brussels got together. And this was during what was called the Winter of Death. So everyone was pretty down and despondent or dead and dying. And so they just had kind of like a snowman festival. And it was called the Miracle of 1511. And there were real deal artists in town that probably did some pretty great things, along with cynical townspeople who did people going poopoo a snowboy, peeing on a passed out drunk. All made of snow, by the way. Right. Body parts and anatomically correct body parts. Yeah. A lot of people having sex, but made of snow. Yeah. So they got involved, but so did the artist of the town. Yeah, like the whole town did. It was called the Miracle of 1511 because the town poet, John Smacken, wrote a poem called The Miracle of Pure Ice and Snow. So that's how it got its name. And for a while, historians thought, like, maybe John Smacken had just made it up, but they've supported it with journals from some people that lived in the town during the time that said, this is awesome. We totally made a snow couple doing it, and everybody went bonkers for it. Here in the US. There's kind of a weird story, or not weird. It's sad and just odd that it's tied to snowman. I guess one of the bloodiest events in our history early on was the mascot of 1690. 60 people ended up dying, including ten women and twelve children. The deal here is some Frenchmen and Native Americans launched an attack on Fort Schenectady, and they were about ready to give up. They had been traveling for about a week through the snow, through the Mohawk Valley. They were obviously going through the snow on a long trek like that. They were exhausted and ill, and it was really strenuous, and they were about to surrender. But when they got to the village, they saw that they had a really easy entrance and that the gate was frozen open. And as legend has it, the two guards went to go have some drinks and put snowmen as guards in their stead. Yeah. And that's the first documented snowmen built in America back in 1690, which is a terrible debut as far as snowmen go in North America. Yes. Also check just as a little aside, that really ties into our Salem witchcraft trial episode, because that's exactly the kind of thing that put the Salem villagers on edge, and they think led in part to the witch panic. Is that interesting? That is interesting. So one other thing about the snowman, and you're going to love this, but Bob Xstein compares the snowman to kind of a type of forest gump. He just pops up at all these really important moments in history. He just happens to be there as well. With Bad CG. Was it bad? I mean, it was early, so yeah, it was bad. I thought it was good. Still. I haven't seen it in a while. But one of the early photographs that were ever taken, it's certainly not the first, or even necessarily one of the first, but one of the earliest ones was taken by a woman named Mary Dilwin, who was Welsh. And she took a picture of her parents making a snowman out in their yard, which is pretty precious photograph, even though you can't really make out what's going on in it very well. Yeah, she was actually pretty interesting. She may need a short stuff. She just got into photography starting in 1845 and took all kinds of cool pictures. And this was one of them, about eight years in. It's kind of nice. Her dad's shoveling snow. And I just love seeing those old pictures. It's really cool. It's like a sepia fest. Total sepia fest. I also saw that the album that she put together of Photographs recently sold for 100 grand. Oh, really? Maybe she should get a short stuff. Let's do it. So here's the thing. Up to this point, Chuck, snowmen snow people have been basically like the providence of artists. They've been used for political satire, for lowbrow copulation humor. They've just kind of existed as almost like a similar to real humans doing real human things. Right. But around the time when Christmas became like a thing in the United States and in the UK during the Victorian era, that's when the snowman finally took the shape of the snowman, as we recognize them today, like, they were part of winter. They were happy, jolly, they didn't have any guile. They just wanted to just be free, almost like they had a sense that their lives were very short and limited and they were just trying to spread joy and happiness. The idea of a snowman or snow person we have today is based in that Victorian age. That's right. And maybe we should take a break there. Okay. We'll come back and talk about Christmas snow people right after this. All right, so snow men are popping up all over the place and sometimes in some countries. And we've done plenty of weird Christmas like legends and Christmas like different weird cultural things around the world a lot over the years. Yes. And there's plenty more to come. Everybody hopefully have fear one day we're going to run out of Christmas stuff. Never. We'll just start making it up and add to the Christmas legend. Okay, all right. That's a good idea. That's some 2028 stuff right there. One of these legends, legends is the Snegaroktaraka. I'm trying this Snegorocha. Oh, you're going to go with the cheat? Yeah, well, she's Russian Snegorocha, which was a snowmaiden in Russian lore. And these stories, and this is where the melting starts, as the story goes that she was a snow girl. She's built by an elderly couple who didn't have kids of their own, were not able to. And so she comes to life just like a Disney movie, and becomes their daughter, essentially. And they're playing, and they're having fun. And one of the things that they decide to do in true Russian folk legend fashion was, hey, let's decide to play a game where we jump over a fire with our little snowdaughter. And of course, you know what happens? She ends up melted and gone. And in the original stories, that was that the couple lost her forever. They knew joy for a brief time, and then they lost her and maybe were worse off than they had ever been before. And by the way, we're probably all going to starve this winter. Yes. The end, right? Luckily, the Russians, like the rest of the world, said, you know what, we've been a little grim for a while. Let's kind of like pep things up as we start to enter the 20th century. And the Snegorocha kind of was revived, I guess, and was associated with Dead Morrows, who's known as Grandpa Frost. And that is what Santa Claus calls himself when he goes to Russia. And he goes to Russia, and he gives that presence around New Year's because he's so busy giving out presents in other parts of the world around Christmas time that in Russia, it's traditional that he gives them out around New Year's. And Snagorochka became Dead Morose's granddaughter, and she helps him give out presents around New Year. That's right. We also have a great cartoon from Nazi Germany, which we'll get into in a second, but it's called Deer Schnayman the Snowman. And it was a ten minute short. Still is a ten minute short, unless they added onto it. I didn't know about it. Have you seen it yet? I've watched a little bit of it, but I couldn't make it through the whole thing. It is so cute. I didn't care for it. Oh, you didn't? Oh, yeah. I could see not watching it then if it doesn't click with you, I could see being really turned off by it. But it's about a snowman. And again, there's another melting coming, but a snowman who obviously is doing snowman things, playing outside, having a good time, and then eventually goes inside of a house nearby and sees a calendar of July and these pictures of Summertime and thinks, hey, this is pretty great. I want to get in on that. Yeah, I would love to see Summer. And so let me put myself in the ice box and just wait until the right moment. And then finally July comes around. Snowman gets out, plays around, ultimately melts, but has a good time and experiences summer and dies with a smile on his little face as it melts away. Yeah, he's singing as he melts to nothingness. He's definitely fulfilled, like, his dream. It was pretty great. For a long time, people who had seen their neiman in the US and outside of Europe had no idea it was a Nazi film. But it was directly commissioned by Joseph Gerbils because during the war and I think the Schneumen was made in 1943, a Nazi Germany was cut off from the west. Like, you couldn't get anything, including Disney cartoons, but they had already developed a taste for Disney cartoons. So he went to Hans Fischer Kusan. I think I nailed his name, which sounds like somebody that Rosen Island would have dated on Golden Girls back in the day. But Hans Fischer cousin became known as Germany's Walt Disney. Right? That's right. I feel like his name should have an Oomlout, did it not? I saw K-O-E and I took the OE as, like, a stretched out or deconstructed Oomlout. That's why I said it like that. So you're just making up rules for the German language? Basically, yeah. They listen to me now. Got you. Yeah. He was like the Walt Disney, and apparently he did not put any propaganda in this film, even though some people say, you know what the snowman waiting for? July, like, that is subtext. It's basically the Germans longing to be free from the Nazi Party, but his son says no to that. My dad was apolitical and did not make his films with a political bent, but at the very least, and clearly does not have any Nazi propaganda. And you could watch it over and over again. There's nothing that seems like pro Nazi or anything. It's just like this guy made a cartoon utterly outside of the context of the Nazi Party ruling Germany and being in World War II at the time. It's really interesting. It's definitely worth seeing it's on all over YouTube. So I wonder how many people will take it like they didn't like it, like you or how many people would be like, that's pretty good. Maybe you should do a poll. Let's do one of those Twitter polls or something. All right. Okay. So then, Chuck, everybody knows about your Schneeman, and if they didn't, they do now. But everybody really knows here in the States at least, about Frosty the Snowman. Have you heard of frosty? Of course. I love that cartoon, that original cartoon, which we're going to talk about. I love traditional Christmas music, so I love that song. So it wasn't originally a Christmas song. Did you know that? Well, here's my deal, is I associate Winter songs as Christmas songs. I'm not as picky as saying, like, they didn't say the word Christmas. It's not a Christmas song. You didn't say the magic word. It could be played around spring break if you wanted to. Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of winter time songs that I associate as Christmas. Yeah, I guess you would never hear the original frosty or Winter Wonderland or Jingle Bells. Those are usually the three sided as non Christmas Christmas songs. You would never hear them after Christmas. Like you don't play those on January 1 or second. So I guess they are Christmas songs for sure. But the point is that they don't mention Christmas, which is why people say that Frosty does finally mention Christmas after Rankin Bass got a hold of him and turned the song into the 1969 Made for TV movie, though. That's right. And this song was a pretty big hit, by the way. There were these songwriters, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins, that realized you could make a lot of dough pretty fast by cranking out holiday themed songs. They wrote, here comes Peter Cotton for Easter. They wrote this Frosty song for Gene Autree after they saw that he had a big smash with Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. And these are no brainers. I bet they knock these things out in no time at all and got some pretty good cash for it. Yeah, made it to like number seven on the charts, which is not bad at all. And I think between Rudolph and Frosty they kicked off, like the idea of Christmas songs in general. So there was this big debate over where the song took place. But apparently it's been settled now that Frosty the Snowman, the song, takes place in the town of Armock, New York, if anybody ever asks you. Yeah. Big debate meaning 18 people in Armor, New York. Well, no. White Plains supposedly laid claim to it intensively. But Armon is like, we're not playing that. I think one of the writers lived in Armon for a while and they're like, It's Armonic for sure. So that became obviously the cartoon that you were speaking of, which was that's still plays today. One of the Rank and bass cartoons. So good. Classic. It's great. There were sequels. That was Frosty's winter wonderland in 76. Not quite as good, but not bad. They were married. Frosty and his wife Crystal were married by Parson Brown from the Winter Wonderland song. Quite a cameo. And this then led to the stop motion Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July. Things are kind of jumping the shark at this point, I think, in 79. And then Frosty returned to 92. And then not to be outdone, they made another one in 2005, legend of Frosty the Snowman. Yeah, I think frosty. Rudolph and Frosty's christmas in July was still very cute and sweet. But the frosty returns. Definitely. It jumped the shark. It's terrible. In the early 90s. It's bad. So that's the US's claim to snowmen. That's the one that we all watch around Christmas time, the holidays. But the UK has their own. They said, no, we're not going to follow your train. We're going to start our own. And back in 1978, the guy named Raymond Briggs wrote a book. And you can't really say wrote a book because it's a wordless picture book. So I guess he drew or illustrated a book called The Snowman. And it is a very, very sweet book. And it was made into possibly an even sweeter TV adaptation that they show around the holidays every year over there. It is about a boy and a snowman. And of course, the snowman comes to life. And you know what's coming, everybody? Fun. That's right, fun. They become buddies. They explore all around the house. They play dress up, they ride a motorcycle. They take a flight out to Sea into the North Pole to meet Santa. But he melts like all other snowperson stories ever. Yes, I watched it the other day and, man, it'll get you right in the bread basket. It is really sweet. And apparently, originally, when they aired the TV movie starting in 1982, it was on channel four, which had just begun broadcasting like the month before. And so they had a hit on their hands right out of the gate. But originally there was like a live action intro by Raymond Briggs, who's like, you know, I built a snowman when I was a kid and it inspired me to make this, so please enjoy. And the Brits were like, we need to get this over to America. They're going to go nuts for this. But apparently somebody at some lunch at, like, Spago or something like that said, no one knows who Raymond Briggs is. You're going to have to come up with somebody else to do the intro. And they said, who could do it? Chuck? Who could possibly take over from Raymond Briggs that the Americans would recognize? That would be none other than David Bowie, because that in the Bing Crosby thing has an oddly large Christmas presents. I thought of that, too. Well, apparently he did this for his son, Moon director. I can't remember his name right now. What is his name? I want to say Doug or Douglas, but it's not Moon unit. Bowie, something like that. Yes. But he directed Moon and he's wonderful. Duncan. Yes. Can't remember. He has different last name, though. Right, right. It's not Bowie. Regardless, he said he did it for his son. So I wonder if he did the thing with Ben Crosby for his son as well. I bet you he did. Which, by the way, man, did you know John Lennon was famously, like, a terrible dad? John Lennon was famously a terrible person. Well, I ran across something, I think, on Quora where somebody broke down, like, just what he was. Some of the terrible stuff he was doing as far as his son Julian alone was concerned, it's like, wow, I had no idea. Yeah, he was a complicated guy and had a really rough childhood and was a bit of a jerk in general. It's one of those things. Well, not a good guy. So back to Bowie. I don't want to lose the magic of this, Chuck, because Bowie did the intro, raymond Briggs was replaced with David Bowie. And this is like the 1982 Let stance or 83 let's Dance era, right? So he's got his platinum spiky blonde hair, and he does the intro basically saying, like, I was this boy, and look, I even have the scarf that the snowman gave me as proof. Hold on a second. Roll. Did you just say he had spiky hair? I mean, it was in the let's Dance era. It was high. It was high hair spikyish. No, that was Ziggy Stardust era, when he had the spiky. No, I don't mean that. I don't mean that. He did a big pompador and let's dance. It was a pompadour, wasn't it? Yeah, I guess it wasn't spiky. Okay, thank you for that. So he had a big let's Dance pompador, but it was platinum. We're agreed on that, correct? Yeah. I was trying to cut off the David Bowie pennsylvania would email us dead in its track. You people know this, but David Bowie religiously listens to stuff you should know every week. Did he? Oh, that's right. Yeah. I was even listening to Blackstar the other day. Good album. It's great. So that's the UK's version of their own snowman. It's just simply called the snowman. And if you haven't seen it, go watch it because it is very touching. With or without David Bowie? That's right. We have a few more touch points for the United States. Culturally, Calvin and Hobbes never read Calvin and Hobbes. But apparently Calvin was the boy. Or was Calvin the Tiger? You're going to get us some mail for that one, buddy. Yes. Calvin was the boy. All right. If you don't know something, you don't know it. No, it's true. But the people who are into Calvin and Hobbs are like, really into Calvin and Hobbs, and they're going to be how can you not breed Calvin and Hobbs? Exactly. Those are the kind of emails we're going to get. Well, Calvin, I guess. Built great snowmen. Yeah, good ones. Real dark ones, where they would be run over by a train or something like that. Just good ones. People have posted, like, collections of all of the ones that were printed over the years. They're definitely worth checking out there's. Of course, Olaf from Frozen, which I'm dying to know if you're the one or if you got this from somewhere else. Who said, he is widely considered the best character in the movie? I got it from somewhere else. Really? Yeah. Who's the best? I don't remember. One of our sources. Interesting. Who's the best character in the movie? Well, I think if you ask any young girl who saw Frozen, they would say Anna or Elsa, the two lead characters. Maybe this was from the parents point of view, I don't know. I take it you haven't seen Frozen or Frozen, too? No, I have not seen either one. The character that you have in every Disney movie, he is the comic relief. The donkey. Sort of the goon. He's the donkey. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. I think people like Josh Gadd as well. Yeah. But I thought it was funny. I don't know if anyone would consider him the best character. Well, I would, and I've never seen it's very funny. We also have to shout out Chuck the movie Jack Frost from, I think, 1998, starring Michael Keaton as Jack Frost snowman who has reincarnated him. Yeah, I think people you could just do yourself a favor and watch, if you have two minutes, go watch the Jack Cross trailer online. It's got every bad dumb joke you could think of on a snowman from his arms falling off. There's one scene where they throw snowballs at him and they land on them as breasts. And he goes, not for me, or something like that, and rubs those off. He gets shaved down to go through a skinny crevasse as he's sledding. He goes, Boy, I've really gotten thin here, or something like that. It is the worst thing ever. But at the very end of this trailer, it says, Jack Frost coming to theaters, blah, blah, blah, featuring music from Hanson. Wow, that's a real 98 selling point. Yeah. Hanson famously lobbied launched the lawsuit to have themselves taken off of that movie, but to no avail. It wouldn't surprise me because it was really bad. And Roger Ebert hated this movie and has a part in his book. I hated this movie. Yeah. He said Jack Frost could have been co directed by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg and still be unwatchable because of that damn snowman. The snowman gave me the creeps. Never have I disliked the movie character more. It looks really bad. And Roger Ebert has seen a lot of movie characters and he's saying, like, jack Frost is the worst of them all. For me, he might be right. You want to take another break and then come back and wrap up some snowman stuff? Let's do it. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. Okay, Chuck. So one of the thing about snowmen, snow people, snow citizens are that they are inextricably associated with winter, right? Yes. So some people around the world have hit upon the fact that you can use the snowman as a stand in effigy for winter. And that if you can get rid of a snowman in some spectacular fashion, you may also be able to symbolically banish winter in favor of being replaced by spring. And the people of Zurich, Switzerland have done just that. They have a festival called Sex Aloud, which sounds hotter than it actually is. Sexual auto translates to the ringing of the 06:00 bells. That's right. And this is actually a spring festival, and it's a little bit akin to our Groundhog Day celebration in that it signifies the end of winter. We're ready to move on. And so we're going to blow up a snowman to do so. And they load this thing up with literally 140 sticks of dynamite in its head. It's built out of cotton and straw and it is lit like a Wicker Man, basically on a big Pyre. And then in the time that it takes those flames to reach the dynamite and blow up is how much longer it's going to be till summer. So that's sort of the tie into Groundhog Day. Yeah. I think the faster it burns, the warmer the summer is going to be. And they're like, yeah, spring is here now. And Gaylord Michigan has an Alpenfest, and they adopted this as well. But they have a slight modification where rather than banishing winter, the townspeople write down, like, their problems or worries or concerns on a piece of paper, and all those get stuffed in the snowman. So when the snowman burns, their problems burn away as well, which I think is right. It's no 140 sticks of dynamite, but they came upon something that's good, too. Should we go over some world records? How could you not? How could you talk about snowmen and snow people without talking about world records? Like, this would be an incomplete episode. Do you know? Let me see. Here's one that was pretty good in 1999. And Bethel, Maine. They made Angus King of the mountain after Senator Angus King. And this bad boy was 113ft tall and had real deal trees for arms and car tires for buttons. That was big until 2008 when they did Olympia, after Olympia snow another senator. They love their senators in Maine. Yeah, they really do. And this thing was \u00a313 million and 122ft. And if you look at pictures of this, it's pretty impressive. Like they said, 60 people built it. I was surprised it wasn't more than a couple of hundred. Yeah, because it was apparently just about 30ft shorter than the Statue of Liberty, the actual statue itself without the base. This is a really huge snowman, or snow woman, I should say, in this case. And so they held it may still hold the record. That was when, 2008, I think. So they might apparently prior to that, dartmouth College, they have a winter carnival that National Geographic ones called the Mardi Gras Winter or the north or something like that. They used to hold the record. I think they held it as recently as 1987. So it's possible that Bethle Mane still holds the record for tallest snowman. It's wonderful. Go Manors. And then for the most snowman ever built, you would just have to get in your wayback machine and travel to Sapporo, Japan, in 2003, where you would find 12,379 snowmen. But you'd also say, Wait a minute, wait a minute they're cheating because they're only doing two balls rather than the traditional three bald snowman. And people would say, no, that's how the Japanese build snowmen. Did you know that? That's right. The two bald snowman. I like the two ball variety. It's very cute. Yeah. Apparently. It's called the Yuki Daruma. Yuki means snow. And Daruma is a little around Japanese doll that's based on the what's his name? Bodi Dharma. The guy who is alleged to have brought alleged who is thought to have brought Zen Buddhism from India to China and just kind of kicked off the whole thing. So that's why the Japanese make their doll or their snowmen two ball snowmen. That's right. But here in the United States, we do three balls and the bigger the better. And name them after your senator or else you're a comedy. So if you want to build a snow person, you want to the snow's got to be just right or not just right. There's a range. But some snow doesn't work as well as other snow. You want good packing snow, so you want temperatures that are closer to melting point. And the snowflakes being a little wetter helps out a lot. Yeah. So you take that packing snow chuck and you start with a snowball and you roll it along the snow. You don't want to go too deep or else you're going to get a lot of crud like leaves and pinestrawn there. And that is just unsightly as far as the snow person is concerned. And there's this guy named Keith Martin that Martha Stewart Living interviewed. He's an ice sculpture. He said, big tip here. When you're halfway through, cut to the left or cut to the right, because then your ball is going to keep a rounder shape rather than turning into like a giant snow cigar or something like that. Yeah, that's the hardest part, I think if you really want it super round and you don't want it to look like a cylinder, like some small rugs stacked on each other like carpet runners, I guess. Yeah, sure. That's what mine always ended up looking like because I didn't follow that tip. You got to alternate directions. So that's a big one. And then also Martha Stewart says that you need to decorate and dress your snowman or snow person. And that, quote, a pine cone still attached to its branch makes a distinguished pipe, which is a great tip. You know, Jerry's meant Martha Stewart. I didn't know that. That's right, jerry, I think last year I think we did something with her, with the company, and Jerry actually got to go up there to her house. Oh, I remember that. And she like, stole a vase or something associated with it. Don't out her. Yeah, I forgot about that. That's cool. She said it was just as amazing in real life as you would expect from what I remember. Yes, she was like it was very cluttered. It's kind of messy. So one last thing we got to end on this, okay? There's a kid site called Kidaddle. K-I-D-A-D-L. Are you going to do these? Yes, we are going to do this because they are no, I'm not. The site kidadel says, don't just finish your snowman or Snow woman snow kids snow baby. Even if you want to impress Chuck by just giving it a distinguished pipe, you got to name your snow creation as well. And don't just name him or her Frosty or Crystal. Right. And they came up with a big list of suggested names. And Chuck is going to join me here in trading off these names. I'm not going to read any of these because I know if you build a snowperson with your child, the only thing you can do is let your child name that snow person. Sure. But if your kid's like I can't think of anything. Here are some suggestions like mistletoe, jolly leaves. It's a good one. What else, Chuck? I don't know. My kid would name it Fart poop the Snowman. Or what about peppermint cuttle pudding? That might be my favorite. All right. Sugar Von, Carols teddy McColl. And then the last one is Twinkle Pranks a lot. That's a great name for a snowperson. That's right. So I think the moral here is if you have trouble naming your snowperson, get online and get some suggestions from a search engine from Cadetle. That's right. Are they sponsoring us or something? No, but they came up with some adorable names, and I thought they deserved to be shouted out for that. So they are shouted out. And we should also shout out all the other sources. There are a ton of them, but they include Smithsonian atlas, obscure, the Farmers Alma, neck, the Garden Fairytales biz because there's big money in fairy tales. Online, the Library of Congress Song Facts and Martha Stewart Living and more. So thanks to all of those sources, too. And thanks to everybody, Chuck, who joined us for this great holiday themed episode on snow people, huh? That's right. Not our Christmas episode. It will be one of those. That's right. And so since Chuck said, don't worry, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. So we're going to shout out our friends at Coed here at the end of the year. Yeah, if you don't know coed Cooperative for Education. They work to stop the cycle of poverty through education in Guatemala. We went down to Guatemala years ago with them. They do great work and we've been working with them ever since. And they are in the home stretch of reaching their target milestone of their Thousand Girls initiative. And the last batch of students identified to start the school year in early 2022, they have the last ones, and they just need a few dozen more sponsors to get past that finish line of 1000 girls sponsored to continue past the 6th grade in Guatemala. That's where they are. That's what they're trying to do, yeah. So it's $80 a month to change a kid's life, as they put it. You can fully sponsor a student, or you could do half of that $40 a month to pay for half of the students education. And if Two Stuff You Should Know listeners, each chip in half, there will be one. And like you said, they're just a couple of dozen short of their goal. And I think Stuff You Should Know listeners can definitely get co op there, don't you? I definitely think so, because we have some statistics from how Stuff You Should Know RME members have helped out Co Head over the years. 446 supporters have collectively raised more than $731,500. Very nice. Amazing. 29 of you have actually gone down to take that tour in Guatemala, which we highly recommend, and 122 Rise students have been or currently sponsored by members of the South East No Army, which is amazing, what great work everyone is doing with co ed and the benevolence of the Stuff You Should Know Army always means so much to us. Yes. And I think we can double, triple, quadruple that, just hopefully with this call out, because I think the more people who know about co ed and learn about co ed, the more people who are going to want to help out. So you can go find out a lot more about coed by just going to coeduc.org coeduc.org, check it out, and then hopefully donate or sponsor, because Chuck and Josh have given our seal of approval on coed many times. That's right. And if you actually want to pick out a student to sponsor, which you can do, these are real people. Everyone go to cooperativeforeducation. Orgsponsorestudents. And that's it. If you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, to let us know how you helped out coed, again, that's cooperativeforeducation. Orgsponsorestudents. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheart radio.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." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-05-11-sysk-charismatic-megafauna-final.mp3 | How Charismatic Megafauna Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-charismatic-megafauna-work | Charismatic Megafauna is not just a great band name. It's really just a fancy word for the cutest and most personality plus animals at the zoo. We're talking pandas, elephants and anything else you might see on a poster. Their mission? To help raise aware | Charismatic Megafauna is not just a great band name. It's really just a fancy word for the cutest and most personality plus animals at the zoo. We're talking pandas, elephants and anything else you might see on a poster. Their mission? To help raise aware | Thu, 11 May 2017 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=131, tm_isdst=0) | 44766854 | 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 there's Jerry Rowland. My vocal cords are about to split wide open. Are they? Sure. You don't sound weird. Oh, really? No, you sound very Josh like. What is that? Is he? I think that's how you pronounce it. You get a little throat thing. No, you know, like when you just talk too much. Have you been talking too much? I guess. Are you stressed? I was under the impression that aside from these 2 hours, you just sort of sit in silence and you and you me pantomime everything we do. Interpretive dance. Yeah. I got to say, my vocal cords babe. Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that. You sound normal. Well, I'm glad I sound normal, because I don't feel like I do. But if I sound normal, who cares about how I feel? Come on. Everyone cares. No. This podcast, by the way, has perhaps the best band name ever right there in its title. I think it's overdone. Charismatic megafauna. Yeah. What do you mean? Like, there's so many bands named that. Or you just think the name is too much? Yeah, the latter of those two. That's pretty good. Charismatic megaphone. I mean, maybe for your second band. Oh, your side gig. No, like the second before your third floor. The fifth one where you finally hit it. Got you. I'm still waiting on that. Are you? No. El chipoto is the first, but a hobby. The alpha and the omega and nothing in between. How do you like my Latin? Where's that Greek? No. This is off to a terrible start. Oh, this is great. So I saw a T shirt the other day. I should give credit where credit is due. You may sell a T shirt the other day and showed it to me. It's pretty awesome. You know it was World Wildlife Fund logo because you were just walking around kicking rocks. Right? She's not looking up. Look up, everyone. She pan of mine. Look up right now. I panel went back the World Wildlife Fund logo with the panda, but there was another panda coming up behind it with a folding chair, which is a play on the WWF. Yeah, I've seen that before. Great T shirt. It is good. But the fact that the panda is the front man for the World Wildlife Foundation, the lead singer, one of the biggest conservation organizations in the entire world, is actually a pretty good example of the use of a charismatic megafauna. Yes. Which is also called a flagship species, and it's a term that came around in the tried to find track it back to the person who thought of it. Couldn't either. Couldn't do it. Let's go with Jack. Hannah all right. Possible. Yeah, it is possible, but basically it's very simple. This is a koala or a panda. Right? But sort of yes, it's an animal that is like the poster child in advertising for zoos and conservation groups because they're so stinking cute and charismatic that people open their wallets to give money toward conservation efforts. You just make it rain on them. Yeah. Like, look at that panda. My wallet is out all of a sudden, and I'm just pulling Benjamin out right. And dropping them along this pandas trail. That is charismatic megafauna. It is. It's as simple as that. And along the way, since it was kind of picked up and coined and started to take seriously by conservationists, it's become much bigger and debated and everything. But it really helps to understand it and bring it down to size when you realize that it's a conservation idea, but it's actually a marketing term. That's what the whole thing is. It has nothing to do with the importance of the species to its ecosystem. Not necessarily. It doesn't even necessarily have to do with how endangered the species is. It really has to do with how cute and relatable humans find the species so that it will generate the most financial contributions possible toward conservation. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. We did an episode, I think a pretty good one on zoos quite a while back and the controversy around zoos and if we should even have zoos. And I think I remember us both sort of agreeing. Like. Some zoos are terrible. And then most zoos I don't know about most. But many zoos these days do such great work. They are now necessary and to conservation efforts. Or go a long way toward conservation efforts. But we still like it's a little creepy sometimes when you see an elephant that should roam for thousands of miles in a relatively small area. It makes you think, better off dead. Who knows? Yeah. But then it's just that thing with zoos again. Then you also see, like, a child get inspired to grow up to be a zoologist because they fell in love with the elephant at the zoo, and then they lead conservation efforts. So there's captive breeding programs that bring animals back from the birds of extinction. Right. All this is supposed to happen, but how often does it actually happen is my thing. I think the conservation efforts are constantly happening at most zoos. You mean specifically bringing an animal back? Yeah. Or how many zoologists are actually inspired by going to a zoo as a child? Is there a better way to do it? I'm sure we got into this in the Zoos episode. Since then, I don't think I've been to a zoo. I think I've been to a zoo once, and I was like, I can't go to zoos anymore. Well, I went to the San Diego Zoo when we did our show there, and now I'm a member of the Atlanta Zoo because I have a small child. And it's a great thing to do with a small kid because it introduces them to animals, which they love. It's really neat for them to be able to see these things in person. And it, quite frankly, wears her out, which is kind of the one thing you're trying to do as a parent to make your child exhausted. Look at how crazy that chimpanzee is from being locked up its whole life. I bet you can't run from one animal exhibiting zucosis to the next fast as you can. So, anyway, I've been to the Atlanta Zoo here a few times recently because of that and still have mixed feelings. Sure. But it's hard to not see, like, your 20 month old delight at seeing. I mean, one of these visits, we call it a full on ape show. Oh, really? Yeah. Sometimes you go to the zoo and everyone's hiding, like, well, that's neat. There's a tiger behind that rock somewhere. But we had a good day where this family of apes was just playing like crazy and, like, this huge was it a gorilla? I can never remember which monkeys which are apes. I think a gorilla is a great ape. Well, this big daddy gorilla. I mean, just to see the strength of this dude moving around and jumping around was amazing. And he would jump off of a rock and clap his hands, and the little kids were playing little baby gorillas, and everyone was just, like, literally in awe of what they were witnessing. Yeah, I bet it was like they pumped them full of steroids, right. Cocaine. Maybe they did. Right then, that gorilla family was showing off their charisma. Yes, they have natural, inherent charisma as far as being a charismatic species goes. Because they're so relatable by humans. Well, yeah, I mean, that's one of the things like, hey, this thing kind of looks like you. Right. Don't you like it more than other animals? Don't you want to give us some money to protect them in the wild? Yeah. And that's the point of the charismatic megafauna usage. Yeah, we're talking gorillas, pandas, koalas, tigers. Dolphins, sure. Killer whales. They include lions in here, and I guess so because they're magnificent, but lions don't do a lot. Most of the big cats just sort of lay around. Sure. They're not running around like the gorillas. Yeah, you got to throw your beer can at them to get them going. They had an elephant paint a picture. They did this little at the zoo. Yeah. They put a paintbrush in his mouth and would hold up a canvas and the elephant would, like, someone else would smack over the riding crop. And it did what you wanted? No, it wasn't like that, actually. You can buy paintings by elephants, but apparently they're not very well treated. Yeah, I think at the Atlanta Zoo they treat their animals very nicely. Sure. I'm not saying that, but I mean, on the Internet, you can buy paintings by elephants, and if you actually look into how the elephants are treated. You probably wouldn't want the painting. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be super activist person, but no, I don't mind. It's a controversy. And you know what? There was a tiger there that was clearly exhibiting zukosis. He was pacing back and forth, and all I could do is think about how much that sucks for that tiger to be there. Well, it goes to that solitary confinement thing, the episode that we did. It's virtually the same thing. I think you even brought up Suico SIS in that episode too. Man, that's quite a long winded sort of intro. I guess so. Should we take a break already? Yeah, I'm a little worked out. Get it back on the tracks. 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. I shot Josh with a sedative from an elephant gun. Now you're drifting off a little. I'm feeling pretty good. You got a pretty good buzz. All right, so we were talking about a lot of things, but let's get back to characteristic charismatic. It's wrong with me today. So I read this article on charismatic megafauna, and it was a survey of other journal like scholarly articles, and I think they read, like, 70 of them because they're basically trying to figure out what a charismatic megafauna definition was. Right. Apparently, it's just all over the place. It's extremely non scientific, I think is part of the problem, because it's a marketing tool, man. These people were trying to whip it into shape. The best definition they found or the best explanation of what makes an animal charismatic was from a paper called nonhuman charisma by A. J. LOREMER written in 2007. There were, I think, four points. One was detectability and distinctiveness. Okay. Anybody can look at a pen and be like, that's panda. Oh, yeah, I love pandas. Look at there's one right there. There's a panda. Well, and I think they interviewed a couple of zoologist, and one of them even said you might even know a few facts about this as just a regular nonzoo enthusiast. Right. Like pandas eat, whatever the heck. Panda bamboo. Well, I was going to say that, but then I thought that was a koala, and I was going to koalasi the eucalyptus. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Pandasy bamboo by the bushel. But you can point out a panda. You're not like, I can't tell if it's a camel rat or a humpback rat. Yeah. It's just the same as everything else. It has to be its own thing that really stands out. Another one is socioeconomic biases. So basically how a society feels about the animal. Sure. Right. Do I want to kill the rat? Right. Or hug the panda? Exactly. That's exactly right. Aesthetics is another one. Is it cute? Is it cuddly? Is it beautiful? Is it majestic? Does it look like, I don't know, a fat dude? Right. Does it kind of looks like it should be wearing a hard hat and carrying, like, a lunch pail? That kind of thing? Yeah. Is it relatable? Yeah, that panda, it looks like Kevin James was wearing a black Lone Ranger mask. Who doesn't love Kevin james right. Or you're a black loan ranger. Man and then the last one is the potential to generate satisfaction. Right. So let's say that you see a panda and you're like, I want to know what that is. I want to know all about pandas. And you find out pandas are really boring. There's not a lot to them. There's not a lot to be said. They don't do anything. It's not going to generate much satisfaction intellectually. So if you have an animal that checks all these boxes, it's relatable. Your society feels good about it. It's cute, it's cuddly, it stands out on its own and has a lot to offer intellectually. You've got a charismatic animal. Yeah, I like that. Well, tell Jay LOREMER that you like it. Jay Lormer, if you're out there, that's wonderful work. So we're going to cover sort of the good points and bad points about this characterization, but when it works is when the I keep saying characteristic, what is wrong with me? Charismatic megafauna functions as what's known as an umbrella species, which is to say, because people are giving money to some sort of conservation effort toward this animal, it's helping to protect and serve other animals within that ecosystem. It's a cop. Yeah. You have to kind of step back and think about it, though. Like, how does protecting, say, like a wolf help the rest of the ecosystem? Well, a wolf feeds on smaller animals, let's say small children. Under the right circumstances, unfortunately. Yeah. Typically, they'll feed on smaller animals, which they feed on insects, which they feed on plants. So that means that if a wolf is happy and healthy in its normal ecosystem, that means that all these other species that make up the food web that the wolf is a part of must be happy and healthy, too. Right. It's an umbrella species, like you said, where if you take care of the wolf, you're inadvertently taking care of the rest of them. So that's fine. Yeah. And in one of the interviews in here, who is this person, Brachini. Was that from the Atlanta Zoo? Yeah. Dr. Stephanie Bratini. She says, and this is, to me, kind of says it all it would be nice if endangered species status was correlated to a charismatic variable, but that's not necessarily or often the case. And she brings up the point of muscles sprinklers, freshwater muscle is critically endangered, but has no charisma. So there's no correlation there. In the case of the panda, there is, because they were endangered, and I think now they're just threatened. Right. But there's not always that correlation. She's like, It'd be kind of great if this was always the case. Yeah. I think the point underlying the use of charismatic megafauna is just knowing that something is on the verge of going extinct has been proven not to be enough to get humans to act to do anything about it. It has to be cute, too. And so what conservations are saying after, Gosh, you're so stupid. They say, okay, we can work with this. See this cute little animal? Save this animal, give us your money. And then they take it and actually use it for the whole ecosystem rather than just the animal. Yeah. And that's such a human thing. Like the same and has been said about kidnapped children or the sex trade. Like, it takes some cute little blonde girl to make the news. Right. And that's kind of always been the case. Yes. Sadly. Well, it's not just social either. It's not just society. Although society definitely values attractiveness. There have been plenty of studies about people with facial differences. Right? Oh, yeah. People used to call them disfigured people. Now it's called facial differences. I think that's a great improvement. Right, sure. But there have been studies with babies and they prefer people who don't have facial differences, who follow more like a typical facial profiler feature. Right, right. Compared to people who have facial differences. And that suggests that it's hardwired. So babies pick up on this. Yeah. And the idea that you're basically born to prefer, say, facial symmetry or something like that, it really kind of falls in line with this, too. It's almost like you can't help but say, yes, I care about this cute little baby panda, or whatever, because it's cute. Whereas this other thing that is way more endangered and deserves our attention way more because it's actually a keystone species, which we'll talk about. It's not cute, so I can't really care about it. I'm not hardwired to do that. Yeah. It's kind of like that thing we've talked about before and I think recently where you prefer things that look like you because evolutionarily, anything else back in tooktook stays might have been a threat. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So it's easy to be hard on people, but when you kind of look at the evolutionary aspect of it, well, you can understand as well, right? Yeah. That whole in group, out group thing. Yeah. If we can get past that, it seems like we've evolved socially faster than we've evolved biologically. I think you're right. And that it just hasn't kept up. If we could just get past that whole in group, out group thing, who knows what kind of world we'd be living in. High school would be so great. Yes. Everybody would be like, I love high school. So you talked about keystone species. That is, a species that actually performs like, a really vital role in their ecosystem. Yeah. Where, like, if you took them out, the ecosystem would be so drastically altered, it probably wouldn't resemble itself any longer. It may just go away altogether. Like a honeybee or like coral. Yeah. Where, like, if it's gone, you're in trouble. The thing is, a lot of charismatic megafauna aren't keystone species. It actually doesn't really matter as far as the ecosystem is concerned. If the pandas there, there's some other species in that ecosystem that will play the same role that the panda will. There's pandas right now listening. That said, did you just hear that guy? Let's go get him. You ever seen a panda attack and kill a podcaster? Yes, it's very distressing. Pandas are supposed to be super vicious. Are they? Oh, yeah. I thought that was a koala koalas as well. They're all vicious, aren't they? Did you see the Giraffe give birth? No. I heard a lot of people talking about sitting around and watching it forever and ever, but I didn't check it out. It was hilariously. Sponsored. The webcam was sponsored by Toys R US. Do you know Jeffrey Giraffe? His family. Well, there you go. Interesting. No accident, right? I don't think so. There's also something called an indicator species. And this is like, if you want to know how an ecosystem is going, like, let's say how's the bayou doing, let's go look at the crayfish, because that will be a good indicator of how everything else is doing. If the crayfish numbers are down, that means something is going on, right. Or if the canaries are dying off in the coal mine, you've got gas. Right. But in the same way, though, an umbrella species can also be an indicator species. And that like if the wolf can't survive, that means that all the other parts of the food web are messed up, too, and they can also be an indicator species. Yeah, I don't think that's how indicator species is used every time, but it's an argument in favor of using charismatic megafauna for conservation. So we've been talking a lot about people want to give the things that look like them and that are cute. This has been proven out with studies. We're not just bloviating. Well, I guess we are, but in addition to bloviating, we're not making stuff up because University of Arizona go Wildcats. Right. Yes. They did a study and did find that people support preservation efforts. Oh, wait. No. That's the Sun Devils. No, that's Arizona State. Okay. Yeah. Wildcats. People did support efforts for animals that are attractive, and they do look more human, and they even found that women support scary animals even less than men. Right. Like preservation for a snake population or maybe an insect or something. Yeah. So this is like a baronazian approach to conservation. Yeah. Promoting conservation. For sure. If you are using a charismatic megafauna for conservation, it actually can have beneficial results. Right. It's not just like, theoretically, this should help elephants. Everybody loves elephants. There's not a person alive who doesn't like elephants in the West, I should say. Right. Who knows why? They're very cute, they're very sweet. They grieve over their dead. They do all sorts of interesting stuff. Right. And they've used elephants to basically as poster species for poaching campaigns. A lot more than just elephants are poached. Everything from whale sharks to rhinos to well, elephants are poached. But the idea of giving money to Andy poaching campaigns because you feel like, I want to help that elephant. Here's a check. It's actually going and helping all these other species as well. Supposedly, there's, like, 35,000 species that are subject to poaching. Yeah. And the other example that given this article is the American bald eagle, which in the there was a big movement. They were like, this is America's, bird. Yeah. Dang it. You know, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey. I think I did know that, yeah. Very interesting. Not that you're ducking. No, that would have been even better. It would have been something. But yeah. In the 1670s, people were like, this is America's bird. We have to save the American bald eagle. And it worked there. I think it's not even endangered any longer, right? I don't think so. My inlaws just saw one in Florida. Yeah. Pretty neat. Yes. And I just think associate them with, like, Alaska and Pacific Northwest, but all along the Gulf. Yeah. There's, like a whole group in the Gulf, and there's a whole group up in the Great White Way. Yeah, well, above that. That's the Great White way. I think that's Broadway, isn't it? I don't know. I never heard it's either Broadway or Canada. I think it's Broadway, but I thought it was Canada because I heard Scott Thompson from the kids in the hall call Broadway that. So I was like, I guess he's talking about Canada. And then I found out it was Broadway. I think it's Broadway. That was way more complex than I thought. And the panda, we mentioned their comeback. They have a 17% wild population increase over the past ten or so years. Largely because people love pandas. Sure. And they'll open up the wallet. And again, not necessarily specifically with pandas, but with some species. If you can say their population is coming back in the wild, then it also indicates that their ecosystem is getting better, healthy again as well. Yeah. So that's all well and good. It's good that it made some money, right? Sure. But there's also plenty of criticisms to using charismatic megafauna. And let's take a break and we'll talk about it 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 to 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? Yes? What's the problem with using a cute panda or an elephant or something like that to get money for conservation? How could there be anything wrong with it? Well, another word for this is the bambi effect. Like when you care only about the cute thing. Right. And they interviewed for our own article. It's interesting. The Atlanta zoo zoologist was like, this is kinda great, and it's working. And then they interviewed Christina Simmons of the San Diego zoo global, and she was a little more like, you know what? This is an 80s thing, and we have moved past that here in San Diego. Ignore that panda on the brochure. We've moved past it. Yeah, I thought that was funny. The article pointed out that they had plenty of charismatic species on their website, even though they supposedly moved past it. So apparently in their projects, they stopped focusing on charismatic megafauna, is what she was saying. Right? Yeah, she said that what they're trying to do is focus on an environment more than like it's not like they don't focus on animals, but they try to look at it, I guess, from an ecosystem point of view. Is that right? I think so. Or they're looking more at animals that have a bigger impact on their ecosystem right. Than charismatic megafauna. Right? Yeah. I don't think it was, or maybe it was her. They kind of put it in an interesting way that I hadn't thought of. It sort of creates a class struggle a bit between wealthy animal in quote, and a poor animal as far as their richness being determined by their likability. Yeah, it's as simple as that. And it's not just public awareness of these species being endangered, whereas there's plenty of other species that aren't charismatic that are way more in trouble and endanger being extinct. It's scientific money, too. Like. Scientists need funding to do their studies. And if there's plenty of funding around to focus on pandas. But not. Say. Those muscles that went extinct. Well. There's going to be a lot more scientific study directed toward pandas and saving pandas than saving those muscles. Even though those muscles probably keep their aquatic ecosystem clean. Whereas pandas just poop everywhere and they don't do anything to clean up their ecosystem. I wonder what the scientific ethics are. Maybe a researcher can tell us about where funding goes if they're like, well, let's divert some of that to this other species, whereas the individual who donate might be like, no, just pandas. Well, that was actually brought up in this larger article, that survey of the 70 other articles about charismatic megafauna, and they said that could be an issue. Some donors want to know that their money is going toward what they donated it. Right. And if you think you donated it to save pandas and these guys are being like, yeah, we're helping pandas, but we're also helping these snakes. But you hate snakes. You might be unhappy that your money is helping snakes, even though the snakes really need the help. Yes. One thing I have noticed with donation sites is a lot of times they'll have that. And then, let's say, would you also like to donate $5 to the general fund so you can help the snake? Yeah. And there's not one that says the general fund, but no snakes right now. There's not an option. You're donating the snakes with the general fund, you know? Yeah. There's also the issue of it being a totally unscientific idea. Right. It's completely subjective. Like, even here in the west, people are like, well, lions are beautiful and majestic, but if you talk to school kids in Tanzania, they'll say, actually lions are quite fearsome because we live near them and I have a friend whose uncle was killed by a lion, so I hate them. Right, so you can't even agree on what animals have. Charisma, even it seems like a foregone conclusion to us. The people who are carrying out these conservation efforts and who are donating the conservation dollars aren't the ones who have to actually live with these animals as well. Right, yeah. So if you're an organization who's getting conservation dollars from these people to save these animals that the locals actually hate right. You're going to have a problem here. Yeah. So what are some of the solutions to this? What can you do as a conservationist if you're facing this issue where you need money but you also need to be realistic? I have a feeling you have an answer and wait. Well, one of the great suggestions that I've run across is you can talk about these species that people like, but just talk about them in realistic terms and don't say how cute they are and all that stuff. Yeah. Or don't make it sound like they're the most important animal on the planet. Right. Like, put it in its relative context. Right. Or this one is even better. Take an actual keystone species from an ecosystem that's in real danger of becoming sync, and then put your marketing people to work on creating charisma for that animal. Yeah, because you know what? They could do that in most cases, right. Unless it's a Komodo dragon. No, that's actually a really great example of them doing that. The reason I mentioned that is because that was one of my favorite animals at the Atlanta Zoo, was I could sit around and watch that Komodo dragon for days. Yeah. He was so cool looking. Right. But a lot of people might not think so. Like Sharon Stone's ex husband. Apparently. There was a what? Sharon Stone's ex husband was bitten by a Komodo dragon very famously. Was he hurt? Yes. Did he die? No. That's not why he's an ex. Did he lose a toe? Well, I should say he's an ex because he got bitten by the Komodo dragon, but just because she was embarrassed by it. So she divorced him. No. Okay. She's like, oh, my God, I can't even go out in public now. Right. See you later. You've mortified me. Yeah, I figured you would have known about that. It was very not funny for him. But funny for everybody else. No, but apparently there was a big local push to save Komodo dragons. They were not well liked, but they put some top marketing people on it and gave the Komodo dragon charisma. Like just pointing to a panda bear and being like, pretty cute, huh? That doesn't take any marketing skill. No, it takes real marketing skill to take a hated and reviled animal that needs human help and make it charming. You know who could solve all of this? God. Disney. Oh, yeah. All you got to do is make a movie about a Komodo dragon is the hero. Sure. And literally. That would change everything. Somebody needs to fill out Walt Disney. Thaw him out. Yeah. Is he still frozen? I don't know if that's true or an urban legend or not. We should get Holly from stuff you missed in history class in here. Well, we did an episode on Cryogenics. I'm sure we covered it, but that was a long time ago. Holly, for all I know, might have Walt Disney frozen in her house. She might. Being held captive. So should we talk a little bit about biodiversity? I think we should. And why that's important? Because that's kind of what we're talking about here, in a roundabout way. A healthy ecosystem depends on biodiversity, and that doesn't just mean what's known as species diversity or species richness, which is a lot of different animals. That's what most people think of when they think of biodiversity. Yeah, it's a lot more complex than that. Yeah. So there's species diversity, like you said. There's also genetic diversity, which is the combined number of genes that's available to species worldwide. Yeah. And the more genetic diversity of species have, the easier it can withstand things like disease. Some individuals are going to die, but overall, the species should be able to survive it, because there's probably a gene in there somewhere that can combat this disease, is immune to this disease, and they'll develop an immunity to it, the species will go on. So species diversity is a very important type of biodiversity, too. Yeah, like bald eagle. Again, genetic diversity, sorry. Yeah, bald eagle, good example. Because they are spread out all over. Well, not all over, but in those certain places in North America, gives them good genetic diversity. Thus they were able to come back, the cheetah, not so much. Back in the day, there was only one species, I think around 10,000 years ago. Yeah. I didn't see what happened to the species or the cheetah. Did you? What, all the other species? Yeah. I don't know, that's pretty bizarre. Just one survived. Yeah, the Asanonics jubatus. I think that's right. In Africa. And that was a problem, because when you just have one species, you're in breeding a lot and your genetic diversity goes way down, and all of a sudden one thing could come along and wipe you out. Exactly. One disease or something. Right, and then there's also ecosystem diversity, which is the number of different types of ecosystems around the world. The more you have those, the better off you are. It's kind of like biodiversity is a really good example of not having all of your eggs in one basket. Yeah. You want to diversify. It's the same thing with stocks and bonds. That's right. And it's humans. Biodiversity is a big deal because of medicine that we use that comes from plants, let's say. What else? Clothes that we wear from plants and animal fibers. Sure. What we eat. That's another big one, too. Can't forget that. Yeah. And the point is, it's all linked, like you talked about earlier, the wolf population or the honeybee population will have an effect on down the line, because it's all one big linked puzzle, and something like Colony Collapse Disorder can follow it up to the point where just because the honeybee or the crop production as a whole in the United States is in trouble right. It seems kind of remedial to go over. But it's important to point out what's at stake here when you're talking about extinction, right. It's not like, oh, we don't have honey anymore right now, the entire ecosystems can fail. And when entire ecosystems fail, the world gets a little less biodiverse. And when that happens, it's a little more fragile and it just keeps getting set up more and more and more for some sort of larger collapse. That's more than just, say, a honeybee collapse. Right. And apparently the big one the big daddy as far as reduction of biodiversity goes. Well, there's two of them. One is invasive species. Yes. I didn't know we should do a show and we were going to do one on Kudzu at one point. I don't know if that's two separate shows or not. I don't know, but I didn't realize that invasive species caused that much damage. Yeah, there's something like half of all of the extinction, special extinctions since the 1600s, they attribute to invasive species. That's crazy, where it's just, you know, you've got a species that's introduced into a new ecosystem, it doesn't have any predator, so it preys on other things and reproduces unchecked and just totally throws off the ecosystem. Right? Yeah. Half of extinction comes from invasive species and then another 36% apparently comes from deforestation. Right? Yeah. I mean, the other two big ones are over hunting, like we were talking about with the rhino and elephants and stuff like that. And back in our pigeons episode literally caused the extinction of the passenger pigeon. And then climate change is the fourth, which sort of just getting started on that one. So that's increasingly becoming a problem with animals forced from their habitats. But deforestation is the big daddy. Yeah. And apparently one of the big issues with deforestation, although there has been a lot of headway made with slowing deforestation, but the rainforest is particularly vulnerable because it covers about 7% of Earth's land mass, but it houses about half of Earth's species. That's crazy. Right? So there's that problem with a lot of eggs in one basket. If you mess with that basket, you're in big trouble. I think that's how the saying goes. Right? Yeah. So one of the problems with deforestation is that if you are developing economy and you've got a lot of economic activity that can be gained by cutting down rainforests, it's kind of tough to fault that economy to say, what are you doing? We, as humanity need that. That's nature's pharmacy. Right. There's also apparently a lot of issues with indigenous peoples in rainforest as well, that a lot of them are like, well, they're indigenous people, they know what they're doing. Well, they're also like deforesting the rainforest themselves as well. So there's a lot of programs that have been put into place to reduce deforestation. And like I said, they're having an effect. Apparently within the last couple of years, deforestation has fallen like 49% year over year. In Brazil. Yes, in Brazil, which is where a lot of it was happening. Yeah. So the idea of deforestation not happening in Brazil are happening less. That's a big deal. Yeah. And they have found a direct correlation between the local economy being less reliant on the rainforest and having, like, a healthy economy that doesn't depend on the rainforest and deforestation decreasing. Right. So it's not rocket science. Right. Thanks to Don Henley, it's all getting better. Yup and Al Gore and Tom Petty. All Don Henley does is help the rainforest and be a jerk and sue people. Who did he sue, dude? Don Henley sue everybody. Sue everybody. Did he sue Sharon Stone's husband? Ex husband. I think so. Now he's sort of a notorious jerk as far as, like, oh, you used this Eagle song when you weren't supposed to, and taking you to court, and then I'll cut you. Man. He like, one of my favorite bands. And then I'll cut you. That's not a peaceful, easy feeling at all. Ocrville river one of my favorite bands. They kind of reworked a Don Henley song as homage and a tribute and didn't even, like I think they just put it on the web. They weren't trying to make money off of it, and they're like, man, we love this song. We kind of reworked it, and, like, here it is. And he was like, Shut it down. Get it off the Internet. I'm suing you, little indie band. Really? Yeah. And then Will Chef, their lead singer and songwriter, he was just sort of like, man, really? Thanks a lot. Yeah. I'm going to have my Eagles tattoo graded off. No more homages to you, sir. All right. It was the end of Will Chef's innocence about Don Henley. I'm going to see Joe Walsh tomorrow night. And Tom Petty. He's opening up. Wow. Which I'm pretty excited about. Usually openers at those big shows, they don't do good job pairing them sometimes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, I saw Elton John once, and he had these two cello players. Yo Yo Ma. Yeah. And his brother. No, it was kind of neat. I can't remember their names. And I'm sure there are tons of people that are fans of these guys because they play, like, AC DC songs on the cello. And it's really sort of I mean, it was cool, but I don't know. I want to see Joe Walsh open up for everybody. So Yummy and I went and saw Cindy Lawford a couple of years ago, and Dr. John opened for yeah. That's not a good pairing. It was an amazing show. Both of them were, but it was like the Doctor John show happened, and then everyone left, and then everyone came in for Cindy Lauper. It was a very weird pairing. I think Cindy Lopper is just like a Doctor John fan and wanted to make sure he got some money that year or something. Right. Yeah. But it was like two different shows. Like an early show and a late show as far as the audience was concerned. Yeah, I saw Josh Groban open up for Iron Maiden. I thought that was strange. Well, Bruce Dickinson is a well known operatic singer. Oh, that's true. I see that. Yeah. Tattooed millionaire pilot. Man, what a great ending. How are we done? Did you have anything else? No. All right. If you want to know more about Iron Maiden biodiversity, josh Groban, yoyo Ma. All that jazz. Type those words in the search bar@howstofworks.com and press your luck. Since I said press your luck, it's time for listener mail. All that jazz, none of which was jazz. All right. I wonder where that term came from. I think it's from the Gray white way. There was a show called All That Jazz, but they invent that, I think, so okay, that's all that. I'm going to call this from our old buddy Sarah Law, who's one of our oldest. I always say oldest, like she's 19. Longest lasting, longest running. Yeah. Long standing listeners from Canada. Hey, guys. Josh, Chuck and Jerry. Can you still not spell Jerry right? Sarah, after all these years. How do you spell it? Gary. With a Gary. J-E-R-I. Everybody, I know you guys love animals, so I thought it'd be great if you could share this stuff. You should know, Army Story friend needed to give up his cat for adoption because he's moving out of the United States due to health issues of the cat shelters would not take her. He was going to have to put her down, which I can't believe. That's the solution. Yeah. If you got to move, I'll just put you down. That aside, I put out a 9th hour call. I think it's 11th hour in the United States. Apparently, in Canada, it's a 9th hour. I put out a nineTH hour call to the stuff you should know. Army and a nice person named Kevin Lyman asked everyone he knew if they could take her. And I'm happy to say that Kevin's coworker Kat with a K picked Ava up. And Ava is the cat from the vet appointment to save her life and then took her to be put down. No, I saw a picture of this cat. It was adorable. Yeah. Never underestimate the power of the Stuff you should army and I think she shared this on Facebook and it kind of happened that way. Yeah. That's great. I love the show. Thank you for enriching our lives in so many ways. Your Canadian friend, Sarah Oxo. Thanks a lot, Sarah. That was a great story. Yeah. How appropriate for this. I told Sarah that. Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that. Cats are charismatic minifauna, I told Sarah, and all likelihood are going to be coming up to the Great White Way. I hope that's what it is for some shows this year. We're going to be hitting Canada, I think at least one, right? Yeah. We've been teasing these shows, but we're kind of nailing it all down. So listen up, all eight of you who still listen this deep into the show. Sure, we might be coming to a town near you. Yeah. Let everybody else know. Yes, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on facebook. Comsteffyshno. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshireo.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." | |
8702e438-3b0e-11eb-9699-d7a87c44e4bf | Heat Waves! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/heat-waves | Heat waves are one of the easiest natural disasters to overlook yet they kill more people in the US than any other natural disaster (and maybe all others combined). And if climate predictions prove correct, they’re going to get longer and hotter. | Heat waves are one of the easiest natural disasters to overlook yet they kill more people in the US than any other natural disaster (and maybe all others combined). And if climate predictions prove correct, they’re going to get longer and hotter. | Tue, 19 Oct 2021 13:12:17 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=13, tm_min=12, tm_sec=17, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=292, tm_isdst=0) | 50869875 | 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 it's just us, but that's okay, because we today are doing Stuff You Should Know. Wave Edition. That's the heat wave. Have you been singing that song all day? I've been trying so hard not to, and it's not working. How about you? Oh, man. Martha and the Vandals. How can you not? Yes, the problem is all I just this constant loop of heat wave. Heat wave. I know. Heat wave. That's it over, and that's the only part I know, and it's terrible. Think I know that one of the first lines is whenever you're near me oh, is that the same song? I think so. Right. Am I thinking of something else? No, I think it is, but every movie that ever uses it just uses that first line and then starts to fade out before they get to the heatwave part. So I never put two and two together. Great song. Great song, for sure. But you don't want just heat wave on a loop in your head, I can tell you. No, I just looked at the lyrics and I'm wrong anyway. But whenever I'm with him okay, but that's what you're talking about. It's not like a totally different song or something. Whenever I'm with him, something inside starts to burning and I'm filled with desire. Heat wave could it be a devil in me? Heat wave the way love is supposed to be he'd wave. Yes. All right, let's done. Let's never speak of that again. Sexy song. I didn't realize it was that sexy. Well, sure. She's talking about getting all hot for a dude. I mean, that's not there's nothing sexy about the heat wave that we're talking about. No. Deadly. Maybe the antithesis of sexy. Yes. Now that I think about it. Heatwave sex. No, thank you. No. And there's such a thing as cold waves, which we'll touch on briefly. They are very much related to heat waves. They're kind of it's polar opposite, if you'll excuse the pun. But you could make a case that would be far sexier than a heat wave. Yeah. At least you're warming yourself up, right? That's exactly right. And, boy, we used a lot of great weather website references for this one, right? Yeah. Great segue there, Chuck. So we got some info from Noah. No, actually, the thing is, I can't even be taken seriously when I'm trying to be serious and genuine. Like that was genuine. Well, I'm still learning. So Noah gave us a bunch of information. Your nephew. There's also the center for Climate Change and Energy Solutions. Is this my queue? Yes. World weather attribution New York Times. The sailing New York Times. NASA AccuWeather yeah, and a bunch more. But those are the ones that we got the meat of this stuff from. Yes. And we're talking about heatwaves, which is the I was about to call it phenomenon. I don't know if it is categorized to that, but it's a weather event. It's a natural disaster. Oh, yeah. And as we'll see, one of the worst it is when there are consecutive days where the temperature is higher than it usually is. That is to say higher than the historical average. But it depends on where you are, what a heat wave is. It's not necessarily like three days and it's eight degrees hotter than usual for those three days. No, because it varies region to region. Like in New Hampshire, a heat wave of two days or two consecutive days where it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit or more is a heat wave. And that's just like yawn to those of us down in the Southeast. That's like a fairly nice day. Yeah, it's regional, like spices that go in hot dogs. Right. But the thing is, that depends. The reason that they do that, the reason there's no single definition for heat waves, is because people are acclimated to different kinds of weather. And if you're not acclimated to warm weather, it's going to affect you and your body a lot worse. So it makes a lot of sense. But the two days in a row as low as 90 degrees Fahrenheit, that's the minimum that I've seen in the United States that constitutes a legit heat wave. A legit heat wave. Oh, boy. We can do that the whole time. I think I'm going to. Okay. This one speaks to my heart because as everyone who's ever listened to the show much knows, and as you, my friend, certainly know, I'm a polar bear, so the sun and humidity is not good for Chuck. I hate it. I hate it. I grew up in the south, and it's worse now. It feels like it's not like I've gotten acclimated. Like, it's easy to say you get acclimated, but even as much as I sweat, which is I can't imagine how hot I would be if I didn't sweat like I sweat. Well, yeah, you'd be like one of those people who can't sweat and can die from it. But when I lived in La, it can get very hot out there. But generally, if you can park it under a tree, you might get a breeze and you can sweat and you're cooling down pretty good. But there's no relief when you live in the south because of humidity. We're going to talk about all that, but I just want to kind of set up my personal involvement with heat waves, which is boo. Thumbs down. Okay. You are personally involved through sweatiness is what you're saying. Yeah. And when those heat waves, especially the late heat waves in the summer, when it should be cooling down, come through, it just makes me mad. Yeah, those are not fun because your body's in your mind has been like, oh, okay, great, it's falling. Then you're just dog days of summer again. It's terrible. I'm with you on that. But how do these things come about to begin with, why is it hot for a week straight? Way hotter than it normally is. And why doesn't it cool down every night? Well, first we should say because I don't want to lose anybody this early on if they're like two days in a row of 90 degree weather. Why are you guys even talking about this? The reason we are talking about this is because, like we said, Chuck Noah classifies heat waves as a disaster. And a lot of really terrible stuff can happen during a heat wave even of just a few days. Like it's an invisible, silent, deadly natural disaster that we're only beginning to awaken to. Silent but deadly. So as you're saying, how do he waves work? You're kind of set me up for that one, right? Well, yeah, but I thought you were going to hit them with the big stat, which is heat waves kill more people than all other natural disasters combined. Or I think you saw somewhere else all but hurricanes. But point being, they kill a lot of people, like way more than you think. Yeah, and even if they don't necessarily kill more people, at least in the United States, that was the statistic I saw than all other natural disasters combined. At the very least it kills more people per year than all other natural disasters. It's the deadliest kind of natural disaster. Right. The thing is, it doesn't happen all at once like say a flood that takes a bunch of people's lives in a very acute area, right? Concentrated area. It happens slowly over the course of days in a very large region and people just kind of die. And it's not immediately apparent like, oh, I found you in floodwater, you drowned in a flood, I found you dead on your sofa in your apartment and maybe you had a heart attack or something like that. That's why I was saying we're just beginning to awaken to it because it's not an obvious natural disaster, but it is most decidedly a natural disaster. Yeah, that's a good point. It's not quite as gravy in the news. They certainly report on it, but it's not in the news. Let's talk about heat waves. Heat waves, that's right. So the whole thing about a heat wave is that it's basically a warm mass of hot air that's just a high pressure system. So let me just restate that less confusingly. It's a high pressure system that's made up of very stagnant, still warm air that kind of finds its way over a region and doesn't move for a little while and things get really oppressive during that period. Yeah, and these high pressure systems are just part of the normal weather patterns and they generally kind of circulate clockwise and kind of move on through the jetstream. Takes care of that. Thankfully, that west to east air current that moves pushes all the weather around, always shoving the weather around. Yeah. In the Northern Hemisphere, at least. Yeah. Well, come on, is there any other hemisphere? Sorry. Australia? America? Centric or anything. No, but in the Northern Hemisphere, the jetstream hits us about at the belt between Canada's shirt and America's jeans. And like I said, it usually pushes stuff around and it'll get hot and then it'll push that hot stuff out. But during the summertime, the jet stream slows down. They have found that overall, and we're going to talk quite a bit about climate change overall it's slowing down, period some, but in the summertime it definitely slows down from its 250 mph or so peak and that's going to obviously keep that hot weather there a little longer. Yeah. Even under normal conditions, let alone climate change conditions. Right. So when all of those factors are kind of falling into place. Where the jet stream is feeling a little logy and not moving too quickly. And there's a big mass of hot air that kind of moves up as a high pressure front and just settles in over a region. You've got everything you need for that mass of hot air to just stay put and continue heating up. Which is the big problem because a high pressure weather system forces air downward. And it's hot air too. Normally you have hot air at the surface or air that warms up at the surface and it moves upward, it floats upward and it's replaced by cool air that comes in and you got breezes. Well, one of the things that's a hallmark of a high pressure system is there ain't no breezes because it's just sitting there pushing the air downward toward the surface of the Earth, which prevents that air from rising. So there's no cool air to come in, so there's no breeze. But also because the air is just sitting there at the surface, it's just getting warmer and warmer and warmer. And the surface air temperature is what we're concerned with because it's the temperature of the air at about 2 meters above the Earth's surface, above the ground. So it's about six and a half feet, which is where a lot of us are trying to take a breath in this really hot air. Well, a lot of you taller people, sure, but even still, if you stood on your tippy toes, it would affect you a lot too. Well, the other thing that happens too, because that air isn't rising, that means it's not going to rain. And rain obviously can be a way to cool things down. So it sort of acts as this sort of like a feedback loop, basically, where the hotter it gets, the hotter it's going to get. Yeah. And even the other thing about a high pressure front is it pushes like air away from it, outward from the edges of it, so there's no fronts coming in to kind of relieve it. So the stronger they get, the more all of these factors contribute, and then, like you said, creates this positive feedback cycle. And basically you're just totally at the mercy of the jet stream to move this thing away eventually, and it can take some time. And so that's what a heat wave is when one of these, like, all these factors kind of come together and this massive hot air settles in over a region and just keeps getting hotter and hotter. And in the daytime, that's like the money time as far as people are concerned with heat waves, because the sun's out, it's really hot, the temperatures are really high, and it's pretty bad. No one's going to argue that the daytime during a heat wave stinks, but it's the nighttime. That's the more insidious part. That's the real problem with the heat wave, right, yeah. Even if it gets really hot. But it's not a heat wave. The Earth helps itself out by cooling down at night. Everything cools down at night. Yeah, it's a great chance to just kind of kick off your shoes and relax and recharge. Yeah, like humans, the human body needs it. Animals bodies need it. The Earth itself needs it. The buildings and the concrete and the asphalt and the steel and the glass, it all depends on cooling down some at night. So it can be like, well, I'm going to get hot again tomorrow, but at least I cooled down tonight and kind of relaxed and, like you said, repaired my energy. But when a heat wave comes, it's not cooling down at night. So just imagine yourself if you never get a chance to cool down at night and you stay hot, then that sun comes up the next day, it's going to be twice as bad. Yeah. Because you're starting from a higher set point at the beginning. And that's one of the hallmarks of a heat wave, is it's hot even before the sun comes up, which is not pleasant, and it's certainly not good sleeping weather. Those are the worst, man. Especially here in the south when you go outside, like you go to let your dog out at 11:00 at night and it's like 87 deg or something, you just start sweating immediately before that's just brutal. Yeah, it's pretty bad. All right, well, let's take a break. I need to go, I don't know, soak in a bathtub or something. Are you sweating now? I'm getting a little hot out of here. And we'll talk about the dreaded humidity right after this. Chuck, lay it on them. That very famous phrase that actually holds true. Youth is wasted on the young. Sure, that one. But also early bird gets the worm. And never say candy man into a mirror. Well, certainly not three times in a row. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. There's the one I was looking for, right? That's the one. And that's true. I mean, we were talking about humidity earlier. That is what the humans have this great mechanism built in kind of a self contained air conditioning system which is called sweat. And if the air is fairly dry outside and like I mentioned, getting under that shade tree in Los Angeles, you can sweat and that water is going to evaporate off of you and a cool breeze will come through and it actually feels good. And that is how you regulate and cool down. When the humidity happens, it's hard to near impossible for that sweat to really cool you down. You'll still be sweating, but it won't have that same effect. Right? Yeah. There's no place for that sweat to go. It doesn't just move into the air because there's already so much water vapor into the air. So the higher the humidity is, the worse off it is for you. And then if you take high temperatures as well, that combination of high humidity and high temperature can be really bad. And back in the 70s, there was a guy actually in somebody named RG. Steadman. They came up in 1979 with assessment of sultriness, which we call today the heat index. It was the paper that put the heat index out there. And the heat index is way too sexy. Yeah, it really is. Sounds like a Tennessee Williams play or something like that. So the heat index makes a lot of sense because when it's really humid out and it's high in temperature, that humidity makes it feel even hotter because we have trouble sweating. So RG. Steadman came up with the heat index. That kind of gives you a much better understanding of what the actual temperature as far as your human body is concerned. That's why they also call it the apparent temperature or the feels like temperature. Yeah, and that's the only one I care about. I don't even know why they list regular temperature. It should just be heat index and wind chill in the winter because that's the only thing that matters. And I guess it's like showing your math or something, so they have to go through it all. But as far as your human body is concerned, those are really the only two measures that matter, or at least for me. Yeah. So you know how sometimes you can end up down a rabbit hole and not find a way out and you have to just crawl backwards out of it and you're kind of worse off for the wear because you went a little mad in there? Sure. That happened to me with humidity, heat index, evaporation, condensation. I'm researching it. Yeah. And I'm like there's some connections here between all these things that my brain is not making. I'm just sensing that it's all very much connected. And I'm even reading stuff that saying it's connected. I just can't figure out how it's all connected because it's not as simple as like the heat index is humidity times temperature divided by two or something like that. That's not how it works. It's way more sophisticated than that. And it takes into account a lot of different stuff so that if you actually put a lower temperature in with higher humidity, it'll bring the temperature down. And then there's some temperatures, like, say, 70 degrees, where it doesn't really matter what you do with the humidity, it's still just going to feel like 70 deg. So there's like, a lot of different weirdness in there. But the thing is, the upshot of all this, I was just kind of confessing and getting off my chest that I'm a little obsessed with this. And if any meteorologists or climatologists can explain all this to me, I would love to hear it. But as far as heat waves are concerned, if you have high temperatures and high humidity, some really astounding stuff happens when you put those together. As far as the heat index is concerned. Yeah. And just not to harp on my personal sweating issues, we've talked about it a lot over the years. But the embarrassing thing for me is not that I sweat a lot, because that's why I never had, like, acne growing up, because I'm just constantly sweating everything through. I've got, like, the cleanest pores in the world, and it helps cool me down. But it's when it's like, 76 degrees and super humid, and other people are like or even in the 60s or fifty s, and they're like, it's really cool. Why are you sweating? Because it's humid. I don't care if it's 40 degrees. If it's super humid, I might break a sweat. Yeah, it's through. If you're sweating at 40 degrees, that's some sweatiness for sure. Maybe not 40, 50. We could do some tests. All right. Oh, yeah, let's do some science. I have to set up, like, a humidity lab or something. Okay. But I still get to get a lab coat, right? Sure. Of the color of my choosing, I'll let you select from three colors of my choosing. What are they? Cinnamon, powder blue and orange. Okay, great. Any one of those then. That's mine. It's mine, too. Banana yellow was going to be in there, but you missed the boat. At least you didn't make me dress up in a banana costume. Yeah, it's funny. I was shopping for Halloween for this year, and I kind of want to go as devo. And so I was looking up for those yellow jumpsuits, and I was waylaid because you kind of end up having to be whatever your kid says you have to be. So I think we're all going to be spooky things this year, but I had to put the devo thing on the back burner. You could be like, zombie devo. Not a bad idea. No, it's not. It's a great idea. Yes, you can be zombie anything. That's kind of the beauty of the zombie, right? Zombie Burke, zombie mark, mothers ball, zombie, zombie Bjork, I like that. Just wear that swan dress and walk around saying brain. There you go. I was trying to think of how bureauc would say brains, but my head couldn't put it together. That was perfect. So you mentioned insidious effects and we're going to talk about those because very wide reaching, it's not just people get hot and people die. It affects kind of everything on the planet. And it's easy to kind of think of heat stroke and dehydration and something like that during the day, like you said, because that's when you count on it and that's when you might take precautions. Which by the way, go listen to our desert survival episode for that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, good tips there. But at night, like you said, that's when it's really bad because the human body really depends on that rest and that reset and that cool down. And if you stay hot, your body, especially if you have high blood pressure or like heart issues, it's working overtime at night when it should be cooling down because I think you're lowest body temperature of the 24 hours cycle is during sleep. So if you're not hitting that cool down cycle, then everything is just doing a lot of extra work. Yeah. In particular your heart is and when your heart is working hard and it has to work hard again the next day, it's like that set point starts higher the next day. So after a few days of this, especially if you have a bum ticker to begin with, it can be quite dangerous for you. And so people like the elderly children, like very young children, they're usually the first casualties of a heat wave. But there are a lot of other people who are susceptible too. Especially people who don't have easy access to air conditioning. People who are of low income, who very sadly might even have air conditioning but don't have power right then, or don't have the money to run their air conditioner, the homeless, people who work outside and sorry, I got to work no matter what to keep food on the table. Whether it's a heat wave or not, they can be in big trouble as well. But then so can any of us. Especially when the heat index starts to jump. Like when you have 100 deg temperatures with 55% humidity, you put those together, it's suddenly 124 out. That's not good for anybody. No, and I mentioned earlier that it's like people and animals and buildings and everything, the infrastructure, it takes a hit. Like railway, railroad tracks can literally warp and buckle. Yeah. They won't run trains during a heat wave a lot of times for that reason. Because they could derail. Yeah, concrete and asphalt, any kind of metal and glass on a buildings. Their shape can briefly change and expand and contract or I guess expand and not contract for a little while. It's not all due to this heat wave. And we talked a little bit about the urban heat island effect at some point. But this is why you go to New York City and a heat wave and it's one of the hottest places on the planet, it feels like. Yeah, because it actually is way hotter than other places because of all the building materials. Number one, that are excellent absorbers of heat, all that black top and asphalt and all that steel. But also check the distinct lack of vegetation like trees and stuff that actually help cool the air. It's not just shade that they do. Like they actually release water vapor into the air and actually cool the nearby air. So the more trees you have, the lower the urban heat island effect. But that's just not like a huge trait of the average city. Like somebody actually wrote a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. That's how significant the idea of a tree in Brooklyn was, you know what I'm saying? That's funny. Energy takes a big wall up, too, for the obvious reason and more. The obvious one being that everyone's cranking those air conditioners, everyone's refrigerators and freezers are working overtime. Industrial refrigeration is working overtime. And you combine that with the fact that transmission capacity is reduced during these high temperatures, it's going to strain the electrical grid even more. Nothing is running with any kind of efficiency. And if you want to really have some people die quickly, you have an energy power outage during a heat wave because of these overstressed systems. And that's when all of a sudden nobody has refrigeration or air conditioning. And it can get brutal pretty quickly. Yeah, because if you think about it, you've got incredible demand on the system and then the system itself can't get rid of its waste heat like it needs to, just like a human body does. So, yeah, if the system blacks out or even browns out, that's not the time to do it, but that's when it's most likely to happen. And then on the opposite side of the same coin, Chuck, are those cold waves I was talking about. And that was what happened in Texas this past winter. It was a high pressure front, but instead of a mass of like, super hot air, it was a massive super cold air. And it just settled in and stayed there in froze Texas. And Texas infrastructure suffered. I think we talked about on the electrical grid episode, and it was the same thing. They just couldn't keep up with the demand. And the weather itself was taxing the system, too. And it's the same thing in a heat wave. It's just for the opposite reasons, but the same outcome. Right. And if you're thinking, hey, look at the bright side, warmer winters mean we're not going to be using as much energy in the wintertime to heat our homes, so it all balances out. That's not true. They've done a lot of studies and they're pretty much coming to the conclusion that the heat is tipping that scale too far in the other direction. And even if we are saving a little bit of energy or even a great deal of energy in the wintertime due to warmer temperatures, it's not going to balance it out. Right. Water is another big one, too, Chuck, which makes a lot of sense. Like people drink more water, they need more water. They might take cool baths to cool down. But not just humans. Livestock need more water during this time. Power plants need more water to stay cool. Crops need more water. Everything needs more water. But the problem is during heat wave when you need water the most, that's when it's like the least available because it becomes pretty scarce because drought and heat waves, they work really well together. They kind of go hand in hand, actually, in a lot of cases. Yeah, I mean, that kind of creates a similar feedback loop in that when there is moisture in the ground, thanks to rain and stuff like that, even when it gets hot, the earth is going to soak up a lot of that sun and use some of that energy to get rid of that water and turn it into water vapor. If that ground is already super dry because of a drought, then it's basically just baking like an oven and that energy has no other use. It doesn't have the use of turning it into water vapor. So it's just baking. Yeah, just heating that ground up instead so it just gets hotter and hotter, which is terrible stuff. Plus, also with drought stricken landscapes, those are more susceptible to wildfires. So as there's more and more heat waves, we can expect worse, more widespread wildfires, basically. Too we talked about animals. Yeah, it's not animals. I think a lot of people forget about animals in situations like this. I think people think more about animals when it gets super cold and like really bad cold fronts come in, but they're susceptible to the heat, too. And it's not just our little domesticated pets that we love. And unfortunately, some of the street animals really suffer. But livestock, if you're on a farm, those cows and chickens don't like that kind of heat either. Sometimes it can affect their mortality rates. It can affect things way downstream because they don't want to have that heat wave sex either. That's true. So they might be reproducing less, which is going to have a downstream effect. And then all the crops are going to be affected, too. Yeah, especially the ones that cops, when it comes snatch the what? Cops want to come and snatch my crops. What is that? You don't remember that as a Cypress Hill lyric? A very famous one. Oh, yeah, okay, I remember now. Boy, we mentioned Cypressilla a lot on the show. Yeah, they're kind of like, they're like a mascot now, like Frank. The chair. I knew that sounded familiar. Cops come and try to snatch my crop. There it is. And then that has to be followed, of course, by Heat Wave. Right. Boy, somebody should sample that on a hip hop tune. That'd be great. What? Heat Wave? Yeah, I bet it has been. Sure. I could see Puff Daddy sampling that. That'd be up his alley. Yeah. Did I ever tell you I went to his house one time? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'd like to hear it again. It's not the biggest story, but I ran Aaron as a PA. Over to his house one time and had to drop something else. So I had to go knock on his door and walk inside the front and drop something off. Something was something in air quotes? No, it was something for the job. It wasn't a big deal, but it was like closed or something. But it was just very shiny and white. Everything was shiny and white. I can imagine. Which is a way to go, I guess. But it's a look, it's too much. I don't know. I mean, this is a long time ago. He may not be into that now, but white couches and big white marble floors. I mean, I like white couches and I do like white stuff, but it's also like gotta have lots of color. Like the white stuff is just a backdrop for your color. That's my opinion. We are too messy. We can't have white things. Understand? Well, if you have a white couch, it's got to be a slip cover because you're going to have to wash it. Yes, if you drink red wine. But there is one that we haven't covered yet. I think we should before we take a break. And it is air pollution, which might be overlooked by some people, but it really makes a lot of sense because, number one, we're demanding way more from power plants than usual during a heat wave with all the AC. So those power plants are putting out more emissions than usual. But then the actual conditions of the heat wave itself make the air pollution worse, does it not? Yeah. I mean, that same cap that kind of forces all that air down and keeps everything stagnant, that same cap is in place for these emissions that are going up into the air. So it's just like bottling it all up. It's going to make things a lot worse. Yeah. And also ozone is more easily produced. So you've got ozone and particulate matter from emissions all combining to make your breathing much more difficult in danger. So let's take a break and then we'll talk about some couple of famous heat waves and what the future holds. How about that? Let's do it. Stuff you should know. All right, so it's you were alive on the Earth this summer, you might remember, in July, you almost started with it and you didn't. You've really come a long way, Chuck, with what you almost said, unless you were living under a rock. Oh, no, I really wasn't. All right, so between June 20 and June 23, something was brewing down in Mexico that was very hot. This big, massive warm air moved up and kind of settled over the middle of the United States and didn't move for a while. And it was just sort of your classic heat wave. But even in places like where they're used to the heat in the summertime, it got exceedingly hot. Like if you were in Arizona, in Phoenix, you're used to hot weather for sure, but it cracked 115 degrees for six consecutive days, which is a record for even Phoenix. That is not okay for anybody. No. So it's bad enough for Phoenix, but still, I'm sure the people of Phoenix are like, yeah, it's kind of hot, but come on, we could handle worse. It was places where it's not normally hot at all that really took the brunt of that heat wave. And as a matter of fact, the heat wave is generally called or referred to as the Pacific Northwest heat wave because that's where it really stunk the worst. Yeah. I can't believe Portland, Oregon, got up to 112 deg. That is bananas. Yeah. And we should say when you're talking about air temperatures and you are seeing the temperature on the news or whatever, that measurement was taken in the shade. That's not the sunshine temperature. That's what the temperature is in the shade. Okay, so wrap your head around that one, Bucko. Yeah. So 112 in Portland, 104 in Seattle, which broker record it was bananas. A lot of people in that part of the country, I don't really know percentages, but there are people who don't have HVAC units. They count on opening their windows and stuff like that. There are still places in the United States, believe it or not, that don't have HVAC that use ceiling fans and stuff, and they just don't need it. That's a trick. Yeah, for sure. There was another town, too, that we have to mention, Chuck Lighten, British Columbia, which is north a couple of hundred miles north of Seattle. They hit 116 and set a new record, not just for themselves, but for Canada as a whole. And then the town burned down from a wildfire right afterward. Very sad. So it was a really big deal. And one of the things that I think the Pacific Northwest heat wave in June, and I think there were multiple ones around that region well, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but in the Midwest states in particular this year. But what I think the heat waves in the US kind of woke people up to is like these things are, like, really deadly. They looked at excess deaths, which they kind of take the background number of deaths you'd expect and then see how many more occurred on a particular day. Or over a particular period or during heat wave. And they've concluded thus far that in Washington state alone, 600 people died from that heat wave over the course of a few days. Yeah. Like, thousands of people total. Right. All over that region. That's a little bit of a squishy number. And we'll talk a little bit about this. Like, people who study this kind of stuff, they're doing the best they can. They can't necessarily say, like, every single one of those deaths was because of the heat wave. But it is a really good measure, and if you're just looking at sort of round numbers, it's not the kind of thing that you can dismiss. Yeah. And plus, if history is any kind of guide, those numbers will probably be revised upward in the next year or so, I would guess. Yeah. And it's not just the United States. There was a heat wave in Europe in 2003 that was the warmest summer on record since the 1540s. Yeah. And I was like, how do they know that? I don't know. So I looked there's a bunch of different ways they can kind of parchment us out. Yeah, parchment is the answer they take. Boreholes is basically one of the best ways I saw, where when it's hot on the Earth's surface, that temperature radiates downward through the Earth. And if you take a core sample, a borehole sample, you can actually kind of deduce from whatever temperature a specific moment in time is. Like, say, in the 1540s, this would have been at the surface that you can actually get the temperature roughly from that era. I think we talked about that before. This one's really familiar. Okay, well, it sounded new to me. I had no idea. But I think that's pretty interesting because there was nobody in 1540 saying, oh, it was 80 degrees Celsius, it was super hot, but I think that's, like, really hot, if I'm not mistaken. But nobody was recording temperature like that. Some people did record the weather, but it was just like a smattering of observations and nothing scientific because this is pre scientific, so they have to use even more scientific stuff today to kind of deduce what it was before. Right. You might see, like, it was very hot the day we burned this person at the state. Right. And we made it even hotter. Glancing reference, but yeah. I mean, Milan, Paris, London, all these places broke record temperatures. Temperatures. Temperatures. I can say that like a lazy southerner temperature. Temperature. Because of hookworm. You say it like temperature. Yes. But in a couple of years after they calculated that, about 30,000 people died all over Europe, and then later on, they said that could have been as high as 70,000 people. When they study the years after that, 700 people died from a two week heat wave in Europe in 2003. And this may be what we're looking at going forward. Yeah. So we talked about, you were saying that there's people who are trying to figure out how much this is increasing, how much of it has to do with climate change. It's a new branch of science called attribution studies, and it's pretty much in league with climatology. I get the impression that it's made up of climatologists and it's a brand new type of science and it's really hard to do. But they're starting from an article I read, the data set post climate change, basically this 1.2 degrees since we started keeping records in 1080, I believe it's like the benchmark year that's starting to happen. Like weird stuff is starting to happen in more and more frequency that this data set is growing and then they have since the 1880s to compare it against. And so using a lot more sophisticated statistical analysis than I can quite wrap my head around, they're figuring out how to say this weird weather event like the one in the Pacific Northwest had exchange of happening, had climate change never happened, had we never started releasing greenhouse gas emissions during the industrial age. And they've actually done that. There was a study that actually kind of came to some pretty interesting conclusions about that. Yeah. You hear about like a 100 year storm or something like that. They did a calculation and they said that heat wave in 2021 of this year in the United States was in a 1000 year event. And that's factoring in like the current climate that we are already in. Yeah. If our climate did not get any hotter or change in any way than it did now, from now on that it would have been 1000 year event like now, basically. Right. And then they can further extrapolate and say this was pre Indo, the 19th century, I guess. Yeah. 1880, that's that benchmark date when everyone around the world started to keep pretty accurate weather records from that point on. They said that would have been about 150,000 year event back then. Yeah. And in the future it might become like a five or ten year event. Yeah. By the 2050s maybe. Yeah. Because I think it's like 30 or 40 years from now, the overall global temperature there it is again. Is going to rise another two degrees Celsius. No two degrees Celsius total since 1880. Deg. Okay. Yeah, I guess that would be catastrophic. Yeah. I don't know what would happen. I think we should do an episode explaining temperature rising, like what effects it's going to have and all that. Sure. So under our doomsday series, so even taking aside like, climate change and an increase from climate change, there's a lot of data that just says, yeah, we're actually seeing a lot more heat waves than we used to just in the past, like 50, 60 years and just taking data. Starting in 1960, I think the National Weather Service did a study that basically said if looking at 50 cities in the United States, 46 of them have seen a statistically significant increase in heat waves since the 1960s. So much so that during the 1960s, they could expect about two heat waves per year. These 50 cities in the United States now, they're averaging about six per year. And the season for heat waves in these cities is on average 47 days longer than it was in 1960. So there's definitely a big upward trend in heat waves. It's becoming this new normal for us. Yeah. And it's really all about data. The more data you have because there are still freak weather events that they don't want to just throw everything in there and say it's all caused by the rising climates all over the world. But the more time goes on, like, the more this data set is enriched and the wheat is separated from the chaff just sort of naturally, the more data you get and those statistical anomalies, they will be revealed as such. Yes. Which I think behooves us to say, like, any good attribution climatologist is going to tell you, like, that heat wave in the Pacific Northwest could have just been statistical bad luck. It may have had nothing to do with climate change. It could have just been like, that was the one we drew. Because 1000 year event means you have a one and 1000 chance on any given year of that it could happen next year. Again, statistically is unlikely, but it's possible just from statistics that it was just bad luck that it happened. But yeah, what you were saying is actually totally accurate, that the more unfortunately weird, freak weather events go on, the bigger the data set. They're going to have to compare to pre climate change times and see what is actually trending upward. And it looks like they're probably right about heat waves. Yeah. And people should feel good knowing that they're really trying to get good, accurate data. They don't want to just be doomsday people and say they want to really get good, accurate numbers in there. So if you're a person who thinks climate change is bogus or it's not human caused or whatever, or they're just trying to scare you and they're going to throw everything in there that happens and say it's because of this, they're not doing that. They're really working super hard to get a super accurate record and picture of what things are like now and what they're like moving forward. Yes. You're not being hoodwinked. I think people who are still saying that they're basically like standing in a burning house, being like, the house isn't on fire, it's fine. Yeah. So what can we do to stop this stuff? Well, you can't stop it. What can we do to help ourselves out in the meantime? No. Eventually we probably will be able to control the weather, which sounds like Bondville and Esque, but we'll probably be able to control it to our benefit. And the benefit of the planet, I'm guessing in the next 100 years, possibly. But until then, we can do absolutely nothing about this except kind of try to mitigate the effects of it. One of the things that's starting to happen, our local governments are starting to get a little more hip to the idea that they need plans in place so when a heat wave comes along, because they're actually pretty easy to forecast by many days out, so you can give people a lot of warning, and then if the government has this plan in place, they can open up. Cooling center. So you got a convention center. It's not being used. Well, that now is the cooling center, where you're running lots of AC for residents who don't have AC to come cool off. You can start reroofing buildings in your city with green roofs or even, like, cool roofs, which is basically a roof that's not black, and that's all it takes to cool that roof by 50 degrees. Sometimes on a sunny day. There's just a lot of stuff where if you just stop and look at the infrastructure and even the color of the infrastructure we use in cities, just changing it to lighter colors would have an enormous effect on the urban heat island effect. Oh, yeah. Plant more trees. I love those. Green roofs are good looking anyway. Sure. They look like hobbit houses, a hobbit skyscraper, no less, making the electrical grid more efficient, because, again, if you've got a heat wave and that thing breaks down, it's just exacerbating the problem. So those are all things we can do to help out a little bit. Yeah, we'll probably figure it out more as it goes on, but it's a pretty good start. And the other thing that you can do is you can actually if you watch your local news and the weather person says there's a heat advisory today, that means that it could be dangerous to be outside. Like, they're not just whistling Dixie there. No I had a borderline heatstroke this summer. First time in my life. What? I was playing golf. I was able to play the historic East Lake Golf Club near where I live, and it was brutally hot. It is a walking only course, so it's not like you're riding around a golf cart. And golf courses aren't they're trees on the edges, but you're out on that sun. Yeah. If you're hitting them straight. You know what I mean? And I started feeling funny. I got a little dizzy a couple of times, and I'm at the age now where I'm smart enough, where I was like, I got to do something here, dude, this isn't right. I don't feel right. I've been hot all my life, and I don't feel right. So they called sort of embarrassing, but they called a golf cart out. And I went back to the clubhouse for, like, three holes and cooled down. Oh, yeah. And then went back out. I missed those three holes, but I rejoined my buddies and finished out the back nine. You had the lowest score of all then. Exactly. But I'm glad that I was smart enough. I was like, well, this is a little embarrassing, but I've got to take care of myself. Yeah. Like, not dying of heat stroke is much better than playing on to not be embarrassed. Come on. Because then what's really embarrassing is dropping dead. Of course it is. And then think about how it would affect me. Chuck. I would have to explain it to all of our listeners. Oh, man. It took me a long time to cool down. Like, I went in the icy coldest clubhouse I've ever been in, and it was just pounding water, and it took me 15 minutes to feel normal. And then I took a cold shower upstairs. In the clubhouse. In the clubhouse. Wow. And bought a new shirt in the clubhouse. Nice. And then came back out, and I was like, I felt normal again. But it took a half hour. There's your answer. That's why it's an all walking course, because they want to move those replacement shirts. I do. I was so mad. Wow. Well, I'm glad you made it, buddy. And you did the right thing. And I hope everybody learns a lesson from you. It doesn't matter if it's embarrassing. We're talking about your life and your health here. You just go cool off or you stop playing, or you just don't have to do it. Like, you got to look out for yourself, everybody. Yeah. And it's just dumped off. Yeah. Who cares? Okay. You got anything more on heat waves? No. Well, if you want to know some more stuff about saving your Tucas from heat stroke and stuff again, go listen to our Desert survival episode. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Let me call this Merchants House Museum. This is from the Embalming episode. Hey, guys. Been listening since you started when I was in high school. You've been in real comfort for more than ten years, and you've kept me company, distracted me, and made me laugh. I'm emailing you because Josh mentioned the Merchant's House Museum in the Embalming episode. I work at the merchant's house. And it was so cool to hear you guys mentioned the museum. I'm impressed Josh. Even remembered Sea Bird Treadwell's name. It's a great small museum in the Greenwich Village East Village area that most New Yorkers and tourists don't even know about. I wanted to see if you could plug the mhm a bit, because for the last ten years, it's been fighting a real estate developer who wants to do construction on the site next to the house. Very scary. I know. It would endanger the 189 year old building and force it to close temporarily, if not permanently. Our small staff are always looking for more visitors, volunteers and donors interested in saving the landmark. Thank you for mentioning the Merchant's House museum. And this is from Lizzy index. She, her and Lizzie and everyone else out there doing the work at the Merchant's House Museum. Thank you. And if you go to New York City, go visit the Merchant's House Museum. If you can't, go, maybe go online and make a donation. Yeah. Nicely done, Chuck. Thanks again for writing in, Lizzie. That was good stuff. I'm glad you did. And who could ever forget Seaberry Treadwell's name? Come on. Great name. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Lizzie did, and help you fight off a real estate developer who wants to ruin your museum or historical location, we want to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheart heartradio.com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
4e93fcf3-89cb-4c58-9b68-aed70149c07a | Googie: The Architecture of the Space Age | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/googie-the-architecture-of-the-space-age | <p>You may not have heard of it, but you’ve definitely seen it before – 50s buildings with bright, loud colors, roofs at crazy angles, and space-age shapes like starbursts. It turns out that Googie architecture is as fun to look at as it is to say.</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> | <p>You may not have heard of it, but you’ve definitely seen it before – 50s buildings with bright, loud colors, roofs at crazy angles, and space-age shapes like starbursts. It turns out that Googie architecture is as fun to look at as it is to say.</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> | Thu, 21 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=202, tm_isdst=0) | 53745464 | audio/mpeg | ||
null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging out. And this is stuff you should know. Our continued doing. ArchitectureDesign suite, which we love. Yeah. Surprisingly interesting stuff. Yeah. This one, I mean, listen however you listen, but if you have a choice, I really would urge you to listen to this. When you can look at pictures of things, this one, above many episodes, requires you to look at this stuff as you're listening, ideally. Yeah. And so if you can do that, do that. Yeah. Because we're going to be mentioning specific buildings that you could go check out and be like, oh, this is what they're talking about. We're going to do our best, but we're going to be describing structures. And it's just way easier to look at the structure. It's got a swoopy pointy thing. Yeah, that's basically it. Livia was kind enough to insert hyperlinks into what she sent us. That made it super easy. I didn't even have to Google the Googie. And that is what we're talking about. It's not a typo, everybody. It's Gooey. It's a kind of architecture Googie. And it is basically the architecture that you think of when you think of the mid fifty s to the very early 60s in America. Well, the 50s when they were thinking of the 90s. Exactly. That's a really what that might look like. Yes. And they were way, way off. But I mean, how great would the 90s have been if it looked like what they thought it was going to look like in the think it would have been pretty cool because I am personally a really big fan of Googi architecture. It's nothing like I don't go to or the buildings or anything like that. In fact, there's one in Georgia, and I looked up where that town is and I'm like, no, it's not worth the drive. But I do like looking at pictures of them. That bank is three and a half hours from my house, and I want to open up an account there just so I can drive down to that amazing building in the middle of nowhere, southeast Georgia. It is really the middle. It's not near anything. Nothing nowhere around it. But it does have a really fine example of Gucci architecture, which we'll get to, which we should probably define beyond it's the architecture that you think of when you think of the 50s or 60s. Right. And before we define it, I just want to say that my love affair with Googi started out when I was a kid. Oh, yeah. Honestly, when I first went to Tomorrowland at Disney World oh, yeah. And then when I started watching The Jetsons and being in Georgia, I didn't see any examples of Googi really growing up. But took my first trip to La. In saw a bunch of Gookie, I was like, I love this stuff. And then in the 1994, took my first trip to New York where my friend Bob and this was not exterior architecture, but this was the early to mid 90s sort of design like kind of space age bachelor pad design movement that's called populx, I saw. Yeah. And that's sort of akin to Gooey. And Bob had his stuff like that and I thought it was so cool. And he told me about Guggy and that's the first time I had heard that word was in 1994. That's hilarious. I heard the word the first time, like this month, I think. Well, oh, really? You don't hear it a lot, but I think people that know it like to tell other people and name it. Right. And Bob was one of those people because I remember when Google came along when I was living in La. And I was like the architecture and everyone went, oh, so anyway, that's just a long personal preamble. Should we define it? I like it. Yeah, let's define it. Chuck, have at it. All right, so this came about post World War II, and I love how Libya put this. It was influenced by the techno optimism of that era. Yeah. Which was the thing. It was like, hey, it was like, tomorrowland this is what the future is going to be like, and it's going to have like, cool shapes and things are going to look like rocket ships and cars can have these big fins and look like spaceships, and we love neon lights and we love these gentle pastels. And it was kind of a populist movement in that it wasn't like just meant for the rich. No, it wasn't meant for the rich. And as a matter of fact, one of the other big definitions of it is there was a commercial movement. So you didn't really see anybody's house constructed in GUI, but you would see like a dry cleaner or a bowling alley or a coffee shop that was a big one, or a diner. So these were places that like any American could go to and did. So it was really fun, eye popping, bright colored space age design and architecture for the everyday person. And that's definitely one of the things that made it so lovable. But it's also, conversely, one of the things that made, like, architecture critics and legitimate I'm making square quotes, architects hate it because it was populist in nature. Yeah, for sure. It emerged and largely state in California. We'll talk about where it did branch out here and there across the US. But it's really a California thing and really a Southern California thing in California at the time really did sort of represent the future in a lot of ways post World War II, it was the Far West, and it was, I think, a city where people moved to from the east that saw possibilities in California. The land of sunshine, the land of the future. And the whole idea of this commercial part of it was let's design, let's say, a gas station that will really stand out if it was a car culture after World War II. And let's design something that can really be noticed when you're speeding down the highway. Yeah, that was a really big driving force for Guggy. Like, if you look at a Gooey building, you see it like a mile away or many miles away because of the bright colors, because of the weird angles, it really is designed to stand out from its surroundings. A lot of architecture is designed to complement, blend, kind of be seamless with its surroundings, whether that's nature or existing buildings. Google did not take that into account at all and actually went the opposite way. And one of the big reasons was because in California, as a car culture, to get people's attention as they're speeding past, you kind of have to use those design elements. And that was basically why Google came along. That's right. I mentioned the Jetsons. And that wasn't just in jest. That was a real thing. It was inspired by things like the Jetsons. If you look at the original Hannah Barbara studio building on Kawanga in West Hollywood, it was a Gooey building. It was sort of Gooey meets art deco, which has a little bit of its roots in art deco in some ways. And also, I guess we should talk about some other kinds of architecture that it sort of sprang from. Art deco is one and then one that is also super cool. It's called streamline modern. And that is, if you look up any streamline modern building, you might think you're looking at an ocean liner or something. There are no squared corners on these buildings. Like, everything, which is also very hard deco, has these beautiful rounded edges. Yeah, which is really neat. There's also usually structures that kind of suggest, like ocean liners, smokestacks or something. Sometimes they even put portholes in the buildings. Like there was a Coca Cola bottling plant that was streamlined modern in the think, maybe 40s in La. And it has straight up portholes on it, like it's meant to look like a ship. And so this idea that you could make something look like something else but also look very elegant, definitely kind of form part of the foundation for a gooey architecture. It's very cool. Another thing that influenced it was called programmatic or memetic architecture. This is basically like how you would see it today, is if you, like, see the Hard Rock hotel in Florida, that it looks like a giant guitar. It is something that is very intentionally sort of like a gimmick designed to look like something else, and not just like but that evokes an airplane. Now it looks like an airplane or a giant hot dog or something. Yeah, very frequently, especially with Mimetic, the structure was the thing that it was selling. So you might have an orange juice stand and the building was a giant orange. Yeah, but it's fun. It's awesome. I saw pictures of an abandoned one in Florida somewhere. I don't know where it is, but it would be cool to go see. And then, like, the Brown Derby. The very famous Brown Derby restaurant in La. It's a brown derby. A brown hat. Or like the donut shops that are like a giant donut. That is all. Mimetic architecture. And one of the reasons that gave rise to Guggy is because that's what's called a vulgar vernacular. It's the kind of thing that you don't even need an architect to do. Like, the owner of the donut shop could say, hey, construction guy, I want this to be a donut. Build it for me out of whatever you want to build it out of. And you didn't need an architect at all. And that was a big thing. That kind of it was also populous in that respect as well. Yeah. And Guggi, that was a way scale back version of that, though. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it would evoke, like, a rocket ship. But if it was a straight up rocket ship, then I think it became Mimedic, right? Yeah. It definitely transgressed and crossed that line, for sure. One of the first Googy buildings is from 1949, which would have put it really on the leading edge of that whole movement. And it's still there. It's a great place. Like, La is a really great place to drive around and see some of the stuff. It made me miss living there a lot because I would go to some of these places and see some of these places on a daily basis. But Bob is a Big Boy in Burbank in 1949, designed by Wayne McAllister, who will pop up a couple of times in this episode. And he built the El Rancho in Las Vegas. And Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, which is really known for the 35 foot high sign of depicting Bob himself. Right. Is that who is it supposed to be in the red and white checkered overall? Yeah, there's some connection to show me's. And I never really looked it up, but it's like Shoney's Big Boy. That may have just been the franchise name or something. I think so, because in Ohio, it was fricia's Big Boy. And they all use the same Big Boy. Yeah. And it was you. That's who I aspired to be as a child. Get out your overalls. So Bob's Big Boy is a landmark? Literally. 1992, the California Office of Historic Preservation declared it an official historic landmark because they wanted to, of course, tear it down. Which, sadly, happened to so many great coogee and other buildings. Yeah, but not Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, which is a lot of bees. And the reason why it's considered the first guide building is one, it was from 1949, but it follows so much of the Gooey aesthetic, like you said, a 35 foot sign as attention grabbing as possible with flashing lights, neon lights with giant letters, usually. The building is one story, I believe, with Bob's Big Boy. The roof kind of swoops in different directions. It will go up and then down, like in a zigzag. The roofs do weird things in a Gooey structure. And there's a bunch of other things, too, like sweeping arches or parabolas. The original McDonald's had two parabolas on either side. That was the original golden arches, I think, in Downey, California. Yeah, that was very Gooey inspired, although I think it was even earlier than some of these other buildings. Yeah, we'll get to that one. I think it's the 50s, right? All right, sure. Like I said, roofs can be candlelivered upswept. They can look curved themselves. They're usually outlined in lights, flashing lights, neon lights. Sometimes it looks kind of spacey, like you said, not exactly a rocket ship, but suggested of it geometric shapes, shapes that suggest motion, like boomerang shapes and starbursts. That's huge, too. The fonts that they use are really exaggerated and big and attention grabbing. And again, the signage really high, really gaudy like, sometimes many times taller than the building structure itself. Yeah, so many of the GUI roof lines really do seem to defy gravity. And that was kind of one of the points, I think, was to make people wonder how they built it. And there are buildings in La. We're going to talk about that gas station in Beverly Hills. That for back then. Now they have such lighter and stronger materials. But you're talking about building these things. A lot of concrete in the 1950s, and some of these roofs that just swoop up and extend to this tiny point 50ft above the ground. And you're just wondering, how in the world did they accomplish this back then? Yeah, that was the point. They just say it's gooey. That's right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. All right, we'll be right back with more Gooey. So what's Gooey anyway? Where did they get that name? Oh, actually, it's named after a specific cafe that was built the same year as Bob's Big Boy. It's also sometimes considered the first Gooey structure. And the reason why is because the cafe was named Googi's. The owner, Mortimer Burton, named it after his wife, whose family nickname was GUI. And it wasn't like he said, hey, create a whole new architecture. John Lawner, and we're going to name it after my wife. He had no say in that. It was just that this Googi's coffee shop was a really good early example of this new kind of architecture that was starting to spread in Southern California. Yeah. And John Lautner is one of my favorite architects of all time. Yeah, he's me he was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. He did most of his work in the Southland there in Southern California. And because the weather is so great there and the sun is always shining and all the things that people hate about La. That don't live in La. You can really do big inside out floor plans where the outside is brought in and you can have huge pieces of glass and exposed wood and everything. Weather is so much better out there. So you're really freed up as an architect to do things when you don't have to worry about torrential downpours of rain for many days of the year and things like that. Right. And he has built some of the great houses in La. Some of the great modern homes. One, which actually is one of my least favorite of his, but maybe the most well known, is the chemistry of the house. It's a little too much for me, but I get it. It looks like a spaceship. It's almost like if the eye piece that LaVar Burton wore in Star Trek The Next Generation was turned into a house and then thrust into the side of a hill. That would be the chemotherapy house. My favorite was made very famous. It's a famous house on its own if you're into architecture, but was made famous in the Big Lebowski, which is the Sheets Goldstein house, which was Jackie Treehorn's house. So when I started looking at I think I just said Chemosphere. And that's way different. The chemistry house pictures was I wondering if it was that house? And I was like, I don't quite think it is. But it's not surprising to me that that was from the same architect. Yeah, it's a lot in your house. If you have time and you're into architecture, just go check out a bunch of lot in our homes. They're amazing. So he is a really great architect. And like you said, he was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. That, in and of itself, automatically made him a serious architect in the architecture world. But he was kind of into Googie as well. He designed that first Guggy's Cafe or Googie's Coffee Shop in the Gucci style. And so it was a criticism of that work of Lattner's Coffee Shop. That guy named Douglas Haskell, who was an architecture critic, wrote an architect, or wrote an article in 1052, just like really drippingly satirical article. Kind of the one of those things where you just talk about how great something is, but you're discrediting the narrator. So anything they're saying, all this praise is actually veiled criticism or poorly veiled criticism. And he was the one who coined the term Guggy to describe the architecture, naming it after that restaurant. Yeah, exactly. It might as well just say every 10th words in parentheses. I roll. Right. Exactly. Because he did the very cowardly thing, which is made a fictitiousal character up to explain what Google this fictional character in this article was Professor Throw, and it was just dripping with cynicism. He was talking about, or rather excuse me. Throw the character. Well, let me just read this bit. It was saying that Guggi should look both organic and be abstract, featuring abstract mushrooms or a geometric bird, or even better, an abstract mushroom surmounted by an abstract bird. It's kind of hilarious. But one thing he does say is he says that the roof of Guggy itself starts on the level like any other building, but suddenly it breaks for the sky. And he wasn't kidding. If you look up the 1949 Guggy Coffee shop, on one side of it, the entire building, not just the roof, but the entire building goes up at an angle like it's on a hinge. And that whole side of the building is angled like it's going up. It's nuts. It's the only way you can say it. And so he's critical of that. But that really weird. Gravity defying roof and in fact, gravity defying building that became like a trademark part of Guggy. And what's funny is Lawner was considered serious enough that on the next page after Douglas Haskell's scathing criticism in that 1952 article of House and Home, is a profile of Lawn in his work because he's a serious architect and everybody knew it. Yeah, that's sort of the trick of this thing, is I'm sure the tongue was in cheek and maybe Haskell was just trying to have a little bit of fun and I'm taking it too seriously. Right. Well, it was an obnoxious thing to do, for sure. It was pretty obnoxious. But the takeaway is that they wrote about it and they could have continued to ignore it. But they even said that the House and Homes editors would prefer to not go nearly so far as Lautner does. They believe that Sirius designer Lawner should no longer be officially ignored. So we'll recognize you by making fun of it. It's like House and Home were like the head of a high school click or something. Right, exactly. So Lawner is very much associated with Gooey, but he was not the only one. And what also makes Gooegy so populist is that it was decentralized. There were a bunch of different people working in Southern California trying to do the same aim, which was get as many eyeballs onto their customers building to bring that many more people into the customer's business. Because, again, it's a commercial architecture movement. And it was totally decentralized and anybody could push whatever envelope they wanted to. Anything really went. Yeah. The almost at Gucci Houser, the Gucci house movement was much more limited. It's kind of cool, but it doesn't fit houses as much as it fits like a bowling alley. Yeah. Or even like a dry cleaner. Like anything. You could just be like, Give me one of those buildings. Yeah. So there was an architectural firm that was hugely responsible for building a lot of these buildings or designing a lot of them. And it was Armette and Davis opened in 1947. By Elton Davison, I guess. Lewis Armette. And they basically saw a big opportunity in the commercial sector. I think they were industrial designers initially, and they started getting hired to build these buildings. And kind of one of the really cool parts of their story is they hired a junior drafts person named Helen Lou Fong. And this was someone who graduated with a degree in city planning from Berkeley in 1949, but could only get work as a secretary because she was an Asian woman and army. And Davis gave Helen Fong a chance as a junior draftsperson and she ended up being kind of one of the sort of central influencers. And I use that in the old school use of the term of that movement. Yeah, I thought that was really cool that they did that, too. So one of the first things they unleashed on was the Clock Restaurant in Westchester, which there's not that many images of it, but if you can find it, it's pretty cool. I saw an original sketch that I guess Helen Fong must have done, and it's just all sorts of angles in one triangle jutting out of another triangle. And it's just a really neat building. Like, I can only imagine being, like, a junior architect and them saying, Go nuts, do whatever you want, and they're going to love it. So that was her first one, her next one, and the most famous one was Pans Coffee Shop on LaTeah. Am I saying that right? Latiera la Tierra. I got all fancy in La. Obviously. Yeah, that's probably not the technical way to pronounce it, but that's how everyone says it, I think. No, I get it now. A descriptionist. It was built in again, one of those dramatically angled roofs, uses a lot of neon and flagstone. Was a big deal with coffee shops or a lot of flagstone walls at coffee shops back then. Big plate glass windows and a lot of these coffee shops. And they described it as a place where George Jetson and Fred Flintstone could meet over a cup of coffee. Yes, because you're using flagstone amidst, like, formica and boomerang and space imagery. That was a quote from a guy named Alan Hess, who is an architecture historian who literally wrote the book not once, but twice on Googley and actually kicked off a gui preservation movement in the late 80s, actually, as we'll see hooray for Hess. Right? That's right up with Hess. We talked a lot about coffee shops. It was actually kind of also called coffee Shop Modern because there were so many of them, armet and Davis and Fong built, or I'm sorry, designed more than 4000 of these coffee shops. Right. That's crazy. That's like all the coffee shops. What's funny is there was an obit of Davis. I can't remember when he died, but he died a very old man. And he had said that he didn't really see much of a reason to preserve these buildings, which I think is a little modest because people are saying, like, these are masterpieces. It's just that the architecture world didn't appreciate them. But they're great buildings and people are destroying them. And the reason why is because, as Davis pointed out, these are commercial buildings. And I saw someone describe commercial buildings as probably the architecture that's under the most pressure to reinvent and reshape itself to keep up with the times. Like, you can't be sentimental with your commercial building. If Google's is out and it went out fairly quick, you got to scrap it and start over and update, or else people are going to think your business is behind and behind the times and out of touch, and you just can't let that happen or else you're going to lose out on business. So he was saying they were commercial buildings. Like, what do you want? Of course people are going to tear them down and replace them with something else. Yes. I never really thought about that. That's interesting, because unless you do something really revolutionary and you have a Netflix show about your house, you can go out in 2022 and say, I want to build a colonial, and no one will be like, really? It may not be your particular style, but they still build colonial houses and Craftsman's and all kinds of houses from all sorts of areas. But I think the commercial building, that really makes a lot of sense. Like, you can't go out and build a commercial building that looks 30 years old. You might get to go out and build something that looks like 50 years old if it's some kind of cool retro thing. Right, but you can't be anywhere between and build something that looks dated. No, it can be classic, but it can't be dated. I think that's the fatal flaws dated and GUI dated itself very quickly, as we'll see that's. Right. And then there was Norms, too. We didn't mention Norms. That was another Helen Fong classic, too, which is just like a great example of Gucci architecture. I think Norms is still there, too. Yes. I believe it was also designated historic and cultural monument by the La. City Council because it was going to go under the wrecking ball and they stepped in and said, no, you're not going to tear down this norm. So it is still there, and it is an awesome building. It's great. On La Venga, right there in Hollywood. Like, a lot of these buildings are the Holiday Bowl. This was a really special story. There's a bowling alley on Prince All Boulevard in Crenshaw in Los Angeles. And Fong designed the interior. And there was a bar in there called Sabika. Sorry. It was so awesome. I bet it was hopping, man. The cool thing about this area at the time was it was one of the only integrated parts of Los Angeles. The local high school literally had one third african American, one third Asian American, and one third white kids. Really? Yeah. And that was what made the Holiday Bowl so special, as you had these different cultures and groups of people getting together where they didn't do so in most parts of Los Angeles at the time. And they had that not only were they bowling, but there was a coffee shop on the premises. And when we keep saying coffee shop, these were coffee shop like the Pulp Fiction. They were like diners, basically. Yeah, I saw that. They were a step up from diners, but not as nice as, like, a regular restaurant. Yes, that's what I saw in the dry. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. But at the Holiday Bowl diner I'm sorry, the Holiday Bowl coffee shop, they had all kinds of food. They had udon, they had grits and Southern soul food. They had straight up burgers and fries. I read an article where people were saying that this was the first time they ever had sushi in their life. And this was in the early 60s, which is crazy, or I don't know if they had sushi that early, but at least at some point they did. It was a where people could go hang out, they could drink at the bowling alley, go to this coffee shop after, and it was actually protected during the La. Riots in 92. Like residents of Crenshaw lined up outside of the Holiday Bowl. Oh, yeah. So people wouldn't touch it. So I saw that it was demolished, but I also saw a picture from three years after it was supposedly demolished, and it was still there. But the coffee shop is now a Starbucks and the bowling alley is now a Walgreens, it looks like. Yeah. So what they did was they did destroy the actual bowling alley part and rebuilt it as a Walgreens. But that exterior coffee shop facade is still attached. And it is a Starbucks. Yeah, but it's still goody. Yeah, it looks cool. So there are some other ones we mentioned, the original or one of the earliest McDonald's from Downey, California is still there, I think. Right. Low building, parabolas on either side. Yeah. And that McDonald's, like you mentioned, is in Downey. And we talked about it in the McDonald's Taco Bell one, too, I think. Oh, really? Okay. I thought you're making a joke. No, for real, the Taco episode, because we talked about Taco Bell and like, there are a bunch of ones from downey California. Okay. But it's an amazing looking restaurant, and it's got a really cool little museum, McDonald's museum next door. So you can still walk up. It's just a sort of not counter, I guess it is counter service, but you can't go in what do you call those? A walk throughout? A walk up take out. Sure. Any of those. I think someone said they finally built a drive through, but I don't think you can. Dine in still. Boy, I guess they're the first McDonald's to have a drive through then. No, I think more recently built a driver. No, just teasing. Okay. One of the other things you mentioned, the Holiday Bowl and bowling alleys were just, like, begging to be made into goofy structures. And another good example is the Covina Bowl in Covina, California, which I guess is around Los Angeles, and it still remains, it's still there. It's up for grabs exactly what's going to happen to it, but they're in talks to somehow preserve some of the facade or structure or sign or something as they redevelop it, I think, in the condos. But it was designed by a firm that created 50 bowling alleys throughout California in the seven years between 1955 and 62. I think, actually, this is what gave me the idea for this episode, Chuck, because I was looking at old bowling alleys in the bowling episode. Yeah. And I came across the term Googley because I was like, this is just such a cool looking bowling alley. And sure enough, it was Gooey. And one thing led to another, and here we are. Well, that Hollywood Star Lanes where the big Lebowowski shot was very gooey. And I was just meant to mention during the Lotner segment, I saw that just a few years ago, one of the Lotter homes was up for sale, which is a rarity in and of itself, but it was, and I say only two and a half million dollars. That's a lot of money for a house, to be sure. But I just thought with La Southern California real estate anyway, and it's this historic building and historic architect, and it's amazing. I thought it would be like $12 million. Yeah, you definitely think that. I was very surprised. It seemed like a steel. I didn't have the cash on me, but it looked pretty amazing. And we should mention the ships coffee shops as well, right? The little tiny three coffee shop chain? Yeah, they were kind of boomerang shaped, from what I could tell. I couldn't see, like, a really good picture of those guys. But I thought what was kind of cute is apparently every location had a toaster on every table. Best idea of all time. Except for the liability. Probably the liability, but also every once in a while there's a crank that would come in and be like, well, I want a discount since I have to toast it myself. And because I can think of that, that means that there's a possibility I might have been that guy. I want to make my own toast in restaurants more than anything. It does seem like a good idea, for sure. It's a very specific thing how people like their toast made. So I love that idea, but hats off the ships for that one other one, too. That's kind of an icon of googie. You mentioned before, that Gulf 76 station. Amazing that's in Beverly Hills. And apparently the design of it not the Gulf station itself, but the design of this roof has been likened to a flying carpet. And it really kind of looks like when it's got some of the most amazing curves I've ever seen. That just don't make any sense whatsoever for a roof, but it really looks cool. And once you understand that it was supposed to be part of the Lax airport, then you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. But apparently it got cut out of the design. But the designer, Jin Wong, was like, this is too cool to just not do. Let's just turn it into a gas station instead. I've gotten gas there. I mean, I wasn't in Beverly Hills much, but I tried to get gas there when I could. It's at Crescent Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. And it is a very cool gas station. Okay. I shot at one of these out in the desert, which I guess leads to are you a record? No, we shot a TV commercial at one of the oh, I got you roadside gas stations, like a Route 66 type of deal out in the middle of nowhere that looking back was super gooey. And that leads us to a break because we could come back and talk about the desert in Las Vegas. Okay, Chuck, you set us up maybe better than we've ever been set up before. And if you've been sitting here listening to us describe Guggy architecture or even going and looking at some of the photos, you might be like, man, this seems really Vegas to me. You would be right about that because it got exported to Vegas pretty quick and took off like a rocket there. Starting with the Sands in 1952. It was the first Gooeyesque structure there because before that it was all like, Balero ties and wagon wheels. Okay. Yeah. And then the Sands came along and said, you hicks. We're going to start something new. We're the mafia. We're the trendsettingest mafia of all time. We're going to take you into the space age. And that Sands was, I think you said, built in 52. And that brings back Mr. Wayne McAllister into the picture, who designed that bob's Big Boy in Burbank just a few years before that. And just look up any image of the old Sands casino sign, and it had that egg carton grid. It was really tall. It was like close to 60ft in the air, very geometric shapes. And the script was super gooey as well. And I think Vegas took notice and said, I don't know who those mob guys are talking to, but they're onto something here. And gooey started popping up everywhere, including, probably most famously, in that iconic welcome to fabulous Las Vegas sign. Yeah, that is super gooegy. I mean, like, if you're ever talking to somebody about a Gooey design and they ask you what you're talking about to say, like, the design of the loss, welcome to Las Vegas sign. It hits basically every cord on that. Like big exaggerated fonts, different kinds of fonts. There's starburst, there's geometric shapes. There's a whole bunch of different colors. It's Gooey in its deepest soul. It is. It's a great sign. While I was looking at all this stuff up in my head, I was like, wait, I feel like they were old Howard Johnson's Motels that were kind of Gooky. Yeah, I think you might be right. And I looked and I looked, and I couldn't find any. And then finally, I did. And sure enough, a handful of those Hojos from that era had these big, swoopy, pointy triangular roofs that went all the way down to the ground, kind of like an aframe and judged way out over the roadway. And I knew I'd seen those in my past, but I don't think there's a lot of them. But it just kind of goes to show where how Google spread beyond California and Las Vegas. Right. And we're going to talk about a few more of those places. Yeah, I mean, there's different it just pops up in some random places. Like, apparently the Northwest Side of Chicago was developed later than the rest of it. And it just so happened that Googi was having its heyday. So there's like some random Gooey structures. Trim and Tidy Cleaners. Super Dog Pride Cleaners is really cool looking. I think that's the one that looks like it's a giant triangle with the point sticking out street word, if I'm not mistaken. It's really neat to see. And then the Ohio House Motel is what's called it's like a subset of Googie architecture called Phony Colony, like faux colonial. Isn't that awesome? I love that term. Yeah, phony Colony. It's going to be my newest insult. Okay. The Wild Woods Resort area of New Jersey has quite a few goofy kind of motels. They would call it duo style because that's sort of the 1050s rock and roll scene there and the Jersey Shore at the time. But if you look up what the Moray family, M-O-R-E-Y designed a number of those motels kind of near the Jersey Shore seaside, and they're really cool looking. They're not quite as out there and space shippy, but they're definitely Gooey. And then there's a newer one, I think. Now people are building the occasional kind of modern Gooey throwback look. And the Starbucks Hotel there is one pretty great example of that. Yeah, I found a really great website called Modernist Architecture, and they have a post from 2015 called Wildwood, the East Coast capital of Guggy. I mean, do whoop? And it is a comprehensive photo spread of all these Gooey structures in Wildwood on the Jersey Shore. And it just looks like an amazing place to wander around, but it's Gooey through and through that. I think in that blog they said that it's probably the densest concentration of Gooey architecture left in the country. Yeah. And it kind of fits those seaside sort of feel, I think, with the pastels. And it just sort of all works together, I think. Yeah. There's also some in Phoenix and Tucson. Probably most famous in Phoenix is what used to be called the 300 bowl, a bowling alley again, and I read that no one is exactly sure who designed it, what firm or what architect designed the 300 Bull. But it's a classic example of Guggy architecture. There's also Paris laundry and dry cleaning and the Rainbow car wash there. It's pretty cool stuff. These episodes are fun because I know there are people all over the country that love their little buildings, get shouted out in their towns. Totally. The Bith Burger driving chain in Clearwater, this was right in that sort of middle of that era. Lots of Gooey inspired stuff there. And then there's a shopping center, the South Gate Shopping Center in Lakeland, Florida, also mid to late 50s. Another great example. Yeah, you got to look up the BIFF Burger. Like, look up. BIFF Burger 1956 and one of the big gooey things they have is like their sign is like different geometric structures, like separate from one another, and each one holds a letter or a little message or something. They're all really brightly colored. It's just really cool and neat looking. And we mentioned that. Great. Yeah, those are great signs. I'm looking at them now. That great. Bank in the middle of nowhere. Georgia and Alma. Georgia. The Alma Exchange Bank. You really need to look this one up and imagine this in sort of rural southeastern Georgia between Atlanta and Jacksonville. It is really something else. And there's a cool place right here, a newer place in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta called Guggy Burger. And it's opened about twelve years ago in 2010. And it's a really cool, modern take on a Gooey style. And it's awesome. I didn't even know it was there. And then also, Chuck, one of the other things we've been talking about, things like dry cleaners and car washes and bowling alleys, it appeared in some legit big structures like the theme building, the iconic building at Lax that looks like a war of the world's UFO basically on stilts. That is about as Gooey as it gets when it's not like a dry cleaners. That's super Gooey building. Yeah, that one. People probably you might have heard it called The Encounter because it had a restaurant and bar called The Encounter in it, but it is called the Theme Building. And it was there when I was there and open, and it was kind of a fun thing to go and grab a cocktail before you pick someone up on an airport run and just kind of like drinking that vibe for a half hour or so. And then it closed in 2013 because there was always just a it was right there by the airport. So usually it was airport people, but you wouldn't go early enough if you were like, flying somewhere just to go to a restaurant outside the airport because you can't check in and then go back out to the encounter. Right. And then going afterwards, maybe. I think once I might have picked someone up that had just come into town who had never been to La. It's like, hey, the first thing we'll do is go to the encounter. But it just sort of had a problem of no one quite knew when to go because it was so tied to the airport. You didn't want to go there if you had nothing to do at the airport because you didn't want to be in airport traffic, which is notoriously bad in La. So it eventually kind of closed down because of this problem in 2013. It's pretty sad. Yeah, it is a little sad, but it was a very inconvenient place for sure. What about tomorrowland that I mentioned? Tomorrowland, everybody, honestly, everybody, but almost everybody, has been to either tomorrowland at Disney World or Disneyland. And it's just like this retro future Gooey architecture. It was at first, and I didn't know this, but apparently it was originally meant to mimic what they thought it was going to look like in 1986. Yeah, that's funny what the people of Thought 86 would look like. Yes. And I mentioned not too long ago, I took my first visit to Disney World since I was a kid recently. And I was shocked how little things had changed all throughout the park until I sort of stopped to think about it. Because Disney people, like, they don't want anything different about that particular park. They're fine with adding new things, but you don't go in and change tomorrowland and get rid of those credit race cars in favor of something better. You just leave the people mover. You leave it alone. Yeah, and I agree with that. I think that they should until it falls apart. Until the people mover, like falls off of the cable and kills a bunch of people. Well, I think his Disney largely deals in the business of nostalgia. Definitely. That's why John Hodgeman hates that place. I got one other one. The TWA Flight center at JFK. Arrow serena designed it, and it's amazing. So we don't need to say anything else about it, but it was built in 1962. Just go to the Curbed New York website and search for explore the TWA terminal. And this is an amazing photo spread from years back from a photographer named Max Tui, who was granted access to this abandoned but totally preserved 1962 GUI terminal for TWA. It's the most amazing thing you'll ever see. Guggy Gooey. Did I? Yeah. Well, the floor is made of molasses. Well, isn't that the same spot that they have now opened the new TWA Hotel? Yes, because it was like perfectly preserved. I don't know how they did it, but I think somebody was like, this thing, we can't do anything with this. It's just too amazing. We can't not mention the Space Needle in Seattle. Yeah, probably their most favorite. I don't know what Seattle people think of it. I don't know if they're tired of it or what, but it is kind of one of their iconic buildings. Just ask Fraser Crane, it's right there in the skyline and those opening credits. But it was built in 1061 for their World Fair, and Seattle hotel executive named Edward E. Carlson gave it its iconic name. And it's chief engineer was a gentleman named John Manassian, who actually worked for NASA and designed Rocket Gantries. Pretty cool. Yeah, it definitely legitimizes the Space Needle, for sure. So what happened to Gouge? Well, like we said, it dated itself. And Guggy came along technically in 1949, but really it started to take off in the mid 50s, say. And it was based on like you're saying, techno optimism of the post World War II economic boom and us getting to space and just trying new technology. And we actually did all that stuff. Like those promises of the future actually came true pretty quick. Like, we ended up on the moon in 1969, and once we got there, humanity was like, we've been there, we've done that. And that techno optimism kind of faded pretty quickly because it became everyday, in, commonplace. And since Google was the architecture associated with that future, that now it become everyday and commonplace. It got dated. I think that's kind of sad, but also hysterical. When people walked on the moon like that. Next week, the dry cleaner sat down with the designer to build their new dry cleaner. They were like, well, what do you want to do, just build me a dry cleaning? Yeah. No, he was like, I'm ruined. We've been to the moon. Who cares? I just want to clean clothes. I saw one of the things that really signaled the death knell, maybe not earliest, but pretty early on, was that McDonald's radically changed its design from parabolas and upswept angular roofs to houses like a brick house with a mansion roof. That really iconic. Seventy s and eighty s. McDonald look, they like Pizza Huts. That the whole restaurant style was all the same. Yeah, it was very close. Although I looked it up. Pizza Hut roof is different kind. It's not a mantrad roof. I can't remember what it's called, but yes, it is very similar. And it was meant to evoke home, which is totally different from a coffee shop that starts taking off up toward the sky. It was a different feel and a different vibe. And it also tied into the ecology movement. Right? Yeah. I think one might argue that some of this gooey stuff can be wasteful in terms of materials to build a roof that extends 60ft to a point to the sky when you just need a regular roof, really. So I think tastes sort of we're tamed down a little bit using more sort of sensible materials, I think played a part going to outer space, played apart all this stuff. And like sort of anything that doesn't end up being a classic design, it's going to come and go, especially one that's kind of radical like this. So it was bound to have its moment and then leave and then be looked back upon with fond eyes years later. And that's what's happened. Largely sadly, during, of course, the lot of these buildings in La. And the south end were demolished. But toward the end of the 80s, certainly with the publication of the 86 book from Hess Gucci colon 50s coffee shop architecture that sort of help reignite like an appreciation for these buildings and this architecture, and more and more we're protected that had not been demolished. Yes. And they're still being demolished. I saw that something like a third of them are gone now already, which is really high as far as demolition goes for specific kind of architecture. But they are getting protected more and more, which I think is good. Totally. I saw one other thing that led to the demise of Guggy. So GUI design was meant to attract the eyes of Southern California drivers as they were passing by so that they would turn in and be like, yeah, I could go for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, right, or I could get my shirt dry cleaned right now. Who knows? So that's what it was designed for. But then in 1955, the highway act started building highways rather than surface streets. So people weren't on the surface streets anymore, and they were going way faster and they were going faster than Guggy architecture could catch their attention. And that was a big part of it, too. Yeah, I mean, that's as evidenced in our Route 66 podcast. And to bring it full circle, that abandoned GUI gas station on Route 66 that we shot at, I was stopping there for gas. It was closed. Yeah, that's true. That's what happens. The highway killed it. Highway killed it. You got anything else? No, I got nothing. If you want to know more about GUI architecture, just go. Spend some time looking up gooey buildings. It's a lot of fun. They're just so colorful. And since I said they're colorful, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this what will be the first of two Appalachian trail emails. And by the way, I'm doing the Georgia portion next spring. Oh, nice, man. I'm doing it. Me and my friend Eddie and my friend Clay have all dedicated to do it. And so this is not only a personal life goal that I never accomplished, but a personal fitness goal, because I can't go out there right now and do that in the shape I'm in. And so losing weight, it's never worked. Like, I got that wedding this fall. I need to look good for that stuff. Never worked for me. But I can't do this and be successful without getting in shape. Like, I will die on the side of a mountain. You really need to read into the wood because one of the characters is exactly in that same position. All right. So it's a health goal and just a life goal and we're going to do it next March. So wait a minute, wait a minute. You're going with Eddie? As in Eddie the forest. Strangler Eddie. Eddie? I don't know if that's such a good idea, Chuck. We're going to start in North Carolina at the border and go SoBo to springer and act like we hiked the whole thing. That's awesome. When we get at the end. Nice work. So it's pretty cool. Anyway, I've been getting a lot of great emails and true stuff you should know. Fashion unplanned but very serendipitously. That episode was released on naked hike day. Yeah. We didn't know that was going to happen, but sometimes it works out that way. Yeah. So this is a really cool one from a man named Arthur sparrow. Oh, she had to put in a pronunciation guide. Iaressic. That's what I'm going to say. Okay. Or eretic. Hey, guys. A long time listener and I'm elated about this at episode because it changed my life. It was the best crazy thing I ever decided to do when I threw hiked it. I spent about a decade battling opioid addiction previous to my through hike in 2016. And when I left, I knew I needed to change many aspects of my life. I'm a college grad from a good family, had a good job, but I was just self destructing. And the at changed all that. The community and the trail were everything I needed. It helped me save my life from a downward spiral when it supplied hope for me when I needed it most. Simultaneously, it showed me how much we are truly capable of when we support one another on our journey. Six months and three years later, still opioid free, I started my own business after doing my hike, doing work that I believe in, and now I'm living and loving my journey on and off the trail. I hope there are a few people like myself that heard your episode and like me decide to do something crazy and change their lives for the better. It will be the best crazy thing that you ever did, too. I can assure them of that. All the best, gentlemen. Keep up the great work. And I got permission from Arthur to read this. He's the owner and operator of green team junk and way to go, Arthur. That's amazing. I'm so glad that you got it together and I'm glad that at was a part of that experience. It's really great. Yeah. Congratulations, Arthur. That's amazing. And thank you for the email. I wonder if Green team is a reference to that Will Ferrell and Michael Riley and Adam McKay like short. What was that? It was called Green Team. Why does that ring a bell? Because you've seen it. It made the rounds. It was viral, like, many years ago. Just like a green team. It's crazy. I think I said he was in the Sacramento area. Okay. It looks like it's recycling and reusing and hauling away stuff for people. Nice. Yeah, that's what I gathered. Like green junk removal. Right? That's what I figured. I mean, the guy hiked the at for pizza. Yeah, it's not brown tea and junk. Right. Well, thanks again, Arthur. Fantastic. Congratulations and thanks for writing in. And if you want to be like Arthur and share your personal successes with us, we want to hear them. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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." |
66b2e6ab-3d2e-47bb-8aa9-ae59012725fa | Short Stuff: Nose Breathing | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-nose-breathing | Nose breathing > mouth breathing for many reasons. Listen and learn!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Nose breathing > mouth breathing for many reasons. Listen and learn!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 16 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=75, tm_isdst=0) | 12076653 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. This is Short Stuff. So let's sort it out. Yeah, this is about breathing, about the benefits of nose breathing. Breathing. But it could be the shortest short stuff ever if we just said the biggest benefit of nose breathing is that you're not a mouth breather. Yeah, for real. I've never remember. I do mouth breath if I'm not paying attention to it sometimes. It's all right, I'm going to say it. I do try to nose breathe, but I was recently diagnosed with a deviated septum, and it makes sense to me. I'm like, yeah, it's hard for me to breathe through my nose. Interesting. And then after researching nose breathing, which, by the way, I think you got this original article from House to Forks, right? That's right. I'm going to get my deviated septum fixed. I want to be able to breathe through my nose properly. Now, is that code for nose job still? I don't think so. I'm fine with my nose. I mean, the big old 30s comic strip, gangster like, hook nose, but I like it. No, it is regular nose. No, not to say other noses are irregular. I love wacky shaped noses. Well, then you got to love my nose because it's a honker. I never thought it was much of a honker, but it sort of used to be code. It's like someone would come back to class from spring break with, like, a brand new nose, and they're like, I had a deviated septum. I know what you're talking about. That is super 80s. They would be wearing, like, chunky socks and have their sweater tied together over their shoulders and eating like, a little cup of yogurt. So what's the big deal? Why should you breathe through your nose? Well, there's a guy named James Nester. He is a nose breathing researcher who is also an author on nose breathing. He wrote Breath The New Science of a Lost Art came out a couple of years ago during the pandemic. And isn't it nice, Chuck, to be able to say things like that in past tense? I just said that in past tense, as if the pandemic is over. Yeah, not over, but things are certainly much, much better. So I'm with you. Wow. Anyway, James Nestor says you want to nose breathe. Mouth breathing bad. Nose breathing good. Like, your body is basically equipped for breathing through your nose. He said he doesn't even know why God came up with breathing through the mouth. It's so stupid. That's right, because your lungs want moisture and warmer air. And breathing through your nose provides that when it goes through the nose, it goes through passes by these turbine, these bony structures, and they're covered in soft tissue called mucosa. And that stuff is going to warm up and moist up that air as it goes into your lungs. And your lungs are going to be much happier. Plus that's not even to mention the cilia, the little hairs that line your nasal airway, in addition to the big old hairs, but you also have a little tiny microscopic hair cilia that can catch smoke. I mean, that's just showing off. If you're cilia, like, watch this and you catch a piece of smoke, they can catch anything. If you can catch smoke, you can filter out basically anything. And that's a big role that they play. And they hang on to it, and then when they're sure it's not going to go into your lungs, they kind of throw it down your gullet and you end up swallowing all that stuff. Dander, smoke, pollen, tiny little mites, all this stuff goes into your stomach where they go through the acid rinse cycle and are pulverized into nothingness. But it just kind of underlines how well equipped for nose breathing we actually are. Yeah. It also encourages what's known as diaphragmic breathing. A funny looking word that g always throws me off this, is that deep breathing. When they talk about, like if you've ever taken voice lessons or anything like that, or even yoga, they talk about our meditation, they talk about diaphragm breathing that's activating the lower part, the lower lobes of your lungs, and that's where you want to be breathing from, as opposed to chest breathing, because down there you've got many more. Well, there's just a bigger percentage of blood than in the upper levels, and that's going to do a whole host of great things for you. Yeah. So you're oxygenating more blood, which is good, because that means that you're going to get more oxygen all throughout your body because that's one of the roles that blood plays. But also it releases nitric oxide. Nasal breathing does. And I don't understand why just nasal breathing, but I could not figure it out. But let's just suffice to say that James Nestor knows what he's talking about, and then nitric oxide is released in nasal breathing. And nitric oxide actually has a bunch of different effects, but a big one is that it's a vasodilator, which means that it opens up your blood vessels so that more blood can flow. Your blood pressure is lower and you're actually calmer and healthier than you would be. And apparently this happens through nasal breathing and not through mouth breathing. That's right. So let's take a break. If you weren't on board with nose breathing, I think you will be when we come back and give you a few more reasons. Are you an athlete? I exercise, but no, I would not say I'm an athlete, no. It would be shameful for me to say yes to that. If you were an athlete, you might want to nose breathe. There's a doctor named Doctor John Duilliard who did some studies in the 90s when he kind of put mouth breathers and nose breeders neck to neck and said, go exercise, and let's talk about it. Let's hook you up to some machines and stuff like that. And interestingly, he found that there wasn't really a big difference in your heart rate depending on how you breathe, but a really pretty substantial difference between your breathing rate a lot more mouth breathing going on, I think 48 breaths per minute, compared to 14 nasal breaths per minute when you're exercising on that stationary bike. Because your deeper breathing would be my guess. Yes, supposedly because you'll be using those lower lobes. If you're nasal breathing over mouth breathing, it's a big difference. 14 to 48. Yeah. And it's a big difference in your perception of how hard and torturous the exercise is, too, because you'd be like, well, who cares if you're taking more breath through your mouth? Well, that creates the perception of more exertion. So apparently athletes who were put through the study and basically reached, like, their max capacity on a stationary bike, the nose breathers, said that they were hitting about a four in exertion, while the mouth breathers said that they were hitting about a ten. Yeah. And these are people who are, like, equally fit, equally athletic, so when they max out, it's basically the same thing. The only difference, the only variable was whether they were mouth breathing or nose breathing. That is astounding remember when those I don't remember the brand, and I don't want to buzz market anyway, but the little strips that you put on your nose to open your nose up a little bit, remember when those made the rounds, especially with athletes? Yeah. You didn't see a football player that wasn't wearing one of those, and now you never see those anymore. No, I think they turned everybody's nose green. I don't know. I wonder if they realize a it maybe didn't have a benefit or just kind of went through that fad cycle. My experience with them was that it worked too well. It opened up my nostrils so much, I got a toothache. Really? Yeah. I never used them again. They really worked. Is that a joke, though? No toothache. But how does that mechanism work? I don't know, but the two are definitely related. Okay. Yeah. You just said that. As in, like, don't ask any more questions. So back to whether or not I'm an athlete. No, I'm not. But I did try this, actually, Chuck, just this very morning, after doing some researching, I went and jogged, and I tried breathing through my nose. My stupid deviated septum kept me from doing it. But I really want to be able to do this. I want to be able to nose breathe while I'm exercising, because I really, like, start panting after a while because I'm mouth breathing. And you end up taking these short, gulpy, shallow breaths when you're really exerting yourself toward the end of the run or whatever. And it's not fun. Like, everything else can be fun, but the breathing part can really kind of make it feel like you're suffering. Yeah, that's where I suffer the most with my cardio. Yeah, I can commiserate let me see. Oh, the other big thing is lung capacity. You can train yourself to increase your lung capacity because people that do things like free diving or just hold breath for competition, I'm sure that exists. Yeah. Like at the swimming pool in the summertime. Yeah. You can increase your long capacity. And there was a study, I think it was a 29, almost 30 year study in the journal Chest. That's a great name, great read. In 2000, it showed that you can increase your lung capacity by nose breathing. And that goes a long way toward being healthier. Like, if you have bigger lungs capable of breathing more, you're literally going to live longer. Yeah. And it's no coincidence that breathing and especially really paying attention to your breath and creating a slower, longer breathing pattern is a huge part of meditation. And James Nestor, the author and breathing researcher, he says that there's a time that's called coherent breathing. And he said a good way to work on breathing is to try this coherent breathing where you breathe in slowly for about five to 6 seconds and then you exhale over about five to 6 seconds. And it's surprisingly hard, especially the exhaling part. And that makes sense because if you've ever trained your lungs on one of those little like, breathing trainers, you know what I'm talking about, it's like a handheld piece of plastic with like a blue corrugated tube coming out of it that you blow into. You know what? I don't know about that, but usually see him at the hospital. OK. Yumi. Got them for us during the beginning of the pandemic because she was worried our lungs were going to collapse if we got COVID. She was like, we need to practice on these. It's really hard. But it's not the breathing out part. That's the easy part. The breathing in part, that's the hardest part. But for me, with the coherent breathing, the exhale is the hardest. It's weird. Interesting. Yeah. But it's fun to try, actually. And you definitely can see like, huge improvements in a very short time if you actually do try to expand your lung capacity. Yeah, I'm going to work on the sum. They say if you have anxiety too, to exhale for longer, if you'd like to do that five or six second inhale, try and do like an eight to nine second exhale outhale. We need to outheel. It's funny, like, exercise is great and it's certainly something that people should do, but the more I learn about stuff, the more it seems like stretching and breathing and like these really fundamental things, if you really tackle that when you're younger, can really extend your life and healthier years, definitely. But it's also never too late to start too. Never too late. So, Chuck, you said never too late. I think that's the end of the short stuff. I think so. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show." | |
A Podcast to Remember (How Memory Works) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/a-podcast-to-remember-how-memory-works | How does memory work? How is internet access changing the function of the human brain? In this podcast, Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the science behind memory -- and how modern technology may be changing it. | How does memory work? How is internet access changing the function of the human brain? In this podcast, Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the science behind memory -- and how modern technology may be changing it. | Thu, 05 May 2011 18:05:30 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=18, tm_min=5, tm_sec=30, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=125, tm_isdst=0) | 32438740 | 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 s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Davis. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I remember your name. Yes. And this is stuff you should know. Lizzy had you cracked up there. If that makes it into the cut. It's not going to. Okay. Because it was pre hei and welcome to the podcast. Everything before that always gets cut out. You know that. I think a little giggle beforehand might be endearing. We would be fired if we didn't cut out everything that came before that, right? Maybe. Chuck. Yes. Chuck, have you ever heard of a guy named Nicholas Carr? Yeah, sure, I know you. Have you ever heard of a little rag called The Atlantic? Yes, I have. Back in 2008, those two things collided. Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic, and he had a very great headlined article called is Google making us stupid? And Nicholas Carr, he went on to write a book. He followed that normal process where you're writing the book and you're like, I need some extra cash, so I'll accept this or rewrite like 15 pages of it sells to The Atlantic or whatever. Yes, we need to get in that gig. Well, we have to write a book or be writing a book. I'd write a book. Would you do that? I can't remember what the book was called, but the article actually made a bigger splash than the book did. Right, but basically he was saying, like, we are reconfiguring the way we learn through our interactions with the internet. Like there's constantly things trying to get our attention on a web page. It's not like a book without pictures or flashing lights, that kind of thing. Not bad. We read horizontally, he put it rather than vertically, meaning we just kind of skim the surface of a bunch of different stuff rather than really deeply get into one thing. Fiction, which helps flex the imagination, is pretty much non existent on the web, unless you're like, in the live journal, harry Potter erotica fiction. But at the basis of his argument is Google. Making a stupid was the idea that it's actually reforming the way we form memories. Not Google. He chose Google just to get a headline. The editor did. But the idea that the internet, the way we read, is changing the way that we absorb information and therefore form memory. It says a lot that he was asking if it's making us stupid because we here in the west equate a good memory to intelligence, to smart. Right. I guess what I'm trying to drive at very clumsily is how does memory work? I thought that was a great setup. And who knows what the heck we're going to look like in 100 years as a species, how our brains are going to be firing and what the effect it's going to have on us. We're going to have mighty humps. Well, that's the thing you can debate all day long. Is it stupid or are we just in the middle of an evolution? Probably in the middle of an evolution. I don't think we're going to end up in Idiocracy, although never know possibility. You never know. I watched Idiocracy, so that might mean I'm on that road myself. It's a great movie. Did you like it? I did. I thought it was I liked it from what it was. But like the one joke premise. Most times when a movie has the one joke premise, it kind of gets old for me. What one joke? Sort of the one joke everybody's stupid. Yeah. It's worth then. All right, moving on. Memories, Josh, are what make us who we are. I imagine if someone has complete amnesia, they usually don't have a sense of self. Yeah, it depends if you remember. HM. Henry Mullerson. No. So he was the patient that proved there's this big debate over when we think of memory, whether there's like one part of the brain that's responsible for memory right. Or whether it's a bunch of different parts of the brain. And he proved that the multiple memory systems works. Yeah, because they used to think like, oh, you just got a big old filing cabinet and your brain just sticks it in whatever file it belongs in, and then you go and pull it out when you need it. Exactly. And that's a very Sesame Street way of putting it. It is. But they were working with what they had to work with at the time. Yeah. And they were wrong. But HM like age 23, this guy who became known as HM patient HM had temporal labectomy. Oh, really? To cures epilepsy. That guy also removed his hippocampus so he could tell you where he went to high school, whose oldest friend was, that kind of thing. But he couldn't tell you what he had for lunch that day because he lost the ability to form new memories. So the fact that he could maintain old memories but couldn't form new memories proved that there's multiple systems involved for different types of memory. Yeah, like Memento, right. Great movie. He would have proven it, too. And memento did not have Ellen Page. No, it didn't. It's on your list of acceptable films. I really hope Ellen Pages listen to this. She would have written in by now. Or not. She may just be like, I hate those guys so much. Yes, maybe. So let's talk a bit about memory, Josh. Let's say we were talking about breakfast this morning. If you remember what you had for breakfast, you might think that that is a very simple thing that happened, when in fact, it is very complex. Reconstruction from different parts of your brain putting together maybe the smell of your eggs, of your eggs. Bacon destroyed. You didn't need that slab of ham. What it looked like, maybe what it felt like in your mouth, how it tasted. Yeah. So you're recalling all these different parts, but not a complex thing. Not even just that. I mean, there's so much more to it. The tablecloth, whether you were angry at the weather guy to remember even what eggs are. Yeah. These memories that go way back. But we conceive of it as this one little snapshot of a memory called what you had for breakfast. Right, but all of those different things put together are called neural projections. Right, Chuck? Yes, Josh. Okay, so go ahead. Well, the other instance, too, that they always mention is riding bikes. You never forget how to ride a bike. And it seems like a very easy thing, but there are so many things going on when you ride a bike. How you get on the bike, how you mount the bike, where your feet go, how you move it forward. Where should I put my hands? What about this car barreling down? I should probably not ride in the center of the road going the wrong way. So it's just like hundreds of memories. I can't put a number on it. Who knows how many there are? Well, the reason why it's so difficult is because this is all a seamless process. Right, exactly. It makes it appear, riding a bike as if it's one single file that you pull out of your cabinet called ride a bike. Yeah. And at times, it's so second nature. It's so natural to us that we kind of detach ourselves from it and call it things like muscle memory. Such a thing as muscle memory. Your muscles, they don't have a capacity for remembering anything well. And we don't even know how we recall. Still, even though we have a better handle on storage of memory, we should disclaim this episode by telling that this is the rough sketch of what we know right now about how we form and retrieve memory, which is more than we've ever known. Yeah, and I think we're hot on the trail. It's really starting to come together and make sense. So should we start with encoding? Yes. Which is basically your senses. It's rooted in your senses. Encoding is the first step to create a memory. It begins with perception. And when we talk about perception, we're talking about your sensory perception. Right. Which right now you appear to me as little scruffy, looking good. You've got your brain's cap on, you got a smile, the Ikea lights gleaming off of your eyeballs a little bit. Okay. All of this is visual information, right? But in my brain, it's nothing more than electrical impulses traveling through the optic nerve to my hippocampus. Right? Right. You might smell me. The example I used in the article is the first girlfriend, but that's right on the money, man. I mean, I still remember all that stuff, but when you see that first girl that you fall in love with, what she looked like, what she smelled like the first time she shook your hand I hate to say this, but it's the exact same thing as breakfast this morning or riding the bike. Well, true in a way, but there's also a point made later on that we'll talk about that things that are more important to you are more likely to be rooted in your long term memory. Yeah, okay. Breakfast is pretty important to me. Right, true. That's not going to be in your long term memory, though. I remember every breakfast I've ever eaten. Really? Okay, it's because you've only had breakfast four times. 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 only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride career prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. Where are we in the hip campus? Well, yeah, we're with encoding. So basically what's just happened is the light bouncing off of you that gives you shape, and all that is coming into my eyes and transforming into electrical information. It doesn't matter what it is. That's the language of the brain. Right. Translates electrical information yes. And stores it in the hippocampus initially. Right. That's like the big processing, sorting, routing hub. Yeah. So your hippocampus is like this region of the brain shaped like a seahorse, which hence the name that basically says okay. I don't get that part. Hippocampus. It's not shaped like a hippopotamus. No. Shaped like a seahorse. Then why that's the name hippocampus means seahorse. Oh, it does? Yeah. I did not realize that. Man. I hope it does. Okay. That's how I've always taken it. So let's call it the seahorse campus. Basically, what the hippocampus does is it takes in all this information, including stuff that I have no idea I'm taking in at the moment yeah. And says, this is important. This isn't important. You can leave this out. Let's send this over here. Let's send this over there. Let's create this neural projection by combining this, this, and this. Right. And it's like, basically the man behind the curtain. The hippocampus is the center of forming new memories. Right. And along with the frontal cortex, they work in hand in hand at this. Yeah. Okay. And it's a really efficient way to deal with your surroundings, Chuck, because consider this. Let's say you or I, let's say we're doing it together. We're coming out of the woods into a meadow, and it is a primal area, and we're scared of bears. So we're scanning the meadow for bears. Right. We don't see any bears, but there's birds, there's flowers, there are butterflies. And we're kind of taking in all of these things, but we're not really taking it in because none of them are the bear, which is what we're tasked with finding right then. Right. So the hippocampus isn't forming any memories of the butterfly or the daisies or whatever. Maybe we would know. Oh, well, there's a splash of white against the green, so there are flowers there. But if we were asked later on what kind of flowers were in that meadow, we couldn't say. So it's just filtering. That what we would consider unnecessary information out. Exactly. Okay. It travels well. We said this perception and encoding is where it starts, but then it has to go somewhere from there. Right. And this is where the chemistry of the brain comes in, which is endlessly fascinating to me. Yes. Josh, we have nerve cells, neurons, and these connect with other cells at a point called a synapse. Right. Which is actually funny that the author of this article put it like that because it's actually not a point. It's a gap yeah. Between the two. You think that all these things connect, but there is a gap. The leap to the other side. The leap of the gap is performed via neurotransmitter. Is that right? Yes. And then latched onto by a dentrite. The little feathery things on the cells collect this. Yeah. They accept the transmission, say, Come on in. Transmission. Welcome to my cell. So, Chuck, I'm going to give a couple of stats real quick, okay? Sure. There's possibly as many as 100 billion neurons in your brain. It's a lot. Each of them have many tens of thousands or many thousands of connections. Up to which are synapses. Yes. Which leads to as many as a quadrillion synapses in the human brain. And they can connect. Is it an infinite amount of times? If need be. What do you mean? Is there any limit to the amount of neural connections these cells can make? Well, I think 10,000 is the high end that I've heard. Okay. But I love that you had an answer for that. Thank you. And they're constantly going, too right. And forming new connections. I think it's something like 30 to 60 times a second. Your neurons are firing all over your head. That is crazy. It is. And they're not set in stone. They're always changing, always forming new connections. The more that you do something, the stronger the connection is going to be. We might know that in the real world as practice or repetition. Right. But another word for it is plasticity, where the brain, the organizational structure of your brain actually changes shape, as you were saying, like through practicing. Something like the repeated firing of a neural connection. Right. Which is just an electrical impulse that triggers the release of neurotransmitters that cross the synapse are accepted in the dendrite, and the neurotransmitters are the message carried. Like a certain type of neurotransmitter, like Dopamine says, hey, everything is just IRI. Right. And this information just passed along from one neuron to another if the impulse is strong enough. Right, right. But then when you do it again and again and again, more channels that allow the neurotransmitters to be released from one and accepted by another are dug, which means that this thing fires more efficiently. And all of a sudden, after firing them by practicing your violin, this one piece of music, slowly, over and over again, you get faster and faster and faster at it until you can play it perfectly. Yeah. That's exactly what's going on. Your neural connection is at top performance. Peak performance practice makes perfect. I learned how to play the intro to Stairway to Heaven when I first got my guitar, and I played it over and over and over and over until I learned it. Give me a guitar. Today, I can monkey through about a third of it very clumsily because I forget or I can't write in cursive anymore. I can't either. I'd really have to concentrate and there are definitely letters that I would forget how to write. Yeah, that was a jarring realization for me. That how do you make the Q? Whatever happened to that z? That weird. Z. It's all gone. And even like the S and the R and all that like normal stuff, it's just gone. You don't want to see my curse of writing. So what you're talking about is that while you can refine the organization of your brain to peak performance, your neural connections also have a kind of use it or lose it aspect to them as well. Yes. Remember that study with the kittens? No. The really sad study. I think it's funny that you're asking me how much I remember and I keep saying no. There is this study that involved kittens having one iPhone shot from birth. That's right. And they were allowed to frolic and play and do whatever, but they just had one iPhone shot. Right. And then after I think like eight or ten or twelve weeks the eye was released. Yes. Opened up again and the kittens were blind for life. And I guess they killed the kittens and looked at what was going on in the brain and they found that they say the left eye had been so shut during the stage of development, the neural connections had all traveled to the right eye, which was seeing and the ones that had been there on the left eye that formed the optic nerve were withered and dead. You know what they call that experiment? They call it the saddest experiment in the history of the world. Pretty bad. Yeah, it's a pretty bad experiment. But it basically goes to show you that not only will neural connections wither and die if they're not used, they'll also migrate to places where they can be used. There's kind of like a survival of the fittest jungle grab for firing. Because the more fired a neural connection is, the more important it is, the stronger it's going to be. Right, right. And FYI, Giraffe neurons can grow up to 3ft in length. Really? Yeah. Are they all in the neck? Yes. Isn't that cool? It is pretty cool. So we were talking about encoding. You have to really be paying attention to properly encode and we also talked about filtering things out. What they don't know, again, is this may be the first time we've said it is. Are we screening this stimuli out during the first initial sensory stage or are we literally processing it and saying, no, we don't need this, get rid of it? Yeah, it would make sense to me that it comes afterward, but they don't know. Yeah, it makes sense to me too. Like the hippocampus is like, that's not a bear, forget it. Yes, forget that. So are we at short term and long term. Josh yeah. You have to store all memories. Even if it's just for a blip, you're going to be storing it or it's not a memory. Right. Even the shortest of short term memories is a memory. And there are three ways they believe that we store these memories. We already talked about the sensory stage. Then you have the short term if it's deemed important enough to remember, at least for a little while, and then eventually long term, if it's really important to you, which there are different ways to look at long term memory. The way that I found is that long term memory is this dormant neural projection. All the different neural connections that make up that rich memory from long ago that it's there. Like it can be activated. That's long term memory. Short term memory is when it's active and then working memory, which isn't in this article. Working memory is like bringing something to mind and then the action of consciously keeping it in mind, like repeating a phone number over and over again that you knew before, but you're having to remind yourself you're keeping it in your working memory. Well, it's funny you mentioned phone number because short term memory is really limited. I love the stat. It says that short term memory can hold about seven items for no more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. Yeah. So that's why when you see something like a phone number, you shouldn't be able to remember that. So what you do is you break it down, or it's already broken down, usually for you, into three sets of three or two sets of three and one set of four. I would be missing a digit. And that's how you remember things and then saying it over and over. And there's all sorts of exercises you can do to remember things. Like when you meet somebody. That's where I'm bad. You know how I am with remembering names. I can never remember names. But you're also very friendly. You can be like, hey, I recognize your face. What's your name? Oh, yeah. And I might remember you could say you met this girl Francis at this thing that we did. And I'd say, who? I'd say, oh, the lady who wore the overalls and the flip flops. Like, I'll remember things like that forever. Names, forget about it. Yeah. That's why you have all the names of everyone you've ever met written down on your hand. That's why I have no friends. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that roll up their own suites. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. It automation. 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. Twelvecom podcast. That's K twelve.com slash podcast and start taking charge of your future today. But long term memory can store everything forever if you wanted to. Yeah, that seems like a g wiz we don't really know exactly what's going on kind of statement. I totally agree. When I read that, I was like, really? Yeah. Unlimited everything forever, right? Yeah, I don't know about that one, but I would agree that it's at least as much as we need. Or another way to look at it is what if we are all operating pretty much at capacity? How much more incredibly intelligent will we be? We had even like 25% more memory storage. Yeah, true. But like we mentioned earlier, things that are important to you, you're more likely to remember. And then when you're encoding, how you're perceiving things. That's why probably when I meet someone, I look at their shoes and what they're wearing, I guess, and I'm distracted. I'm not thinking of the fact that they said their name when they shook my hand. Well, you just hit two big points. One, that something that is meaningful to you, you're going to remember more. That's because emotion is usually attached. The seat of emotion is the amygdala, and it is directly connected to the hippocampus. It's got like a direct line to the hippocampus, like coming through. I'm first, right? The saddle on the seahorse, if you will. Yes. And that's great. That was really good. Thank you. And there's I guess one of the big theories behind what emotions are, why we have them, is they're basically like learning guides. They're teaching guides like you feel fear. You're going to remember that you feel fear when you see a bear and you're going to stay away from bears. Right. Or joy makes us feel familiar with other people to stay in groups, which is safe, right? Yeah. Away from it keeps bears away. Eight people could beat up a bear rather than just one. Right. So we have emotions and we learn from our emotions, which is why we manage to remember things so much more clearly when there's an emotion attached. And if you examine most of your memories there's probably going to be some sort of emotional memory, I guess, beneath the surface there like, have you ever watched a movie? And it's really dramatic and intense, and that scene ends and you kind of come out of it like you were just totally sucked in, and you kind of come out of it because the next scene started and the build up hasn't happened yet for that scene. But you realize you have this kind of remnant, uneasy feeling that you have no idea what it belongs to any longer. Yeah. And then you realize, wait a minute, I was just identifying with the movie. Right. So I think that's kind of the same kind of underlying emotional memory that can be attached to anything, and that makes it more poignant and more likely to be remembered. Yeah, exactly. And that may be more important to one person than another. So it's typical to say I have a good memory or a bad memory. And what's probably more likely is that you might be really good at remembering some things, but not others. You know what I'm saying? I do. And if you're having trouble remembering something, it's not like your entire memory system is not working. It's probably like one part, because I think there's three stages to actually keeping a memory around. Right. And it just means one of those is not working quite well. What are they? Why don't you tell me? Okay. Well, basically that you can say that. Let's take an example of eyeglasses. Okay. Neither one of us wear right. But let's say we did and we're going to bed. Right. You're going to bed separate from me. And you take your glasses off and you toss them off on the nightstand sure. And go to sleep. Right. If you looked at your eyeglasses where you sent them, you would be perceiving their placement and coding. Right. Which is going to make it likelier for that memory to be retained. And then when you wake up, since the memory is retained, you'll be able to retrieve it. Right. So those are the three steps. It's awareness retention and then retrieval. Right. Any of those three is where the breakdown can occur. Yeah. And I've heard there's all sorts of tips, like if you say out loud as you're doing it, I'm putting my eyeglasses on the nightstand. That might help you. Might seem a little weird, but that will help you remember it. Yeah. So, Chuck, what about aging? Like, there's this underlying fear among everybody that as we get older, our memories are going to go. And that's true in a lot of cases, but it's often associated with Alzheimer's or dementia or something. That's not necessarily the underlying mechanism. It's not the mechanism, but it does happen. There is a breakdown that starts with the onset of sexual maturity. Oddly, it's linked to that. You start forgetting things. Yeah. And I think it gets worse and worse until we. Reach our 50s. Yeah, it's like twenty s to fifty s is when you really have some trouble initially. Right. But the brain isn't changing its structure or anything. It's the connections that start to fail. Is that right? That's what I understand. Yes. Although they did say the brain in hippocampus shrink in your 70s. It depends. Yes. I think what they're finding, though, is that a lot of it has to do with the lack of stimulation. Well, that's huge. Yeah. They found that rats that are raised with lots of toys, where they are given lots of toys in a stimulating environment later on in life, have literally fatter healthier cells, brain cells, neurons than their counterparts, and the same as in humans as well. At the very least, we know that our neurons shrink as we get older, like you said. But they found that stimulating environments, like if you're in a nursing home and there's a lot going on, rather than just like, go sit in your room. Right. The people at the lots going on nursing home are going to be a lot more, I guess, intelligent later in life, or at the very least, they're going to have better memories, is another way to put it. Yeah. Well, Emily's grandmother is 90 and she has a very robust personality and memory. And I think it's all due to the fact that she exercises that muscle quite a bit. She does word puzzles every day. She's on the internet more than I am. She's on all over our Facebook page. And that's how you stay vital. If you don't Facebook, that'd be a heck of a endorsement. Yeah. Facebook lets you live forever. But it's true, though. I mean, any way you want to go about it, if you're exercising that noodle, sure. It's going to stay strong and you can regenerate and stay vital and not slip darkly into the night. And also, they're pretty sure that a reduction in production of acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that's strongly associated with memory formation. Yeah, they kind of pinpointed that. Yes. They're not exactly sure how that works, but they know that, like, if you the more acetylcholine you have, the better memory you have, and vice versa. But you can actually reverse that right through the mental exercises. Yeah. I think you can boost production like that. And I'm sure pretty soon I'll have a cytocholine shot, so we can just shoot right into our brains like memory junkies. If you're a smoker or a drinker or generally unhealthy, it's going to impact your memory, too. And then lastly, I say that, sadly, this is the one that I find the most fascinating about memory. There's something called sleep dependent memory consolidation. And basically what happens remember when we were talking about sleepwalking, your brain, you go through two phases. One, where your body is active, but your brain is out, and then the REM sleep, the deepest sleep, where your body can't move, but your brain is going basically taking advantage of you napping so that it can do some paperwork or whatever. Right. And it goes through and fires all the neural connections that were used that day. Maybe some are kind of fading a little bit here. There fires those. And while you're sleeping, your brain is basically creating perception again. Right, got you. By firing your neural projections, which I think is probably the best explanation for dreams I've ever heard. Yeah, that's it. Well, I will disclose by saying, if I have ever met you and I don't remember your name, please don't be offended because I guarantee you I recognize your face. Who was it? Tammy with the overalls and the flip flops? Yeah, I remember all that stuff. Like who? Last time I was in New York, emily Marveled. I saw, I think, two different people that I said, hey, that person was at our trivia night a year and a half ago or two years ago, or whatever. She said, do you remember that? I went, yeah, I remember all those faces. That's very good. Just not the names. And if you think your memory is going, try paying more attention. Distraction is one of the greatest threats to memory formation and if you don't form a memory properly, you're not going to remember it. Yeah, that sounds so basic, but, yeah, proper encoding requires concentration and really look at the glasses as you set them next to the alarm clock and think, I just put them there. So obey, human. Boom. If you want to learn more about memory, type memory. You should probably type human memory, because I'm pretty sure if you just type memory, a lot of computer stuff is going to come up in the handysearchparthouseupworks.com. You don't want to read any of that. Now it's time for listener man. Josh. I'm going to call this Maggie Mania. Yes. They really got people. I always find it like eye opening when I just tell a story for my life and everybody's like, oh, my God, I couldn't eat. Yeah. I'm like, oh, sorry. All right, this is from Cath in Australia. Oh, hello, guys. I have done the exact same thing as you, Josh. I put some meat in a plastic bag in the kitchen garbage bin, which also had a lid, and woke up to a moving floor. Only I was not wearing my glasses, so she might have forget where she laid them. Yeah. I was doing a little cleaning and it slowly dawned on me what had happened. I had begun my morning by sweeping. I had made cookies the night prior and was noticing all these little balls of dough on the floor. They were very hard to sweep up. I became more and more confused at the huge amount of tiny balls of dough until I bent down and had a closer look. It was like a horror movie. My blood went cold and I crouched in utter panic. I then looked across the floor and these little dough balls had made their way across the entire apartment, and they made it to the bedroom carpet. Wow. I was totally disgusted and horrified. I think I was even doing that half panic cry, swearing quietly to myself thing. Not aware of that? No. Me neither. I got rid of them by patiently sweeping them up. I couldn't bear to squish them and that's clean up that mess. And I put them into a plastic bag that I left sitting outside. I sprayed the bag with this infectant and bug spray after every dump of maggots, but they were still squirming. I will never, ever leave meat unattended again. I live in Australia, where I should have been aware of this. I thought she made cookies. Did she make meat cookies? Was that just unrelated? I think it was unrelated. And that maybe explained why she thought there was dough on the floor. No, she said she made cookies night for this is Australia. Maybe they have meat cookies. Day one ended. I want some meat cookies. I do, too. That's it. That's from Cat. Wow, that was weird exposition there, Chuck. That was Cath. Yeah, from Australia. Well, thanks, Kat. The magahata with an H or just Kath? K-A-T-H short for Katherine or Kat. Well, thanks a lot. We appreciate it. I imagine you've moved by now, and very sensible of you. Yes, if you've ever made meat cookies or anything that sounds equally awesome, we want to hear it. And if you got a recipe, cool. And if you're willing to send us some of these things, even better. Right? Right. So you can get our mailing address by sending us an email right, right at stuffpoadcast@howstephworks.com. 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 to the works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena 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 your 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/2017-12-28-sysk-seven-wonders-part-two-final.mp3 | How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Works, Part II | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world-works-p | We finish our tour of the best sights of the ancient world when we get deep into the history of a lighthouse that stood for 1200 years, an unsettling statue of Zeus, the world’s first mausoleum, and Chuck’s favorite, the Colossus of Rhodes! | We finish our tour of the best sights of the ancient world when we get deep into the history of a lighthouse that stood for 1200 years, an unsettling statue of Zeus, the world’s first mausoleum, and Chuck’s favorite, the Colossus of Rhodes! | Thu, 28 Dec 2017 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=362, tm_isdst=0) | 43873702 | audio/mpeg | "Stuff You Should Know. The San Francisco Live treat. Ding ding. How about that? That was pretty good, Chuck. Everyone who we just annoyed, we're going to come see you, San Francisco. We're gonna be at Sketchfest on January 14 th. That's right. And hey, we're looking at you, Oakland. We're looking at you, San Jose. We're looking at you, cupertino. The whole Bay Area, come out and see us. Sunday, January 14, of Castro theater is part of Sketchfest. Plus, Chuck, you're going to be there even earlier, huh? That's right. At 01:00 P.m. On Sunday the 14th, I will be doing a movie crush live, my very first one featuring the great Tony Hale of Veep and Arrested Development, where we will be in conversation about his favorite movie, Punch Drunk Love. Plus, Chuck, what if people want to meet you and greet you, then just come to the show. Because I'm meeting and greeting before and after. And you can get moviecrush tickets at Bit. Leemobycrushandstepyshtnowlive.com is our touring home on the web where you can find tickets for not only Sketchfest at the Castro, but the few tickets we have left for Seattle on January 15 at the great Moore Theater. So we'll see you guys out there on the West Coast in January. And until then, happy holidays. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles WTO. Bryant and there's guest producer NOL again. And that makes this stuff you should know. Part two. That's right. Did you ever see Hotshots Part Two? The Sequel? No, I didn't see a lot of those movies at all. Except for the airplane movies and the Naked gun movies. The Hot Shots movies were worth seeing. Did not see those. Did not see any of the scary movies. Oh, the scary movies? You haven't seen those? No, all of them are good. Like, every single one of those are good. Really? Yes. I did record a movie crush yesterday for the movie Scream, though. Oh, yeah? With who? Nate Bargatzi, comedian. Sure. So it was interesting that I had to do screen research and like that movie changed. Like horror movies were on their last legs. Yes, they were. Not to say that something else might not have come along, but it was Screamed that revitalized a genre. Yes. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's kind of a watershed movie. Did we talk about that in the horror movies that changed the genre? I'm pretty sure we had to. Boy, if we didn't, we missed out. Well, if we didn't, we probably just said, and obviously Scream. We don't even need to mention that. Well, it launched the Scream franchise. It launched the scary movie franchise, in a way. And relaunched the genre. Yeah. So scary movies were seeing hotshots is worth seeing. Naked Guns were seeing, of course. Although I would put either one of the Hot Shots up against the third Naked Gun any day. Of the week. That's my bookie over the third naked Gun. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. And then don't get me started on what was it like, the godson. The what? The godson. I don't know what that is. It was like a godfather spoof that Leslie Nielsen was in the Dom Del Louise. I haven't even seen holy cow. Five minutes of it. I don't even know what that is. And you stumped me. Oh, good. Thank you. That's a good start to this episode, don't you think? You're welcome. Thank you. So, Chuck yes. We're moving on. We've already talked about the Great pyramids at Kufu. We talked about the hanging gardens of Babylon and the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Right. All three of them. Top, top notch. Yeah. And if you don't know what we're talking about now, and this is your first episode of Stuff You Should Know ever, this is the second of a two part episode there you go. On the seven ancient seven wonders of the ancient world. And here's part two. Right. Then we're going to start with the statue of Zeus at Olympia. To say it like that there's no other way to say it. That's how he's the guy's name, the boxing guy, that guy. I don't know his name. Yeah, he used to stand at the statue of Zeus and say that on an hourly basis. Yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. So this one is one of my favorites, but not my favorite. I promise that my favorite was in here, but this is not quite it. Okay. Although it's close, because this is the main deal here. Olympia, Zeus. This is no runofthemill god in some cast off city. No, it was the site of the first Olympics, so it was pretty important city. Very important. It was nowhere near Mount Olympus, though, curiously. But it was pretty important, right? Yes. This one, to me, is the most ho home of them all. Oh, yeah. Not quite sure why, but I am just kind of like, whatever about it. All right, well, let's talk about the template first. Okay. And also, I should warn you that this article has the proportions wildly incorrect. Oh, how tall it was? Yeah. All right. What is it? For real? This article says it was 210ft tall. That's a 20 story building. The temple was not as tall as a 20 storey building. It was 68ft tall. How did they get it that wrong? I don't know. I just don't know. It's staggering. It's as staggering as this temple would have been had it been 200ft tall. And it doesn't even say it was somewhere between 68 and 210ft. Right. It's weird. That's annoying. Everything else is right about it, though. Okay, so it was 68ft tall. Still pretty impressive. Sure. For the time. Yeah. But I would have to say, if you were driving through Dunwoody, he saw a 68 foot tall temple, you would probably still be impressed, even though somebody just built it. So I think it's still impressive even today. Yes. So the temple is fairly impressive, but inside we're talking about the statue. Mainly the Greek artist Fidius was commissioned. And I imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for these jobs. Yeah. Because there's only a few of them who are capable of doing this at the time. Yeah. I mean, there are only a few people in the world that could do this now on something of this scale. Sure. So they said, hey, Zeus is the man. We want a statue of Zeus. And he said, yeah, I can knock that out. It's 450 BC. It shouldn't take me too long. Eight years later, he was finished. Right. And he used some really weird materials. So the temple itself, it was like a standard temple, 68ft tall. Like, all of them were a bunch of columns, that kind of thing. But the statue inside is apparently what was the big draw. And one of the reasons why it was something to see was because Fidius used ivory and gold rather than marble, which was pretty much what you used to make a statue back at that time. And I think one of the reasons why he used not ebony, but ivory and gold was right. But the reason why they thought that was because he was building a statue to Zeus. Right. So it needed to be special. This is like the king of the gods. Yeah. And ivory was definitely something that people would travel to see. A statue made of ivory. Zeus. So basically, Zeus is sitting down in this statue and he's sitting just straight up. He's not like, you know how the Lincoln and his memorial is kind of chilling in his seat? Zeus is not chilling. He's sitting up, ready for action. What'd you say? Kind of the statue itself was about 50ft high, which is super impressive. Like, when you see a rendering of what someone looks like standing at the base of this thing, it's really pretty striking. And one of the things they said about it was that if he stood up, his head would have burst through the roof of the temple, which was probably pretty cool to see too, if he was sitting down at 50ft. Totally. Would have. Right. He would have just been like Zeusmash. So he's holding in one hand a statue of Nike. So it's a statue holding a statue. And Nike is a wing goddess of victory. Right. Yeah. So it's kind of like his version of Tinker belt hanging out in his hand. And on the other hand, he's holding a scepter, which is pretty appropriate for the king of the gods. Sure. And again, he's seated on the throne. And yet, if you look at artists rendering of them, we should say, here most of this stuff, by the time these lists were written, were already aged, and then they crumbled over time. So we actually don't know exactly what they looked like, some people saw them firsthand, but a lot of this information comes from secondhand sources or even further down the chain than that. So we're not exactly certain of what they looked like. But for most of these, because they were so widely regarded as seven wonders of the ancient world, that you have to see that enough people wrote about them, talked about them, that if you really spent some time, you could put these sources together and come up with probably an accurate description of what it looked like. Yeah, for sure. The remarkable thing about this one is apparently was the expression on Zeus face. Not only is he sitting straight up ready for action, he just had this look on his face. It was kind of intimidating. I guess you could say you've disappointed me and your mother. And the legend has it, and I don't buy this at all, but FDI has said that once I'm finished with this thing, he asked for Zeus's blessing on the sculpture and a bolt of lightning struck the temple at that very moment. Right. I don't believe it. No. As a matter of fact, if you do believe that right in so we can tell you that you're wrong. There were a couple of issues with this statue. Number one, it was built a couple hundred years, few hundred years before Christianity began and then started to spread in the area. Once that happened, the worshippers of Zeus, who still remained, said, we need to get this out of here. These Christians, they don't play around, they're going to get rid of this thing. Right. And they moved the statue to Constantinople and it stayed there safe for a while, actually, apparently housed in a palace. But one of the things about the statue was it was made of gold and ivory, but those things were overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture, which kind of like pretty slack fitted. Maybe you should have stuck with the marble. Maybe, but the palace and Constantinople caught fire. Yeah, that's a problem because marble doesn't burn. No, it doesn't. Yeah. So it would have survived but he chipped out, let's be honest. Yeah, he phoned this one in. Yeah. And they were right to have moved that thing because the Christians did come in and take care of business, shut down that temple in 391 Ad. But by that time the statue was gone at least, but yeah, burned in a fire. So earthquakes and fires are taking out all of the wonders. Earthquakes, fires and Christians. Yeah, the great levelers. Pretty much. So back in, I think, this guy, and again, this stuff just sat in the realm of legend for a long time. Although I think the ruins of the temple itself are still around, aren't they? That I'm not sure. I think they might be. Like over the last two days I've seen so many pictures. I have two of ancient temple ruins that I'm like, wait, which one is that? Mush. Right. I think this 1 may still be around in Olympia, the ruins of the temple, you can still make out a couple of steps leading up to it, that kind of thing. And there's, like, the posts of a couple of pillars or whatever, but they found in the workshop that Fidius used beside the temple, and apparently we're able to recreate using the molds that they found, probably what the statue looked like, which is pretty impressive, just working from old molds. Yeah. Not only that, but these are on coins, right? Oh, yeah, that's right. That's the other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins. So this isn't one where you really had to guess so much what it looked like, because on those coins, there's a lot of detail about what it looked like. And because coins, they originated there, just where they ended up eventually would give a little indication on how far people had traveled to come see this thing when they carried those coins back. Yeah. It made me wonder, like, were those coins currency, or were they, like souvenirs, like, if you go to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center or something like that and get a coin made? Yeah, I didn't think about that. I wonder because this was an age where there were tourists and they were already selling the replicas of the Temple of Artemis as tourist momentum. I wonder if these coins were that, too. Yeah. Pretty neat to think about, ancient tourists. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, I'm going to contemplate that, and we'll be back right after this. Okay, Chuck, here's my second favorite. Let's hear it. This isn't your favorite, huh? Are you sure you have a favorite? I do. We're not there yet. Okay. All right. Well, this is my second favorite, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Okay. You don't like this one? It was all right. Mausoleums. I don't know. You see one, you seen them all. Well, this is the original one. Like, the word mausoleum came from this structure. Yes. That only goes so far with me. Oh, I love that. The original thing? Yeah. I thought you were, like, an etymology kind of guy. Oh, it can be, but it's not with mausoleum. Yeah. I don't know. There's something about mausoleums that bug me because there's dead people interred inside or interior. There's just a lot of hubbub for a dead body. I see. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I don't want to knock it, though. Well, okay, we'll just stop right here, then. If you're King Mazalous, you deserve to have this named after you. I would say that especially if you're married to your sister and she's madly in love with you and you've just died. Yeah, that was a little weird. He was the Persian king of Taria, and he was indeed married to his sister Artemisia. Yeah. And she really was in love with her brother and husband. And from what I understand, he seemed like a pretty successful ruler. They had the mausoleum under construction while he was still alive, and he died before it was finished, obviously. But his sister sister wife, Artemisia, was so broken up by it, she said, all right, stop what you're doing. This is not good enough. This has to be the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made to their husband brother. I've got to get in touch with all of the greatest sculptors of the realm, and she did. She got in touch with at least five of the greatest sculptors alive at the time. And they were headed by a guy named Pythias, who not only was one of the sculptors, he was the overseeing architect of the entire project. Yeah. So, like, he architected the whole thing. And then she got one sculptor per side to embellish the outside. Scopus, Briaxis, Leo, Charles and Timothy. That one's easy. That one is easy. And this one has often been because she had all these different people working on it. And not only that, but I think for years afterwards, it became a place where artists could exhibit and showcase their work. So in the end, this thing ended up being, I think, not as coherent as what you would think something might be when you just hire one person to work on it for this episode. And the last one, I went to the site Unuseum. Have you ever heard of it? Yeah, I think so. They were very helpful in researching this. And one of the things, the way they put it was that during construction, artemisia died before it was completed. And the five sculptors who were running the show looked at each other and they're like, let's keep going. We could stop here and leave it unfinished. But it became that, though. Well, no, not true ones. It became a temple, a monument, not just to Mausoleus and Artemisia, who were entombed inside, but it became a monument to art as well. We can do whatever we want now, guys. Right. And they did so they went ahead and they completed it. And it was a pretty impressive structure. Yeah. The structure itself was about 140ft tall. Is that right? Yes, I believe so. That's a relief. The base was about 100ft, 24 steps tall. Yeah. And then on either side of the steps, flanking the steps were crouched lions, which is pretty cool. It's always cool. Around the outside of the second tier, where you would walk into on all four corners, there were soldiers mounted on horseback, sculptures of them protecting the place. Yeah. What else? Planty the Elder said, this thing is 440ft, and the perimeter of this thing is 440ft. So it was large, 36 columns. It was a big structure. Very impressive. I didn't get from the pictures that I saw of renderings. It didn't look too busy to me. No, I'm not sure. The only place I saw that kind of shade being thrown at. It was in this house. Stuff works article. Yeah. I know that there were different people working on it, but it didn't look like I expected when I saw it to look like a big mess, and it did not look like a big mess. Now it looks pretty neat and tidy, right? Yeah. So one of the things that I love about this thing so, again, Artemisia and Mausoleus are entombed inside this thing, but it's also, like, just a place you would go take a date or something on a Sunday afternoon in the city of Helicarnassus. Right. One of the cool things about this is that this structure stood for hundreds and hundreds of years after the city of Helicarnessus fell to ruin around it. Yeah. That is so cool. Just imagining this abandoned, ruined town, and in the middle of it is this 140 foot tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum, with all these ornate sculptures around it. It's just almost completely out of context with the surroundings now that the town is falling to ruin. Yeah. That's pretty cool, for sure. But, like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take care of business in the shake this thing down. And again, like a lot of these other stories, in 1494, they use the Knights of St John of Malta said, hey, let's take all this scrap and use it for our own castle. Yeah. As Helicarnassus fell to ruin, another city nearby grew up called Bodrum, and the ruins of Helicon assist. You would go to Bodrum today to view the ruins of helicopter the mausoleum, I should say. But the big draw, apparently, is the Knights of St. John's castle. And to build that castle, some of the scraps that they used were from the mausoleum. So you can still see original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated into the structure of the castle that you would view. Yeah. Which is cool. So it's still around in some way, shape or form. Totally. That's very cool. But that earthquake that got it in the 1400s, it actually had a weird way of preserving some of it, right? Oh, yeah. So there are three big things that keep coming up. Right. There is earthquakes that keep happening. There's people using scraps to build other cities nearby. And then there's the British Museum. Those three things figure into the seven wonders of the ancient world, big time. Because if there's a piece of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, somewhere in the world outside of its original location, it's probably in the British Museum. Yeah. And that's the case with a few things from the mausoleum at Helicarnassus. They think that what happened was the earthquake toppled the sculpture of Mausolis and Artemisia riding a cherry. It pulled by four horses. It was very famous. That was on the top of the mausoleum that it fell and was covered by rubble so that it was protected until it was finally excavated in the 19th century when they found huge old chariot wheel. And then they think the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausoleus, and now they're all in the British Museum, but they think the earthquake had a weird way of protecting it from being looted and reused by the Knights of St. John later on. Amazing. I'm telling you. That's why it's my second favorite. Well, we're coming upon my favorite. I wondered if this was it the Colossus of Rhodes. It's a good way to say it, sir. Yeah, I like this one. This was ancient Greece, and this one was the granddaddy of them all, statue wise. This one was even bigger than the statue of Zeus at Olympia, third century. And Rhodes was an island, still is an island. And Macedonians came knocking on the door and they were angry, and they wanted the help of the people of Rhodes because Ptolemy one that is conquering. And they said, we need your help here. And the people of Rhodes said, hey, we don't want to get involved in all that. We kind of like it here on the island, living our peaceful lifestyle here. Well, plus, if there was anybody they were allied with, it was tolerance. Yes. But they wanted to stay out of any wars. They just weren't into it. Right. So they rebuff the Macedonians and they left. But they left behind a bunch of supplies and equipment. I'm not sure why they did that, actually. So this article is so bizarre, man. The Macedonians besieged roads for over a year, and they had these huge war machines that were made of bronze and wood and metal, and they would pull these huge machines up to the city walls, and they had catapults on top, and they were trying to crush the city for a year. And when the Rhodeyans finally overcame the Macedonians, they were like, well, we're just leaving the stuff behind, it's too big to move. It didn't work anyway, so we'll leave it. Yeah, that's why they left it. This article puts it in a really weird way. Yeah, I agree. They ended up using selling away that stuff right. To make the money to build, in part, the statue. Yeah. And they reused some of it directly for the statue. Right. Like that huge thing that they used to besiege the city they pulled up to the walls. They actually use that as scaffolding to build the statue with. Heck, yeah. It's making plowshares out of, I don't know, guns. So they use the sculptor Charles of Lindos, and he said, I got this one under control. And he has all these different materials, iron, bronze, stone, and this one I'll have wrapped up in about twelve years. And they said, that's about right. Yeah, that's not bad for what they did here. Yeah. I mean, this thing was 110ft tall. Yeah. It had a skeleton of iron and inside the skeleton for structure, it had huge stone columns running through it. And yeah, it was like the actual statue itself was about as big as the Statue of Liberty as today, and followed a pretty similar structure, but like a thousand or so years before. A couple of thousand years before, yeah. People think from written accounts that it was holding a torch like Lady Liberty does, and that the face was modeled after Alexander the Great, some say. And here's where it gets interesting to me is if you look up pictures of this thing, you will likely see it standing a straddle the entrance to the harbor. Right. So literally standing there, like, kind of with his leg spread, and you would have to sail a ship between his legs to get into the harbor. You shouldn't look up. Yeah. Don't look up because the detail is really amazing. Very amazing. At 110ft high, you know what you're going to be staring at. So there are accounts, and there are plenty of illustrations and other things that support this. And it looks trust me, if you look it up, it looks very cool. They were into making things this tall just because it was so mind blowing, but also they were thanking their patron god Helios for spreading them from having to go to war, which is pretty cool. That's one of the reasons I like this one is they were saying, like, you know what? We stayed out of war. We managed to remain at peace. We're going to build a monument to our god who we assume helped us out. Yeah. But when they did these things, like, with most of these, I loved that they were just like 20 foot high statue would be great. That's impressive. They would try and build things as large as humanly, literally possible, engineering wise at the time. I see your point. Yeah. It is pretty neat. So when you look at pictures of the straddling the harbor, it's just like it's enormous. It's huge. Unfortunately, that's probably not how he stood. Right. That's the downer here is that they didn't really have the materials or the knowledge or the skill to do something like that. The reason the statues back then were basically straight up and down is because you needed those legs to support the rest of the statue. Yeah. And they were atop a pedestal that could hold the weight of the statue above it. Yeah. If each foot was on either side of the harbor, that's usually not the strongest, solid ground you can find. No way. So they wouldn't have had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it. So it would have just sunk or fallen right over. Yeah. And plus, the other thing, too, Chuck, was that it would have closed the harbor down, and they relied on the harbor for their economy. Yeah. So it's probably unlikely that it looked as cool as it looks in pictures. And what happened to this 153 years later? Yes. Earthquake. Yeah. 53 years. That is so quick. Yes. It didn't last long at all. No. So the thing fell, and they think that it probably was located closer to the center of town, somewhere inland, but that when it fell. It crushed a bunch of people's, houses and businesses, and some of it probably fell into the harbor itself. That's right. And this one was notable because I think because it was so young when it fell, it still it's not like they're like, let's get rid of this thing. They let it lay there as a tourist attraction in its prone state for many years, and people would come far and wide to go visit the fallen statue. Yeah. For almost 10 years. It's crazy. Yeah. It still stayed a tourist attraction. Apparently the cool thing to do is to try to put your arms around the thumb. Yeah. The thumb was bigger than most statues. Right. People couldn't get their arms they couldn't touch their hands around the thumb. Amazing. And apparently also the arms fell off pretty they may have even fallen off first during the earthquake. But did you say it broke off at about the knees, just below the knees? No. So those probably stayed for a while, like, from the knee down. Yeah, I'm sure. Which looks a little weird. Like that picture of the person who suffered spontaneous combustion. All that was left with their one leg. I bet it looked kind of like that. But the stuff that was on the ground, like you could see into the armholes, and apparently even that was just breathtaking cavern. It was just such a massive structure. They're like, have you seen in those armholes? Yes, I have. I've seen all the armholes all over the world. I'm the best tourist ever. Have you tried to hug that thumb? I have a subscription to Monocle magazine. I'm just as cool as they come. The final nugget on this one that I thought was pretty fun was 653. These invading Arabs sold, like all the rest of the stories, sold the scrap metal. They sold it to a Jewish merchant who apparently used 900 camels to take this stuff away. Good Lord. So how about that? So 900 camels, or, like, just a few camels who had to make 900 trips total. I don't know. It said 900 camels. Plus, if this is a Jewish merchant buying the scrap metal of colossus of roads, he probably owned 900 camels. Got you. And think of all the poop that generated around there. Oh, man. It's a lot of camel poop. All right, well, let's take one more break. We'll come back and we'll finish up with the final wonder of the ancient worlds right after this. All right, Chuck, where at the last one. This one's pretty neat, too. I don't think we ever said when the colossus of roads was built, did we? Oh, jeez. Did we. Not. So it would have been in the fourth century. Now, the fourth century BCE is when it was built. We've been going chronologically through all of these, and this has been the youngest of the ancient wonders. Yeah. The little baby of the group, the Lighthouse of Alexandria. And, you know, I've got a lighthouse thing. Sure. And this one's a pretty great one. This was notable as one of the wonders of the ancient world because it was the only one that actually had a practical use, and it wasn't just some monument or temple. Right. It served a purpose. Who was it that said, nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful? Or was it just a movie line that I remember? I think that was John Cusack. Okay. But nothing useless can ever be beautiful? Yeah. Man, I wish I could remember what that's from, because I'm sure we're going to get a lot of email about it, but they said in the movie, they say somebody said, nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful. I'll buy that. Yeah, it's an opinion. It's a well put opinion, which is how it ends up in a movie. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So this one did have utility, and it was kind of beautiful, too, from the artist renderings I've seen. I liked it. Yeah. Pretty sweet lighthouse. So the lighthouse at Alexandria, supposedly it's got a pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself had a dream, and in the dream they said, alexander, you need to go find the island of Pharaohs. And he said, Why? They said, It doesn't matter, just do what we say. And he woke up in a cold sweat, and he's, like, trembling, lit a cigarette, and he said, I got to find Pharaohs. And that's how it started. Yeah. Pretty much located off the coast of ancient Egypt. He said, you know what, Tolami is such a cool name. I'm going to choose you as one of my generals to go and have it and settle this place, take care of it for me. And told him, he said, I'm all over it, but I I you know what Pharaohs needs, though? It needs, like, an identifier, something that you can see from a long way, something symbolic, something that literally helps you identify it because it's tough navigating around the shores. And Alexander said, well, I don't know if it was Alexander. In my mind it was. He said, how about a lighthouse? Well, supposedly it was either Ptolemy or the Mausean, which is the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like a brain trust, a think tank, early prototype of the university where the library Alexandria was housed. Either Ptolemy came up with it or the Mauzian came up with it. That's right. And it's a great idea, put a lighthouse, because it serves a function, and it can be tall and grand, and the island will then be known for this. Right. And it most certainly was. I have to say, one of the things that I love about these is how some of them are tied together. Like, this is the same Psalmy that the Macedonians were fighting and tried to bring roads into roads had been conquered by King Mosulus and then was later reconquered by Artemisia. Like, all of these things kind of fit together. And when you start to learn about one, you learn about the story of the people who built them and how they relate to the stories of people who built other amazing wonders of the ancient world. Such a cool history lesson. Have you seen the new Noah Bombach movie on Netflix? No. Yes. It's called the Meyerwood Stories. No, I haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's Adam Sandler. The guy's not in the movie, but Adam Sandler's neighbor, he references a lot. His name is Tolamie. Yeah. So he just keeps saying, well, you know, Tolami says this, and that's all about the movie. It's pretty funny. And a reminder that Adam Sandler should only play these roles. Yeah, he definitely will. That or the original Billy Madison Happy Gilmore role. He was pretty good at that, too. Man, he's so good in these kinds of movies. I know. Punch Drunk Love. Yes. So good. And this character is sort of like a grown up version of that Punch Drunk Love character a little bit to me. Good movie. Check it out. Yeah, thanks. So it told me which has got a silent P, by the way. Yeah, it's a cool name, which is why it's such a great name. It's Potolomy. So Potolomy is on the island. They get this thing built around 285 BC. They begin construction. There's a dude named So strates of Nedos. Sure. And they don't know what part he played other than the fact that it was important. He could have been the architect, could have been the financier. Could have been both. Yeah, absolutely could have been both. But he was definitely important to that project. So supposedly, this project, they actually have a monetary value for how much it costs. They said it costs 800 talent, which is a word for bars of silver. And apparently that's about $3 million today, which is not bad for this lighthouse. 3 million? Oh, yeah. Not bad at all. You couldn't build half a lighthouse today for that. No, not one like this. No. So apparently it was about 450ft tall. And one of the reasons they built this, too, is not just to put Pharaohs on the map or Alexandria on the map. Alexandria was already, like, a pretty important city, or it was becoming an important city, port city. But having a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the economy boom. And actually, after the lighthouse came into operation, the economy did boom as a result of that. Right? Yes. And 450ft is really tall. Yeah. They said that you could see this thing's light from 100 miles away. Yeah, I saw the ones that said it was more like 30 or 40 still, but yeah, that's a pretty high functioning lighthouse 100 miles away is more believable than the temple of Zeus being struck by bolts of lightning after it was completed. Agreed. So you could see this thing 30 miles away. We'll even go with 20 miles away. Okay, I'm not even going above that. And the reason why you could see that is because atop this 450 foot structure, there was a polished disk of some sort. They think it was probably bronze. And during the day, they moved it so it would reflect the light of the sun so you could see it then. And then at night, they had a fire going all the time. And there were structures within this amazingly tall structure that were basically what you would call dumb waiters. Or that type of elevator on pulleys where you could raise and lower to bring, like, firewood or dried animal dung up to it. Yeah. And I don't think we said that. One of the things that makes this so cool to me is it's not just a big cylindrical lighthouse like most of them you see it is three different levels of three different shapes. You've got your huge rectangular base, then you have the second level, which is octagonal, and then that third is cylindrical. So it's just really cool looking. And apparently you could even up to that first level, which had to be over 100ft high in itself, you could bring carts and workhorses and stuff all the way up to that level because they had a bunch of storage up there. Right, this is pretty cool. And then dumb waiters to take stuff to the highest hours. Right. They had, like, those ramps and kind of circular or spiral staircases going around it to help to maximize the space that you use to get things up. Yeah, it was very clever structure, for sure. Yeah, it's very cool. There are some cool renderings of this online as well. So this thing was a solid piece of work. Apparently, it survived a tsunami in 365 Ce. Oh, wow. But what got it? Hook. Earthquake. Earthquake, yeah. It was after dozens of earthquakes. Yeah. So it was built around 280 BCE. It stood until 1300. Right. Amazing. And finally some earthquakes took it down. And the other thing that happened, they reused some of it as a fort, which is still around today. But the cool thing about it is, in 1094, there was an underwater expedition around Pharaohs, and they found what they're almost positive are original blocks from the lighthouse itself. Original blocks, and I think statues, too. Oh, wow. Yeah. Sculptures, I should say. Yeah, I did look at some of the underwater pictures. Is pretty cool. Oh, yeah. It's just as cool as it gets. Man. Anything that's underwater now, that used to be and was meant to be above water. So cool. So creepy. I was reading this really interesting article about the Andrea Doria, the luxury liner from Italy. I think it's sunk in the 50s or early 60s, but it's like this incredible wreck site that people dive, and they call it like the underwater Everest. Because if you're an underwater wreck diver, that's like, it doesn't get any better than that, but it's also extremely dangerous. I read this really well written article about it. I can't remember who wrote it, but just start reading Andrea Doria articles, everybody, and you'll find the one eventually. Well, we'll do a podcast on it. How about that? Okay, let's do it. That's it. We did the seven wonders of the ancient world. Finally, huh? That's the last one. That's it, everybody. That's the big one. That's a Chevy Chase quote. Is it? Yeah, from Christmas vacation when he reveals the pool. Oh, right. It's so awkward. The way he says it is. Perfect. That's it. That's the big one. Well, at any rate, Christmas is coming on, Chuck, but this is the last episode that we're going to release this year, so I think we should wish everybody a happy new year. Yeah. Happy New Year, everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this 2017, and we'll see you in 2018. On a personal note, happy birthday to my sweet wife. Yummy. And we'll see you guys next year, right? I sure hope so. In the meantime, it's time for listener mail. That's right. We're going to finish out this two parter with a single listener mail about bath salts. Appropriately. Why not? Yeah. Hey, guys. I'm not wanting to take hard drugs often, but my friend and I were going to an EDM festival and decided to take what we believed was Molly. The drugs were crystalline and we took them orally. Yuck. The experience did not go as planned. A few days later, we used a drug testing kit on the remaining crystals and found out dun dun dun. Bath salts. Isn't that scary? I'll take that. It looks like a drug. Sure. It's crystalline. Yeah, sure. Unlike any other party drug that might make you feel ready to dance, this stuff gave my friend and I the sensation that her feet were stuck to the ground by a magnetic force, and lifting them was almost impossible. This made dancing very difficult, as all we could do was awkwardly move around with the top half of our bodies. Additionally, we've felt super paranoid that everyone around us is watching us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts to dance. By the way, anonymous, no one noticed you. I can go ahead and tell you that right now. All right. It was impossible to enjoy the music with my mind racing these unpleasant thoughts, and the feeling lasted for the full day. After the disappointing day, we headed back to the apartment, ready to get some rest. Tackled the next day drug free. But no, the bass salts would not let us sleep. Tries we might all night long we laid there wide awake. Part of the song turned down for what by DJ Snake laid over and over in my mind for 8 hours straight. This sounds really bad. It does. My eyes were closed and it felt as though I was watching a show of squiggly, neon colored shapes pulsating in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind. Somehow we managed to get to the festival the next day, but we felt like zombies. And we were not even at the cannibalism stage yet. I'm not sure what that even means. Well, the whole face eating bath salt's legend oh, got you. She's like, we weren't even there yet. Still was terrible. She didn't even get the pleasure of eating someone's face right. So just from experience, I was second with Josh, and Chuck said and urged, steer clear. That is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous. Appreciate that. The more you know or no, that's one to grow on. So that's one to grow on. If you want to send us one to grow on, hit us up. I'm at Joshua Clark on Twitter. I also have a website called Ruceclark.com. There's an official Twitter s YSK podcast. There's an official SYSK Facebook page. There's a Chuck Facebook page. It's Facebook.com Charleswchbryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetopworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouhthwe.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com." | |
Is tone deafness hereditary? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-tone-deafness-hereditary | If you're tone deaf, you can't hear the difference between musical pitches and notes. And it's probably a hereditary trait, as Josh and Chuck explain in this pitch-perfect episode on tone deafness. | If you're tone deaf, you can't hear the difference between musical pitches and notes. And it's probably a hereditary trait, as Josh and Chuck explain in this pitch-perfect episode on tone deafness. | Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:30:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=16, tm_min=30, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=273, tm_isdst=0) | 20234889 | 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. This is Josh Park. With me is Charles W, chuck Bryant. Huh? Huh? You are not a singer, are you? No, I'm not. I'm not. But I can tell you I'm not tone deaf. Right. Chuck's little upset with me right now. We're going to mend fences during this podcast, aren't we? We'll see. Come sit on this chair. No, that's Frank. Come sit here. Not sit on Frank. No matter what we do, our chair got his first official email. I saw that. What was the question? I think it was like, Frank, who's been sitting on you lately, and who would you like to sit on you in the future or something like that? Who do you think? I think probably the first person to sit on Frank, as far as we're concerned, will be Joe Randazzo, maybe. Right. Some of the other podcasters might sit there. No, I'm saying as far as we're concerned. Yeah. There are other podcasters. Let's do this thing. Okay, Chuck, I have something of a lead in. Are you ready? Yes. Have you ever heard of my Way killings? No. So there's a subcategory of crime, of violent crime in the Philippines called My Way Killings. It's what the media calls it. Frank Sinatra. Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's a huge karaoke society. Asia in general is pretty into karaoke. The Philippines are super into karaoke, but they also have something of a violent society. Is it people who botch that song get killed? Yeah. Or people who are jeered at for singing that song, kill in return. Wow. It's not just the Philippines, but at least a half a dozen people have been documented as having been murdered because of that song in the last ten years. Right. Just in the Philippines. Other songs have been known to kind of erupt violence. Like, there was a guy who lived in Thailand who killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver's Country Roads, Take Me Home. Apparently not to his liking. Wow. So it's not just my way, but with my way in the Philippines. This has the highest frequency of murder or violence attendant to it. Right. I would say it's a very good year. Maybe that would get me through. Well, as a result, a lot of people do avoid My Way, but isn't that weird? Yeah. Okay, so most of the reported My Way killings have been due to tone deafness. Right. Actual tone deafness. Or they just say people who can't sing. It could go either way. This is weird in and of itself. I don't know that anybody's done that much investigation. Right. But that is my intro. Chuck, let's talk about toe and deafness, which is also called amusia. And I got to tell you, the people in the Philippines don't find tone deafness AMI jing thank you, Chris. Paulette. If you're talking actual tone deafness, then you're only talking about one in 20 people are actually a music, so it's not very many. No. 5%. 5%. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with deafness. It has nothing to do with how your ears work. But this is something I didn't realize if you're tone deaf, I just thought that mean you can't sing in tune in tone, but apparently you can't hear it either. Right. So that was surprising to me as well. People who are tone deaf are actually faithfully reproducing or recreating what they're hearing, which makes me really sad because that means music sounds awful to these poor people. Yeah. Apparently one person described it as the sound of pots and pans clanging awful, which is not good. Anybody who has a two year old knows a two year old and unsecured cabinets. Yes. Pitch, though, is what we're talking about. Right. That's what they mean when they're talking about tone. Well, that's what underlies it. Yeah. Right. So pitch is the frequency of sound. Right. You have high or low. Yeah. And that higher. Low means high frequency or low frequency. So a high note is actually just a high frequency note. Low note is a low frequency note. And as Tom Sheath, BFF puts it, tom wrote this. Yeah. You need to reprimand him because he said that piano was plucked. It's a hammer struck. Yeah. Harps accords are plucked. So are harps. So you need to tell Tom daniel, I got this kind of wrong. Give him a break. He said that a violin has a violin note has a frequency of 440 wavelengths, vibrations per second. That wavelength. He also said pianos are plucked. But why he said that, erroneously, was he was just pointing out that the length of the string of a string instrument will determine how high or low the pitch is. Right. And pitch is what we talk about. We talk about tone deafness. And then perfect pitch is on the other end of that scale. And only about one in 10,000 people have perfect pitch. Yeah. Chuck, I have a question for you. What do Jimi Hendrix, Ingwei Malmstein, Bing Crosby and Yanni have in common? Mustaches. No. No bing Crosby of a mustache. Nobody smoked a pipe. See, Ingbay and Jimmy played Stratocasters. I don't think Bing cross I think I'm giving too much thought to this. They were from Seattle. No, perfect pitch. They all had perfect pitch. Really? Which is also called absolute pitch. Yeah. Perfect pitch is when you can pick out a note and name that note by itself, solo, without any other relative notes around it, and you can duplicate that. So if I said, Josh, sing an Aflat, you would be able to sing an Aflat perfectly. That's way too high. So that's perfect pitch. But relative pitch is what many more people have hold on. Means you can pick out a note relative to other notes. Right. So somebody can play something and then they'll play something else. And you might not be able to say, well, that's an A and that's an E flat or something, but you can say, well, that's high and that's low. Right? Exactly. Did you take that tone deafness test? I did. I took another one. I didn't click the link that you sent me. What percentage did you score? Well, let's pass this out. If you want to test your own tonequality, www.delosis.com. Delosislisteninghome. HTML and you can take 60 questions. It takes like 15 to 20 minutes. I did one in six minutes. Yeah, it's not as thorough. It is, too. And there's two parts to this one, and there's 30 pieces to each part. So you basically listen to a sound or a series of notes, and then it's followed directly by either the exact same thing or something slightly different, and you click same or different at the end, you get your results. And I got a 27 out of 30 on both sides. Wow. So that's pretty good. I got a 77.8%. Yeah. What's 27.30 percentage wise? Jerry like she's sitting around with the Avocado. Are you pulling out your calculator? I am, but keep talking. All right. While you're doing that, I'll tell everybody the site that I took it on. It was httpjakemandel.com it's Jakemandell.com Tondef one word, 90%. 90%. I'm bad. That's really good. Actually. Mine was average, and that actually makes sense with me because I sing in my band and I'm an okay singer, but I'm clearly not, like, a great singer, else I wouldn't be doing this job, you know, yanni and singing in a band in my basement. I'd be singing in a band for real. So that makes sense. 10% of the time, I probably sound like crap. See, now that's not necessarily true, Chuck, because you should know by now it's all about who you know, right? Yeah, but I was you could be squandering your talents right now just because you don't know the right record producer. Yeah, but if you've got the goods I always use Chris Cornell as an example. Like the first time that dude sang in the shower when he was 16, he was probably like, okay, I guess this is what I'm supposed to do with my life. Yeah. When he shattered the windows of his shower door, and then he solemnly washed the soap out from under his arms, got out of the shower a new person, and said, I'm going to form Sound Garden. And that was that. He should have never stopped. I think you're getting back together. Actually, they should. That'd be awesome. All right, so Chuck pitch actually is not constant. Did you know that? I didn't know that until this article about the elevation. That really surprised me. Yeah. Basically, when you pluck a piano string strike, the vibration that it creates at sea level is different from the vibration it's going to create at higher altitudes, I would imagine, because of the atmospheric pressure. Right. Yeah. Altitude affects everything. Well, it does baking, pianos, everything. Athleticism. Your ability to live. Yeah. By breathing and absorbing oxygen. So when that vibration is created, it transfers to the air and it goes and hits our ears, and then inside our ears, it goes right. And it goes to our brain and we process the sound. Tone deaf people hear you or I because we have relative pitch and we're not tone deaf. Right. And just about anybody else who's not tone deaf could say if a frequency is off by a few vibrations per second, even that slight bit, we would be like, that doesn't sound quite right. Especially if it were relative to a note. Like you played one note correctly and then another note, the same note, with a couple of vibrations off per second, you would definitely be able to hear the difference. Tone deaf people apparently can't do this. Right. Right. So it's kind of like colorblindness. It happens in degrees. So some people who are color blind and can tell red from yellow, they can't really tell black from dark blue. Sure. I think that is another aspect of tone deafness as well. Yeah. I'd be interested to take the one I took again, because the ones that I missed, there was somewhere I was like, oh man. They literally would have like twelve notes, and one might be like half a step down from the other. And those were really tricky. And I think those are probably the ones I missed because some sounded really off. Yeah, some were obviously off. So, Chuck, now that we know some stuff about tone deafness, what's the explanation? Well, Josh, there are a few potential explanations. We seem to think that it is hereditary. It does seem to have a genetic basis. Studies show that it is hereditary. And twins, identical twins, have scored similarly on pitch test, which also means it's probably hereditary. Right. And it likely has something to do with the brain and specifically the arcuate physiculus. Nice first try. That is pretty good, Chuck. They study that, and that's one of the nerve bundles that sends information, like so many nerve bundles. And they found that they think that one of the roles is to send signals concerning the perception of sound. And they studied tone deaf people and found that the fibers were in fact smaller in people that were tone deaf than non tone deaf. Right. Some of them didn't have them at all. Right. And that is the amount that was there is relative to the degree of tone deafness. Right? Yeah. So there was also a 2007 study, or the study published in a 2007 issue of Harvard Health Letter, which I get mailed to my house. I thought you wrote it in my sleep. Got you. This study showed that people who are tone deaf have less white matter connecting and remember, the white matter is the stuff that connects the gray matter, the nerve fibers. They have less white matter conducting the right frontal lobe, which is in part responsible for higher thinking, to the right temporal lobe, where basic sound processing first takes place. And they found that people who are toned deaf have less white matter. And among tone deaf people, the less white matter you had connecting these two regions, the more tone deaf you were. It's like the oh, the sorry. Arcuit facilities. Nice, Chuck. I think I pronounced it different earlier. So we'll just say merging of those two is the correct way. Right? So we would say that, yes. It appears to have a genetic basis. Actually, if you're in the San Francisco area and you like being a medical guinea pig, you should go ahead and look up the study that the University of California, San Francisco is launching right now into tone deafness in its genetic basis. What do you got to do? Do you know? I think you probably have to be a little tone deaf and then listen. Or you could be part of the control group, right? Yeah. And be a great singer. Yeah. They do say that. You cannot improve upon this. You can take music lessons, you can take singing lessons. It's not going to help you if you're tone deaf. No, you're born with it. And if you do find out your tone deaf, stay out of the Philippines. Yes, of course. This is of perception to tone. That doesn't necessarily mean like, you're a bad singer, although that would make you a bad singer. But you can also be a bad singer if you're not tone deaf like me. Well, you probably fall into one of these categories in a couple of neuroscientists. Did a study from the University of New York at Buffalo and Simon Fraser University, and they said there's likely four explanations. Poor music perception is one okay. Which would be tone deaf. The other might be poor control of your vocal system. Yeah. Thick tongue, perhaps. And another might be inability to imitate or mimic something. So you hear the sound and you hear it correctly and you know what it is, but you still can't make it right. And that was something that occurred to me while we were doing the research for this article, that it seems like there could be a basis for flawed memory storage. Recreating it. Oh, really? Yeah. He said the fourth reason is just bad memory. Between the time you hear it and when you sing it back, you actually forget what the notes were. Too much Scotch. And he likens it to like a baseball player. You can know how to hit a curveball and you can be a professional baseball player and know how to swing a bat, but it still doesn't mean you're going to hit the curveball. Nice. So you can hear the note. You might not be tone deaf you might think you can mimic it, but when it comes out of your mouth, it's not quite Frank Black after all. I saw Frank Black just this very week. Was it good? My friend said it was. They found it in. I disagree. Really? I could have definitely handled a lot more songs from Trompel's. They played pretty much all of Doolittle. Yeah, that was the tour, right? Playing Doolittle. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think that was the deal there, actually. But, yeah, it was cool. I liked it. These guys are old back in the day, so they might be jaded old people. We played like, Winter long and no, I mean as far as just phoning it in. Oh, got you. Are you saying the Pixies are old? No, my friends who said they phoned it in are dudes who saw them back in the got you. They might have been all, they phoned it in. I thought it was cool. Cool stage show, too. They were all dressed like stage hands. Really? Yeah. What's a stage hand dress like? Dark clothes. Really? And Joey's is bald as Frank Black, isn't it? Yeah, man. He still plays that gold top benny the Les Paul. I don't know. I can't even talk. Don't ask me if you want to know more about tone deafness and find out what the one article that Tom Sheep got something wrong in looks like type tonedeaf into the search BARHOW stuffworks.com. While we're at it, before we move on to list your mail, have you heard of Paul Beth? I think it's Dateh and DJ inko one. No, dude, it's this kid. He's like 15, looking perfect. He has absolute pitch, has violin, and he's just playing along with a guy who looks like his cousin who is a DJ. They're playing like Tribe called Quest and Far Side, and he's playing it on the violin. Awesome. Along with his DJ cousin, who is DJing. Really cool. We'll have to put that on the Facebook page when we release it. We will. Do we have to wait as long as we can do it now? We could do that. All right, well, how about listening to mail? Chuck, we are not doing listener mail because we have some important events coming up that we'd like to share and we would also like to build up our Facebook presence. Yes, we really would, because we've noticed that there are people that participate on our Facebook page without liking it, which I understand you might not want it in your news feed, but it helps us out when you like it. Why would you not want that in your news feed? Are you embarrassed that you listen to us? Who knows? Some people just don't like I liked a lot of things initially before all this stuff started happening, and now I get everything in my news feed, and so I've had to unlock some of it because I don't I love collectico. I just see what you mean, but I don't want to see what Calexico has to say every day. I thought you were saying, like yeah, that's what Twitter is for. I thought you were saying, like, people wouldn't want other people to see that they were fans of stuff you should know. Well, that might not want RBS coming up in their feed. Perhaps. I got you. But we don't post that much. No, we don't post that much. And when we do post, it's pretty worthwhile. We would ask you to hit the like button because that makes us look good. Our boss, when he sees a certain amount of fans, he doesn't, like, write us a check or anything. But yet it's a good thing for us. Yeah. So we'd appreciate if you liked our Facebook page. Let's see. So that's Facebook twitter. S-Y-S-K podcast. We occasionally say something worth Chuckling at. Yes, very often. And then let's do the Atlanta event a yes. We got a couple of things in mid October coming up. The first one is a non sanctioned event, but you can rub elbows with us if you want to come to the Drunken Unicorn on East Pots de Leon. October 12, Tuesday. Our buddies, the Henry Clay. People of La. Are playing a rock and roll show headlining gig. A concert. Concert. And you can come and it'll be a good time. It's a very small venue. Is Jerry going to be like, a big party? Jerry, are you coming? She said, yes, ma'am. Jerry's going to be dressed as Thomas Pinchon. Wow. You really liked that one, didn't you? Oh, that's good. Thank you. Anything else? Man, I feel like I should be like, goodnight, everybody. No. The following night, October 13, is the sanctioned trivia event, the allstar trivia at the Five Seasons Brewery Westside. Evening hours, probably around 6630. Just block out six to eleven. Yeah. And on our celebrity team, we have Joe Randazzo, editor of The Onion, dave Willis, the cocreator of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Squid Billy. I've got to say, I'm really looking forward to meeting Squid. Billies is so twisted and awesome. What I do sometimes the Squid Billy is just close my eyes and you just imagine it's just real rednecks. Then you open your eyes and they're squid. Even funnier. And then, of course, Mr. John Hodgman. Yes. I'm going to get him to sign my books that I've read of his. I'm going to get him to stay overnight at my house. Good luck with that. Yeah, I'm going to be like, sorry, the hotel we booked burned down mysteriously. John creepy. Yeah, that's it. Okay, so if you want to send us an email, what do we want to hear about Chuck? How about some karaoke stories? That's a good one. If you've ever been beaten up in the Philippines or you have a good karaoke story, we want to hear it. Greatest karaoke songs of all time. How about that? Yeah, we'll post that one on Facebook. Karaoke stories we want to hear via email. And you can type that up. Spanking on the bottom. Send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks. Check out our blog on the House of Works.com homepage. Brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | ||
How can hypermiling save you gas? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-can-hypermiling-save-you-gas | The EPA tests vehicles for maximum fuel efficiency, but those impressive estimates don't always pan out in real life. Hypermiling is one sure-fire way to improve your fuel efficiency. Find out how it works in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | The EPA tests vehicles for maximum fuel efficiency, but those impressive estimates don't always pan out in real life. Hypermiling is one sure-fire way to improve your fuel efficiency. Find out how it works in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:12:46 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=12, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=183, tm_isdst=0) | 22014489 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from howstuckworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Chuck Bryant. We are podcasting right in the midst of death season. Chuck. Wow. Yeah. Ed McMahon. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson. Billy Maze. Yeah. Some impressionist. I don't know. You're a comedian guy. Yes. People dropping like flies. Wow. Yeah. I feel lucky to be here. I do, too, actually. Chuck. I'm on vacation. I know you are. Chuck Bryant is such a world class employee that he actually came in while on vacation to podcasts. I'm fresh in from the airport from a wedding in Columbus, Ohio. How was it? My first Catholic wedding. Dude, those things are awesome. Plenty of wine. Yeah. The reception, sure, but no wine at the mass. You were looking around, there were flasks of wine and fuse. Yeah. Believe me, it was long. Pretty cool, though. I've never experienced that when everyone started reciting the things. Chanting. Is it called chanting? I call it chanting. It freaked me out at first. Yeah. Quite honestly, because I grew up Baptist and there's people who don't say anything out loud in Baptist churches, but it was interesting. Definitely a cool experience to go through. You only really need to do it once. I would agree. And I doubt if I go to a lot more weddings. When I was living in Toledo, I probably spent 50 to 70 hours a week in a Catholic wedding. Really? A series of Catholic weddings. Yeah. Columbus is pretty cool, though. Yeah. Ohio State, not bad. Go Buckeye. All right, are we done? Yes. Okay, what are we talking about today? We are talking about gas mileage. Oh, yes. And how it's calculated, right? Yes. Kick us off, Chuck. Something you folks might notice when you go to buy a car these days. They'll advertise certain gas mileage. And you may not get the gas mileage when you're driving the car that was on the sticker on the side of the car or on the TV commercial that was kicking us off. That's a very common thing, to not get the gas mileage that's stated. Well, why? Well, because let's get into this. All right, let's do it. Chuck, basically, as you stated, pretty much god, and everybody knows that whatever it says on the sticker on the car, whatever it's miles per gallon has been calculated at is vastly more than what you're actually going to get. Right. And it's not because the EPA isn't putting cars that it tests through rigorous experiences. Right. It's not because they don't care. No. As a matter of fact, they don't test almost any of the cars that come out. That's actually left to the auto manufacturers. Yes. I was kind of surprised. They submit their findings to the EPA for review. And then the EPA, I guess, randomly tests about 10% to 15% of the new models that are released. Yeah. I was disappointed. I would have thought the EPA would be a little more involved than that. You would think so, but no, not really. You're busy, though. Sure. Saving the planet. We're busy running around trying to figure out how to bring super fun sites back. Exactly. Brownfields. Right. So, Chuck, the other, I guess, big weirdness that has to do with EPA fuel efficiency calculations is that cars actually don't ever see the road. True. They're put on what are they called? It sounds kind of fantastic. It's called a dynamometer. Nice. Dynamo meter. Yes. Something like along those lines. Let's call it a fun machine. Yes. Actually, it's like a treadmill for a car, is what it is. Right. So the car is actually in a lab being tested. And it's kind of like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Exactly. Not in reverse. Right. And I guess they have the city they have a city test. Which is what? Well, both tests involve a professional driver. I wonder how they get paid. Yeah, that's a good question. Go into the EPA test, drive a car for a few minutes. I wonder what everybody gets paid. Do you? Oh, yeah, I'm one of those guys. So, yeah, professional driver gets in to simulate, depending on which test, city or highway, which driving conditions. So the city program, what they do is they get in, start the engine cold, and then they simulate stop and go traffic idling, that kind of thing. I think they say 11 miles is how far they drive. And they make 23 stops over the course of 31 minutes. Drive an average speed of 20 miles an hour and the top speed of 56 miles an hour. Yeah, it seems smart. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then the highway test, you start out with a warm engine and they drive 10 miles with an average speed of 48, top speed of 60 mph for about twelve and a half minutes. Right. So let me go ahead and say 60 top speed. Oh, same for me, pal. Not really out of hell. Yeah. I just drive as fast as I can. And if you are in front of me in the fast lane and you're not driving faster than me, I'm all upon you. You're like the Germans, pretty much. Or Winston Wolf. Yeah. Not quite as fast as that, but that's because you don't have a bulk up that high. Okay. So these two tests seem logical enough. Here's where things become really illogical and where the discrepancies come from. Right, right. The whole time the EPA is conducting these tests or the auto manufacturers conducting the test, there is a little sensor jammed into the tailpipe stuck in there. Right. Like when you go to do the emissions testing. Sure. And this thing is measuring how much carbon is present in the exhaust. Right. So instead of looking at the tank meter or whatever the gas gauge. The gas tank meter sure. What country am I from? The gas gauge. Yeah, that would be the easy way to do it and just divide. But, yeah, they say this is actually more accurate. It is more accurate. The thing is, do you drive around with the sensor jammed in your tailpipe? I do not, sir. No. Nor do I. Very clean person, and neither do most people. Right. Correct. So this is why, when you go buy a car, the miles per gallon calculated are vastly different. That's not the only problem. Right, right. Because it's in a lab, that automatically changes everything. Not only do we not drive around with sensors jammed up our tailpipes, we also don't drive in laboratories on Dynameters. Right. There are many differences between a dynamiter in a lab and on the road. We're going to lick that word before this podcast over. Weather. That's a big one. Wind resistance. Most laboratories are indoors. Right. Different. Having passengers in your car, having a roof rack with your stupid bike on the back. Yeah. Weight, aerodynamics. And that's really probably the biggest one, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, think about it. The car is not moving. It's just the wheels. Right. So there's no drag whatsoever. None. Like when I'm flying down 75 doing 90, it's hot out, I've got all four of my windows rolled down, and that just devastates fuel efficiency. Yeah, true. It completely changes the aerodynamic characteristics of the car, which Volvo is kind of boxy to begin with. Right. But, yeah, I've noticed my gas cages go over, like, 20 miles. I used to drive a Plymouth Valiant. Did you ever tell you about T? My car? T? That's great. Isn't it? The one you drove back from La. To La. I towed it to La. I wouldn't have made the drive. You bought it in La. No, I bought it here and towed it out there. I've never heard of this car, then. Well, it's a great car, but it was one of those old gas guzzlers. And this thing, literally, dude, if I was accelerating on the highway, if you looked hard enough, you could see the needle move. Wow. Yeah, it was bad. It was real bad. The other things, they don't account for. Josh, since we're talking about this is what they call jackrabbit starts or lead foot acceleration, because that will burn up your gas quicker. Oh, yeah. And that's realistic city driving. Oh, definitely. Most people don't just go they go right. He does do that. Who? Chris Cox, our coworker. Is he a slow, patient driver? Yeah. And I hope he listens to this, too. If you are listening, Chris, stay out of the fast lane. Another problem with this test, and I know it seems like we're saying that there's nothing but problems with this test, but that's because there isn't, is that it tends to dramatically favor hybrids. Right. Because I believe city driving is where the hybrid really gets the most. It's almost all electric, which produces zero emissions. Sure. And I guess they haven't adjusted the formula to account for that. So all of a sudden, some hybrid cars just getting these incredible miles per gallon ratings when they don't really right. There are some ways around this. Well, before we get to that, can I mention one more thing? These are brand spanking new cars that they're driving. Oh, yes. Not only that, they've been broken in properly. Oh, they have. There's actually a way that you're supposed to break in a car when you first buy one, and I think it does take place over the course of a couple of thousand miles. But you want to drive, I think, no more than 60, and then stop it. And it's staggered. There's this whole process to it. It could actually probably take up part of the podcast itself. Right. And I don't know enough about it to go into it because I've never had a new car. No one does that. But that's the way you're supposed to do it. So apparently the EPA does it. So these are brand new cars that have been properly broken in, and so they get maximum fuel efficiency. Right. And I think the point, I guess my original point was if you I don't remember, you don't maintain your car, and a lot of people don't maintain their car like you probably should. You're going to get worse gas mileage. Right. Plus, they don't have any of the electrical system running, no AC. Those tires are perfectly inflated. Basically, this is like what the EPA thinks everybody should be driving, and absolutely no one does. Well, they said they were going to and we should follow up on this. They said they were going to start doing more realistic tests in the future. And they said that in the future? Yes. I'm not sure if that's in effect yet, but they did say they were going to try and start taking some of these more things into account. It's about time. It is. Agreed. And just look at the gas gauge like everybody else. No one cares how much carbon is present in the exhaust. Save that for the emissions inspection. Yeah. So, Chuck, as I was saying yes? Cheating the EPA. Yeah. There's some ways to beat the EPA at their own game. Right? Well, beat your car at its own game or the oil companies. Are you talking about hypermiling? I am, Chuck. You know what that is? Hypermiling? Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, do you know who coined it? Some dude in Chicago. What's his name? Wayne Gertis. Yes. The king of hypermiling. Yeah. I'm not sure if he won the title or not, but I think he's the world's most fuel efficient driver. I think so, too. Yeah. And he is dedicated to it. I will never hyper mile, ever. It just takes too much patience. And you're slow. You're the slowest driver on the road when you're hyper mile, right? You hyper drive. Thanks. That's different, but it definitely improves your fuel efficiency. For sure. Yeah, I got a stat. Let's hear it. Edmunds, the Car magazine. Edmunds, they did an experiment and they found that hyper mileage, you can get an extra 35% more per gallon. And that was in a Land Rover. Yeah, which puzzles. And apparently if you hyper mile and like a Toyota Prius, you can bump it up to like 80 to 100 miles a gallon, they say. Yeah, I saw a picture. There was a Mother Jones article on Wayne Gertz, and they had two shots of these two different dashboards went from a Prius and I think one from an inside or something like that. And these things were clocking, like, 150 miles per gallon. Man, that's nuts. Yeah, it is nuts. And I don't drive. I don't even know if I put 50 miles a week on my car. Maybe 75 miles a week. You could make a tank of gas less, like a year like that. I could if I had a prius. I should do that. Yeah. But I have my old Civic and gets decent gas mileage, but I don't drive enough to invest in a new car at this point. Well, the cool thing about hyper modeling is you don't need a new car. You can do it with any car. It's merely a series of techniques. You don't have to go buy anything. You don't have to do anything except drive pretty conscientiously and be aware of what you're doing, like accelerating and breaking too quickly. You were saying? That was the Edmunds test that was based on taking off at a red light or just driving up to a red light and slamming on your brakes. They're both wastes of gas. Right. So Too is driving on the highway without cruise control. Yeah. I didn't realize that. That same test by Evans actually vastly improved the fuel efficiency of the Land Rover. And I think they tested a Mustang, too. But they got the biggest bang for their buck using cruise control at 70. At 70 on the Land Rover. Because if you think about it, even if you're really paying attention to staying at 70 miles an hour, it's still based on your foot, and your foot is flawed. It's kind of heavy, clumsy thing. I have a club flight. I know you do. I wasn't going to bring it up. So yeah, you want to rely on cruise control. Those two things alone will really increase your fuel efficiency. Right. Driving at lower speeds is a really important thing, too. Yeah. Did it say anywhere what the ideal speed was? No, but I've always heard 60. Really? I've always heard, like, 35 to 40 for the ultimate gas mileage. I'm talking highway. Okay, sure. Yeah. You'll get in trouble if you drive 35 to 40. Right. No, that makes sense then. Yeah. I think in the city, though, it's 35 to 40, is it? Yeah. Well, I know that they used to have much well, I guess today's posted speed limits back in the early 70s or late sixty s. And then because of the oil embargo, that's when they were dropped down to 55, was to increase fuel efficiency in cars. And then they've kicked it back up because everybody's like, we want to drive fast again. We don't care about it. We're on the highway to hell anyway. Just let us drive as fast as we want. That can't drive 55. Crowd and AC apparently is kind of a big one, using it at max power, which is decisive, uncompromising and rude. I have to, though. Yeah. My AC doesn't work. As I said, I drive down the highway with the windows open, and that apparently is way worse than driving with your AC on. Right. Because of the drag. Sure. And this guy, he also doesn't he coast and cut his engine early if he's approaching a parking space. So he'll coast the last however far he can to park his car. And Girdis actually on his side, I think it's cleanmpg.com. If that's not his site, he writes heavily for it. He answered an age old question for me. If you are going to be idling for longer than 7 seconds, turn your car off. Really? Because it takes about 7 seconds worth of gas to turn a fuel injected carOVER. Always wondered. Yeah. I've never heard, like, whoever told me I didn't believe, I believe this guy. Sure. So if you're sitting at a drive through or something, turn the car off. Yeah. It's a great idea. Yeah. And then there's some slightly more advanced techniques for people who are really into this patient. People like what? Like ridge riding. Don't know that that was actually another term coined by Gertos that I hope I'm saying his last name right. I've never met the guy. Okay. It's where you hug the far right line, solid line of the far right lane on the highway. Okay. You do this for two reasons. One is to make yourself really obvious and noticeable to other drivers so they have an opportunity to pass you early because you're going 35 miles an hour. Yeah, because I think he drives like 50. Right. Or 45. Or 50. On the highway. On the highway. So then I was probably wrong about 60 because this guy's probably going to drive at the optimal speed on the highway. Yeah. So, number one, it makes you obvious because you're not positioned like everybody else. Okay. But secondly, in bad weather, especially rain, you're actually taking yourself out of those depressions that have worn into the asphalt where the puddles are forming. Right. And that will slow you down. Sure. Running through water. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Yeah, definitely. Because your wheels are moving, but you're not getting anywhere. Okay, that makes sense. So you've lost traction. You're a hypermiler Josh, in a way. I just know a lot about it. Again. I'll never do it. Right. And then probably my favorite is distant anticipatory focus das. Yes. So Gordon basically tries to drive like he doesn't have brakes, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. He maintains a very slow, steady pace, so he's looking several lights ahead to time his driving to that light. He's trying to accelerate slowly to keep in time with these lights because he wants nothing but green lights. Got you. That makes sense. He never has to use his brakes. That saves quite a bit, too. Of course, this is the same guy who also turns off his ignition and coaches in the parking space, but that's pretty much hyper mile. There's actually a lot more to it, taking advantage of other cars, like using 18 wheelers to draft off of. Yeah. Well, a lot of the NASCAR guys hyper mile. They don't call it that. I don't know what they call it. Racing. Someone probably has that answer. But during the caution, when they have, like, debris on the track and the pace cars there yeah. The little guy will throw out the caution flag, and that means everyone's got to slow down until they clean all the crud off the track. And a lot of the drivers will cut their engines and coast for a while and then cut them back on, and then cut them again. And then while they're racing, they will draft. That's a very popular technique to save fuel, because in NASCAR, the fewer stops, the better. Sure. Obviously. Yeah. You a NASCAR guy? No. Me neither. I watched it for a while, remember? I really love the origin of NASCAR bootlegging. Other than that, I'm not really into NASCAR. My sister in law Sarah, who I was just with in Ohio, is big into NASCAR, and we always give her a hard time. Yeah. We call her a redneck and stuff. That's funny. Yeah, it's good. Well, Chuck, anything about it? No. I mean, really, until we come up with an alternative fuel source or standard 100 miles an hour or 100 miles per gallon cars. Right. It's a good idea. 100 miles. Yeah. We should say, though, I think, exercise some caution if you want to try this stuff out, because some cars, if you turn the key off, don't turn all the way off because your steering wheel lock up point, and I think sometimes the air brakes are activated when you start the car. Right? Yeah. So I think you want to keep it set to ignition or dark. Keep it set to the on position. Yeah. So you can put it on your radio. No. So you still see lights on the dashboard, right? Yeah. So just be careful if you want to try some experimentation here. You are really good at COA, buddy. Well, I could see somebody do you have any idea how many times we would have been sued I know. Were not for you. It's just my mind's eye. I just pictured someone saying Josh and Chuck had to cut my engine and all of a sudden who's this? Josh and Chuck. They go to pull into the car to the parking space and they're steering wheel locks up and never wreckage 6 miles an hour. Well, good. All right. That's hyper mileage and EPA. We'll keep an eye out to see if the EPA actually does do any real world testing. Good idea. Listing or mail? I think so. Okay. Nowhere to go but up, right? Josh, we are going to call this what was in my inbox before I came in. Listener mail. Awesome. That's a secret. Actually. I should never revealed that a good way to get a listener mail is to email me the day we record. It's not a secret any longer. It's not. This is about the Peter Principle. Remember we did a podcast about the fact that many companies will not demote somebody, they will just fire somebody if they're incompetent. And this is from Jennifer and she says that she worked for the same company, has still working there for five or six years. And last November she worked her way up to the top of a sales support and she was kicked down to reception instead of fired. Wow. And she was told about her new job and said that she was getting the demotion because she was the weakest person on the team. It's a little harsh. I thought so. And she asked him during the meeting, why didn't they just fire her? And they said because she was still a very important part of the team. Just the worst part of the team. Exactly. Very important part of our team. But the worst part, don't forget that. And she said that her pay didn't change. So she's actually a very high paid receptionist and actually makes more than a lot of people on the sales team now at the reception desk, which I'll bet the sales team just loves. And we actually did have someone else email another company that said that they practiced this as well. That's fantastic. Two out of several hundred thousand. Yeah, not too bad. And she also adds here at the end that we sometimes give shout outs to our men and women overseas who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and to support them. And she says that she's an Air Force wife and that we should mention the families occasionally they are left behind because it's very hard on them. Do it, Chuck. And my brother in law is in the Marine Corps and he has been deployed many times. My sister Michelle and her kids Shelby and Reagan are often left at home for months at a time and it is hard on the family. So when we say support the troops, we mean the whole family, the whole kitten school. Nicely done, Chuck. Thank you. Nicely done. That's it? Well, if you want to mia culpa out of Chuck. You can email us at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housestoftworks? 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. 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." | ||
How IEDs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ieds-work | Improvised explosive devices were the primary killer of American troops in Iraq and continue to top the list in Afghanistan. Their use is so prevalent among guerrillas and insurgents because they are so effective. They are easy to put together with parts | Improvised explosive devices were the primary killer of American troops in Iraq and continue to top the list in Afghanistan. Their use is so prevalent among guerrillas and insurgents because they are so effective. They are easy to put together with parts | Tue, 17 Sep 2013 22:49:38 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=22, tm_min=49, tm_sec=38, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=260, tm_isdst=0) | 30797387 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your City Advantage Platinum Select card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage Miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the City Advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles WTO. Bryant with me, etc, etc. But it's stuff you should know. How are you doing? Pay attention, people. In the blink of an eye yeah. This podcast will be over. Yeah. James is getting a lot more loose with the laughter. Have you noticed? Yeah, she wants to be noticed. Either that or her sense of humor has been ratcheted up. We're going to look one day she, like, literally pulled up your desk with her chin on her hand, like, hey. Yeah. What are you guys doing? Hey, nice shirt. Hey. Thank you. You compliment the shirt every time I wear I know. Let me set the scene. We're in our serial killer like room, and Josh is wearing his Mystery Science Theater shirt. $3,000. Yeah, that's the one. And it's got the guys there. It's a silhouette. The famous silhouette and the movie theater seats. Yes. And it's just a great shirt. Yeah. One time you and I were at home watching it on, I don't know, the Internet or something like that. Laughing, laughing, laughing. And she had such a good time that she got me this t shirt to commemorate it. That's a great reason. So thanks a lot, Ms. T. Three K, guys. Yes, Emily does. I got a Dexter shirt. I got a true blood shirt. I got a madman shirt. You guys are laughing at Dexter. I know. Parks and Recurs. Every time. Children's Hospital shirts on the way. Like, enough with the shirts, right? Exactly. Fun TV events, right? You can just show what TV show you've watched recently by wearing that T shirt. Do you like Michael Stipe? Remember that year he wore, like, ten shirts at the VMAs? No. He kept taking off his shirt for each award they won. And it was another, like, a statement, political statement. I found his best. Just let Skype do his thing. Let Stipe be Skype. Yeah. That's a shirt. He's got a sculpture, like, right there. What do you mean? He has an outdoor sculpture at the next building over, the Sovereign building in the back. Really? Right next to the valet, there's like six, seven, eight cute, little, larger than life foxes, and he's running around in a circle, and it's Michael Stipe. Yes. Did he do it or did he conceive it and then had some sculpture go do it? If he did, he's taking full credit for it. Okay. I mean, I believe he did that. They're called the Stipe boxes. I can't remember what it is, but it's got, like, what the name is, but it's got, like, a plaque that says who the artist is and gives them background. Well, look at that. Michael Stipe had no idea. Yeah, and it's pretty good, too, I have to say. I'm going to go check that out. You should. Right after that. Okay. Chuck? Yes. Do you know what an IED is? I do. I bet some folks might not, though. You hear that word? It's one of those things you hear on the news a lot. Some people might just sort of get lodged in the brain. I don't know what that is, but I hear it enough. Spell it out for him. I e. The improvised explosive device. And that is the, I believe, still the leading cause of troop death in the Middle East. Yes. The mission in Iraq is over. Right. Like, we've totally withdrawn. Yeah. I was stung in Afghanistan. Right. Okay. Before that, even though it was, it remained then forever. Now the number one killer of US troops in Iraq, and it still is now in Afghanistan, as far as I know. Yes. I have a couple of stats here. It is still the top threat. You're correct. Killed 104 US troops in 2012, compared with 196 in 2011. It's a significant drop. 46%. Yeah. Yeah. They're getting better at finding and we'll get to this, of their methods of getting better at rooting them out with machines. And from what I gather, reading the stuff, just the soldiers being there, they just sort of get in that mind. They're just getting better at this. Like sniffing out sniffing them off the case. Right. Yeah. These guerrilla tactics, the more you're there, the more you just understand the enemy. That article also said that the statistics reflects just fewer troops to be attacked, though, as well. Sure. But yeah, we definitely have gotten better as a military over the last decade or so. Yeah. Like twelve years, I guess. Wasn't it 2001 that we invaded Afghanistan, or 2002. Yeah. Mission accomplished. And we came face to face with IEDs pretty quickly and really kind of had to learn what we were doing. Like, I remember the soldiers were just driving around in regular Humvees and getting blown to smithereens from IEDs left and right. And it took like a year or two before they had Humvees that were armored enough to protect them against Humvee blasts. Yeah. Well, it's sort of new, though, because this article points out at the beginning of the war, they weren't as popular, and it was mainly gunfire. Mortars and grenades were the cause of the incident because we were fighting a non insurgent group. We were fighting the Iraqi military. We were fighting Taliban. Yeah, you're right. But yeah, in Iraq, we were definitely fighting the Iraqi military. Yes. But then the insurgency came after that. Yes. They definitely have realized how effective they can be when you can put it in a dead dog's carcass on the side of the road. Yeah. Or a cow or something like that. Yeah. It's very scary stuff. You can hide it just about anywhere. And they're not new. The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't. Invent IDs. They go back at least into the Vietnam War where the Viet Cong figured out that a good way to get American troops blown up is to put an IED in, like an old Coke can or something, or an old beer can. Leave it along the side of the road where you knew they were going to be walking, because everyone knows that Americans like to kick cans down the road. And apparently all it took was one kick and then, boom, the whole platoon was in danger. There was an IED? Yeah. The IRA Irish Republican Army obviously used those in the when you hear about the Boston Bomber or the Centennial Park Bomber, these are IEDs. Yeah. Like homemade moms. Right. It's an improvised explosive device. Basically, the big distinction is you didn't buy it from a commercial manufacturer. Right. Or it didn't come from a commercial manufacturer. Right. Like a pipe bomb. That's an IED. Yeah. It doesn't have to be in Iraq or Afghanistan. And like you said, the reason that they are in use and, man, they are in use, is because they are an effective weapon against a larger, especially larger conventional army. Yeah. They're cheap. They're easy to get. The parts, too. They're fairly easy to put together. And apparently there's a lot of information out there about how to do it. Like the Times Square bombing that was foiled a couple of years back. The bomb that guy had was virtually identical to the ones used in the Boston Marathon bombings. Oh, really? So clearly there's some instruction out there that people who want to can get to and make these things from just parts you buy at the store. Yeah, the Internet gives us and it takes us away for sure. Yeah. Right. All right, so you want to talk about the basic parts of an IED. Yeah, there's five of them. You got your power supply, basically, your trigger and your detonator need electricity usually from, like, say, a battery or a battery. Yeah. I mean, it could be as simple as, like, a flashlight battery. Yeah. So that's pretty scary. The trigger is the switch that sets the device off. It's usually, like, sometimes a trip wire or a timer, but most times it's like a firing button where someone is watching. They actually press or a radio signal from, say, a cell phone or something. Yeah. Anything that can relay information that can trigger an event to that trigger. Like a garage door opener, cell phone, radio, whatever. That makes a pretty handy trigger switch. That's right. So the detonator, that is the small charge that sets off the larger charge. I know we talked about this since something oh, building implosions. Exactly. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. It's kind of the same thing. Yeah. You're taking a little charge because it doesn't take quite as much to set that one off, and then you use the energy, the force created from that one to explode the larger charge, the main charge of the primary charge. Right. And you can actually use conventional weapons, conventional bombs, like an unexploded landmine, as the primary charge. Fertilizer is very handy, apparently. And then from the main charge, we move on to the container. That's the thing that holds everything together, whether it's a pressure cooker or an old washing machine right. Or whatever. What did they do in Boston? Pressure cookers. Is that what it was? Okay. But they snuck in and backpacks. Is that right? Yeah. That is some scary stuff. It really takes a lot to not be super freaked out at any public event after something like that. It definitely takes a little while to for even the most rational, stable person to say, no, I'm going to go to this marathon and hang out and not worry about things. Yeah. I think it increases vigilance, for sure. And then, of course, in the NFL this year, I got the Falcon season tickets. They sent out a statement to all the ticket holders that you can't bring bags into the game anymore unless they're those clear bags that high school students have to use now. I didn't know you could ever bring bags. Like, you could bring a backpack into the game or something. Yeah. Or purse or anything. Like you can't bring any of that stuff in there. Can you bring a purse any longer? No, it's got to be like they have a size requirement. It's basically a little small purse that can fit your ID and stuff. But yeah, they're putting the kibosh on that. Yeah. It can fit your ID, but not your IED. That's right. Yeah. That should be their slogan, which, I mean, I guess it's not much to give up. Like a purse. Of course, I don't carry purses, so it's not a big inconvenience for me. Right. But to ensure that much more safety, that doesn't seem like enough, but it's also part of that slippery slope where it's like, okay, you made that concession, what's the next concession? Right. Taking off your shoes in line at the airport. Not that big of a deal. But when you add it together with all this other stuff, all of a sudden we're pretty much constantly thinking there's constantly an awareness of the threat that's out there. That's probably good to a certain degree then, don't you think? Yes, it is. But I think it's also a double edged sword where it's like, maybe you're safer, but you're also more stressed out. Right. And it certainly doesn't limit the racial profiling and stuff like that after events like that. And people are staring down people of different colors and races. Oh, yeah. I'm sure, like, the random pat down through, like, a TSA line is pretty far from random. Yeah, true. See our podcast on no Flight List are you doing on that? Yeah, I genuinely don't recall it. Yeah, give yourself a break, buddy. 550 of these. Yes. But I would think, like, I could remember any of them eventually if you said the title. Yes, we did one on no Fly list. Like, how do you land yourself on a no fly list? Okay. On a government list. Right? Yeah. Okay, that was my fault. I said the wrong title. That's why I wasn't jogged. Yeah, we did one on, like, flying and stuff. All right, so there are other things packed inside these devices as well, basically for use of shrapnel anything from nails to ball bearings. Sometimes it can be toxic chemicals to cause fire. It can be all sorts of nasty things. Yeah. And it could be part of a dirty bomb. It can be like the means to get a dirty bomb exploded. Right, Chuck, before we go any further, you want to do maybe a message break? I think so. Okay. A summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shine and 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, host Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition. Right. For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that, kid. Your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. Chuck so we've talked about what parts there are to an IED. Let's talk about how they fit together. And obviously we're not going to give you any kind of instructional step by step, but there's just general information about how they fit together. Yeah. So you got your power source, which we talked about. Right. And that's going to give you the electricity that you need to power the trigger and the detonator. So that's how those fit together. Right. And then you've got the trigger, which activates the detonator, which also requires some sort of power. It also draws power from the power source and the trigger, it can be set on a timer. Right. Like the old sticks of dynamite with the clock. The timers. That's an ID, I suppose. Sure. It has a sensor on it. Yeah, it could be activated by a tripwire. There's all sorts of things you can do. Somebody could be standing off in the distance watching and pressing, calling a phone. Yeah, I remember we talked about it before. I don't remember which one it was, but we talked about supposedly a separatist, a Chechen separatist maybe was planning on bombing Red Square in Moscow the new year's before last. And she blew up because she got a text message from her phone before she made it out of her apartment. She got like a happy New Year message from the phone provider. Wow. I never followed up to make sure that wasn't an urban legend, but it is a heck of a story. Yeah, I do remember talking about that, and I believe it. Why not? Why not? And then you've got like I said, we got the detonator, which provides the energy for the main one, then the main charge, which sends a shock wave or a blast wave and shrapnel and fire or toxic chemicals or whatever, outward very fast. Yeah. And the big problem, as we said, with IEDs and with combating IEDs is you can make them from so many different materials. There's all sorts of different types of explosives. You can use the parts you can get from just about anywhere. I know in the Boston bombings, the trigger was triggered via an RC car part. They use regular batteries to sell batteries, so you can get this stuff from anywhere. If you were really interested in stopping IDs from being produced and made your supply lines, following supply lines is really difficult. Yeah. It's not like you can trace things. Yeah, and they're just coming from so many different places. Yeah, it's like we're banning RC cars. Can't really do that. Yes, I did see where the government is trying to track this stuff a little bit more. They spent more than $200 million. The Pentagon has basically just trying to get a hold of the problem altogether. But they have something called the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. Or Jaidao. I think they're going to get about $217,000,000 this year. And one of the things that they're trying to do is track some of the stuff out of Pakistan. It seems to be one of the main countries where things like calcium, ammonium nitrate are coming from. Yeah, fertilizer in Pakistan saying, we kind of have an agricultural sector that needs fertilizer, so we're not going to stop making fertilizer. Part of the problem is that's also the main source of explosive material being used in IED. So that scan shows you the problem. You're part of the problem, at least. Yeah. The other part of the problem is there's so many different ways to deliver an ID. You can just put it somewhere they're very easily hid in, say, like rubble or trash pile or like you said, in the carcass of a dog or a cow or something like that. Just something that seems innocuous. They can be buried. They can be left in a car. Yes, those are vehicle borne IEDs. I'm really into these modern war movies. Have you seen Hertlocker is one? I haven't seen that one. Oh, man, so good. And Zero Dark 30. That was the worst part of the movie. What part? Where the ladies like jumping up and down like, yeah, my informants coming for the car bomb. That's what happened though, dude. And the other girls on the other end saying, like, OMG, I'm so excited for you. It's like their characters suddenly just totally deteriorate into just these caricatures. Like, what happened at that part? She was jumping up and down like yeah. I don't know, man. She was probably pretty excited. I just thought it was very weird. So much so I'm like, what is the director trying to do here? She's trying to say something that I'm not picking up on it. It was just odd. But, yes, it was a vehicle born explosion. But you like the movie. Aside from that. Aside from that, yeah, that was pretty cool. Both those were Catherine Bigelow, by the way, right? But, yeah, I never saw her locker. Hert locker is great. And then Green Zone was another good one. The Matt Damon one. Wasn't that like the born Identity Four? Isn't that what a lot of people call that? Oh, really? Yeah. Well, that's just silly, isn't it? By the same guy who directed it, too, maybe. I think it was Paul Greengrass. I think yeah, but it was that's just silly. It was because it was Matt Damon kicking butt and Paul Greengrass. Yeah, but it was a war movie, not a spy movie or whatever those Born movies are. Yes, I got you. I take issue with that statement. Okay. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the explosion itself. I said that gas heats up, expands rapidly. And how rapidly, Josh? Well, if you're talking explosion, usually at least one 6000 hundred feet per second, 488 meters/second, which is a lot, that's your blast wave. If you're anywhere near that, then you're probably not going to make it out. And it creates a lot of force measured in atmospheric pressure. GS. Oh, yeah. How many G's? Up to 1000 times the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. So remember in the Diving Bell episode? Yeah. We were talking about no, it was the ejection seat episode. Yeah. We talked about how when you eject from a plane right. Depending on how fast you're going, you can be subjected up to 20 G's. All of a sudden when your seat shoots out, this is 1000 GS. All right. So that's going to send that shrapnel at that same speed, which is going to do tons of damage. There's secondary shrapnel from stuff like windows and buildings that are going to be splintered and flying around. Right. There's the fire itself, secondary fires. And then this one I didn't really think about, though. The vacuum. Yes. Apparently it leaves a vacuum that can cause you to go blind or deaf. Well, it blows it out so much that it causes a partial vacuum and then the air rushes back in to fill it and it brings all that other debris that it just shot out right back into you. So you get it twice, I guess, if you're in that blast zone. Wow. And I guess that atmospheric pressure is what can give you concussions. That's the shockwave swelling of the brain. Yeah. What is it? Traumatic brain injury, which is so similar to PTSD. Yeah. And it also points out, too, I never really would have thought about this, but air filled tissues and organs like your lungs and your bowels can actually be perforated with this pressure change. Yeah. That's just unbelievable. And like we said, if you're close to one of these, you're probably not going to make it out alive. If you're a little further away outside that primary blast radius, you're likely going to be injured. A lot of I think 61% of wounds in Afghanistan are still caused by IEDs. So while deaths are down, still, a lot of guys have been ladies being wounded. Yeah. Losing limbs. There's a huge increase in Iraq and Afghanistan to lost limbs and traumatic brain injuries because they're being protected from kevlar. Whereas before these protections and the measures that the military took to protect soldiers were instituted prior to that, they would have just died. So they wouldn't have been chalked up to the casualty or the injured list. Right. They would have been chalked up to the deadliest. Right. Yeah. So now it's like, yeah, they're being protected, but they're also losing limbs. They're also like they have brain injuries. There are big problems that they're carrying along with them as well, which is one of the things that's made this war so expensive, not just financially, but in human costs as well. Yes. And of course, civilians aren't protected at all, so they're dying at a rapid rate. So you've got ideas they are out there. There's a problem. What have we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan? How do you protect against the use of IED? Well, one thing they use is dogs to sniff them out. And I know at some point we have a good article on war dogs that we might cover. But dogs is one way. Like I said. Just living in country and learning that every time one of those goes off. They probably learn a new method to add to the list. Which is scary. But also great to be there and sort of get inside their head a little bit. Paying attention and being suspicious is another one. Yeah. Like, there's an instance that's given in this article about a Marine spotter who noticed a man outside of Habenaya, Iraq, who was videotaping a convoy. That's kind of a dead giveaway. This guy should be checked out. I guess they looked at him and saw that he had a high powered rifle on the seat next to him and they shot and killed him and went over and apparently he had a bunch of parts to make IDs with. That's right. So I guess he was scouting or what have you, and then not very surreptitiously either. And he probably well, you never know. I was going to say he might have one of those video cameras from the it's like set on his shoulder. It's not even a small one. Yeah. They do have some new technology, though, which is pretty cool. And it makes sense because if you're using a signal from a cellphone, let's say, to set these things off, you might think, hey, can they jam those things? And they can, you know, they do, and they're trying to. There's something terribly named device called the Nerf N I RF, which stands for neutralizing Improvised Explosive Devices. Oh, no, wait. Yeah. Is that Nerf? Isn't that a terrible acronym? So Nerf oh, with radio frequency. Okay, sorry. Give them the whole thing. Neutralizing improvised explosive devices with radio frequency nerf. Yes. And that emits a high frequency pulse that basically just shorts out all the electronics in the area. Yeah. They also have devices that emit bursts of microwave radiation that fry the electronics anywhere around. So if you have an IED coming up and you shoot it with some microwaves, it probably isn't going to work. That's right. And they have lasers, the Libs. Libs man. The military in their acronyms, like, everything. They love those. When I'm talking with my brotherinlaw, he's just like, and he's so used to saying what they are, too. And it's just like rapid fire, you'll say, like Libs laser Induced Breakdown Spectroph. See, I can even say that. Spectroscopy well, spectroscopy is a difficult word to say either way. That's why they call it Libs. Yeah. And these detect IDE explosives within about 100ft, which is pretty good because these things, most of the time, it's not like a daisy cutter. The explosion is large, but if you're 500 yards away, it's not going to have much of an impact on you. And they've gotten a lot better at detecting devices. Apparently, 86% of IEDs in Afghanistan were detected before they went off. And I think 2011, 2012. And did you hear about the guy who sold fake bomb detectors, like, around the world now? He's this British guy named James McCormick, and for ten years he sold this device called the Ade 651, which stood for Advanced Detection Equipment. And basically what it was was a device called the Gopher, which is used to find lost golf balls. And it actually doesn't work. It doesn't even find lost golf balls. It has no better chance than random chance to detect a golf ball or anything else. This guy just repackaged these things and he sold one to a government for 300 grand. Apparently the Iraqi police bought 6000 of them. They're still in use all over the country. They don't do anything. This guy made $60 million over ten years selling these things, and he's a total fraud. Is he in jail or anything? Yeah, they got him finally doing ten years in prison. Wow. And they took his money. Yeah. But who knows how many people died because of him. It's pretty scary. Like you talked about the Humvees and stuff were more armored now, but they also have things called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles. Mwraps. And they have a flat undercarriage in the shape of a V, which will supposedly divert the blast. Yeah. Rather than flat it's. Like it comes to a point. Yes, it makes sense. It inverts it away instead of just right up under the vehicle. So you just have to hope you're not standing next to the vehicle when the thing goes off, because it's going to direct all that stuff towards straight out. And then just today we learned that a company called Oshkosh, not Ashkosh Bagash. No, but I wonder if they're related. The military vehicle. Division of Oshkosh Bagash it's in Wisconsin. Is Oshkosh Bagash, Wisconsin? Yes. Is it really? Yeah, oshkosh is probably a place there. Yeah, I believe it is. All right, we'll look into that. Maybe they make onesies and military vehicles. But in Washington DC. Right now, today is August what, 13th? Today is the 14th. 14th in DC. This week they have a trade show. And Ashcott is unveiling. The terra max and the terra not terror. Terra is in land. The Terra Max is unmanned, which is kind of cool. And. It has a counterID payloads, and it's basically a little ATV that I guess is remote controlled, or it says it can run in a supervised autonomous mode. Right. Remote control. Oh, is that what that is? It's just another way to say remote control. Yeah, they should say RV, man. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. So they're definitely spending money at the rate of about 200 to 20 million a year to try and combat this. Well, and that's all I got. That's all I got, too. If you're interested in this, you can also another way of delivering an ID is via suicide bomber. And we did an entire episode on suicide bombers, did we not? We did. Okay. So you might want to check that out as well. And if you want to learn more about IEDs and how to combat them, you can type IED into the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a message break. 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 into 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. 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 Haloholistic at chewy amazonandhalopets.com all right, Chuckers, how about listener mail? All right, this is called I worked with a hyperbolic chamber, hyperbaric. Would I say hyperbolic because it's the largest chamber in the world. It's so full of hyperbole. Thanks for catching that, by the way. That's what I just finished listening to. How does the diving bell work? And I couldn't help but think about a guy I think about a lot. I used to live on a Caribbean island called Utila. Utila, or Utila, is known for backpackers, learning to dive whilst traveling around Central America. I was a scuba instructor on the island and also drove the hyperbaric chamber, or hyperbolic chamber, set up and funded by a small fee charge to all divers. Although we treated locals for free, all of us non Hondurans learn to dive as safely as possible. But the locals would go for lobster. They called them bugs, had horrific diving conditions. They would have a guy in a boat with a couple of dive tanks without pressure gauges attached to long hoses that the fishermen would use to breathe. They knew that they were running out of air when it became hard to breathe. Once they realized they were running out of air, they would surface quickly, but stay in the water, drink a Coke and smoke a joint. It would be attached to a new tank then and go down looking for more lobsters or bugs stuff in their sacks. This is what's going down down there. There's an article about this industry and this way of getting lobsters in Mexico by hand in Harper's, I think last month Harper's or this month. Wow. Yeah, it's like just like that really dangerous. They're really cavalier and they get hurt a lot. Apparently they smoke weed while they're doing it. Yeah. This one guy came into the chamber room in pain and twisted up. We were pretty sure he wouldn't walk again. Gave him a couple of rides in the chamber over a couple of days. This entailed trips down to the equivalent of 60ft, only to be slowly brought back to the surface. Surface, end quote, over a few hours time. We also did some hydrotherapy on our small pool. Because he wasn't getting any better, we had to fly him off the island to the mainland, but keep the plane just above the water so it's not to elevate them much higher than sea level. After leaving him to the hospital, I never saw or heard about him again. He was a husband and father of two. That was twelve years ago, and I think about him often. That's from James. Thanks, James. I thought that was a pretty great email too. Yeah. And he sent a picture of the hyperbolic hyperbaric chain. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, he said it was a bad picture. I thought it was great. Yeah. You're hard on yourself, James. Set yourself up. If you want to send us a picture of something cool that you operate, we'd like to see that. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushadow.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 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 holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandalopets.com." | ||
3feb1e8a-5461-11e8-b6d0-b3076d8d1c14 | Selects: How Temper Tantrums Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-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 classic 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 classic episode. | Sat, 04 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=247, tm_isdst=0) | 36663882 | audio/mpeg | "I don't want to do a select. My name's Chuck. I don't want to pick out a select and do an intro for this one. I don't want to work. See, that was playacting, everyone. This is called how temper tantrums work. And that was an example example of a temper tantrum. This is from May 27, 2014, and it was a good one. It was before I had a kid, and it really was instructive on how things were going to go once I did have a kid. But I got to tell you, I'm five years into this thing, and she's great. She rarely ever has thrown temper tantrums in her whole life. She can be a real pain in the butt, but she's never been a tantrum thrower. So I'm going to listen to this one again, actually, right along with you. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles, Debbie, chuck Bryant. And again, we have our guest producer, Noel He's, thrashing about on the ground, vomiting, screaming, capillaries bursting in his cheek. Yes. 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 in public. 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, it makes me kind of uncomfortable. But just parenting advice, period is so, like, subjective and individual. Yes. It's always feel like people shouldn't tell other people how to parent, but 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 yeah. 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, like, maybe childhood is like 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, you know? 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 any more, then you stick a feather on your throat and vomiting it up. Supposedly the vomitoriums thing is a myth. Have you heard that in ancient Rome, 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 like a real myth. Right. They want you to think it's a myth. Got you. Okay, so we're talking temperate 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 and 80%, 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. They found even higher rates. Go 1st. 91% of children in the study between 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'm sure I was, but I think I was a pretty good kid. Yeah. I'm saying it never happened with me, but I was pretty chill. Yes. My brother in laws and sister in law are 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. Yeah. 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 tantrums yeah. It's a 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 a 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 make sense? Yes. 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 and over. 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 ten minutes later, your kid has probably forgotten about it. Right. Even though you have not. Yeah. 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 Podigol found that rather than one giving in to the other, leading into the other, they're pretty much simultaneous. And then once the anger, you have sadness all along, and then it's overlaid with anger. And then once the anger subsides, all is left is 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 is just played out at this point, and it's really sad. Yeah. And protagonal also found that if the kid goes straight into the physical stage yes. The tantrum is even shorter lived, I think, because they text 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 vomiting. 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. You probably responded, certainly thinking, all right, yeah, he's stupid. Back to the prefrontal cortex. We said it develops very 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 till you're four. Right. And I 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. So 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 able be to understand what you're saying. Oh, yeah. But they can't speak the words yet. So 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. Yeah. 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. Sufficient. 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, a normal temper tantrum in kids? Yeah. And we also should point out that the fight or flight kicks in, too. 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. Right. When you think about this. 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 response has kicked in are also signs that your kid is 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 be any exorcist get them blow. 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 tantrums 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 is 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, you 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 short balls. If you have to make your own bowl of cereal at age like two yeah. 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 heading them off at the pampulton. 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 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. I love it. 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. 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've researched 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. Yeah, 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 and 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 Nutrigrain 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 and expensive. Shape. 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, 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. Yes. 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 because you don't want them 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 like 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. 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. 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 knockoff plugmobile box set. That's fine. The kid doesn't know. We got so many knock off 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. I wanted the BMX Mongoose and I got the Sears Goose. Right. I wanted Pong again. Sears. I got the Sears Ping, basically. Yeah. Nice. Of the round table. Pretty much. You remember that? Yeah, but I did a solo. Look at me. Yeah. I never had brand name clothes unless they had, like, a button missing or the collar was misshaping 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. It's great. Yes. We'll repost it, but you should definitely look undergalleryfishnes.com there's some real misses. Yes. And I have to say, I remember going to plenty of stores as a kid and being told I could pick out a Toyota, 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 yeah, there were some. 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 and horses. Go cart and a motorcycle duty at everything. Yeah. And look at him now. He's super successful and wealthy. Yeah. 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 last 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 hubbub over this, right? Yeah. Because it was just added to the new DSM in 2013. A new disorder. Yes. And basically it turns temper tantrums into a mental illness, like pure and simple. If you are over age six, between six and ten. Yeah. And you have that number, what was it? Three per day that lasts 15 minutes or more. 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 and all other manner of prescription drugs, even though you're sick. 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. 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 2000 and 2007. So there's a definite trend of any time a new disorder is identified or described in CSM. I've got that, Mick, 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 are 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 they forget to breathe. They get so worked up that they and faint. And apparently when your kid does that, it 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, and 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 hummel 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 homo figuring, we have to go to psychiatrist 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 certainly you want to stop any kind of, like, violent aggression towards humans or animals. Let's just see how this plays out. Yeah, you want to get in. There, take care of business. Yes. 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 behaviors. At least. 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. Yeah. 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%. So between ten and 18, if your kid can't even look at your face and read your emotional cues, like, that's how out of it they are, you know? Yeah. Teenagers, like, I couldn't even tell dad was mad at me because the wires aren't connecting upstairs. Yeah. And apparently the prefrontal cortex, 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 you got anything else you want to talk about? That girl from Millageville? Yeah, go ahead. I didn't 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 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 it? 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 athouseafworks.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 guys, just showing off. I know. Evil caneval. 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 I didn't. Yes, 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. Yeah. Red light running Land Rovers. I hope that dude 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 memory, something we left out of an episode, we always want to hear that kind of thing. You can go on to Stephishando.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with some good old country goodness, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com." | |
How Blimps Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-blimps-work | After newsreels captured the Hindenburg erupting in fire in 1937, the promising development of airship aviation was cut short. Today companies and militaries are taking another look at blimps and the unique qualities that may revive them. | After newsreels captured the Hindenburg erupting in fire in 1937, the promising development of airship aviation was cut short. Today companies and militaries are taking another look at blimps and the unique qualities that may revive them. | Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:59:17 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=14, tm_min=59, tm_sec=17, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=240, tm_isdst=0) | 44073444 | 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 with us. So that makes this stuff you should know. How you doing? I'm good, man. I'm excited about this one. Oh, are you sure? Blimps. Yeah, because they have, like, eight names. Blimp, Dirigible, Zeppelin yeah. Airship. Yeah. Well, technically, LTA, I'm counting that lighter than airship. Yes. Which I think is ultimately lighter than airship. LTA is the umbrella term for all of those things, which are slightly different. Yeah. An LTA and an airship is all of them. The derigable is all of them. A Zeppelin is rigid, and a blimp is non rigid. Nice. And mostly we just have blimps these days. Not a lot of rigid airships. Would they constitute yes. No. But they can be semi rigid or non rigid. Right. Yeah. And I think the future we'll talk about that, obviously, at the end. But I think some of those are more of the semi rigid style. Right. Yeah. But they're made of some really lightweight but very strong composite materials. Yeah. Boom. So, Chuck, let's talk about the history of blimps, because I think when anybody thinks of blimps, they think Hindenburg. They think they think the Hindenburg. And then maybe concurrently or right after the goodyear blimp. Yes. Those are the two that really laid it on the line for blimphem. Yeah. You want to talk about the early history, I guess, and then get to the tragedy. Yeah. Because there wasn't that much time in between the two, to tell you the truth. Yeah. It all started, of course, with hot air balloons, because they're not so different. In 1783, a couple of Frenchies brothers, jacques Etienne and Joseph Michelle, they said they were brothers, but they have different last names, I think Jacques Etienne is his first and middle name. Okay, that makes sense. They all had three names. I like serial killers. Mongolfier. They invented the hot air balloon, an unmanned hot air balloon in 1783. And then later that same year, a French physicist last name De Rosier, had the first manned balloon flight, and they were just floating around, because that's what balloons do. You can go up, and then if you're really good, you can come back down. But left and right, that's up to Mother Nature. That's right. Which is a little scary, although I think these days can exterior them at all. We have a great article on this on how to hot air balloon. No, you're subject to the winds. What is the god of wind that comes out of the cloud and blows wind? That guy. Yeah. You're subject to his whim. So if you're headed towards something, it's go over it or hit it. Yes. Okay. And you remember there was that terrible hot air balloon accident, and I think Virginia last year, earlier this year. I didn't hear about that. Yeah, they hit a power line, I think, and then the basket caught fire and they had to jump. It was really bad. Wow. But, yeah, you can go up and over, and I imagine, I guess, under, if it's like a power line yeah. Or a tunnel, if you're really good, or you're in a cartoon, like the Laugh Olympics. That's something they do in there. Totally. But I think if you're really good, you could probably know where to steer into the wind to maybe use the wind. But no with the Blimp. The big distinction is, aside from its distinctive shape, is that you can maneuver like a pro. That's right. And that's what Henry Jafar did in 1852, when he finally someone said, we should steer these things. He built the first powered airship, and it was cigar field, like the classic shape that we know and love now. Had a propeller, like they have now, and a little engine, although it was a steam engine, which they don't use now. 3 HP steam engine. Yeah. They're not huge engines. Still, it doesn't take a lot, apparently. No, it really doesn't. And those were rigid airships. It's a metal framework. And in 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. That name sounds familiar. Led Zeppelin of Germany. And that's where they got the name, of course. Sure. But I never understood the Led the lead well, I think someone said, as a joke, you guys are going to go over, like a lead zeppelin, or they did when they played on the BBC. Is that it? But why take the A out? Because the same reason you take the A out of Def Leopard. I've never understood that either. In the same way you put a over Motley Crue. This makes you cool. I got you. You got to misspell something in your band. I think I was just looking too deeply into it. It's the problem. Yeah. Le ad zeppelin would be weird. Yeah. But I think our paradigm would have adjusted. We would think Led Zeppelin would be weird if we were used to Led Zeppelin with an A. Or if the Beatles was spelled B-E-E-T-L-E-S. Yeah. Instead of their punny name. Very punny. All right. Boy, we get sidetracked so easy with music stuff. Not really. I think people saw that coming before they press play. That's true. So that was the rigid airship, the first one, and those have a metal framework, and it had tail fins and rudders, had combustion engines, and could cruise at about 1300ft with up to five people. Yes. Not bad. You could bring the whole family as long as you encounter as long as you totaled no more than five. Yes. As long as you paid off the captain. Well, then you just have to be a family of four. That's right. Because the captain's got to sit somewhere, right? Yeah. They got their little captain's chair. Everything was going quite swimmingly, actually, around the turn of the 20th century, it was just widely assumed that we would have a future where blimps zeppelins were just a regular feature of the sky. Well, they were. Up until the Hindenburg went down, there were more than 2000 flights, carried tens of thousands of passengers over a million miles. Like, that was air travel, we should say ultrawealthy passengers at the time. Sure. The Hindenburg in particular was high class. It was the pride of Nazi Germany. Yeah. And it was on its maiden voyage, wasn't it? It was almost called the Hitler, by the way. Was it really? Yeah. But Hitler is like, I don't want my name on that thing. Really? Not that he, like, foretold the future. I don't know. He just didn't want him named after an airship. He didn't believe Freud's idea that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Cigar shaped airship is just a cigar shaped air. And it crashed and burned, too. So he was probably pretty stoked that he didn't have his name on it. Yeah, he very famously went when he heard the news. Exactly. So we should probably stop making light of this nearly 80 year old tragedy because people did die. Yeah. I mean, should we tell the story? Let's. All right. Well, it took off on May 3, 1937, had 36 passengers and 61 officers and crew members and trainees. Left Frankfurt at about 715 and then crossed out over the Atlantic at about 02:00 A.m. The next day. It's not super fast travel. It was compared to the ship travel at the time. It took about half the time to cross the Atlantic as it did in a boat. Yeah. But compared to what we're used to, it was leisurely. Right. And apparently after reading more about the Hindenburg and I guess ship travel is sort of the same way, we're going to get there when we get there. We're trying to get there then, but you never know what's going to happen. But that's why they called them the leisure class. That's right. It followed a northern track across the ocean, eventually into North America, over the coast of Newfoundland, and arrived in Lakehurst, New Jersey about 12 hours late. Germans, they're always late. They're famous for it. And basically arrived there at the naval air station. And because of poor weather, the captain and the commanding officer on the ground said, you know what? The weather is not so great. Let's wait a little bit, because they can fly around forever and those things. Right. And he said, all right, well, the Jersey shore is nice. Let's just go fly above that and tell everyone to look around. Look at all those old timey bathing suits on everybody. They're up to their ankles in water. By 06:00 P.m. Conditions had improved. And at 612, he sent a message saying it's suitable for landing. Recommended landing now. At about 708, he finally pulled the blimp in. It was a bit of a dodgy approach but he eventually got it down toward the ground pretty skillfully, which, as we'll see, it's not as easy as you'd think. Even though it sounds easy. It's not in practice. No. They dropped the landing lines, and then things went south, like, really fast. Yeah. It was filled with hydrogen, which is the lightest element. Right? Yeah. And it's also probably the most flammable, or one of them, yes. Inflammable was a big error at the time. A lot of glimpse had caught on fire. This is not the first accident, and people testified afterward because not everyone died. We'll get to the numbers here at the end of the story, but there was testimony that it appeared as if gas was pushing against the cover. Maybe it escaped from a gas cell. At 725, the first visible flames appeared, and it varies, but most witnesses say that the first flames are either at the top of the hall, forward of the vertical fin, or between the rear port engine and the port fin. And they described it as a mushroom shaped flower, and it pretty much engulfed the tail, like, right away, and it was able to remain steady for a little while. Like people could start jumping out at this point. Well, those are the people who died, correct? No, that's what I always heard. That's what I have heard is that the people who stayed in the Gondola lived, and the people who jumped were the ones that died because the flames, because hydrogen is light, they were burning upward. Well, it says here basically it was all dependent on where you were. If you were close to a means of exit, you generally survived. If you were deep inside the ship, like in the power room, along the keel, or in the smoking room. They have smoking room in handenburg. I'm surprised it wasn't all smoking with a big blimp full of hydrogen. Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about they had, apparently, a double airlocked door, one electric lighter, and you're allowed to smoke as long as you put it out before you left. So, like I said, if you were in the smoking room on B Deck, you're in big trouble. If you were one of the nine men closest to the front of the ship, you definitely didn't survive. Really? Yeah. So out of the 97 people on board, 62 survived. I think when you see the footage, you can watch it on YouTube. It looks like, how in the world could anyone survive it? Because it's fully burned in less than a minute and on the ground. Yeah, it went up fast. But 62 did survive, 13 of the 36 passengers and 22 of the 61 crew. And they're still two guys alive today, two years ago, but they don't like to talk about it. I can imagine. There's one genetic experience. They're both named Verner. Verner Franz and Verner donor the two Verners, and one was a little cabin boy, and one was a passenger with his family, and they were contacted for the ceremony. I guess you don't call it an anniversary, I guess. Memorial. Yeah, memorial. It's an anniversary. Yeah. It just sounds like a party. But they said, no, we're not coming. We don't like to talk about it. Yeah. So it's been a long standing mystery exactly what happened. I found an article in the UK Independent from 2013 about a study from that year that found they said they figured it out. They built, like, scale models of the Hindenburg, which was like two and a half football fields long, by the way. They were building scale models that were like 60ft long, so good sized ones. And they tried to blow them up because there was a rumor that it was sabotaged, that everybody hated the Nazis even then. And they tried all manner of stuff. And what they finally figured out was that probably what happened was from being in that stormy weather, the exterior, the envelope of the blimp became electrified. And when the ground crew ran up and grabbed the cables, they completed the current from the blimp to the ground, which caused a spark, which actually ignited a hydrogen leak. That fire caused leaks pushing out. Yeah. One thing they say definitely isn't, which they long thought it was, was the actual fabric was, like, painted in this flammable stuff. Right. And that's not true. It was the standard fabric. Okay. It was just big balloon fill of hydrogen that caused the park. Yes. So when that happened, the future of blimps were just pretty much like, that was it for blimps. That wasn't the immediate end. But as far as commercial blimp travel, that's tough for an industry to get over, so it kind of fell to the wayside. Although they did continue on in a couple of forms up until the government, especially the Navy, maintained blimps. I guess the Air Force, I don't know if it's the Navy, but one of the branches of the US military use blimps as giant aircraft carriers of the air. Not the sea, the air, which is pretty awesome. And apparently they had them so you could connect like, a light plane to what's called, like a trapeze mechanism coming out of the bottom of the blimp, just like, hook your plane on, climb up and say, hey, guys, where are we going? Or you can take off from there, too. What? Yes. How do you take off? You just drop I think you just release the hook from the trapeze and start a free fall, and then you just go off into the distance and go, thanks for the ride, lady. That sounds really weird. And they had even bigger plans that were never realized because the Navy scrapped the program in, I think, 1962 to have, like, a landing strip on top of the blimp. So you could have just, like, planes take off and land and then be stored in the blimp, which would have been pretty awesome. Well, cargo airships are the wave of the future, perhaps. So we'll see. Yeah. But the military was involved in blimps for most of the first half of the 20th century, and then our friends at Goodyear came up with a blimp that has really served them well. Like they were making blimps for the military, and then they started using them for commercial purposes. And everybody knows about Goodyear thanks to those blimps. Yeah. And they're going to figure in here, of course, because you can't talk about blimps a lot without a ton of buzz marketing for Goodyear. Yes, but that's where they make their name. In fact, my in laws almost wrote on the one based out of Akron, because that's where they're from. And I think he was going to put in a bid on an auction bid to win a trip, and I think it never happened. The trip never happened. I think he either lost the bid I'll have to ask him. But I don't think they ever wrote on the blimp. Okay. I was going to say the trip never happened. That doesn't sound like the Good year. I know. No, there's like the Germans. So there's three good year blimps, actually. There's one in. I believe in Texas. There's one in California. There's one in Ohio. Or is it Florida? California and Ohio is what it is. I'm sorry. The spirit of Goodyear, the spirit of America, the spirit of innovation. And, Chuck, about the time this episode comes out, robin Roberts, the TV personality, is going to be christening the newest member of the fleet, the wingfoot one. Nice. So they're going to have four. Yeah, because there's a lot of sporting events. There sure are. And you can't watch a big sporting event without hearing the words aerial coverage provided by Goodyear. Yeah. And those shots, man, they're pretty great. They really are. They haven't been around forever. It was, I think, an Orange Bowl in Miami where the first one was broadcast in the 60s, maybe. I don't know, something like that. And it changed America. Yeah. Well, it certainly gives them a lot of press and saves. I don't know about saves them money. I haven't seen their balance sheet. But they don't spend money on that 32nd spot. They still do, to tie into the blimp. Right. But it's great advertising for them. Yeah. They also were good sports in a movie called Black Sunday. Did you ever see that movie? No, of course I never saw it. But apparently they provided some of the footage for the movie and let their blimps be used. And let their name be used, even. It wasn't like the Good wire blimp. You know, they didn't try to have to change it just enough. They used Goodyear, which made the whole thing even more terrifying and realistic. Yeah. They wanted to kill everyone at the Super Bowl. That was the plot right. With a Blimp. Right. That shot darts, which is weird. But it was written by the guy who wrote Silence of the Lambs. Oh, yeah, he's a good writer. Have you ever read any of his books? Oh, he was the book writer, yeah. Oh, no, I didn't know that. Yeah. No, I haven't read any of The Silence of the Land. He does very good research. Interesting guy. Nice. Anyway, so good year in the military after the Hindenburg. That was the two cases of blimps. But like you said, there is potentially a future for blimps, which we'll talk about. But first, let's talk about how blimps work in general after these messages. You want to know how blimps work, buddy? I do. They're pretty simple. This is a delight to learn because it was like, oh, I thought there would be just that little to it. And that's really kind of the case. Right? Yeah. There's not like oh, and here's where it gets really hard. Right. They're like the pontoon boats of the sky. Yeah. The most complicated thing on the blimp is probably the Gyroscopic camera on the front of it to film the football stadium. Yeah, I think you're right. So let's talk about the anatomy of a Blump. You mentioned the envelope earlier. That is the thing that you're looking at. That is a big cigar shaped balloon. It's filled nowadays with helium. It is that shape because of aerodynamics, of course, and they are super lightweight and super strong. Like you were saying, two ply neoprene polyester generally. Is that what the envelope is made of? Yeah. There's a company called the ILC Dover corporation. They make a lot of skins and they use the same material that they make spacesuits out of for NASA, for Blimps, too. Good enough for Neil Armstrong buddy. Good enough for my blimp. This is like all about Ohio, this one. Oh, is he Ohio? Yeah. Might have done it. So it was good year. No, I knew that. So are your in laws. That's right. The envelopes, they hold and it depends on the Blimps for all of these statistics, of course, but between 67,250 thousand cubic feet of helium and it's not super. The pressure is really low inside. Zero \u00a37 per square inch. So that's why if you shot a blimp, it wouldn't like, fall. No, it just leak very slowly and you just land it and patch it up, I guess. Yeah, very slowly. Yeah. 1994, the British Ministry of Defense fired hundreds of bullets into an airship just for fun, we'll notice if it could be shot down in battle, basically. And it took many hours to deflate and land. Cool. And they don't even deflate them, they just leave them that way. So their natural structure well, not natural, but their original structure prevents them from being shot down. That's one big benefit because I was wondering about that. I was like, you're just providing a target for every teenager with a gun in any country that you hover a Blimp over. Sure. Now I understand. But secondly is we'll see it also has to do with the dynamics of flight, of hovering in the atmosphere. So you got the envelope, and the envelope also has something called nose cone baton, which is basically like a support structure for the nose. The front of it. Yeah. Just the very, very tip. And it keeps the the Blimps front from being mashed in as it moves forward, which is pretty smart. Yeah. I think I misspoke the nose cone is on just the very tip. And then the patterns are like the fingers that distribute the stress over the front of the cone. Got you. Okay. So they're like the structure that comes out of the nose. Right. Yeah. And then also on the nose is the mooring hook, because you got a hook, a Blimp up to something. Yeah. It's got a little spindle there and it's got a little wheel under the tail rudder. And that's basically how it sits. You just tie it down. Yeah. Very simple. Just like a balloon. That's right. So here's where it gets a little craftier, like 19th century crafty, but still neat nonetheless. Sure. There's something called balinesets. Right. And these are basically air bladders that are located within the envelope and you inflate or deflate them, depending on whether you want the Blimp to go up or down. If you want it to go up, you deflate these ballots. You want it to go down, you inflate them. And the reason that works is because you're inflating these balinets with air and helium, which Blimps fly using now, is lighter than air. So more air means the Blimp is heavier, so it goes down. Less air means it's lighter, so it goes up. Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's sort of like how a submarine operates. And there's one in the four and one in the aft. So that's how you control your trim. You can just nose it up or nose it down. Filling up or deflating. That's the pitch axis. That's right. Or trim. Okay. Well, the trim is the levelness. Okay. Yeah. And the axis where the nose and the back go up and down, that's the trim axis or no, the pitch axis. Right. Yeah. Okay. No one can see you. Not in agreement. Okay, Chuck. Then there's the catinary curtain and the suspension cables, which I didn't get the catinary curtain. Really? I understood the suspension cables just fine. It's on the inside, about 30% off center. And basically, it sort of looks like where you attach the basket to the hot air balloon. There's a number of these lines that run down and all meet at a single point near the gondola. Right. And that's what you attach the gondola to the Blimp using. Right. Yeah. So basically, if the Blimp envelope wasn't there, it would sort of look like a hot air balloon. It would have these lines that run up from the gondola, aka basket, up to the top. So they would be like the vertical lines or the horizontal lines. Yeah, okay, I understand that. Exact emmanuel. Then you've got the really technical stuff, the flight control services. So everything we've just described is basically balloons and then the structure that gives the balloon its shape, right? Yeah. And then the flight control services are basically a rudder and elevators and they're the things that you can control to make the balloon tilt upwards or side to side. That's pretty much it. Yeah. There's that one rudder on the top and bottom and that controls your yacht. And you do it with little if you look at the captain's chair, he's got little foot pedals. It's like a clutch pedal. You would push in and on the very bottom back of the rudder, there's something called a boost tab. And that's just a little additional sectioned off piece of the rudder that's also controllable. It's like a little mini rudder. And it assists with the rudder, I think, to make an even tighter turn. Got you. So if you imagine just a smaller rudder as part of the main rudder, just to give you that extra boost, I guess, when you need to turn. And then there's two elevators. And if you are sitting in your little captain's chair, imagine a car steering wheel placed vertically by your side. And that's just a wheel that you turn up and turn down. It's really very basic. It sounds like the wizard of Oz. It's totally behind the curtain. Like all the machine he's messing with is blown out. It looks very steam punky when you look at it. So you steer up or down with that wheel and that's pretty much it. Oh, no, don't forget the engines. Oh, well, yeah, I mean, as far as driving this puppy. Yes, the flight control. Yes, this is what separates it from hot air balloons. Don't forget the engines. Well, yeah, the engines, but also the flight control services. But the engines are turboprop engines. Right. There's twin ones, which means there's two. One on each side of the gondola at the rear. And they're pretty cool because they propel the thing forward. But very cleverly. There's also something called air scoops that are basically these funnels that face the back of the turboprop and they catch the vented air out of the props and they use those to inflate the balloon. And yeah, that's called prop wash. This is all the lingo I've learned. That's good stuff. And the engines are just six cylinder engines. Like I said, that you don't need a ton of power to power these things. And you can go at about 30 to 70. This is miles per hour, not knots. How about that? And 70 is cruising. Apparently like 30 to 50 is where you want to be. Get this. I did the calculations. So one of the great advantages Blimps have, which is the reason we're even talking about these things. Anybody's talking about still making Blimps is that they can stay aloft for days, weeks even, which gives them a huge advantage over airplanes, which have to stop and refuel and stop and refuel. But going 70 mph chuck a Blimp non stop at that rate could travel the circumference of the earth around the equator in 14 days. Wow. Is that enough fuel? Yes. Which I think is not very hard. No. At 30 knots, the skyship, which is just one example, consumes about eight gallons of fuel per hour. So apparently during an entire week of operations, it consumes less fuel than a 767 commercial jet uses to move away from the gate. Wow. So it's super green, which is kind of cool. You can understand why cargo companies are looking at them too. Yeah, and it runs on AV gas, of course. Not just regular old gas. You couldn't pull it up to a gas station like your car, because I think AV gas is still leaded, or a lot of it is. And that's the diff. That's not that green. Yeah, true. But they're not burning much of it. So let's see what else is there. The valves. You got to be able to let air in and out. You also want to be able to let air in and out of the envelope itself in case things become too pressurized on it to pop. Yeah, that's true. So you've got your air valves for the bladders inside and they are underneath. Two up front, two in the back. And then you have your helium valve and you can either vent it and you don't have to do this much because you should have it pretty like the pressure set. But if something does happen, you can either manually do it or it's set to automatically release. And if you look at the Goodyear Blimp, it's sort of in the y of year. Wow. Just looks like a little gas cap. You really know your Blimps man. Well, I mean, I went to the goodyear site. It's awesome. There's all sorts of animated gifs or is it gifts? I never could remember. I say GIF. Yeah. Graphic interface. Yeah, but there is a correct way, I just don't know what it is. Well, the guy who created GIF says GIF. He pronounces it GIF, which kind of throws a wrench in the works, but I disagree with him. Morglon's gift. The Goodyear Blimp Gondola, which is where we are now, is 22.75ft long. It is aluminum on welded steel frame and that's where everyone rides. Depending on your Blimp, it's going to hold up to well, it depends on how big the Blimp is, but usually you don't see a Blimp with more than twelve passengers or so. Yeah, and it's not even necessarily passengers. The Gondola can also be the place where it holds all of the surveillance equipment too. Sure. Depending on what you use it for. Or it can also be the massive cargo hold. Yeah. You've got your communications up there, your flight surface controls, any NAV equipment, propeller controls. There's not much else to it besides what you got there in the gondola. Yeah. What's funny is I always thought blimps were basically like, you know, you get the blimp in the air and it takes off and then that's it. But at least with good year, it's kind of like got helicopter parents almost, because when you see the blimp, if you look around, you'll also find a ground crew with a bus, 18 wheeler and a bunch of vans that follow it everywhere because I guess those things break down. Yeah. And apparently the pilots, too, they're FAA certified and goodyear pilots also have another training program, but the pilots are even everyone is cross trained, it sounds like, to work on the ground or make repairs and yeah, it's like a little self contained unit all just traveling around together like half tornado chasers. Right. And you talked about if they just took off and floated around, if the engines did stop. That's exactly what you're doing. You are basically a hot air balloon at that point. So you lose control of the flight service controls. Yeah, well, I mean, they call it a free balloon, so it's buoyant and it's kept aloft, obviously. But if they lose all the power, then all you can do is ascend and descend because I think, I guess the rudders and the elevators are also powered mechanisms. I got you. It's not just attached to a cable, attached to a pedal, attached to a wheel. It sounds like it is, though. And as far as weather goes, they compare it to roughly operating is about as similar as a helicopter. Like we can fly in bad weather, but we try to avoid super bad weather. Yeah, I don't blame them. Sure. I mean, that's no fun. No, you want to be above the rose ball and like 70 deg weather. Sure. Yeah. So coming up, we're going to talk about how blimps fly and then also the future of blimps and if there is such a thing after this. So, Chuck, the way blimps fly is pretty simple and beautiful and elegant if you ask me. Yeah. So you have helium, right? Yeah. Which is they used to use hydrogen. Helium slightly heavier than hydrogen, but not that much more. You don't notice a difference, I would guess. Yeah. I mean, you get why they use hydrogen. They weren't dummies. Right. It was lighter than air. Sure. The lightest of all the gas, of all the elements, from what I understand. And when hydrogen blew up, they said, okay, not hydrogen, what else do we have? And they said, well, helium works. And so they started using helium. And helium has a lift capacity of zero point 70, which is 1.1 kg/m\u00b2, which means it can lift a pretty decent amount of weight for just a little bit amount, sure. And since they're filling these balloons with hundreds of thousands of cubic feet or cubic meters of helium, they can lift tons and tons of weight, and they do it by just simple physics. Since helium is lighter than air, as long as the helium has enough lifting power to lift whatever the envelope and the gondola and all of the mechanisms way, then it will rise more than the air. It will rise into the air. Yeah. It's called positive buoyancy. And what you want is a blunt pilot is neutral buoyancy. So that's why you're going to control, like we talked about, your air bladders, to get that thing where once you've got your cruising altitude, you just want to be at the same level. Yeah. You want up and down, and you want to fill it up by blowing exhaust into your air scoops, which fill up your balinets. And the higher you get into the atmosphere, the less pressure there is, which means the higher up you could float conceivably. So you want to make sure you get the air in so you don't just float away and you achieve is it negative buoyancy or neutral buoyancy, you said? Yeah, that's what you want. And then when you want to land, you do just the opposite. You fill it up with even more air, and then you make the blimp heavier than the helium inside can lift, and it just slowly comes down to the ground. And I mean, that's it. That's how blimps rise and fall. Yeah, it is pretty simple. And when they're on the ground, they just tie it to that little spindle. You've got your little wheel under the rear, you got a little tractor to tow it around, maybe a hanger, and that's the life of a blimp. And like I said, they don't inflate and deflate these. I'm sure it's a time and expense. And I think they're running out of helium, too. Didn't we learn that? Yeah. Do you know much about that? Well, we covered it in the probably the Mars Turbine episode. Mars Turbine, yeah, that was it. I read a really interesting article, and I think The New Republic I can't remember I found it online last night, and it's about the helium shortage and why we have a helium shortage. And apparently the US. Has had a reserve, a strategic helium reserve, since 1925 in a cave in Texas. And apparently during the Clinton era, the government said, let's make some money off of this, or let's make our money back off of it. So they passed a law that said start selling the stuff off Bureau of Land Management, but only make enough money off of it to recoup whatever we've put into it over the years, which is like $1 billion. Yeah. So they started selling it, and by setting the price artificially, they created an artificial market, because this is like 80, 90% of the world's helium reserves in this cave in Texas. So whatever the BLM was selling it for, that's how much the market value was, but it was artificial. So you had artificially cheap helium flooding the market, which had a two pronged effect. One, it led to these scarcities that we're running into now because they just started selling it off in a fire sale, the private industry. But the other more positive effect it had was that it spurred all of this technological innovation because nuclear magnetic resonance, the technology behind MRIs, superconductivity molecular analysis, uses helium to super cool magnets to turn them into super conductors. Right. So you need helium for that. So all these industries were using this helium from the Bureau of Land Management to advance technology by leaps and bounds, which is one of the big reasons why we are where we are right now, technologically speaking, because of helium. But now we're starting to run out. There is, I think, 9 billion cubic feet of helium left in the reserve in Texas, which is about a third of what they had when they started selling it off in the 90s, which would be fine if we just clamped it out and said, okay, this is a reserve again. But instead, for some reason, the government just doubled down and issued another decree to the Bureau of Land Management, like, keep selling this stuff. Let's just get rid of all of it for no good reason. I don't understand why interesting, like, it made sense in the 90s, maybe, and it had all these great effects, but now it's like, okay, we understand that helium is literally irreplaceable. As the article put it, once there's no helium, there's no helium. We can't go get it anywhere else or manufacture it, and we have no technology to recycle it. I wonder what the reason is. I guess money. Private industry has a lot of interest in it, and there's good interest, too, like using it for MRIs or pharmaceutical research or that kind of birthday parties. Well, that's the thing. So the Med and Pharma sectors use 29% of helium worldwide. Welding uses 17% because they use helium to weld yeah. Party balloons equals 8% of worldwide helium. Yes. Wow. I have a feeling that party balloons are going to go the way of the dinosaur very soon, if they haven't already. And half of that is the stoner kid who operates the helium tank. Right. Just talking funny. Yeah. So that's the helium shortage. That's the skinny on it. Wow. So I wonder if there's any other gas they could use for blimps. I don't know. It seems like a giant waste. Or I wonder if they could do, like, a hybrid so it's fueled by hot air, like a balloon? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. Well, I guess we are at the future then. In the future, and depending on who you ask, the future of airships is either super exciting and awesome, and when you look at these, they are yeah. Or it's not going to be funded enough to really there's not a lot of money being pumped into it. Well, the government was for a little while with the Afghanistan war. The Department of Defense is like, give us new blimps. We want these things now. And all these companies ran in and we're like, here's your blimp, here's your blimps, give us some money. The problem is the whole program got scrapped because nobody could fulfill the enormous orders the DoD was placing for helium. Right, well, that makes sense. And the military is interested because they basically could be a satellite function. As a satellite? Yeah. Like a 10,000 foot satellite. Yeah, pretty much. There are people doing it, though. Lockheed Martin has a P 791 that is super cool looking. And it is a trihaul. If you look at it from the front, it looks sort of like three blimps squashed together and it has four big it looks like feet, these dischaped cushions that are apparently for landing. And these are also cool. There's another one in California from worldwide aeroscorp called the Dragon Dream. And it's different looking. It sort of looks like a whale shark. Did you see it? Yeah, it's a single hull, I guess, but it's sort of kind of flattened out and it looks like a whale shark. They actually submitted that design to the DoD and when the DoD scrapped the program, they bought their design back because they want to go commercial like cargo carrier with it. Yeah. They're in trouble, though, because the Dragon died. Well, I had a roof collapse in a hangar. Yeah. And they don't know if they have the money to even fix it and then continue. Well, they have another model called the ML 866 that it sounds like they're putting their energy into. It supposedly can carry 250 tons, which is more than twice the cargo payload of a cargo 777. Wow. Twice. Again, you mentioned how little fuel it takes to power these things. So it'll take a little while for you to get your package, but the company shipping it isn't going to spend too much money delivering it. I still say if it's a military to use as a cargo plane, I know you can't shoot a hole in it, but what if you launched the surface to air misleading? It's still full of helium. I don't know. They're so high up there, you can't the fact that we have satellites and drones, it seems to me like the surveillance uses of blimps are preposterous, especially considering that we could be using that helium for medical purposes instead. Yeah, I agree. Is there anything else on the impact? We got nothing else. I got one other thing. If you were fascinated by the way blimps float, I think it's cool for some reason. I did a Brain stuff video. Oh, nice. About, you can calculate how many balloons it would take, like regular party balloons to lift yourself into the sky. And I made a video about it, so you go to brainstepshow.com and check it out. Nice. And if you want to read this article, you can go to howstepfloor.com, type in How Blimps work and it will bring it up. And I said, Housetofworks, I think so that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this sterilizing addicts. Remember that old one did a show on whether or not it's legal to sterilize attics? Turns out it is. Yeah. And that's the thing. And this is from someone who had a personal stake in it. It's long, but I'm going to edit it in my head as I go. Okay. Hey, guys, just recently listening to your podcast and Sterilization of Addicts had a personal story to share until my mother is a fully recovered heroin addict, and I'm grateful just to be alive. Until I was six, she was only an alcoholic. However, drug addiction set in fast. My mother, brother, and myself, along with whatever scumbag boyfriend she had at the time, were constantly on the run from the police, looking for shelter and searching for food. My father is an upper middle class, blue collar worker who always had a sound home environment. When my mother was sent to prison when I was ten, I was sent to live with my father. Always had food, shower and clean clothes, was never in fear for being homeless. I lived with my father for three years until I finally ran away. Once I regained contact with my mother, my father, even with his financial support and stability, was never there, even though he was only a few feet away. My mother, even while on drugs, always listened and always cared about my thoughts and feelings, and that was what was important as a child. My mother eventually overcame her addictions cold turkey because she could see it was damaging to me and my brother. She's been cleaned for eleven years now and is an amazing mother and an amazing grandmother to my nephew. I like to believe that seeing the harder side of life made me appreciate such things and be more humble and responsible and fearful of what could happen if I slipped or did not take care of myself. I don't want to be the poster child for children of addicts. However, I do believe that we are all in control of our own lives. And that is anonymized as. Cornelius Jacobs II corneli. Jake seven. Yeah. He said, yeah, you can read it. And I said, I'll anonymousize. It. Is there some sort of name anonymizer on the Internet? No, he said, please do. Just make it something awesome like Cornelius Jacobs the 7th. That's great. Cool. PS. I've been secretly wanting Jerry to be the Tyler Durden of your podcast, like Made Up. But we think she's real, but she's not. Okay. Are you real, Jerry? Jerry says no. No. That answers that. Cornelius Jacobs the 7th. And you read the Roman numerals correctly, Chuck this time. Good going. Yeah, nice going. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us any story like Cornelius Jacobs the 7th, please do. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffysheno. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howtofworks.com. And as always, go to our cool homeontheweb stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | ||
Why Are So Many Disembodied Feet Washing Ashore In British Columbia? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-are-so-many-disembodied-feet-washing-ashore-in | Between 2007 and 2016, 17 disembodied feet - still wearing shoes - have washed ashore between Washington and British Columbia. What's behind the sudden influx of Vancouver's mystery feet? | Between 2007 and 2016, 17 disembodied feet - still wearing shoes - have washed ashore between Washington and British Columbia. What's behind the sudden influx of Vancouver's mystery feet? | Tue, 14 Jun 2016 13:49:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=49, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=166, tm_isdst=0) | 35088211 | 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 over there. And there are 6ft in this studio video right now. And all of them are exactly where they're supposed to be. Attached to their lower legs? Yeah. Below the calf. Yes. Above the floor, facing forward. Yeah. That's a big one, too, because if it's facing backwards, you've got problems or you're just going the wrong way all day long. Made it. So you know where they're not supposed to be, Chuck? Feet. Yes. Well, they're not supposed to be on the armrest of the seat in front of you on an airplane. Yes. Or movie theater. Yes, but I know you're not talking about common courtesies. That bug me. No, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. That is so wrong. And I'm meant to tell you, I've come over to your side about taking shoes off on the plane. Oh, good. It's okay if I do it. Okay. But you and I were flying somewhere and this dude behind us had nasty, stinky feet and he had his shoes off and we're facing forward and we could smell his feet below our seats behind us. And I kept turning around, giving him the dirtiest looks, and he was like he had no idea what I was doing. Did you look at his feet and then at his face, and he still didn't get it. Did you look at his feet, his face, and then clap your nose? I did. That still didn't work. I threw up a little bit onto him. He just thought I was there. Sick. Yeah. Yeah, I know. People disagree with me. People wrote in were like, what's? To you? I thought it was to eat your own. Chuck, don't yok my yum. Yeah, I'm a yum yucker. All right, so I'll tell you a place where feet aren't supposed to be. They're not supposed to be off on their own on a beach somewhere. Not attached to a body. Exactly. No. That's not something that you see every day. No. Unless you're in Vancouver and then it happens. Like almost every day, it seems like. Not quite, but sure. There's something very weird going on in Vancouver. You say there's no mystery, I say there's still a bit of a mystery to it. But we'll start at the beginning. Okay? Okay. August 27 is kind of a cool and drizzly day at a place called Jededai Island Provincial Park up in British Columbia. Right. Near Vancouver. Yeah, right. Lovely area. Sure, of course. Beautiful. That's why you would want to say like, go park or camp at this park with your family. Which is what a twelve year old girl was doing. I couldn't find this girl's name to save my life. Probably because she's twelve. She wouldn't be good to say it. Anyway, she was sure she was walking along the beach with her dad and there was a bunch of, like flotsam. That's the term for stuff that washes up from the sea, that the sea spits up onto the shores. And she saw a shoe and she picked it up and she untied it and turned it upside down and out fell a sock. And inside the sock was a human foot. Yes. And she was pretty surprised. Size twelve. Yeah. It was a campus brand shoe, which ended up being not, neither here nor there, but it is manufactured in India. Mostly sold in India. Right. And we'll just park that right there for now. Yeah. So the families like this is unusual. Sure. They borrowed a radio from somebody else and they alerted the authorities. And in very short order the Mounties showed up, the coroner showed up, the Coast Guard showed up. I bet the mountains were all over that foot. So yeah. They said, you know what, we're going to take that foot if that's okay, little girl. And she threw her sobbing tears, said, sure, but just give me a little money. Okay. And they said, we're going to send it off for DNA examination. And did that return nothing? The DNA? As far as I know, yeah. There's no match. So that wasn't like a clue? The DNA? Yeah. No, but it was the first thing they tried. Sure. The DNA. They also looked at it to see what was going on with the foot, if there was any kind of signs of what the deal was. Yeah. They held up their ear and pretended like it was a telephone. And one of the other Mounties said, that's not funny. Yeah, but they're like, oh, it is kind of funny. And they said, sorry, so they just kind of filed it away. It actually didn't make much of a stir outside of the area. It was worth talking about. It got a little bit of ink because it was just so weird. But they put the foot away at the coroner's office and everybody went about their lives, right. I would assume so. And then six days later another foot showed up in the area. Not the same place, but in the same general area. Another right foot. Which means it wasn't the person's other foot. No. That'd be weird. So there's two people missing feet now. Yes. This is a Men's reebok, size eleven, I think. And the people who found it said that when they saw it, they immediately knew that there was a foot in there because it looked full. It looked futy is how they put it. Full foot. Yeah. And they picked it up and smelled it and they're like, yeah, it's a foot. That's right. And the Mounties came in again and they got off their horses and Corporal Gary Cox said, it is a little weird to find 2ft, especially within six days of one another yeah. In the same area. He described it as a million to one odds. I don't think he did the science on that, but it's just something you say. Right, but he said two is pretty crazy. Yeah. And I agree with them. Yeah. So the first foot was in Jeddai Island. The second one is on Gabriella Island, which is I couldn't find exactly how far away it was across the water, but it's not that far. They're close, but they're separated by some water. And now all of a sudden, there's 2ft that were found within six days. The media starts to catch drift of this one. Yeah. Right. There's huge feet washing up on the shores in Vancouver. Right. And at the very time Robert Pickton was on trial in Vancouver for murdering as many as 49 women, you've heard of him, right? I think so, yeah. He was the notorious pig farmer who would, like, butcher women and feed them to his pigs and then butcher his pigs and feed pigs to his guests. Yeah. One of the only, probably, Canadian serial killers. Right. Yeah. And one of the worst of all serial killers. He's a horrible person because he wasn't crazy. You know what I mean? He was just a horrible person. Yeah. And so he's on trial at that time, got, I think, 25 years, which is like, the maximum sentence you can get in Canada. What? Come on. Canada? Yes. 25 years for up to 49 horrible murders. Yeah. So he was on trial. There are also a lot of really high profile missing people in the area, too, that it just vanished without a trace in the four years leading up to that. Yeah. And you point out because you wrote this correct? I did, but actually, I was pointing out that Christopher Solomon pointed something out. Okay, well, the point is, and this is a little strange, but maybe not. I don't know, I was trying to make sense of it british Columbia apparently just has a higher than normal rate of missing persons than other parts of the world. Yes. Which is weird. Yeah. But I mean, like, a lot more. Yeah. More than 2400 people over a 59 year period. And Solomon compared that to Kentucky, which is about the same size and population. Or same size population. They only had 515 people missing over that 59 years. That seemed really low to me. Did it? Eight people a year missing in the whole state that remained missing. Okay. Unsolved forever. Yes. Because in Kentucky, they'll just be like, he was Uncle Billy's down the road for a week. Right, exactly. Okay. So the idea is that BC has almost five times the number of unsolved missing persons cases over this 59 period, compared to Kentucky, which has about the same size population. It's a lot more yeah. I mean, Solomon might have gone in and selected, like, oh, Kentucky's got the lowest of the same size population, so that will really point it out. But it does seem that BC has a large amount of missing persons. Now, I bet it has something to do with the terrain and the wildlife. Probably the abundance of water. Probably that, too. It's not a good thing. A lot of heroin. Yeah, sadly. And probably go missing in the drug vendor. In addition to the serial killer theory, one of them was that these were, like, people who had either run a foul of the local organized crime syndicates yeah. Or ran a foul of, like, a fellow heroine addict. Unorganized crime. Exactly. Disorganized. Yeah. Remember that movie? What movie? Disorganized Crime. Was that a movie? Who's the blonde dude from La. Law? Courtney Bernstein. Yeah. Wow. It's actually a good movie. Really? I haven't seen it Mark Harmon in a couple of decades. Hey, Summer School is one of the all time great, man. It sounds like that kind of movie. Disorganized Crime. A bunch of bumbling criminals, definitely. But I think, like Fred, Gwen was in it. Herman Munster. Oh, yeah. One of his last roles. Wow. All right, so you talked about theories. One of the other theories. Remember we mentioned India manufactured that first shoe. Some people said, you know what? This is, sadly, just feat of tsunami survivors from the Indian Ocean disaster, december 26, 2004. And just years later, these body parts are washing up on shore, which is sort of plausible. It is. I mean, 250,000 people died in that tsunami. A lot, if not, most of them were never found. Yeah. Also, we had people point out remember when we said that modern disaster flicks are bad? We had a bunch of people write in and say the Impossible was a great movie. That's the one about the tsunami. Yeah. And it was great. It was awesome. But I think that's different because that was about a factual event. Did you categorize it as a disaster? No. See, I don't categorize it as that because it was a real thing that happened, like disastroflicts to me or when you invent some crazy disaster. Okay, well, let me ask you this. If it were totally fictionalized, but the exact same movie, would you then consider it as a disaster flick? Yes. Okay. So it's, like, on that scale and everything, too. I had the impression it was much more just like a human interest. Well, it became that. But they showed film the tsunami. That was amazing how realistic it is. I will check it out then. Very tough movie. Okay. Very hard to watch. Have you seen Twelve Years A Slave yet? Still cannot bring myself to watch that. It's pretty rough. It's just staring at me on my DVR every night. It'll be soon. I'll let you know. Okay. I'll just come into work crying. Okay. What did I do now? All right, so the tsunami disaster, they said, might have been one of the reasons, but I think other people said maybe that's not the best explanation. Right? Other people said well, a lot of people just go missing from other things, like plains go down in the Salish Sea, which is the body of water between, I think, Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. Yes. Which is where most of these are found. Is it Salish? I think so. But we'll hear from Canadians one way or the other. You say salish. I say salish. Who's. Right. Really? All right, well, we're getting all excited here with these theories, but there were more feet to come. And we'll get back to those feet right after this. So, Chuck, when those 1st 2ft were found, within six days made the rounds, people talked about it and then it just kind of drifted out of the news. Right. Like a foot in the ocean. Exactly. And then a third foot was found and it came roaring back because this is yet another foot, a totally different one. This is a woman's foot, actually. A new balance. Size seven, I think. Yeah. Kirkland island. Same general area. Right. The same 40 miles stretch along that coastal area. And this is within ten months. Now, 5ft. Four people. Yeah. So the other New Balance sneaker was found. That was the fifth foot found. And then in between the yeah. They matched the foot to the I don't know if that's good or bad, but they found the guy's other foot. Right. The woman. That was the woman that they found. Oh, they found her 2ft. Yes. Okay. So her feet were number three and number five to turn up. Got you. And then in between, an entirely different person's foot turned up. Men's like size eleven Nike, I think. Wow. So, yeah, within a ten month period, there were 5ft belonging to four different people that turned up on this little stretch. That's right. That's significant. Then there was a six foot the next August. This was in actually, Washington, so I guess it had its papers in order and made its way to the States. Like you said, if you're following the story at home as it's going on, you're starting to think, like, if I go to the beach, I'm going to see a foot today. And a lot of people did do that. Yeah. A lot of people around British Columbia started looking for disembodied feet. They were turning up so frequently. And I misspoke you were right. So the 7th foot to turn up was the woman's other foot. That's hard to keep track. It really is. All these disembodied feet. So how many feet in total, sir? I think the last two were found February of this year. Yeah. And they actually belong to the same person, but they were found a week or two or so apart. Yeah. And if they last, I mean, most recent, I'm sure more feet will come. It seems that way. The first foot was found in August 2007. These most recent feet were found in February 2016. The total 17 disembodied feet found within 150 miles stretch between tacoma, Washington, and British Columbia. Wow, that's unusual. It seems like it. And there's a lot of theories, but no one can say definitively here's what's going on. Right. And I know we're making a lot of jokes. I realize these feet belong to people who are no longer with us. I just want to throw that out there. Sure. But we do a lot of comedy on the show. We did a coma episode that had jokes. I mean, come on. Okay, good. Just wanted to see away there. So from the beginning, the cops and the Mounties were basically like, this seems really fishy, but we don't think it's murder. We don't think there's someone out there killing people and chopping their feet off. Right. Which is what a lot of people thought. Yeah. Notably, I think, because their feet weren't cut off. And you can tell. Right. They said that they were naturally disarticulated. Right, that's right. So that first foot that that girl found on Jedi Dye Island was identified pretty quickly because the cops released a picture of the shoe to the media. And remember, it was a campus brand which is made in India, sold mostly in India. And so the guy whose foot it was, his family saw it on the news and identified him as somebody who was a longtime sufferer of depression, and he was in a depressed state when his family last saw him. So the cops came to the logical conclusion that he had killed himself. Right. So foot number one has been matched to a missing person case. Close. Right. That's right. So then the New Balance shoes turned off on separate islands. This is the woman, and she was identified as a lady who also was suffering from depression and jumped off a bridge. I think they knew this for sure. Yes. That's where the woman was last seen, was jumping off a bridge. Yeah. And this had been four years previous. So now they're starting to get a pattern here where all right, there was another man, too, the one on Valdez Island. Feet three and five, they determine either suicide or accident, and then another couple of people who were accidentally killed. And so they see this pattern now. All right, these are people that just happened to die or died by their own hand near enough to the water where their feet were there. Yes. I'm just being vague for now. Right. Yeah. But the weird thing is now, all of a sudden, in a very short period of time, relatively short period of time, because one of these guys whose feet turned up was last seen after his boat turned over in 1987. So in a very short period of time, all these people who died at very different periods of time, suddenly their feet were starting to turn up in this area around the Sailors Sea. Yes. And the cops had, I guess, kind of a pretty good idea from the outset but to understand what was going on, or at least what the cops say was going on, you have to understand what happens to a person who dies in the water. Yes. You think that people float. Yeah. You kind of think that because in movies, if you're trying to get rid of a body in the water, you always tie cement blocks to a cement shoes. That's the old joke. Somebody turned up like that in New York recently. Like with cement shoes. Yeah. Wow. That's not too many movies. But the idea is that you have to weigh the body down. And I suppose if you were going to get rid of a body that I'd probably do the same thing just out of discovering my bases, just to be sure. Right, yeah. Well, the thing is, if you do use cement shoes on a person, you should never do that. But if you did, what you're doing is you're not ensuring that they sync right. Then you're ensuring that they don't come back up because that's what happens. That's right. The body that has gone unconscious or has drowned and died sinks pretty quickly. And it usually sinks so quick that if you are looking for a drowning victim, you should look on the bottom pretty close to where they were last seen on the surface. They sink that fast, man. So a body sinks and it'll sink faster in fresh water than salt water because salt water makes humans a little more buoyant, I guess, overweight people, people with a lot of fat on their bodies sink more slowly than people who are leaner. And then depending on the water temperature as well and how deep the water is, they'll sink faster and faster as they get to the bottom. Yeah. And depending on what you're wearing yeah. Like a coat or shoes or something like that, that'll all weigh you down. Or a backpack. Yeah, it's definitely going to pull you down. But the point is, once you go under, once you submerge and you're dead or you're dying, you're going to sink pretty quick. Yeah. There's more pressure to the deeper you get in the body of water. You mentioned the temperature was lower, but there's also more pressure and that compresses the air in your body and that's going to make you less floaty as well. Right. So the thing the cool air or the cool temperature does down there is it kind of preserves you for a little while longer than ordinarily because the bacteria that will eventually consume your body are just going to be slower to do so. They just move more slowly. Yeah. But that bacteria is eventually going to overcome the sinking of the body because your body is an enclosed system, generally, roughly. I mean, you got a mouth and all that, sure. But as they're eating, they're putting out as a waste product gases like methane and stuff like that. And your body traps that stuff and it begins to bloat. And everyone knows that once you bloat, you float. That's right. That's the forensics bumper sticker. Yeah. Eventually you're going to rise to the top like a dirigible because of those gases that are trapped in your body. Like a submarine, I guess. Okay. I guess. Do you mean they keep going into the air like a blip? You float off and then your foot will be found on the moon later? Yeah. You're going to float. And that's why whenever people discover, like, a dead body in a lake much later, it's not a pretty thing. They're bloated and puffed out and decomposed. It's not pretty. But if you are trapped, say, like in a vehicle or something like that, and all of this takes place, eventually your body is going to be prevented from floating away. Sure. And it will eventually rupture. And once the rupture happens, all that gas and the buoyancy that's created by it is all released. So you're staying there. You're staying there. Yeah. And I read this article about did you read the article about the Oklahoma guy? Yeah. It was really weird and sad. It is. So, like, there's a guy whose brother went missing in his Camaro, and I think, like, 1970, and he just never knew what happened to him. And he used this boat ramp on this place called Foss Lake, and he found out later, when the cops accidentally discovered the car, that his brother had been submerged in just 12ft of water for 40 years. All those times he was back in his boat into Foss Lake, his brother was right below him. Yes. Isn't that crazy? And they found him accidentally, and then they found another car that had gone missing, I think the year before, just a few feet away. And the moral of the story is that Foss Lake is really murky. Wow. I mean, 12ft of water, two different cars. Camaro. Yeah, a Camaro. And I think like a packer or something like that. Or Buick. Man. Unbelievable. All right, well, let's take another little break here, and we'll talk a little bit more about what can happen to a body underwater. And what's the deal with all these feet? All right, just this year, there was a study there's some criminologists at Simon Fraser, you outside of Vancouver, and there have been a bunch of studies like this over the years where we've talked in our Body Farm episode, where criminologists and forensics experts try to see what happens to bodies under various conditions, including being sunk underwater. So they took a pig carcass in this case, not a human could ever and they sunk it kind of near where in the Sailor Sea where these feet had been appearing. And these pigs carcasses, they were bones in a matter of days. It was really fast. Yeah, they were really surprised. Surprisingly fast, because conventional wisdom is that this took weeks, months maybe even. Sure. And the other studies have shown that. Right. And these things, these pigs were like just bones in a few days. They think it's possible that the Sale sea is an anomaly because this was almost 1000ft of water but it's really highly oxygenated. So there's a lot of life down there, a lot more things to eat a body. Exactly. Whereas if you took it to another body of water in 1000 ft. There might not be as much oxygen so it might take longer. But for the sailors sea it's possible for something to be reduced to bones in a few days. Yes. Here was my one problem with the way they did this study. Maybe I over thought it, but they trapped it under fencing which presumably means that was just kind of in one place the whole time. Sure. If you're going to simulate a human body I would have maybe shackled a leg and put a long leader 100 so it could move around and see what a body would do. See the spikes? Yes. Because a body can move on the bottom a little because there's current minor gripe. Yeah, but yeah. Did you see the video of it? The time lapse video? Oh, no, it's really something. Yes, it's gross. Don't need it. There was another study that I found that really kind of ties all this together. It was from 1992 and it was carried out by the coroner of Kings County, which is where Seattle is. And he or she, I think he looked at bodies that have been pulled from the water and he took the amount of time they've been in the water submerged and then the amount of body parts that were left or exactly what body parts were left. Right. And basically went back and reverse engineered the process by which a body comes apart when it's submerged underwater. Yeah. That's valuable information. It really is. And so what they came up with was that the thinnest areas of skin typically cover like joints like your wrist and ankles. Those get eaten away first, which exposes that soft tissue beneath that holds your hand to your arm or your foot to your leg and then that gets attacked by scavengers and all the other stuff that's eating it. And so between the things eating that soft tissue holding the bones together and the wave action of the currents at the bottom of the body of water, the hands and then the feet work loose. They disarticulate. Yeah. So they naturally will fall off the body as the body's decomposing, submerged underwater. And they are among the first parts to go. That's right. And if you're just a foot and you're not wearing a shoe, then chances are that foot will get consumed and you will never see it again. Although one of these feet was a barefoot correct. Yes. Which seems to be a little bit of an outlier. A little bit. But if you've got a shoe on that thing that's tied up nice and tight and you're disarticulated at the ankle, that foot is still inside that shoe going to make it really hard for a scavenger to get in there. And it's very possible that that foot will not decompose or at least decompose very slowly. Right. And not only that, will it be protected once it disartulates? If it's wearing a certain kind of shoe, specifically an athletic shoe that's made in the last 1520 years, it's going to have air injected into the sole. And in the case of, like, remember Nike Air Maxes? They had actual air pockets in between the sole and the bottom of the shoe and that actually creates a buoyant effect that will lift a shoe, including one that has a foot still inside to the surface. Yes. So they started looking at all these cases and they said, well, almost all of these are athletic shoes so that makes sense. And it's going to bob upside down because of that rubbery sole. So it's going to be protected even more from birds and things. Right. So what we have here is a case of people that just happened to die and their feet happen to come away from their bodies and be well protected by these awesome running shoes yes. And eventually made their way to shore but a little bit weird that they would happen in this area in such a span of time, I would still say. Right. What you just said, that's the cops position. Yeah. And it has been basically since the outset, since the first foot was found, basically nothing to see here and there's not a lot there to undermine it or attack it. It's a pretty sound position but there is still a mystery to it, to me, in that why British Columbia? Like it doesn't make sense. And there's a couple of explanations. One is that the Sailors Sea is something like a lagoon to where water flows in from the Pacific Ocean from the south northward into the Sailor Sea. And once stuff goes in there, it basically recirculates. It doesn't come back out very often. Well, when you see the sign that says Sailor, she says feet flow in, they don't flow out. Exactly. Yeah, right. So once you see that sign you're like, well there's the explanation. The idea is that the Sailors Sea would experience higher incidence of floss of all types, including feet. Which is one explanation. Yeah, it could be. Right. Well I'm sure that has something to do with it. Sure. The other explanation is one of my favorite things in the world, which is a version of well there's a couple of names for it. There was a guy named Arnold's Wiki in 2006, a linguistics professor at Stanford who coined a term frequency illusion and that's one of the cognitive biases where basically if you are looking for something you're going to find it. All these people saw in the news. Feet washing up on the shore. So like you said, they all started looking for feet and every time a foot was found, it just supported the idea that, yes, there's something really weird going on here, which only increased the awareness and the focus on this. Which means that people started seeing more and more feed. That's right. So frequency illusion specifically is a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias. So in this case, selective attention unconsciously keeping an eye out for that new thing that you were just told about, which is the feet. And the confirmation bias in this case is the reassurance that it's just more and more proof of its omnipresence. More feet. Right. You could see that happening here for sure. Pretty interesting. It's called the Bottermine half phenomenon too. Yes. I didn't know where that came from. There was a dude until I looked it up. 1994. It was just a commenter on the Pioneer Press of St. Paul discussion board. And he had heard about the Botter Minehoff terrorist group a couple of times in one day. Right. For the first time. Yeah. And just said, Potter minehouse phenomenon. And it became a meme. Yeah, I thought it was more I thought it was cooler than that. No, I thought there was some cool explanation that wasn't just some dude online. It definitely sounds cooler than it is. It sounds way cooler than it is. But it's a common thing. People talk about 1111 on the clock is a big one for a lot of people say, I see 1111 all the time on the clock. Because you're looking for it. Sure. Frequency illusion. Yeah. It's not actually happening more than it ever was. You're just paying more attention to it now. And this is really unnerving suggestion because it says that feet washing up on the shore is way more common than any of us realizing that if you went over and picked up an athletic shoe on a beach somewhere, there's a good chance that there's going to be a foot inside. We just aren't aware of this as human beings outside of Vancouver. Right. So that makes Vancouver the capital of the disembodied feet capital of the world. I don't know if that necessarily holds up though. I don't think it's been explained. Yeah, because I bet you it's frequency illusion. I disagree. I think it's something else. I think it probably has to do with the hydrology or something about Vancouver or British Columbia. There's this database called Name US and it's like a catalog of unidentified remains. And I did a search for disarticulated foot and out of like 40,000 unidentified remains in the US. 30,000 were from Vancouver. The only three were disarticulated feet and one was found in the Washington State area. So you could technically kind of include it in that weird Vancouver club. One was in Maryland and one was in Dallas. That was it. Wow. So it does really seem like vancouver has higher than usual incidents of this articulated feet showing up in its area. Wow. Which is weird. Are you on the case? No, I'm just a fan. Okay. So you got anything else? No, I just realized that I've been rotating my feet around and just feeling making sure they're there, sort of. If you want to know more about this, you can. Actually, there are three really good articles that I read in addition to some other ones, but three stood out. One was by Winston Ross of the Daily Beast. One was on Pacific Standard. I didn't see an author. And then Christopher Solomon's outside article. Those are all pretty stand out. And since I said stand out, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this Internet round up. I don't know if people watch, but we have an internet show called Internet roundup. Several hundred people watch. Yeah, it's like the silliest thing we do. We sit down in the studio on video and we just talk about a couple of things on the internet that we think are neat. Right? So that is the setup. Hey, guys. I was recently on a Delta flight and they show these on delta? Yeah. And this is not an ad for Delta? No. I was recently on a delta flight from Atlanta. Austin. Keeping an eye out for your hat, Chuck? I got very excited when I remembered I could watch your Internet round up show on the plane. To pass the time, we began our descent in Austin, sudden thunderstorms developed. It was quite bumpy, to say the least. If you have never been on a plane that unsuccessfully tried to land in a thunderstorm, I don't recommend it. I just had listened to your how to survive a plane crash episode from 2008 just that week before. And I remember thinking how grateful I was that I was in the back of the plane because Chuck said I had a better chance of surviving that way. It's not much of a chance, but sure. I just thought you would like to know that despite the horrible weather going on and never lost connection with your show, watching Internet roundup and able to listen and watch, you guys really helped me keep calm until our pilot finally gave up trying to land and diverted the plane to Houston. That's even scarier. Yeah, I'm not going to try anymore. Well, let's go to Houston. Close enough. Yeah. In the end, everyone made it to Austin safely, though, so thanks for everything you guys do. And that is from Lauren Sprouts. Thanks a lot, Lauren. Have you ever watched videos of planes that come in for landing, but it's too windy, so they have to immediately take back off? No, this has never happened. Like they touch down and take off. If you watch those waiting to get onto a plane, it's a really good way to just poke at your brain. Wow. Yeah. No, thank you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hit us up on Twitter at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Instagram at s yskpodcast too. You can join us on Facebook. Comlovychado. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.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. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-11-21-sysk-bath-salts-final.mp3 | Bath Salts: Steer Clear | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/bath-salts-steer-clear | Although much of the media-fueled hysteria over the designer drug called bath salts has been utterly unfounded, especially when it comes to driving users to eating people's faces, you'll still want to pass on them. Learn why. | Although much of the media-fueled hysteria over the designer drug called bath salts has been utterly unfounded, especially when it comes to driving users to eating people's faces, you'll still want to pass on them. Learn why. | Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:00:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=325, tm_isdst=0) | 38966827 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, Portland in Seattle. We are coming to see you live next January. Yep. On January 15, we're gonna be in beautiful Seattle, Washington, at the Moore Theatre. Hooray. And then on January 16, the next night, we're gonna be at Revolution and hall in Portland. And we are super psyched for these, right, Chuck? That's right. These tickets are going fast. So for all the deeds, go to our livehome on the Web s Ysklive.com welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. They are both loaded on bath salt. No, you're not. Like you even need to say that. Everybody knows you're not on bath salt. Yeah. And so COA time. This is about the drug bath salt. It's not just about us chatting about how lovely it is to soak in a tub. Do you remember how confusing it was when they first came out, being an old person? They're like, Is that a bad thing? Like, are they actually snorting bath salt? Right. Yeah. So even though a lot of this episode about the drug Basalts will be about the incorrect hysteria surrounding bath salts, much like the crack episode, you should still not ever do bass salts. Yeah. An endorsement for going and trying bests salt. They're so 2011 anyway. Yeah. But there is a lot of interesting hysteria surrounding this. Kind of like PCP and crack and all this stuff. Yeah. It's a really great study in how the media can really fuel drug hysteria. And not only how they can, how every time a new drug comes out. They do? Yeah. Because anytime the media scares everybody, people pay more attention to the news and the media makes more money, so they have a reason to scare people. And this is a great example of it, but it is also an example of reality coinciding with hysteria, too. There are some really messed up stuff that did happen on bath salts. Just not nearly as widespread as people thought. Yeah, it stay off the bath salts. Exactly. So I guess our story sort of starts in 2010, ish when this new drug appeared on the scene, and it is what they call a designer drug, meaning that it is created by a person synthetically. And in this case, rather than God. Yeah, in this case, it's something called synthetic Cathy Known, which we'll get into all the chemical stuff in a bit. Okay. And I was shocked to learn that designer drugs, there's like several hundred a year. Is that what it said? Like 250 something in Europe. We worked also off of a Smithsonian article it was great. Called no. Bath salts won't turn you into accountable. And the author mentioned that there was, I think from 2009 to the 2014 or 15, there was like 279 new designer drugs that hit the market. That's so scary. Sure. Yes. The reason why, though, is because designer drugs are easily tweaked. Right. And the reason that they tweak them just ever so slightly is because governments tend to outlaw specific chemicals, and they do that by the chemical composition. Well, if you add like, a covalent bond here or a hydrogen atom there or whatever, I don't know, I'm not a chemist. But if you alter it ever so slightly, so it still has basically the same effect, but is a different chemical than the one that's outlawed, you can then turn around and sell that legally for a while until that chemical composition gets outlawed. Yeah. And this article is rightfully referred to as a cycle in a very tough cycle to battle as far as drug enforcement goes. That's right. It's a new day and age with a synthetic drug thing. But it does seem like if the media gets the nation on board, then the drug warriors can be like, it's outlawed now. And everybody's like, okay, cool. All right, so 2010, what's going on? 2010 over in London, I believe, drug called methadrome got kind of big. Meth, as in Emmy? PH. Yeah. I'm not, like, listing Methodrone, also known as meow meow, which is probably the greatest drug slang name of all time. Although there's another one in here that we'll get to that may be even better than yow meow, but I think I'm just going to call everything meow meow from now on. Yes. I just like the idea of someone, like, walking up to a guy on the street corner, say, hey, man, you got some meow meow. Right? So I got you hooked up. The guy is like, you know, you can just say meow, and you know what you're talking about. He's like, no, it's better to say it twice. He said, I can also hook up your kitty with some meow mix. Right. So this stuff kind of hit the scene in Europe, and then in very short order, it made its way over to the US. As well. And it was really popular all of a sudden among club kids, ravers, people who enjoy getting high on drugs. Really liked it a lot. Yeah, I'm wearing pants with wide legs. Sure. Yeah, that's a big one. Still, probably. Although I think that's like goths now. Ravers are called goth kids. There's a convergence. Yeah, it's weird, but they're all, like, into fluorescent. It's a bizarre convergence that happened somewhere in our rear view. Yeah. After we kind of moved out of that. I mean, I was post rave. I wasn't in that scene. Even I was too old for that. I was Perry Rave. What does that mean? Like, right in oh, you're sure did you go to those things? Yeah, I went to the I might tell the story once, but I lived in a warehouse in Atlanta one year, and actually it was right at the turn of 2000, and they had raves at these warehouses for a while, and I went to one, me and my buddies were like, all right, let's do it. And yeah, what am I seeing? Yeah, but we had one friend our age that was really into it, and he even wore the clothes. And it's like, dude, you're too old to be wearing this. Come on. That's awesome. You shall remain nameless. I know exactly who it is. I'll bet. No, you don't. No. Okay. Who are you going to say that? I'm not going to say now then. Okay, you'll tell me off, Mike. Maybe. So anyway, 2010, long after Chuck went to his rave and I went to my rave, this new drug hit the scene. And one of the reasons it was so popular and became very widespread out of nowhere, was because you could go to a head shop, you could go to a Spencer's, maybe. You could go to the mall, you could go to a gas station, you could go to a skate shop and buy this stuff. And it was called Bath salts. And some of them, they had brand names on some of the bath salts, like Locomotion, Vanilla, Sky, Zoom, Ocean, Snow, every dumb name you can think of is what they call them. But they were all generally lumped into this new drug, bath Salt. It was all meowmail. And it was totally legal. Yeah. And if you looked on the label, it would say, I love that name. No, if you looked on the label, it would say, not for human consumption. This is pond cleaner. Right. Or vacuum refresher. So buy it and snort it. Right. Or plant food. Yeah, plant food was another one. Fertilizer, something like that. Right. And then, yes, you would buy this packet. I think it was like $50 for 50 milligrams or something like that. Yeah. I don't even know how much that is. I think they came in like a packet. Okay. You know, like pop rock size packet. There you go. Put it in something I can understand. Right, okay. So about a pop rock amount was, I think, $50. All right. And yes, the people would take the home and chop it up and snort it, or crazy people would inject it. Some people smoked it, some people just ate it. But I think the predominantly it was done with snorting it. Yeah. I think we probably already said this, but the reason was called Bass Salts was because it very much looked like the stuff that you put in the bathtub to have a nice, quiet soak very relaxing. You light a candle, put in some basalts in your tub, which is very ironic because the drug is the opposite of that experience. Yeah. Especially if you do too much. Yeah. By all accounts, bath salts will actually, I'm going to just go ahead and read this because it's so great. Is this from the Smithsonian article? I think it's from our own, but it really describes the experience, such that why would anyone want to try this out? The bodies of basalt users experience a smorgasportive stress effects, including rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pains, fever, sweating, nausea, vomiting, nose bleeds, trimmer seizures, muscle agitation. This can lead to muscle damage, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and death. The brainboards an emotional perceptual roller coaster of agitation, irritability disease, insomnia, ticking slowly up pills of anxiety, and then diving into valleys of depression. Concentration grows. Difficult thoughts might take a turn towards suicide or extreme paranoia, fueled by delusions and in some cases, hallucinations, all of which can culminate in panic attacks, hostility, or aggression. Right. Sounds great. Right. So what that was describing, from what I understand, was if you are a chronic user and this stuff we should say, is highly addictive yeah. Worst case scenario type of experience. Right. But it wasn't, like, out of the realm of possibility for just about anybody to have this kind of experience. Right. But it's not like if you snorted your first line of bath salt, like, you're immediately you've gone nuts and you're having a horrible time. Right. The reason people tried bath salts is because usually at a normal dose, I guess, produced euphoria, talkativeness, sociability energy. Yeah. Like a sexy drive. Yeah. It would increase your sex drive. And a lot of people likened it to a cross between cocaine and ecstasy. Right. And it was cheap. Yeah. That was another thing, too. Yeah. Like you said, again, the pop rock thing. I don't know how much it took, but it was pretty cheap compared to the cocaine and the ecstasy, I think. Right. Should we take a break? I guess so. All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back and we'll hop into the bathtub again. All right, Chuck, we're in the tub. We're soaking in it. It's very relaxing. Yeah. I think it's starting to permeate through the skin. Is that your foot? I sure hope so. Yeah. Here's why bass salts begin to make the news, and this is where it gets into a little bit of hysteria, because sometimes these people were, in fact on bath salts and did some extreme things, and sometimes people were not on bass salts. But a cop on the scene who talked to a reporter said, it sounds like bass salts to me. Right. And then all of a sudden, it's reported that way. Yeah. There is a very famous case of that. Yeah. Most infamously is the zombie cannibal. Rudy Eugene in Miami. Remember that? Yeah, I remember. Very disturbing. Yeah. There was a man named Rudy Eugene who completely out of the blue as he was walking around Miami one Saturday, just jumped on a homeless man that he saw, and over the course of, like, 18 minutes, ate his face. 18 minutes. Ronald Peppa is the name of the man. And he's recovered, actually, he doesn't have a face any longer. He doesn't have eyes or anything like that, but he's taken the opportunity to learn the guitar again. Oh, wow. Yeah. He actually seems like he's in high spirits and everything now. But he was not in high spirits while Rudy Eugene was eating his face. No. And Eugene died on the scene. He was killed by cops. From what I read, it took multiple rounds to kill him, making animals sound. Yeah. It was so disturbing, it immediately became bath salt frenzy. But here's the thing. He was not on bass salt. No. A cop on the scene apparently said to a reporter, he's definitely got to be on Bassalt. Right. And the entire media, the international media took that and ran with it. Yes. Like you said, a month later, the talks report came out, and the only thing they found in the system was marijuana. Yeah. And you don't hear much about the follow up reporting, usually. No, you don't. And as a matter of fact, as recently as, I think, 2016, this Forbes article we found mentioned that CBS News was still reporting that really, that episode was the result of a bath salts overdose. So lazy. It is. So the fact that that happened in 2012, right in the peak of the kind of hysteria that had been building over bath salt's use, it lent this idea to bath salts. That it turned you into a zombie cannibal who is capable of doing anything and usually would become very physically violent, was impervious to pain, super human strength. Yes. Took like 15 cops, take them down. And the media was reporting on this without facts. And somebody would do something crazy, and somebody would suggest it was basalt, and the media would report that the bath salts did this to this person. A month later, a tax report would come back. There was no bath salts involved, but it was too late. So bath salts and whether this is, like, unfair or not, it doesn't matter. The point is this. The media was being extremely lazy, and they shaped public opinion over a drug in ways that should not have been shaped, and they should be taken to task for that. Yeah. And here's a quote, I think, from that Smithsonian article. It said, the description of bass salt's present in these broadcast media reports was very different from the scientific literature on the topic. And it does not appear that the media took this particular source of information into account in reporting that's from the Forbes article. I was at the Forbes one. Basically, they were completely ignoring the science behind it and all this notion of super strength and psychosis, which maybe could happen under the most extreme overdose addiction cases. I mean, basically, like you said, it's talkativeness energy. Euphoria. That's a long cry from a super strong zombie cannibal. Right. The thing that strikes me is, like, I want to know why Rudy Eugene did that. Why? Where did that come from? It was like, do you remember many years ago I don't know, 1015 years ago, there was a guy on a bus on the Trans Canada Highway who out of nowhere, pulls out a knife and stabs the guy sitting next to him, who he doesn't know and apparently hadn't even spoken to on the bus ride, stabs him to death and then cuts his head off. Yeah, I remember that. And that guy supposedly had no history of violence and it came out of nowhere. What makes somebody snap? What makes somebody chew someone else's face off? That's what the media should be finding out, reporting on. Instead, they're just parroting, or in this case, they were parroting the supposition of one police officer who was on the scene and never followed up on the talks report. Right. Should we talk about the history a little bit? Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm sorry, am I in a soapbox? I don't think so. Okay, good. No, like you're on a bar of soap. All right. I can deal with that. Like, an inch off the ground. I get so sick of myself sometimes, you know? No. So, bass salts. Historically, and this is very surprising to learn, but Synthetic Cathy Knowns came about in France in the 1920s, which is a shock to me. That's a swinging time for France. I bet it was. And it didn't become, like, super popular and was all over the place. It kind of went back underground until it was published. The recipe was published on the web in the mid 2000s. Could you find who published it? I couldn't find no. I mean, some underground chemists found it and published it. Yeah, and it was taken off the web, or at least that website was shut down in 2004, but it was already out there. And there are some other drugs that we need to mention that sort of are in the same category. One is called hagagot, which was big in Israel. And I believe haggagot was a synthetic version of the natural plant. Kat. K-H-A-T. Yeah. And cot, it's a leafy plant that grows in, I think, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East. And it's kind of popular in those areas. Apparently. It's just a part of everyday life. Like, if you're a student cramming for tests, you're going to chew cot leaves like you would chew tobacco if you're a redneck here in the US. Or, like, you might brew a tea from it, which you would drink. It like social gatherings. Some people drink it in the morning. It's often compared to coffee. I've seen that it is far, far stronger than coffee, but it produces giddiness, euphoria, something verging on anxiety. And so cot is the natural version of what is it? The synthetic Cathy known. Okay. But it's the natural version of the cathedones. Correct. And so everything else is a synthetic version, including bath salts. Right. And that haag, which was big in the Middle East. So there are a lot of different versions. It's not like there was one bath salt recipe. I think that it was continually sort of changed in all of these synthetic drugs. Like we mentioned, that cycle are constantly being tweaked and changed and are sort of different versions of the same thing. But so Bassalt came about because, like I said, in 2010, methadrome made a big splash on the UK club scene. Right. And Methodrome is kind of like an even more synthetic version of MDMA, right? Yes. It produces similar effects, but it's why can't I say it? Cathyme. Yeah, cathy known. Okay, I got it. It's a type of meow. Meow. Right. Whereas MDMA is something else. But methadrome, what it does is it forces the release of dopamine in the neurotransmitter. That's your happy feeling. That's part of the reward center, the pleasure center in the brain. And it forces that. Well, everybody loved methadrone, and they said, well, if you love methadrone, also known as MeowMeow, you're going to love methadrone mixed with a couple of other drugs. Yeah. One called methylone, which is another Cathynome, another type of meow meow. It does get a little confusing. And basically, from what I can tell, the reason that they say it's like cocaine and ecstasy is because of the combination of the things. Like, one is like ecstasy and one is like cocaine. So two of them are like ecstasy. Methadoneone and methylone are like ecstasy, where both of those things go in and say, hey, neurons release a bunch of dopamine. Right. You've got more than usual, which is good stuff. Right. And then you've got MDPV. And I'm going to try saying this out loud because I practiced a couple of times. Let me see if I can I didn't even highlight that word. Are you ready for this? Sure. Okay. Chuck MD, PV. It looks like the alphabet is so long. Methylene dioxy pyrovalone. Whoa. Yeah. I told you I practiced. That was take one, everyone. Just so you know, that was not the magic of editing. And MDPV is I'm not sure if it's a Cathy none or not, but what it does is it stimulates the release of norepinephrine. It also prevents its re uptake, but it also prevents the reuptake of dopamine. So you have two drugs that are forcing your neurons to release more dopamine and another drug that's stimulating your fight or flight response. Yeah. And is preventing that dopamine that's being released from being taken up. So it's just floating in your brain? Yeah. It's like a perfect storm of brain activity, I guess, if you're a drug user. The right kind of brain activity. Right. And these are three different drugs that people liked on their own that somebody mixed together. MDPV supposedly produces feelings of kin to cocaine, but like ten times the impact of it I've seen in multiple sources, and they mix these three things together. That's what bath salts were. Correct. And so in 2010, in the UK, poison control centers yield rather 3470 bath salt calls just from January to June, which is about ten times the previous year's total. By 2011, mid 2011, 28 states here in the United States had banned bath salts. And then finally, in October 2011, the DEA basically can do this thing where they're like, emergency. We're not even going to go through all the rigmarole. We're just going to say, this stuff is federally banned. Yeah. Wolf Blitzer said it was dangerous, so we're going to ban it. Yeah, or actually, that didn't ban it. It was October I'm sorry, july 2012. That was the federal government, right, when Obama signed a federal ban on a bunch of synthetic drugs, basalt's being one of them. But as you said before, that the DEA had the authority to be like, this is outlawed. We're not going to Congress. The President. We're outlawing it. Yeah. And they did. So methylone and MDPV were all outlawed, I think. And the head of the DEA stood in front of America and said, mao, Mao, we just gave out mao, Mao the boot. Let's take another break and then we'll come back and talk about all the reasons why you should not try Bass Alt right after that. So yummy. Yes, ma'am. What's that from? Super Troopers. Yeah. When they played the male game, that was pretty funny. So people might have heard, like, oh, wow, ten times greater than cocaine. I got to try that. It's just like ecstasy, but even more potent. I got to try, don't try this. And here are all the reasons why you should not try it. Right. So, yes, it will produce feelings of euphoria, great sensations in you if you do a normal dose. You don't really know what a normal dose is. One of the big problems with this is that it was a designer drug, meaning that it never spent any time in a legitimate pharmaceutical lab. There was no research, there was no R and D. There was no testing whether I'm, like, jailed inmates against their will or not. Nobody studied this stuff. They just did things like go over patents and medical literature to find compounds that sounded like, oh, I can work with that, I'm a chemist. Let me adjust that a little bit and then give some to my neighbor who I don't really care if they live or die and then see what happens. And if they get off on it, I'm going to flood the British club market with it. Right. That's how these drugs come out. So no one who has any idea what they're talking about knows what an actual dose should be. And the problem with bath salts in particular, and with Cathy Nons, is that if you trapeze into the overdose territory, which you very easily can, you're in big trouble. Yeah, I think it was the Forbes article you sent. All of those awful side effects that I mentioned before we took that break, you can happen upon that rather accidentally. Right. And it said that quite often a basalt user will get way more than they bargained for there after the little sexy drive and hey, I'm up and I'm talking of and I'm feeling like I'm the king of the world. Yeah. And watch me tear my shirt in half. Right. And before you know it, you're clawing skin off your arm in a psychotic break. Right. So that can happen if you overdose it apparently also can happen if you're a chronic user too. And apparently you mean like Dr. Dre's. Chronic or you mean just a chronic user. Right. Sometimes the two overlap. Okay. But if you abuse the drug and you use it frequently, it can have all sorts of terrible effects on it, will addict you and the reason why you see this kind of thing, like anytime a new drug comes out and it's addictive, they'll say that it's X number of times more addictive than the most addictive drug that came out last. Yeah. Like you thought that was bad. Right. So bath salts are frequently said to be like multiple times more addictive than meth or whatever. Right. No one knows if that's true or not, but the point is this it is highly addictive and anyone who knows about how it hijacks your brain can tell you. Yes, that's how drugs addictive. And a release of dopamine that stays in your system, in your synapses longer than normal is going to create cravings. You're going to become addicted to whatever substance does that to you. So it's really easy to get addicted to the cathedones that are found in bath salts. Yeah. You're altering your brain chemistry. Right. And because of the prolonged effects that these chemicals have on your brain, the hangover is really bad. And so you may want to use more to get back up again. Right. And again, when you use it to a chronic degree, you're setting yourself up for those really horrible side effects that you can have even without an overdose. Yeah. That's the vicious cycle of most of the feel good drugs. Like that is your body adjusts and gets a little more used to it. You do more to get that same feeling. You're chasing that initial rush or whatever that you get and then before you know it, you're in bad shape. Right. As a person. Very sad. So that's not like Nancy Reagan talk, that's real. Yeah. It's going to have terrible effects on you and it can be very addictive. This is your Uncle Josh and Chuck being real. Yeah. The more you know. But as we said before and Pepper throughout the show, despite that, that doesn't change the fact that the media far exaggerated sometimes the effects of basalt. But what they really did was exaggerated how much it was going on. At a certain point, I think they even found that CNN was reporting this massive uptick when in fact it was actually going down in usage. Yeah, I'm not quite sure if it was the DEA outlawing the ingredients and it made it harder to get or if the kids who are using it and apparently it was largely a drug of the younger generation just said, this is Whack, I'm done with this, and stopped using it. But it clearly peaked in 2011 and usage was halved by 2012. Yeah, it says here in 2011, poison control calls. And that should tell you how bad this thing is. Right. That's how they rank. That's the proxy for use 6138 calls in 2011 compared to 2654 and 2012. And this is why CNN, we're not picking on them. Like a bunch of news outlets were calling it an epidemic, and it never really was. It was always sort of a niche, smallish time drug. Sure. And one of the other things, though, that they did was say, like, it will turn you into this violent, psychotic or shoe of faith. So when the DEA outlawed the constituent drugs of bas salts, the Mail Man, I love that. There was actually supposedly there's a Chinese, Walter White, who was to life in prison, known only as Zhang, but he was a chemist who apparently traveled abroad to Europe or somewhere overseas and found, like, there was a big demand for methadonene. And he was like, oh, I know how to make that. So he made like \u00a3425 of it and was selling it over the Internet via bitcoin before the Chinese caught him on the Dark Web. Yeah, I guess so. Guys like that were guys like that who weren't arrested, I should say, went back and said, okay, well, let me alter this a little bit. And now there's a second generation of bat salts coming out, right, that are again, synthetic. Cathy knowns. There's one called Alpha PvP, better known as Flaka. Oh, is that what that is? Flaka? I've heard of Flaka. Yeah. When I saw that, I was like, oh, finally, you know what waka flaka means. And I looked it up. I'm like. No. Spelled differently. Has nothing to do with one another. Still, the quest continues, right. But Flock, apparently, if you want to see some whack stuff, look up people freaking out on Flaka on YouTube. And there are plenty of high on bats alt videos on YouTube before Flaka. Seems like it might actually be worse. Really? Yeah. And one of these friends saying, look at Timmy, some of them, we're going to put this on YouTube. One I saw was this lady, I think in Miami who is in one of the weirdest positions I've ever seen on the ground next to a car, but had her leg up back against the car and was like screaming at somebody to bring it on, even though she couldn't move on the ground, just under her own will, she couldn't move. And some guy, I guess. He's just sitting there with his phone, like, recording her, which you can't really blame him because it sounds familiar. Yes. And somebody goes, Are you on something? You think, yeah, it's just put, like, a perfect little period on that. But if you see those videos and then see, like, Bath Salt videos, it seems like faking may even be a little worse. Yeah. We're kind of laughing at this because we try to lighten the mood about stuff, but obviously there's nothing funny about someone under the ravages of a drug addiction. Sure. Even if some Yokel films it on their phone and throws it on YouTube for the world to laugh at. It's very sad. Thank you for rescuing that story. Well, I just want to be clear. It's super sad that these chemists aren't the ones doing the drugs for the most part, don't you think? I would guess probably not. They're just creating something in a lab to sell and make money off of that destroys lives. Right. Luckily, though, Chuck, with Flakka, the highest you get off of Flocka is by vaping it. Unfortunately, nobody vapes. Right. It's actually supposedly falling to the wayside already. But that's another good study on media hysteria as well. Media started to do the same thing. There was a kid in Florida. Austin Haruf. Austin Haruf beat a couple to death. Stabbed, killed, didn't know. He just happened to be walking past their house, and they think we're sitting in their garage. Such a disturbing case. And he walked up to him and killed him. He chewed on one of their faces. He was reported to be growling like an animal or whatever. And the first thing everybody said was, that guy was on flocka. Yes. It was the sheriff on the scene. Just like it always happens. Someone stuck a microphone, his face, and he's like, Looks like Flaka to me. And then all of a sudden, Austin Haruf, the 19 year old Florida State frat boy, was a flock of abuser who did this awful, awful thing. But they found no flock in the system. No, he did do that awful thing. And by all accounts, it was just a psychotic episode. Right. Again, he had not been on Flaka. The tax report showed no flocka in his system. Just like Rudy Eugene. Just like that guy on the bus in Canada. This is the real question of the podcast. What happens to make somebody do that? I don't know. These are the cases where obviously well, in Rudy Eugene's case, he died. But there needs to be some way that there's an automatic brain donation in cases like this. Agreed. So they can study what the heck is going on. I guess you can kind of, like, let the media off the hook a little bit or certainly let the public off the hook because you want to give explanation to behavior like that. You don't want to think that anybody could just be walking around and suddenly snap. You want to think that they have to be on something that overtakes their willpower, takes over their humanity and rids them of it and turns them into a monster. Not that we're all just ticking time bombs. Yeah. I mean, when you read interviews, like, a year later with that kid in Florida, he said that the demon was after him. And when you talk to him today, he's like, I think he literally said, this sucks. This thing happened. I don't know why it happened. Right. I feel fine now, so can you guys let me go? That's not quite how it works. Right. And I'm not saying I have sympathy for this kid. It's a weird well, if he had a psychotic break, that's a weird thing there he had no control over. I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for him. I do. I certainly feel it for his victims and their family. But if this kid just, like, lost his marbles and got violent and he had no control over it really? Honestly? Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's one of those things where there are many victims and tragedy on many fronts, but by all accounts, in his case, it wasn't even like he was abused as a child. And I think it literally things happen sometimes with the brain, and there's something physical that happens in the body, some chemical, something happens in the brain. We don't know what it is, but that's the only explanation. So, field of psychiatry, stop sitting around, congratulating yourselves and get to work figuring out what happens. Is that what's going on? And then lastly, there's one more new bassall out on the market called For MEC, and this one is the only other one that has a rival nickname to Miami. It's called Shrimp. You know, Emily sells bath salts in her store. I remember this was like, okay, are those bath salts or right, bath salt. It's not in the news so much anymore. But it would be funny if she had to have a sign up said bath sauce, not those bath salts. Right? These are your mom's bath salts, right? Instead of not your mother's bath salts. But if your mom was on bath salts, then they would be her bath salts. It get confusing. Yes. All right, well, if you want to know more about bath salts, go read about it. Don't go try them yourself. Okay? And since we said that, it's time for this renewal. All right, I'm going to call this a little 1000 episode. Congrats on a little Simpsons part. I love little Simpsons. Diddy hey, guys, congratulations on 1000 episodes. Hope you know how much joy and laughter you brought to all of us over that milestone as I tuned into The Simpsons Part Two. On Thursday, I was on a flight to Salt Lake City to interview for a physician and program pursuing my doctorate or physical therapy. You'll just say the whole day had an anxious I was anxious and not knowing what to expect from my first interview. And I had a long day of traveling. It put me on edge. But man, the two partner on The Simpsons soothed my soul and put me this man. Comma. Yeah. Light landed, got the rental car, drove to my hotel, starving, having missed dinner, had to settle for some ramen out of the vending machine. That's delicious. Yeah, that bad. I sat down on the questionable hotel comforter to eat my dinner and watch some TV before grabbing some pillow. Turned on the TV was almost creeped out to hear the Simpsons theme song playing as a new episode was beginning to play on whatever channel it just happened to be on. Right. Which would be fox Destiny, fate, chance, whatever you call it. Joy instantly struck me and actually laughed out loud to myself. The two parter really brought back memories of childhood and trying to watch episodes of the Simpsons sneakily without my parents knowing because my mom thought it was the worst thing possible for my young eyes and ears. It's quite comical to me that here I was on the eve of what could be a huge turning point for my career and what is getting me through the self doubt, anxiety and uncertainty was a podcast by chance in an episode of The Simpsons. Thanks for all your hard work. You guys brought so much happiness to all your listeners who have turned me into the best dinner party fact nerd out there. Nice. Love, Jared. Thanks a lot, Jared. Much appreciated. It's a good one. Yes. I hope you got your job, buddy. Yeah, same here. Let us know, will you? Sure. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Jared did, you can hang out with us. I'm on Twitter at Joshuaclark. And also check out my website. It's russeriusclark.com chucksandfacebook.com charlesw chuck Bryant. Correct and stuff you should know. And you can send all of us, including Jerry and email, to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com and then join us at our home on the web, theofficial stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstoftworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like morbid, my favorite murder and small town murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
How the Musketeers Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-musketeers-worked | You know and love them as a fluffy chocolate nougat and maybe as a book and a movie, but musketeers were quite real and quite deadly. Visit with Josh and Chuck as they examine the elite special forces of 17th-century France. | You know and love them as a fluffy chocolate nougat and maybe as a book and a movie, but musketeers were quite real and quite deadly. Visit with Josh and Chuck as they examine the elite special forces of 17th-century France. | Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:19:50 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=17, tm_min=19, tm_sec=50, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=213, tm_isdst=0) | 28680854 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workxcom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W chuckle Bryant. And since the two of us are together in front of a couple of microphones, you got Stuff you Should Know. That's right? Is it an award that we won on itunes? At the very least? We won a vote. Yes. A vote winning podcast. Yeah. Popular podcast is what we can call ourselves. Have we won an award? Are we award winning? No. No. Okay. Maybe someone at home will make us an award and send it in. We've been awarded a podcast, so we are award winning. Okay. Yes. So that's it what we're about to do. And I think it's becoming painfully obvious why we haven't won any awards. The more we talk about this yeah, I think you're right. You doing good. I'm great. You getting the psyched for ComicCon? Yeah. In, like, two days. Well, by the time this is out, we'll be like long since have pooped our pants on stage and laughed at. Yeah. I'm excited, though. Sure. San Diego. Let's do it. Yeah, let's go. Right now? Yes. Just wait a day. In the meantime, Chuck, I have a proposal that we speak about the Musketeers. Let's hear it. The intro, that is. Oh, the intro. Yeah. I'm not handling this myself. Just take it away. Can you imagine how long that episode would be if I just discourse on the Musketeers alone? Without you? It just keeps going. An infinite loop. Hey, have you ever heard of a little candy company named Mars? Yeah. Nowadays, I think it's eminem's Mars, but back then, it was just Mars. My stars, my stars. How does Mars make such wonderful candy bars? How old are you? I'm 41. And my grandfather used to say that it brings back great memories. That was, like, one of the things Granddaddy Mills did. I'm sorry to tarnish it with sacred. That's all right. Okay, well, this company, Mars, that your grandfather liked and rightly so, Mars Bar is one of the greatest all time candy bars ever. You're crazy if you say what's in the Mars Bar. Nougat caramel almonds. It's just this great milan of flavors. The almonds are what really do it. It's like the thinking man snickers. Throw some peanut butter in there and I'm on board. Hey, I'm with you, too. Okay, well, this is long before anybody ever thought to put peanut butter in anything besides maybe a sandwich. Right? It's the Mars company released a candy that they called, very appropriately in my opinion, the Three Musketeers. Okay. Today you pick up a Three Musketeers bar, you're like, what the hell does this mean? Back then, you could very easily figure out what it meant because it was three pieces of milk chocolate covered nougat, in three different flavors vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Really? Hence, three musketeers. Three different pieces, three different flavors. So it's three different flavors all in one single wrapper? Yes. That's pretty injured. So if you pulled the wrapper back and you're like, oh, there's three, which one do I want? What value which one do I want to give to my little brother? You give your little brother probably the strawberry one. Yeah, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate. It's like neapoliture. I didn't realize that. I had no idea that there were three. It makes sense now, because now when you open it up, you're like, I don't get it. It's one candy bar. That's what I'm saying. It's named after a novel. A classic novel. Yes, it is. Thank you for that, Segue, because I didn't know how I was going to get out of this one. I have it. I whipped myself into a quagmire today. Classic novel. Today we've got three Musketeers that are just the chocolate nugget. We have a classic novel written by Alexandra Duma. I checked pronunciation. Don't even try me on that. I listened to a Frenchman. That's you. Oh, really? I listen to a Frenchman say it. There's this website called forgo.com yeah. People's names. I had someone's names. It's awesome. Yeah, it is. And one thing I realized reading this is I don't think we don't get a lot of mail from the French. No. You ever noticed that? Yeah. I wonder why. Do you think that? There's probably not a lot of French listeners. No, I don't think so. Okay. We're beneath them. Yeah. I don't think we're hitting their wheelhouse much. Like podcast. Not just podcasts. I think podcast like Mark Marin Fuge in France. But then again, so is Jerry Lewis. I guess if I was sitting around a cafe, like, by the river drinking wine, I wouldn't have an ipod anywhere near me. I would throw it in the river and just, like, live my life. You know, we are huge as India. True. Which is awesome to me. Agreed. Hey, India, let's talk about the Three Musketeers. Right. You said it was a novel by Alexander Juma. Yeah. I mean, the really quick one sentence summation is hick, adventure. D'Artagnan. D'Artagnan moves out of the sticks, and because he wants to join the famed Musketeers the Guard. The musketeers of the guard. Yes. The kings, basically. Secret Service right hand men. Yes. But he wants to join them. He goes there, he meets the Three Musketeers athos, Porthos and Aramis, and he eventually worked his way into, I guess, to be the fourth Musketeer. Well, he presents himself with the opportunity to prove his valor and his courage and his skill by basically hanging around him. Yeah. And along the way, there are duels and there's some love making. Yeah. I think this is the only article on how stuff works.com that has the word love making, fighting, adventure and love making. And it's hyperlink, too. Is it really? Yeah. To what I would imagine sex. It's an article on sex. Yeah. Okay. That was a great summation. There's no need to read The Three Musketeers or any of the other works by Duma that feature the Three Musketeers, including The Man in the Iron Mask. Oh, is that him? Yeah. I didn't know that, but I kind of figured, like, who else was writing that stuff? Yeah. I don't know. He kind of the market cornered. He was the John Grisham of his day. He was the John Grisham, the Danielle Steele and the Sue Grafton of his day. Okay. Well put. Thanks. Well, the weird thing, I guess it's not too weird is that he wrote this novel a couple of hundred years after the real action takes place. And it came out at a time when you know how later on people have a real fascination with things that came before them. Came out during the romantic era in the 1840s where people were like, dude swashbuckling and these outfits and the love making give me more. Right. It was really popular. Right. And it was also popular because it was based on actual events featuring historical characters. Yeah. All those dudes were real. Yeah. D'Artagnan or D'Artagnan. He was a real person. And actually, The Three Musketeers that Duma wrote was based on a semi fictional memoir written about that guy who was a real Musketeer of the Guard who went on to great glory. Actually, he traveled from the hinterlands, I think, Gascony, to join up the sticks. Joined up, eventually became commander of the Musketeers of the Guard. But did they cover that? There was more than one book, though, right? Yeah, there are several. Okay. And the original book was serialized, too. We'll talk about juma in a minute. Right. The point is that his work was based on real people, but it was super fictionalized and super romantic. Yes, it was. And all of it was based on the idea that in the 17th century there was this new invention that gave rise to all of this. The Musket. Thank you, China. Yes. Like everything else almost on the planet that we have. Thank you, China. They were the leaders in pretty much everything back in the day. And around 1000, they invented a little something called gunpowder. And you pack this stuff in a tube that's a metal tube only open on one end. You light it sort of like a mini cannon. They call it a hand cannon. A hand cannon. And, boy, I bet there was a lot of mistakes early on. Oh, man. Can you imagine that going wrong? Yeah. So easily. I can. They would light it through something called a touch hole, and then there would be an explosion, create this hot gas that would send whatever they stuck inside there, which was a little round ball at the time. It would send it out at decent speeds. At first. Fairly decent. Yeah. I mean, for back then, that was probably like, Whoa, look at that hurling projectile. Right. It was probably more like magic run. The man has a hand dragon. They didn't think they call it hand cannon yet. They probably call it a hand dragon. And it was mostly it produced a psychological effect because it wasn't very accurate. And like you said, that it didn't really shoot it out at fast speeds. Yeah. The knight's armor, it would hit it and go clunk and then fall on the ground. And the knight would bend down and pick it up and put it in his little satchel. Cut you in half. Yeah. Cut you in half of the sword at first. Not super effective. No. But it inspired people to make this better. Like, we can do better with a hollow tube and a stick and a touch hole. So let's figure this out. Yeah. If I may segue to the side here for a moment. This got me thinking today about battle and just warfare and weaponry and how it's still so basic. I mean, it's, like, super advanced now with how they do it, but Tuktuk starts out by hitting another caveman in the face, like warfare. Start out with your fists, and then it transforms into, like, eventually someone uses a club and they're like, hey, this implement is way better than hitting with my fist because it's harder and I can do more damage and I can get a little further away from you. Then come, like, swords and things and lances, and they could get even further away. And the whole history of weaponry is about hurling bigger fists from longer distances. Whether it was the arrow, then later the bullet, and now you have ICBMs that are just, like, really big fists you can fire from really far away. I think the point you're making is that war, no matter how advanced we get, is really primitive. It is. It's a primitive idea. I didn't know that was an appointment. I think it's spot on. All right. Back to it. Thank you for that. Sure. You asked if you could do it first. That's really formal. Well, and each method was, like, a little bit further away, like arrows, like, hey, we can get him further away. And then pretty soon it was bullets and then it was, like, sniper rifles and then it was missiles. Now it's some guy sitting in Nevada shooting people in Afghanistan. Yeah. On his computer. Yeah. It's pretty sad. Okay, so back to the musket. Yes. We've gone from gunpowder to hand cannon, and now we're at the arctus. That's right. Not ARCHIBUS. Early 1500, to be specific. And this actually had a shoulder stock, which was, like, a huge deal because it wasn't just a stick attached to this metal tube. Like, you could actually aim this sucker now, right. You could look down the barrel and point it at something. You could shoot it, and it would shoot a projectile. But again, still the ultimate goal. The pinnacle of the battlefield was the horse mounted knight in armor. Yes. And if that guy was wearing plate, the arctus wasn't going to do it. Still a match lock weapon, which meant you had to light a little thing. Yeah. So you needed a touch hole of some sort. And you needed something like a smoldering piece of yarn. Maybe you needed something dry. Right. Which is the key that we will find out. Right. That's a big problem. Like when it's raining, your not going to help, but you know it works well in the rain. What a sword. It does. Like the one that the horse mounted knight in armor is using to cut you in half yet again 100 years later. Right. So people are like, we can make this work. This has got to work. We have to figure this out. And the Spaniards were the ones that came up with this new thing called the mosqueto, the sparrowhawk or the boomstick, that's what I like to call it. It was even longer barreled. It was really heavy. I looked up pictures of this thing. They actually mounted it on a little fork stick. Actually, Rainbow carried his his 50 millimeter. Yeah, but that's supposed to be on a tripod, you understand? But Rainbow so mustly carry it. Rainbow and Charlie. Sheen and hotshots. Oh, did he use that too? Yeah, because he was imitating random. Right, okay. So they used the fork stick to hold it steady and to help them out. The French called it a musket. The English called it a musket. A musket. I think you see where we're going here. It was also match lock, but it actually could fire something that would go through armor finally. And then all of a sudden the knights are like, oh man, shoot, I'm in trouble. We're done. And they actually did fade from the battlefield after that with the Moschetto, the mosquito or the musket. And we covered that in the night spot. Yes, it totally did. So then they're like, okay, we figured it out, we got the night down. The problem is this thing requires a fork stick to aim. Yes. Like \u00a320. Yeah. And you need a pikemen, another soldier who has an 18 foot speed to protect you while you're reloading. I would want two pike men. Yeah. Well, I think you probably have your own little formation because you were so important you could just stand back and shoot at night. Yeah. So yeah, they're going to give you as many pikemen as you ask for. If you knew how to shoot one of those things with your hand. Dragon. Exactly. So they're like, okay, we've got it. Now all we have to do is refine it. And one of the first refinements they made was to make it a flip lock. Huge. Yeah. So now you didn't have to carry a smoldering piece of yarn any longer. That's right. Flint Lock worked in the rain because it would strike a piece of flint against steel producing spark instead of needing that open flame or the smoldering yarn. Do they really use yarn? They would use, like, something akin to yarn. Okay. It probably was yarn, but they spelled it with an E on the end. Yarn, e. All of a sudden, you could shoot it in wet weather, which was awesome. And because the nights have sort of gone the way of the dodo it didn't have to be a two inch iron ball that you're shooting. So that means that the gun itself can be smaller. Everything can be smaller and lighter. Right. Very big deal. So now we're starting to see the kind of thing that the Minutemen used in colonial America. That's right. For those of you into that area, you'll know what I'm talking about. And then they also got rid of the pikemen by attaching a bayonet to it. Yeah, I don't know about that. They said that that rendered pikeman, like, unnecessary. But I would still rather have another dude with an 18 foot lance than me with my bayonet on the end of my rifle. But you might like to have that. But your field commander would rather have another guy with a musket and a bayonet. Yeah, that's true. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Get rid of the pike, give them a musket and a bayonet instead. And all of a sudden, you get two people shooting fire. Yeah, good point. So they still call it a musket. Yeah. And technically, anybody who had a musket and used a musket in battle was a musketeer. I bet a lot of guys like to throw that word around back in the day, too. I'm a musketeer. Right. And then the other guys would say, you're not a real musketeer. Right. A real musketeer. Josh, as we mentioned earlier, personal household guards of King Louis the 13th. Yeah. And apparently was he the one who founded it? Yeah, he formed the guard officially in 1622. The musketeers of the guard. Like, they had to add the extra couple of words. So you didn't just think there was some schmoes with a musket. Exactly. Because everyone with a musket at that point is, like we said, bragging about being a musket. Sure, yeah. Because this is, like, high technology at the time. Oh, yeah. And it stayed that way for a century. The Flint Lock musket that any infantry man could carry with the bayonet was started was introduced at the beginning of the 18th century and all the way up to the 19th century, that is what people used. Yeah. A rifle. It changed somewhat, but as soon as China invented gunpowder, it was all over. People would be dying left and right, sadly. All right, so these are like we said, these were sort of like Special Forces, Secret Service. The private guardians of the king and his family. Yeah. Very important, because in France during the 17th century, the early 17th century. It wasn't like a party going on back there. No, actually, a lot of troubles. Louis XII, his father Henry the Fourth, I believe, was assassinated, and Louis the 13th, he ascended to the throne and he became king at age nine. I was like the boy king. That cracks me up. Yeah. And he had, like, a child bride, anne of Austria, I believe her name was, and I guess overseeing this whole thing was a guy named Cardinal Richeleu. Yeah. So at this time, and this was, I think, fairly correct, there was a lot of internal civil strife in France. Religiously based. Yes. The French were also battling the Habsburgs of Austria, and within his own house, Louis XIII was having to worry about the machiavellian, which was new at the time. Machinations of Cardinal Rishlew basically is Dick Cheney. Yeah, but a Dick Cheney with, like, an eye on the throne. Yes. So his Carl Rove. Yes. It's very Games of Thrones. I don't know if you watched that or read it, but no, I've heard of it, though. There's like a throne made of swords done. It's really good stuff. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. All right, so the Musketeers were there. They're guarding the king. A lot of religious upheaval. Yeah, that was the big one. Yes. French Protestants saying we don't like you. Catholics, catholics are saying we don't like you, Hugonauts. Which were the French Protestants? Right. And so there was a lot of warring going on. So the king needed these, like, super specialized and these dudes, they were bad. They were like the tough guys at the time. Even though they were dressed up in frilly clothing, they apparently struck fear into the hearts of their enemies. Yes. They're like, look at the deep blue, that gold embroidery. But they were highly trained, and their morale or their esprit decor was legendary. Yeah, evidently. Well, they were also expert swordsmen. They were called Musketeers, and they knew what they were doing with a Musket. Sure. But day to day, they had a sword by their side and they could take your head clean off with it. Yeah, that's it. In the book, you're going to see a lot more sword fight and then the movies that they've adapted than any kind of Musket play. Yeah. Supposedly in the book, Muskets, they show up a few times. They're only fired a few times, but the rest is all swords and swash buckling. But they were still musketeers. Right. And the reason, again, they were Musketeers, because there's cutting edge technology at the time, and if you were somebody who was really proficient with a Musket, you were somebody special. Yeah. You didn't have to be, but it helped out. If you were an aristocrat, a nobleman, you didn't have to be loaded, but you had to kind of run in those circles. Right. Or you're never going to get picked up to be one of the what was it $150 to $300. Yeah, that's the time. That's the most in the least they ever had operationally. And they were actually like, again, this is real life we're talking about. They were formed in 1622, I believe. Yes. And they ran all the way until 1816, when they were disbanded due to a lack of funding. I know. And I saw they rebanded a couple of times after and subsequent years and then disbanded again. And then eventually they all went on to solo success as artists, entertaining recording artists. The Aramis, he had a nice line of deodorants and personal fragrances. Did he? Yeah. So now can we talk a little bit about the book and Alexander what do you call him? Duma. Duma. Very nice. Paris, 1820s. Very popular. John Grishamlike in his output. Right. The swinging Paris scene of the 1820s. Yeah. So he was turning out books like, he had people writing stuff for him. He was like the Andy Warhol of his time. He would have people say, like, here's the structure of the book you're about to write, and he would sit down and write it, research, tone chapter ideas. He had assistance for everything. And he would just crank this out like it was an assembly line. Well, they were hugely popular. Yeah, they definitely were. But historians, they don't knock him because he also had the goods as a writer. Right, exactly. Just his prolificness alone is pretty awesome. But then if you combine the idea that he was actually good at what he did, that's staggering. Like, his collective works, his unabridged collective works fills up 300 volumes. Really? Yes. Wow. And some of it's really great. Like, if you read The Three Musketeers, you're like, wow, this is pretty cool. It's neat, it's interesting, it's engrossing and the lovemaking. Right. It's hyperlinked all over the place. So do we get specific about the real dark, tang's Musketeer life? A little bit. We said that he came from Gascony. Yeah, a little bit before, or was it after? No, he was after. He came on the novel. Yeah, he came on in 1632, which was a little later than the fictional version, and served under Louis the 14th. The Sun King. He was the Sun King. You know a lot about French history. Well, I went to Versailles once. Did you really? Yeah. Very nice. I never made it there. I didn't make it inside, but I went to Versailles. Oh, you tried, though. That's an ugly incident. And actually, the real Dartagna became the commander of the Musketeers and was killed in 1673. And apparently the three dudes were also based on real guys. Right, right. I don't know if their names were dead on, but they're pretty close approximations in the book. And so, like you said, this book was hugely popular. It was first serialized in the French magazine Lacico. Very nice. I don't know about that, but in 1844, and like you said, he was really hitting the romantic period and everybody loved it, so they took the cereal and put it into a book. That's why a lot of the chapters have, like, Cliffhangers. Okay. Because it was serialized in a magazine. When I think he started out didn't he start out as a playwright? Yeah. Okay. Which makes sense with the whole Cliffhanger thing. Right. So he writes never really gets the respect that some of his contemporaries, like Victor Hugo Got or Emil Zola. Right. And it wasn't until 2002 and this possibly was because he had mixed race heritage. Oh, really? Yeah. His grandfather was a French nobleman. His grandmother, I believe, was a Creole woman from Haiti. Oh, that's right. So he had African in his blood now in France, it's not anything like it is in the United States where it's like the idiotic one drop rule. Right. But apparently it was enough. There was enough racism in France that it wasn't until 2002, when Jacques Rock was president, that he was moved. His remains were moved to the pantheon alongside, like, Zola. Really long. A lot of people said, well, no, he was a hack. He was just a hack. He could but he was still a hack and that's why people didn't take him seriously. But it's also possible because of his racial background as well. And this bodes well for us. I think hundreds of years on, even prolific hacks can be looked upon as geniuses. Right. That's pretty much what I've been betting on since we first sat down. Pretty much started doing just somebody out there. Somehow society is going to just devolve and they'll be like, these guys. It'll be like idiocracy. Yeah, that's our meal ticket. But more entertaining. You got anything else? No. I mean, the rest is history. Great book. And I love the story behind the Musket and the musketeers, the real life thing. That's great. Pretty cool. You know, I like my history. If you want to learn more about Alexander Dumas and the Musketeers and Muskets, you can type Musketeers M-U-S-K-E-T-E-E-R-S into the handychurch houseephorse.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh I'm going to call this clarification that I actually felt pretty bad about. That's why I called. Okay. Josh and Chuck just started listening to stuff you should know. And I love the podcast, but I was recently listening to your Samurai podcast and I couldn't help but notice that you gave credit to George Lucas when talking about a Darth Vader mask and it's relative similarity to the Samurai Caboodle mask. Remember that? Yeah. I thought I would point out that Mr. Lucas, although responsible for Star Wars, was not responsible for the design for the conception of Vader's mask. Credit for that should go to the great concept artist Ralph Macquarie, who used future aesthetic as in like, full time, you looking yeah, no, I love that aesthetic. Seriously? Yeah, me too. It's one of the reasons for the iconic status of Star Wars and really informed, like every great space movie since, don't you think? Yeah, think about it. Like a spaceport or something like that. Like all the jet engines are kind of battered and beaten and everything, and every once in a while go to an airport and look and see the planes are just like that and I'll just see exactly what the guy was doing and how well they nailed it. Agreed. So, Macquarie, hats off to you and Geiger. Oh yeah, HR Geiger is awesome. I'm going to take my hat off to you too as well, sir, and then continue with the email. Okay. Lucas's original script did not put Vader in a mask at all, evidently, and it was Ralph's idea to put a frightening helmet on the Sith Lord. Macquarie recently passed away and it would be a shame if his contributions to popular culture were not recognized. And Joe from San Francisco could not agree more. And I'm glad you pointed this out, because movies, although it is a director's medium, are made up of many people's talents contributing to the end result of the film. And people like Macquarie are often overlooked with something as iconic as Darth Vader's mess. That's awesome. So thank you for that. Joe from San Francisco. Well done, Joe. You're speaking well. Yeah, if you have an awesome correction for us, or just a clarification, or if you want to tell us that we were utterly and completely wrong about something, we're always open to hearing that kind of thing. Especially if you're nice. Being nice nothing. There's no point in being mean. You can tweet to us at syskast. You can join us on Facebook.com at facebook. Comstnow and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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. 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How Lion Taming Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-lion-taming-works | Bossing a lion around in front of a crowd at a circus has been an attraction for 200 years, but exactly how lion tamers get their captive wild animals to comply has evolved over time. Take a peek in the jaws of this odd profession with Josh and Chuck. | Bossing a lion around in front of a crowd at a circus has been an attraction for 200 years, but exactly how lion tamers get their captive wild animals to comply has evolved over time. Take a peek in the jaws of this odd profession with Josh and Chuck. | Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:58:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=18, tm_min=58, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=292, tm_isdst=0) | 26496595 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know. Yeah. This, Josh, is another episode of the Summer of Sam. Oh, this kid is good. Yeah. Our friend Sam Tea Garden is programming our show here and there. Hey, Sam and Samson and Hawaiian Taming Works, which is also written by Debbie Ranka, my buddy. Yeah. From New Jersey. Roller Derby Debbie. I don't call her that. No, you don't. I call her Deb. She's an old friend. If I call her Roller Derby Debbie you did it probably the first time. Yeah. Roller Derby Debbie. That would just get difficult. Sure. Yeah. Well, right on. This one is just going to be great then, because it's a good article, too. That's right. And you can read Debbie's also log@freakgirl.com. That's quite a plug. Thank you. And then where are we at with Sam? So Sam has now selected how lion Taming works. What was the first one? I can't remember. It was a couple of weeks ago. He's done too. It was awesome. But we actually recorded a couple that he had not heard yet that he also had on his list. Oh, good. Just by chance, are we going to attribute those to him? No, just the ones that we saw afterward. But anyway, thanks, Am. This is a good one. Will put Chuck. Thank you. Let's see. I have a bit of an intro. Have you ever heard the idea that the Simpsons have a tendency to predict the future? No. Okay. Well, let me enlighten you. There was an episode called Homer. H-O-M-R season Twelve episode Nine Excellent episode. It's where Homer basically, they find out that Homer is a crayon stuck in his brain. A what? A crayon. A crayon from childhood. And they remove it and his IQ just immediately doubles. Classic. In 2007, years after Homer, a German lady aged 59 was going to get surgery to cure her chronic headaches. They found a pencil that was stuck up there from childhood. That she stuck up there? Yeah. Wow. When she was a kid and apparently forgot, they removed the pencil. She's fine. People are wacky. Yeah, but isn't that weird? Yeah, sure. Okay, here's another one. Let me see what you think about this. Homer in the treehouse of horror. 19. Definitely didn't see that one. Really? I quit watching it after some season 20. Okay. He goes to vote for Obama on election day, and it's a take off of diebold the voting machines. Yeah. That had so many problems. Yeah. He goes to vote for Obama, and instead it starts voting a bunch of times for McCain. Okay. So I guess that year, a woman from West Virginia said that she checked the box next to Obama and it just automatically switched over to McCain. Really? This is after this thing came out. Okay. Which would mean it's predicting. Probably most chilling comes from Springfield with the s spelled as a dollar sign. The subtitle is or how I learned to stop worrying and Love legalized gambling. Season five, episode ten, springfield gets a casino. Mr. Burns casino. Great one. And in it are two characters who are obviously based on Sigfried and Roy, and they're with their white tiger, anastasia. She loves the city. Yeah. Anastasia flashes back to when she was caught in the wild by Siegfried and Roy, who shot it with a tranquilizer gun and spits out her little bubble pipe and her little beanie and attacks one of them. Yeah. This is a full ten years before the attack of Roy horn in 2003, during a show at the mirage in Las vegas, where one of their white tigers attacked him. Monte corps attacked Roy. That's right. And basically just ended their career right then. Yeah. I think on that one, like, if you're going to write a simpsons episode aping sick green. Right. What else are they going to do? You're going to have the lion eat them or the tiger? I'm sorry. You raised an excellent point here, Joe, but it's still remarkable. It is, but you raised a very good point. And the point is, I think everybody who sees someone interacting with the tamest wild animal you could possibly imagine still will not be surprised if that animal kills the person. Yeah. Because, as Jack Hannah put it very appropriately, I think And Jack Hannah. He was the original Steve Irwin. Right. Yeah, sure. He said, you can train a wild animal, but you can never tame a wild animal. And that's a really big important point in the world of, I guess, lion taming. Yeah. And another famous lion trainer tamer we're going to probably interchange those words said you can't tame a lion, because if you did, there would be no act. Yeah. Part of the act and part of the thrill of this for people is the fact that these are wild beasts. And if it was just a penguin, it wouldn't be very exciting. No, it wouldn't. I'd like to see that. A trained penguin. Well, yeah. Putting your mouth ahead in its mouth and cracking the whip. Yeah, it would be it would be really mind blowing if the penguin was dressed like a lion tamer and you were treating it like a lion. Okay. I've got another lion tamer quote for you then, smart guy. All right. Gunther gabel Williams. Yeah. He was the one I saw growing up. Okay. At the Wrinkling brothers. He said, a wild animal is like a loaded gun. It can go off at any time. So let's end the intro with that. Okay. Let's talk about lion tamer. You brought up a really good point, Chuck. If you are in this world these days, it's not lion tamer, it's lion trainer or wild animal trainer. Yes. Because none of these people think that they have a tame animal on their hands. No. Sort of the hubris of some of these early jerks that we'll talk about right now. 1819 was kind of when it all got going. Yes. Frenchman named Henry Martin. Yeah. He's our French listener. He was a retired horse trainer. And he thought, you know what? I'm going to try and work with a tiger, which is very different than what anyone's ever seen before. And he had a method where he worked himself into the cage little by little, like just my presence. Then I'll stick an arm in, then I'll stick my head in. Take a couple of scratches. Yeah. Here and there. And then eventually he found himself earning the trust of the big cats over time, and he would find himself completely in the cage. So he was the first dude, period, I think first American. He was the first known what you would call lion tamer. Yeah. First American was a guy named Isaac Van Ambrose. And he was around in 1833. And he was what I meant when I said jerks, because he would apparently beat these cats with crowbars and use very violent tactics. Yeah. And he had a pretty good excuse for it or justification, didn't he? Sarcastic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He was a biblical guy. And he would actually act out biblical scenes with these animals. And his big defense was Genesis 126. And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over everything creeping that creepeth upon the earth. Creep. And I just like the Bible saying creepeth. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it just kind of goes on. It's like really one big run on sentence. And you can't help but wonder if Van Amberg would say the whole thing or he'd just be like, just regenerasis. 126. Yes. His finishing move was sort of insult to injury after he would do all this stuff. And of course, he's not beating them with a crowbar in front of people, but apparently that's how he trained them to begin with, out of fear and injury. And he would finish his shows by making the lines lick his boots. Oh, man. What? Sure. I know. After all that, after suffering at his hands. You know what would be awesome? Would it be to see the steam man of the Prairie beat the tar out of Ann Amber. Yeah. You can reference our exoskeleton cast for that one, right? Yeah. All right. Have you seen fast, cheap and out of control. No. Is that about robots? You got to see that. It's Aery Morris documentary. And it was about a topier gardener, a robot scientist, and a lion tamer and how all these things sort of intertwined. There was one more, a mole rat specialist. And in the movie, Dave Hoover was the lion tamer. And errol morris also worked in because Hoover was a huge fan of Clyde Beatty and Arrow. Morris worked in this old black and white footage, and Clyde Beatty was almost the fifth character of that documentary. Oh, yeah, it's really great. Okay. I have a really good wild animal tamer documentary. All right, let's hear. Yummy introduced me to this one. It's called Cat Dancers. Have you heard of it? No. Oh, my gosh. It's so heartbreaking. It's ridiculous, really. It's about this group of people who have their own thing going on and love one another and love their big cats, and then these things keep going wrong. Oh, really? It's a really great documentary. It's one of the best I've ever seen in my entire life. Well, this one out there, too, is one of my favorites. Okay, go ahead. No. Fast, cheap and out of control. Oh, okay. Well, it's both on the table. It's crazy, though, that this podcast features two of our favorite documentaries. Yeah. Fast, cheap and out of control. And cat dancers. Look for a quick question on that one. And you can get those on Netflix. So Clyde Baiti, who was Dave Hoover's hero, was around in the 1920s. He used a pistol and a whip to keep things in line. And I think the pistol was like a sound scare less than like a threatening thing. Right. You go through a lot of lions shooting him in the chest. That's right. He gets expensive. But he was performing at the peak of this lion tamer. You think of an old timey lion tamer, the peak of the appreciation from the public. Sure. Because a lot of these guys, they shaped the public expectations, but they were also responding to them. And the public has had a role in shaping how lion tamers lion trainers interact with their cats. And Betty was kind of the last of the pistol shooting, whip cracking chair guys. The old guy. Yeah. Hoover actually explains the chair. And Debbie is right on the money. If you've ever wondered why they point a chair at a lion, it's because apparently these big cats have a one track minds and they're single minded. And so the four points of the chair legs confuse it. Yeah. And that's what Hoover said, so I believe it. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. So you've got Henri Martine, who starts everything out very gently using trust. Yeah. And basically just exposing himself to these large cats. He did. Trust falls. Right. And the cat would catch him. And then you have Van Amberg coming along, isaac Van Amberg basically just beating the tar out of these things and using a very different method, fear. And Clyde Beatty kind of carries that torch. And then after Beatty, things change. And you have modern lion trainers like Siegfried and Roy gunther Gebble Williams. Is that how you say his name? Yeah, you're the German speaker guntagueans. You just made my eyeballed. Yeah, like I said, he was the one that was very big in the when I was growing up. Right. And apparently he was in an American Express commercial oh, yeah. With a leopard hanging over him. The don't leave them without it days, probably, I would imagine. Yeah. Then you have this kind of transition to the modern lion trainer, which is actually a circle back to the beginning, a little more genteel. Well, not just that. It's like using trust, not using beatings, and basically just spending time with your animal to let it get to know you. Yeah. And the whip they use even if you see a whip these days, they're not whipping the animal. The whip is just sort of like, hey, this is my space. This is your space. Yeah. My space is over here. Exactly. Your space is over there. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. 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So let's talk about the psychology of all this stuff. Yeah. Animal psychology and people psychology, because it's really not that much different. BF. Skinner is a person psychologist, a very famous one. Yeah, he created the Skinner box. That's right. And children in it. Oh, is that what's his face? I don't know. I thought you were talking about the kid that was kept in isolation. Arthur. Oh, baby Albert. No, that's totally different. Okay. That was fear extinction that they were studying. Got you. This is conditioning that Skinner was all about. So operant conditioning is what we're talking about. And that's basically connecting a behavior with a signal and giving the animal a reward. Yeah. It's like it's pretty much a one, two, three cycle. Yeah. It's basically saying, like, you did something that even remotely close to what I want you to do. So here's some food. And now you have the animals attention. Like, oh, where did that come from? Right now, you kind of shape that behavior where it's like, come on. Let's try turning to the right. And then if they move to the right, they get a little bit of food. And maybe if they turn all the way to the right, they get a bunch of food. And then you're leading them with a stick. So eventually you remove the stick and replace it with something like a snap or a clap or hey. Yes. You hear a lot of that and all of a sudden you have an animal that can turn in a circle when you do what you just did. That's right. And that's called classical conditioning. Well, it starts with operate and moves into classical conditioning. Operate, then capturing, then shaping. The classical conditioning and capturing and shaping are part of opera. Exactly. Should we talk about crisis in the line? I guess I don't see how we can. It is real, people. If you've seen this on the YouTube, it is not made up. Are you sure? Oh, yeah. Like, you realize what you're saying here, man? Dude, it's as real as, like, anything in history that happened. Okay. I've seen the documentary about it and I don't think it was Christopher Guest who directed it. I can't remember the name of it. Christian the lion, something like that. You've seen it on YouTube. In the 1969, late 60s, couple of Ozzy's, John Rendell and Ace Bork bought a lion from a department store in London. Harris didn't know they sold lions back then. Harris does. Really? Yeah. It was sort of the head of London at the time. It was like the swinging sixty s. And these dudes were known for having this lion and throwing parties and stuff. It was like, pretty cool. And the lion got bigger, of course, and they had to release it to the wild with the help of the born Free people. And then there's, of course, the famous video where they went to visit this lion. Was it years later? It was I'm not sure when they released them, but it was quite a while later and it was a few years. The line jumps up and hugs the guys. It was amazing. It was pretty amazing. Yeah. Are you sure it's real? I'm as sure that that's real. Is that you're real. Otherwise the biggest hoax has been pulled over the world. I don't know about that. I think the Howard Hughes biography is top. Christian that was pretty good. But as Debbie points out, for every Christian the lion, there's a secret. And Roy. Yes. Which we already kind of covered, but I think we should go a little more into it. Yeah, there's some different theories out there. So in 2003 and Roy were doing their thing and apparently they had like, I think, 3000 of these performances under their belts already. Yeah. They were working with Manticore or Montecor, sorry, who is one of their tigers, who they'd raised from a cub and he was now seven years old. So they knew this tiger intimately, like they were parents for all intents and purposes. Yeah. And that's one of the keys, too, with line taming, is that you raise them from a cub. They're not going out and getting these tigers from the savannah that are grown and then taming them. So the symptoms were wrong in that respect. Sure. During this performance, something happened. Montecor grabbed Roy by his windpipe and dragged him off stage from the outset. Roy, by the way, is now partially paralyzed and has a crushed trachea because of this. But from the outset, from the moment he regained consciousness, roy said, do not destroy Monte corps. Something happened. He wasn't trying to hurt me. He was trying to protect me. And he was just dragging me away from whatever it was. Roy suggested that possibly he had a stroke and that freaked out the tiger. Tiger picked up on it. It's also been theorized that a woman this is almost like the lone gunman theory. Actually, this is the one I believe. A woman with a beehive hairdo sitting toward the front row, or possibly in the front row, was distracted and confused. The tiger, which I guess maybe the tiger was trying to get Roy away from the beehive. Well, what happened, the accounts I read is that this tiger became transfixed on this lady and started walking toward the lady. And so Roy jumped in between them and the tiger grabbed a hold of his wrist at this point and Roy bopped him on the nose with a microphone, was going, Release, release. And he released him, and he fell backward at that point. And I think that's when the tiger keep on saying lying. That's when he thought that Roy was in trouble because it was a big brouhaha. All of a sudden, with him falling over, people rushed out there in the confusion. They think that he grabbed him like you would grab a baby kitten around the neck to pull it off stage. Yeah. So I believe that that sounds sensible. But he didn't let go. Like, they sprayed him with this fire extinguisher and they beat him with a fire extinguisher until he let go and cut his what do you call it? The windpipe? Yes. No, but the bleeder. The jugular. The jugular, yeah. Well, Roy is still alive. He survived. And they actually had a final performance in 2009, six years later. With Montecore? With Montecor, yes, because he's still alive. And he was at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. I've been there. Pretty awesome. Where is this? It's in Vegas. Okay. I can't remember what hotel it's at. Well, the Mirage is where they performed, but I feel like it may be at the Mirage. Right. I can't remember. It's also possible it was at another place. But anyway, they have, like, their lions and couple of tigers. They have a bunch of stuff. And it's sad because it's a small zoo, but I'm sure these animals are treated better than the average animal added zoo. Yeah, but, I mean, they're in these enclosed habitats. Well, they get investigated just like modern circuses do. I think they're routine checks. By which government agency is it? Do you remember USDA? The USDA does that. They do circuses, zoos, that kind of thing. Okay. The thing is, if you're an animal welfare group, you probably don't think the USDA is doing enough. And even if they are following the letter of the law, you probably think the letter of the law isn't strong enough. And supposedly every single major circus in the United States has been cited for violating the animal welfare act. So I think the whole concept behind Lyon taming and lying training is fascinating for most people. But then you take another step further and you're like, these are wild animals in captivity. What are you doing? Yes. Why is your head in its mouth? Exactly. And I'm glad you brought that up, because then in the introduction, there's a pretty good description of what a lion can do. What can lie? A lion's mouth can open up wider than your head is tall, a foot 30 CM. It's also capable of crushing a bull spine. I love that reference. That just sounds tough. It is a tough spine of a bowl. Yeah. And the claws are about three inches long. Pretty serious stuff. This is very serious stuff if you're a lion trainer. But at the same time, it's like, how do you justify having this act? What's the act for? What's it doing? Is it protecting? Is it conserving? Is it raising awareness? I think people are demanding more explanation than they did in, say, the time of Clyde Beatty. Yeah. Because back then, it was fun to poke and prod things that you thought were unusual and exotic, and there wasn't a lot of respect for it. Like the initial circuses before there were these acts were I think they had horse acts, but it was mainly like, look at these animals in cages that you've never seen before. Exactly. And look, there's a pygmy. Yeah. Bearded lady. Right. And that guy. Thanks. And I think Isaac van Jerk was the first guy to put his head in the mouth, too, right? He was, yeah. Unfortunately, the line didn't finish that job. 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. We have, like, a whole suite of circus art stuff. Human cannonball. Oh, yeah. We have several other circus arts. That's what it's called. If you even look on the channel, it's entertainment. Housethoughforks comartcircuitarts. Wow. It has a sub channel. Circus art sub channel at house because that's the kind of site it is. And if you go to that sub channel, you don't even need to do that. You can go to the search bar on the homepage@houseenforce.com and type in lion taming and it'll bring up this article. Yeah, I know we talked about something else because I mentioned that I go to the Big Apple Circus when it comes to town. Yeah, I remember talking about that. And that's the one where they have, like, a horse, they saw the equestrian show and, like, dogs jumping through hoops, but other than that, it's like clowns and jugglers and the Cirque du Soleil beats of strength. No animals, no big cats. People on the run from the law. Yeah, it's not like the Gaudy Ringling Brothers now. Good. I haven't seen the circus, and I can't even tell you how long you and you should check out the Big Apple Circus. Oh, yeah, it's neat. All right, we'll check it out. It's, like, very small and intimate. It feels like what you might expect the circus 100 years ago to be like. Will you send me an email when it's coming? I will. Okay. I said search bar, by the way. All right, so that means listener mail. Yeah. This is from we helped someone kick heroin. Did you read this? Awesome. Hey, guys have been meaning to write you for a very long time. I've been listening to you pretty much since day one, learning and loving every step of the way. However, it was almost a year ago I chose to check myself into drug treatment. See, I am a female marine, no longer active duty. But when I was injured, I was given a lot of painkillers and ended up getting addicted to those. And that eventually led to me getting strung out on heroin for years. What does this have to do with you? Well, heroin detox is one of the worst things you can imagine. We were not allowed to listen to music or watch TV or pretty much do anything but classes and groups. I agree that it helped me being in a media blackout, but I did beg the staff to let me listen to you guys to my amazement, my doctor was a fan of yours and approved it. Awesome. So while I was going through the worst of it, you were both there with me. I will spare you the details. So, August 15 is not only I think we've both seen The Seinfeld, where Elaine is dating the guy who's kicking heroin. Did she date a guy kicking heroin? Yeah, don't you remember? I don't think I remember that. Let me just take that one up. Sorry. Go ahead. So now, August 15 is not only my birthday, I'm 29 this year, but also my first birthday off drugs. Oh, congratulations. I want to thank you for what you've done for me, and I'm going to go back and listen to them all again. I know it is a lot to ask, but a shout out would make my day. Dude. And Elaine Turley. Elaine? Don't tell me that's a coincidence. Well, it's a spelled an A. Okay. She says simplify for Milane. Turley. That's awesome. And then she says, PS. Marines are the few and the proud. Female marines are the fewer and the prouder. Nice. So way to go, man. Yeah. Congratulations. I want to say, man, lady, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. You kicked heroin with us. That's amazing. Yeah. Can you think about that? Wow, man. That was a mind blower. Chuck pretty good one. If you have a mind blowing story that relates to us even if it doesn't, that's cool. But if it does, wow, that's even better. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. That's a Twitter handle. Facebook. Comstuffytechnow is where we dwell on Facebook. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilg, Eric 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." | ||
433f56e6-53a3-11e8-bdec-4f1942d10516 | How Dog Training Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dog-training-works | Chuck and Josh explore the age-old question: Should you train your dog by treating it like a living, feeling being or should you beat them up and break their spirit? | Chuck and Josh explore the age-old question: Should you train your dog by treating it like a living, feeling being or should you beat them up and break their spirit? | Tue, 31 Mar 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=91, tm_isdst=0) | 42866385 | 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 guest producer role over there. And that makes this that's you should know about dogs. We love dogs. Heart them. We talk a lot about dogs have dogs. We have dogs. Just love dogs in general. They're the best. Train them up the end. Train them right, though. Yeah. This is an interesting one for me because I am terrible at dog training and I do a mix of so many things. My poor dogs don't even know what to do. None of their behavior is their fault. Well, yeah, I think it's my fault. That seems to be true among, I want to say not high end, but good dog trainers, like professional dog trainers, high in trainers. Yeah. They would agree that not just with you, but any dogs bad behavior as a result of their human not training them well or properly or at all. True. Although I will say, I mean, any dog can be trained, supposedly. I've seen those shows. But my dog Nico is just so hot wired when someone comes over. Now. She's the brindle. Okay. Just so hot wired when people come over that I just don't know what to do. What do you mean hot wired? Just so excited and so excited she's about to implode into a nuclear fission reaction. Okay. Like just really low. Knows. He knows Nico. It's very tough to rein her in when someone knocks on that door and comes over, okay? She'll chill out after ten minutes, but it's just hard to not get her to jump up on people and stuff because they got to be in on it, too, you know? Well, I would say that probably any high end dog trainer would say that you should give her tranquilizers all the time, especially when somebody's coming over, let her sleep her life away. Your instinct as a dog owner is when someone comes over and your dog jumps on them, is to say, no, Nico, get down, get off of them, and even pull them off. But this article says no. Even a scolding is reinforcing that behavior because all that dog wants his attention. Even if it's a scolding, right? And if you say no or whatever, the dog gets the attention. It prefer positive attention, where you're like, yeah, jump up, that's great. But Nico or any other dog will take the know what they say to do is to just ignore it. Yeah. Just ignore the dog until they're doing what you want them to do and then reward the dog. And I think that what you just said, and I'm glad you said this because we really need to get this across. What people have been discovering more and more about dog training in the last 20 years is that having a dog and raising a good dog requires way more than we previously thought it did. Way more attention, way more research, way more patience, way more persistence, way more than it used to, and rightfully so. I mean, it should require this. And one of the reasons why it does require more is because there's been a real shift in mentality over what direction you should take to train a dog. I keep saying raise a dog. I think that's a good way to put it, too. Yeah, sure. But it used to be different, and it still is that way for some people, as we'll see. But it used to be much easier because you just asserted yourself physically, psychologically. You yelled at your dog, you spanked your dog, and you basically showed your dog who was boss. And then after that, they would just kind of behave. They're saying, like, no, don't do that anymore. That's not good. It really has really terrible effects on the dog. It harms your relationship with the dog. And instead you really need to just give 110%, whereas before you're giving maybe 50%. That's right. What you're talking about are the two main approaches dominance or positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is a straight up operant conditioning technique where you reward your dog for good behaviors. Or I guess we shouldn't even say good and bad. They say not to do that with children and dogs. Desirable behaviors and a focus on what a dog should do, whereas dominance is a technique to discourage unwanted behaviors. What you should not do and the whole dominance theory is based on this idea. And this has been around since, well, who knows where it got its original start, but at least since the 70s, there are these dog training monks in Cambridge, New York, called the new skeet monks. And they are monks who raise and breed German shepherds. Sure. And write dog training books. Right. Well, I mean, the monks are supposed to give something back to the world. Some monks brew beer, and these guys train dogs. I like the beer brewers better. Yeah, it's been at least around since then. But this is based on the idea that dogs are really just wolves. 2.0 in dog's clothing. Yes. And that wolves. We should look at the behavior of wolves, and they are pack animals with an alpha male and an alpha female. We'll get more into that, and we can extrapolate that to dogs. And this is what these monks say, too, that's what you should be doing is mimicking what wolves do well, but say in the wild. Not the case, really, what wolves have been studied doing in captivity, which is a key point. Right. And then, like, because they have packs with a leader called an alpha male and alpha female, the alpha male and female maintain their position through dominance, through acts of, like, aggression, violence, and that they're constantly challenged for these positions, so much so that this constant struggle over dominance and alpha dom is what shapes wolf society. And that if you take that and you just assume, like you said, that dogs are just a different type of wolf, that they are so closely related to wolves and descended from wolves, that the same kind of mentality applies to dogs. If you create that kind of situation in your own home, you will have a happier, more obedient dog who understands its place in this household, which to your dog is just a pack. That's right. This started in the 1960s. There were a bunch of studies observing these wolf packs and their social structures. I saw it even earlier than that. I saw a guy named Rudolph Schenkel was doing this in 1947, and that he's the one who coined the idea and the term alpha. And he was also the guitarist for The Scorpions, if I'm not mistaken. I think you're thinking of John Fogarty's guitarist, which is, I think it was his brother Rudy Shankel. Rudy Shankle, yeah. So they're observing these wolfs, and they're saying that there's a continual pattern in the pack of the male members vying for control, challenging the alpha, then the alpha, putting it down, usually physically and also psychologically, I guess, as much as you can get into the psychology of a wolf. Here's the thing. I mean, should we go ahead and say what the deal is? I feel like or should that be a third act spoiler? No, I think we can go ahead. All right. I said they were studying captive wolves. That's the rub here, is that they're studying wolves in captivity. And it took this other guy in the when was that? The 90s. Yes. David Mack. Yes. That actually studied wolves in the wild. And he's like, that's not what's going on at all, because it's like studying humans in a refugee camp or a prison. Like, the behaviors aren't going to be the same. What I'm observing is these animals that follow what most animals in the animal kingdom do, or many, which is their families. And the alpha is the alpha because he's the dad. Right, exactly. When they said, oh, no. Wolves are constantly under these physical attacks for their status as the alpha wolf. What they were saying was these wolves are in a completely unnatural setting and situation, and you've got a bunch of different alphas who are trying to figure out who's in charge. And, yeah, there was a lot of aggression and dominance, but this was a terrible thing to base this idea on how to train a dog, because it was a totally artificial situation. And it wasn't until I think what did you say? He actually revised an earlier book. He wrote a book in 1980 that took these earlier ideas and said, yeah, these are totally correct. And now he's like, I wish I'd never I got it so wrong. Yes, there is dominance, there are alphas. But it's like you said, Chuck, they're mom and dad. That's what we would call them. That's right. Just in the same way that your mom and your dad are the boss of you when you're a kid. Same thing in a wolf pack. Yeah. And dad goes out and gets the food. Mom takes care of the kids and protects the kids and acts as, you know, the defensive guard over their den. And that's just how it works. And then after a couple of years, the male puppies, I guess, leave. They become alphas of their own families. And he observed the stuff over where is it? Canada's. Elsmere island. Every summer for 13 years, that island has the best carnival in Canada. It really changed the way people look at wolves and ergo dogs. Yeah. For the revision of it or the earlier stuff? Well, the revision of it, sure. Yeah, it totally did, because everybody realized that this dominance based training that people have been doing, where you basically beat up your dog, if there is a sense of alpha dom that your dog is following, your dog is basically like, my dad is beating me up and yelling at me all the time, and I'm just scared and anxious about everything. So the dog training world realized that this is what was happening, that it was based on faulty, preliminary, original research. And they switched. They changed. They went to a much more respectful, happier, friendlier way of training that doesn't involve punishment. It involves basically rewards and extinctions, as we'll look at later on. All right, well, let's take a break. We're talking about beating up your dog, but when we come back, we'll talk about specific techniques the people that subscribe to the dominance theory believe in. All right, so you talked about people beating up their dogs. I know you were sort of kidding, but there are actual physical things that they say to do in dominance training, and they are as follows. One is called the alpha roll, not R-O-L-E. That's right. The other one R-O-L-L you got it. So this is when the trainer will I guess if you're the owner and trainer, will pin the dog on its back and hold the dog there by the chest or the throat until the dog gives in and stops the struggle. Okay? That is slightly different than dominance down. That is pinning the dog on its side until the dog stops struggling. The same thing. I mean, you've got a dog that is doing something that you don't want it to do, so you are pinning it, you're physically restraining it in an aggressive manner until it just basically dies inside. I will say that I have done the dominance down before because of a dog fight between my two dogs, okay? Getting the dog separated and then pinning one down until they calm down. One thing I saw somewhere, I don't remember where I saw it, but the actual I heard a while ago. The way that you break up a dog fight is you grab them by the back leg is to rub yourself a steak. I just walk through and be like, who's for steak? Why fight when you can have steak? Grab the back legs. Yeah, that makes sense. Here's the thing, though. If you've ever been involved in a dog fight up close, it's an adrenaline rush. You don't know quite what to do. And it's scary. It's, like, super scary. Yeah, well, your brain just becomes totally like my brain becomes clouded when Momo starts barking at somebody. I'm like I get all flustered, and whatever dog fight is like, it is one of the most flustering clouding experiences you can have. I've heard there are water on them. I could see that. I could also see him just fighting right through the water if the fight is bad enough. Yeah. My dog Lucy, who isn't with us, got into a fight with my former Codog, Jake, the pit bull, who my friend Justin ended up taking. And it was ugly, man. And they're both not with us, and they're both really sweet dogs, but they looked at each other wrong, and it was on from the get go. And, like, Lucy took off part of Jake's ear, and it was just like it was bad. It was scary. You don't know what to do. Right. And so a person who subscribes to dominance theory training says, you need to show that both of those dogs that you're in charge. And you tell them they're not fighting, that they're acting out, they're misbehaving because they don't understand their role. But at the same time, I would be like, well, no, it sounds like that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't think you're the Alpha. They're trying to figure out what their position over one another in this package, or just dogs being dogs, man. That's another way to look at it, for sure. Lucy got attacked at a dog park when she was young, and from that day forward was if a dog was slightly aggressive, it was on and scary. So we couldn't take around other dogs. That's the upshot. Yes. And they would say so. One of the other things I want to call out here, rather than waiting, when a dog acts aggressively, every trainer I've seen on both sides says that it's fearful that the dog was actually afraid. That was for sure Lucy's case. Yeah. And that's why I thought of that, because she had a negative experience and she was afraid, so she would act aggressive in the face of fear. So one of the reasons why people criticize dominance training, as we'll see, is that you're physically and aggressively punishing aggressive behavior. So you're punishing a dog for feeling fearful, which is going to make it more fearful of whatever it is it's afraid of at that moment, which means it's actually probably likelier that it will become more aggressive rather than yes. A human kid, too. If you have a kid who has learned to be aggressive and your way of discipline them is to hit them, what do you think is going to happen? I don't know. I don't know anything about human kids. I only know about dogs. They're the same. So back to the physical methods of dominance training. There was alpha roll dominance down there's. The scruff shake. When you grab the dog's jowls, they're scruff with both hands and shake it really hard and stare them, stare them in the eyes. Leash jerk. If you're on a walk with your dog and they're pulling you, let them get up ahead and then jerk back really, really hard. Sure. And then using choke collars or pinch collars or shot collars, instead of the more humane, gentle leaders, what they call them. Right. It sort of looks like a muzzle, but when the dog pulls, it just sort of pulls their nose down. They don't like that. Right. That's for the other kind, the gender leader physically hurting them when they pull on the leash. Correct. Or when you jerk the leash back. Right. Or the choke pinch or shot collars are all dominance. Right. Or there's psychological methods, too. Staring at the dog till the dog looks away, like, I'm boss. Who's going to blink first? You. Dog you. Or growling at a dog or making dog noises to the dog is another dominance technique. Yeah. Psychological dominance. Right. So you've got all these techniques. And as far as dominance training goes, if you employ them in a consistent manner, eventually your dog is going to figure out who's boss. And the people who subscribe to dominance theory say this is actually a gift to your dog. Right. Because if your dog is acting improperly, if it's misbehaving, if it's being aggressive, it's asserting itself because it doesn't realize that you're the alpha because you haven't asserted yourself over your dog. And so somebody's got to be the alpha. So this dog is confused and is trying to step up. So if you assert your dominance over this dog, you will reassure that there is an alpha in charge and it can just relax and be a good, happy dog. That's what people who subscribe to dominance theory say is the whole purpose of dominance theory. Right. On the other side, you have people saying, no, your dog is not just becoming super happy because they know you're in charge. They're going into shutdown mode basically because they're afraid to do stuff, and they're basically living in a state of shutdown mode because they're afraid of being alpha rolled or barked at or pinned or whatever. Yeah. And so what they'll do is here's the thing, and this is really important to remember. Nobody saying dominance training doesn't actually, at least in the short term, curb problem behavior in dogs. But the way that you're doing is actually like breaking the dog spirit. You're not providing it this comfortable position in the household. It's packed. You're basically just breaking a spirit so that it doesn't do anything until you tell it to do something. It's that shutdown that you were just talking about. And people who've who subscribed to the other way saying, no, there's a different, better way to do this, which doesn't involve breaking the dog, which allows the dog to lead a happier, healthier life. And there's what's called the least intrusive, minimally aversive list of how to train a dog. And using dominance theory techniques are at the bottom of this list. Yeah, I think they listed six things. And that was number six was positive punishment, which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, I guess. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah, that's what the whole list or just the positive punishment? Well, just about the punishment problem. Yeah, I mean, that's when you're delivering what they call an aversive consequence, or I guess averse consequence to reduce probability that a behavior will occur. Yeah. So in this sense, positive and negative doesn't necessarily mean like good or bad. Right? It means the introduction or the removal of something. So you can have a negative reward where something bad is removed in reward for the dog doing the behavior you want. And then you also have negative punishment where you remove something good when the dog does something you don't want it to do. You also have positive rewards, which is basically giving a treat to a dog. It does something good, and you say, hey, here you go, or praise, or something like that. Sure. And then positive punishment, which sounds like, okay, that's an all right kind of punishment. That's actually the worst of all of them as far as most professional dog trainers are concerned. That is where you're introducing punishment because the dog is doing something. So you're yelling at the dog, you're alfa rolling the dog, you're spanking the dog. You're introducing a punishment as a response for an unwanted behavior in this hope to train the dog. And so they say, well, there's the basic problem right there with dominance theory and dominance training is that eventually you're going to come to positive punishment. It's woven into the fabric of dominance theory. And if you're punishing your dog, if you're yelling at your dog, or alpha rolling your dog, you are going to create this shutdown dog. And what's more, it seems that positive punishment, as far as training techniques, conditioning, operating conditioning techniques go, is the least effective of all of those four. And it's not just dog trainers saying that. Even BF. Skinner himself, who created a Skinner box and raises poor little barefoot electrocuted children, and he said, yes, positive punishment is the least effective of all of these. Yeah, they say the number one on that list is health, nutritional, and physical factors. And this is basically setting up your house and being assured that your dog is healthy and well fed and there's nothing physically wrong with the dog. Yeah. Like, if your dog is peeing in the house and won't get house broken, they're saying the first step you should do is take your dog to a vet and make sure it doesn't have, like, a urinary tract infection. Yeah, I mean, let's go over this list because that's really helpful. The association of Professional Dog Trainers have a list of misinterpretations urinating. The house is one of them. A dominance explanation would be like, no, they're peeing on your bed because they're trying to say, like, this is my territory. It's a really paranoid place to come from. The dog thinks it's better than me. What is really going on, they say, is that it's just the house training has been inconsistent. Yes. Or you have a urinary tract infection or something. Right. And you would find that out by taking that first step, which is taking the dog to the vet to make sure there isn't a health or medical issue that can solve this problem. Because, again, it all comes down to this problem behavior. Why is the dog doing it? Or what do you want the dog to do instead? Right. Jumping up on people. This is Nico's deal. A dominance explanation would be that she's doing this to assert their height and rank over you. Like, I'm just as big as you are. Whereas what's really going on is she wants to lick your face and it's fun and she's excited and wants to say hello. Right. So what you would do is you would say, teach your dog to sit whenever you go to open the door or something like that. Or if your dog is jumping up, to ignore it until it's sitting with all four paws on the floor. And then you reward it because it's like you were saying, one of the easiest ways to train your dog is accidentally. And what you're doing is training your dog to do all the stuff you don't want your dog to do. Yeah. I mean, you come home from vacation and Nico jumps up on you, like, your first instinct is to kiss her face and tell her how good it is to see her. And that's the wrong thing to do. I'm good at that. Like, I can come in and just turn my back and ignore her. And it works. But you got to get people coming in the house, all your friends coming in and family. Everyone's got to be on board. Yeah. Like, momo barks at strangers when they come into our house. She does not, like, say, a contractor coming over to bark or to come to her house. She just doesn't like it. So ideally, I would give the stranger a treat, say the contractor a treat. I'd be like, by the way, can you show up five minutes early to our appointment? I'm going to give you a dog treat, slide a treat under the door. You and I are going to go and sit and get situated at the table, at the dinner table, and we're going to just talk calmly. And then my wife is going to bring my dog into the room, and you're going to give her a treat. Don't stand up in the presence of my dog. Once my wife removes our dog, then we can go on with our appointment. I know, man. That would be the ideal thing. What this thing says to do is, okay, instead of all that, just keep your dog outside. Go hang out outside with your dog. Make it so your dog has no idea anybody even came over. Yeah, that's easier sometimes. Yes, that's the number two thing that you're supposed to do after taking the dog to a vet is just changing the dog's world so that the problem behavior doesn't exist, because the thing that creates that problem behavior isn't part of the dog's world anymore. Yeah, I had a situation last week where I was out of town. We had our house worked on, and the contractor, the framer guy who was there most of the time, like, hands on, really loves dogs and loves our dogs, but he had to come over and do something. He hadn't been over in a while, and I was gone. And I was like, I can tell you how to get in my house if you want to go put them in the bedroom so the plumber can come in. I was like, this is on you, man, if you want to do this. He's like, sure, I'll do it. And he came in and texted me afterwards that said, that Charlie, he said as soon as I walked in, bolted and ran into the bedroom, basically, and that Nico barked and barked and then was just like, downstairs trembling and afraid. And he eventually was like, Come on, Nico. Come on up. And he got her into the bedroom. That is so bad, though. That is so sad. It's also really sad, too, when you think about your dog barking or being aggressive or something like that, when you're just like, oh, it's so obnoxious. Be quiet. But then if you realize, like, they're actually doing it because they're scared with, it makes the whole thing just heartbreaking. But I think it's a really important thing to remember, too, because it changes your perspective on it. It goes from being like, stop being aggressive, stop being hostile, to realizing you're saying, stop being afraid. Stop being a chicken. That's no way to talk to something that you love, and that holds true for a dog, too. So to think that really kind of changes your perspective. The end of my monologue and then a couple of other behaviors pulling on a leash, a dominance explanation might be that, no, they're trying to assert that they're the alpha and get out in front of you and be in charge, whereas what's really going on is your dog's excited to be on a walk? And they love to get out there and smell things, and that's why they're pulling and then finally running through the doorway first. I get run over by my dogs all the time trying to get outside. Sure. And the dominance theory is that they're trying to push you out of the way to show you they're in charge again. What they're doing is pushing out of the way because you're blocking them from getting outside to where they love life a lot more. Right. And this really kind of, I think, does a beautiful job, Chuck, of putting side by side the dominance theory and the what is it, the positive positive reinforcement, I guess. Yeah. Positive reinforcement theory. Those are the two main ones. But just the almost night and day ways that they see dogs. Like, what makes dogs dogs? That, to a dominance theory, person the dogs, just like, I'm in charge of you. Get out of my way, where the positive reinforcement theory says the dog just likes to go have fun, and it's really not very concerned with social niceties of letting you go first. It wants to go have fun immediately. It doesn't really have anything to do with you. It's a dog. Exactly. I don't know if everyone's figured this out or not, but I tend to fall a little more on the positive reinforcement side of that. Same here. So let's take a break, then, and talk about a little bit more about the problems with dominance training, but then the joy and the goodness that is positive reinforcement. Beautiful learning stuff with dartshark. All right, so, earlier in the show, you said that dominance training can achieve results. No one argues that that can be effective at times, but we talked about why it's effective that your dog is being shut down. Essentially, your dog might be fearful. And one of the other problems besides harming the relationship between you and your dog that you might even know is harmed right. Is that if your dog is aggressive at all, this can really ramp that up, and that can be a big problem. Yeah. Because, again, you're punishing your dog for being fearful if you're punishing it for aggressiveness, and you're just making it more fearful. So, two of the other big problems that can arise from dominance training are injury to the dog. If you, say, do an alpha roll too hard and you break its rib or something like that, that can happen. Or if you're instilling further aggressiveness in the dog, an injury to you or the trainer or somebody else. Yeah. There was a study in 2009, so it's a little old, but I imagine it's still pretty true. Published in the applied behavioral science, I guess, journal extravaganza, they surveyed dog owners who had reported problem behavior and aggression. They completed the survey about their training techniques and of the dogs that were. Physically punished hit or kick, which I can't even go there in my mind, eating up your dog. 43% of those dogs responded with aggression. Okay. And then what else? If you growled at a dog, it was 41% of dogs became aggressive. It's growled? Yeah. Okay. That staring was 30%. The Scruff shake, 26% of dogs were aggressive in response, and the alpha roll was 31%. Right. And this is another reason why there's a near consensus, despite what Caesar Milan might say on dominance training not being the way to go, the association of Professional Dog Trainers, international association of Animal Behavior Consultants, american Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, pet Professional Guide, and the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers all say this is not the way Caesar. Yeah. They say it's like, not only is it bad for the dog, it's not rooted in science, that the whole thing that dominance theory was based on is not correct. Yeah. The whole wolf thing. Yeah. But Caesar will still say he's still out there saying no. Animals love they want to be in a pack, and they want to have a strong pack leader. Right. And that is up to you to be that pack leader. Yeah. So this article kind of says that basically the people who are into dominance are amateur dog trainers, unaccredited, and I guess not high end, is the way I would have put it 20 minutes ago. And a lot of Pet dominance training tool industry people oh, sure. Like that sell the shot collars or the pinch. Exactly, yes. And then people who watch Caesar Milan right. Because he is he's a force onto himself as far as dominance training goes, because people watch his show and they're like, oh, wow, this really works. Like, you can go to a dog and the dog will stop doing what you want to do. Yeah, he does. He produces results. But again, that question of what kind of a dog or what kind of a mentality he's producing in the dog or that kind of training produces in a dog, that's what that question. That's also a heavily edited TV show. We have to remember. It is. I don't want to say he got in a lot of trouble. Hot water, maybe a little bit, but warm water. There was, like, a petition that got, like, 10,000 signatures to have a show canceled on National Geographic because the pig yes, the pig thing, where there was a French bulldog that had killed two pot belly pigs in its past, and the owner was like, I don't want my dog to kill pigs anymore. And Caesar is like, I have just the idea. Let's put it in a pen with another pig. And apparently it was going very well, but then they let it off of the lead, and the dog attacked the pig and took a chunk out of its ear. And they aired this, and I'm sure they aired it because they were trying to be true to their documentary roots, I guess, rather than just editing the whole thing out and being like, well, we can't show that they included it. And there was a lot of outrage, and they were like, this is a clear act of it. Animal abuse. Like, this pig was harmed because of this show's actions and Susan Lawn's actions. And there was an investigation by Los Angeles County, I think, to see whether they could charge him with animal abuse. And they cleared them eventually. But it created it produced this round of interviews for him. A lot of publicity for the show. But also he did a lot of interviews. And in every single one. He said. I understand that the people who prompted this investigation care about animals. And the people who are doing the investigating are doing their job. And they should. And it's great. And I'll cooperate. But in every single one, he stood by dominance training. He did not question it for a second. That's true. He still believes in it, for sure. So on the other side, we have positive reinforcement, and that's generally like a two pronged thing where you reward good behavior. And this next part is really key because it's easy to reward good behavior, but not accidentally reinforcing bad behavior, which you talked about earlier, which is someone comes in, Nico jumps on them, and my instinct is to pull her off and say, no, I am reinforcing that bad behavior just by giving her even negative attention. Right, exactly. The whole point of positive reinforcement is ignoring the behavior that you don't want to happen. Right. Which means you're not accidentally reinforcing bad behavior and then rewarding the behavior that you do want to happen. So in the case of Nico, the part where you're ignoring, it's called extinction, where this idea that the unwanted behavior goes away if you do nothing. When you come in and she's jumping up, you just turn your back to her and ignore and just go about your business. Say, unpacking your shoes. Maybe you've got a wet bathing suit that you need to get out of your suitcase with my Mr. Rogers, that kind of thing. You've just come home from a beach vacation. Dude, she does this when I go get the mail. Okay, all right. Wow. Okay. So you come back and you're looking through your mail, your Garnet Hill catalog, and you're thinking, maybe I will spend a little more on Halloween decorations than last year. And you're ignoring her. You're just doing your thing. And then the moment she sits quietly and looks up at you, bam. You're there with the treat, with the tug of war rope, the verbal praise. You're right there. And then you go back to it. She jumps up, and you go right back to your mail. You just totally ignore it. And the moment her feet are on the floor, bam. You're right back there with another treat. So you're very consistently this is really key. You're consistently rewarding the behavior that you want, and you're consistently ignoring the behavior that you don't want. Yeah. And again, I'm pretty good about this with myself, and she doesn't jump on me, but it's with other folks. So that's the thing. I got to really work on some of our closest friends that come over a lot, understand, and they ignore her and try and turn their back and stuff until she comes back. Why do they hate me? Oh, goodness. Another thing you can use is the clicker. That is something you hold in your hand that makes us clicking sound, and you just sort of reinforce that along with the treat. But they hear that click, and I guess it's sort of like that Pavlovian response where the precision of that click, it makes it easier for them to put two and two together, and pretty soon you can make that click, and they know, like, oh, maybe I'll just sit down and behave because the treats coming my way. Well, with the click, I think you're more marking the behavior. Like, there's five different things that she's doing, as she says, settling in or whatever. Maybe she was looking up out the window and you said good girl, because she was sitting down. But to her, you're saying good girl because she's looking out the window. If you clicked the moment she sat down and settled, she would know that what you were talking about is the sitting part rather than the looking out the window part. The clicker, it happens so fast. It allows the dog to mark that behavior more than your praise. Right. Because it takes a lot longer to say, nico, you're so good exactly. Than that little click. So you'd want to click first and then hit her with the praise. But the click is like, oh, that thing. That's right. And the consistency that you were talking about is so key because you can be going down a good path for a couple of weeks and undo it all in a couple of days or even a single action if you're not consistent with this training. But it's like with the peeing in the house thing, maybe the house training that you engaged in originally, you didn't quite finish, you weren't quite consistent enough, so go start over. It's not like it's like, oh, well, I'll never have a nice rug again, right? My dog just pees in the house. It's like, no, you go back to house training your dog. Or if you have this whatever the unwanted behavior is, you just have to go back to it and do it again. And your dog will pick it up probably way faster the second time, and you just stick to it. It's just more consistency, which is why I was saying earlier, it's a little more involved owning a dog than we used to think it was. But the dogs that were sharing our lives with, I would argue, are way happier and healthier mentally and probably physically, too, than, say, they were 30 years ago. In general. Yeah. And there is a certain amount you don't get dogs and cats if you want to have well, this is not necessarily true, but if you need a pristine house that's hairless, you probably shouldn't have pets. Like, there's a certain amount of giving into the fact that you may have rules where pets aren't allowed on any furniture, which is great, that helps. But like, in my house, they're furniture dogs. So we know our sunroom couch is never going to be the nicest, greatest couch in the world. It's always going to have some dog hair on it and that's just the way it is. That's fine with us. Yeah. You, me and I are defiant. We have not one, but two white couches. Yes. Luckily, Momo doesn't shed. But has Muma ever thrown up on the couch? No, she hasn't. And I know now that I'm saying this back at home, she's throwing up on the couch for the first time ever. My friend Justin, he and his partner Melissa have a great dog named Foley, who is Nico's best friend. And Foley is not allowed on their furniture and is really good about it, but he is allowed on our furniture. Oh, yeah. So when Foley comes over for spending nights and playtimes, he fully milks that stuff, but it doesn't and I was worried I was going to mess them up at home, but it hasn't. He gets the difference. Yeah. I think probably because dogs are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Probably. He probably likes his dinner, too. I can tell you, Mum, I was very smart. Yes. My dogs are smart and dumb. Yeah, okay. That's a good way for a dog to be, too. It's like, sometimes you think, man, what a smart dog. And then you see them eating poop out of the cat litter box and you're like, wow, you're really not very smart after all. Yeah. And they're like, oh, so good. Or they come around the corner with cat litter on their nose, they're like, what? I wouldn't do anything. Right. Just play it off. Just play it cool. They don't know anything, they can't prove anything. You got anything else about cat poop? I got nothing else. Don't hit and kick your dogs, man. Yeah, don't beat up your dogs. Well, if you want to know more about dog training, there is a lot to go read about on the internet and a lot of it is conflicting. So definitely choose wisely. Since I said choose wisely, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one. It delighted us. I think you probably read this one. I enjoyed the short stuff, guys on barbed wire. I wanted to share the fact that my great great grandfather won. William Harvey Beale invented the barbed wire tightener. Nice. How about that? Yes. This is what enabled ranchers and farmers to install their own fencing. I am the 12th generation in a long line of bees that began in the US in the 1680s from England first landing in Pennsylvania and gradually migrating westward. I don't know why that reminds me. Do you watch what we do in the shadows? I have seen it here. There? Yeah. So it was a movie and now it's a TV show. One of the elder vampires. Any time they're on Staten Island and he talks about Manhattan, he calls it Manahatta. That's hilarious. But there's no reason for it to be hilarious. But it just cracks me. I like the TV show more than the movie, almost exclusively because of Matthew Barry. Oh, really? I think anything he's in is just priceless. That guy is good. It's great. You know, one of the writers on the show and producers is Tom Sharply of the best show. Wow. Anyway, I don't know how that reminded me of it. I think I was thinking about them landing in Pennsylvania and what it was called back then, pennsylvania. Back to the letter. William Harvey, who is generation Eight, was homestead in Kansas in 1889 and took a job as a barbed wire fence salesman. And he said that, goodness knows, there was plenty of fencing being shipped into the country by that time. You couldn't do any good trying to farm without it. Big problem there for farmers they got the fence up was how to pull the wire tight on the post. So he tinkered in a forge and developed a device to pull the wire tight. So I got a patent and was soon selling the beal wire tightener, to, quote, every bedeviled fence tinder for miles around in quote. She sent pictures of the device and the patent. And William working on a ranch and it was great. She said he traveled around the west. He travelled around the west for eight years, selling his invention. Was able to pay off his debts. Eventually moved to California, where the next four generations remained. I'm writing from San Diego. I know all these details, thanks to William's youngest daughter, who recorded extensive oral histories and books. What a great letter. That is a great letter. I've been listening to the show for about five years. Flew to Phoenix to see you live last year. Nice. Thank you. The highlight of my week. With love and gratitude. Shodra in San Diego. Thanks a lot. Shonddra, Pennsylvania. To San Diego. I love it. Over 340 years via Manahatta. That was a great one. Thanks. And for the pictures, too. That was just excellent. If you want to get in touch with us, like Shondra did shonda, right? Yes. Okay. You can go on to stuffyshito.com and check out our social links. And if that doesn't work, you can always try a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the 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. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart or topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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97607b74-361e-11ea-938d-43aa2aedde6e | Short Stuff: Hawaiian Night Marchers | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-hawaiian-night-marchers | Get ready for some Hawaiian folklore, people. Today we discuss the Night Marchers. | Get ready for some Hawaiian folklore, people. Today we discuss the Night Marchers. | Wed, 26 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=57, tm_isdst=0) | 9718856 | audio/mpeg | "Aloha. And welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh. Aloha. No way. Don't go anywhere. I didn't mean goodbye. I was just saying hello again. You've been to Hawaii? Sure, yeah. Married? You mean? I got married in Hawaii. That's right. Hawaii. And you've been back, right? Or no? Yes. We love it. I can't wait. I've never been. Still, you're going to love it. When we went, we were not expecting it to be as great as it was, and we were just blown away, and we went back and got married, and now we go back as often as we can and to people that are thinking, what a jerk. Josh didn't invite Chuck to his wedding. Didn't invite anybody. Yes. You guys kind of did your own thing. Yeah, we eloped. I like to think I was on the spiritual guest list. You definitely were. But it was funny when we called people and said, like, hey, we just got married. We eloped. And the first question from just about everybody was, well, who is there really? We'd say, no one, and they go, Congratulations. Like, Wait, why do you say congratulations first? Yeah, that's interesting. We need new friends and family. Who was there? Exactly. So the thing I couldn't we're talking about the legend of the Night Marchers of Hawaii. I read through a couple of things on this, and I was frustrated because I still couldn't figure out what they were. Were they real? No. Is it a legend? Are they ghosts? Is it folklore? Yeah. And I finally it took me, like, two or three articles, so I was like, okay, this isn't really happening. So, wait, there was a point in your research where you thought that people were walking around just slaughtering innocent bystanders in Hawaii? Well, that's what confused me, as I thought maybe these were people reenacting this legend for fun. But then I was like, but the murder part, no one has said. But they don't really kill you. It's awesome. So let's talk about what this is. No, I'm confused. If you've been to Hawaii, you might have heard about these Night Marchers. It's basically a situation where you might hear and of course, this is folklore again, right? This is folklore, right? You'll hear these war drums in the distance. You'll hear chanting. You hear, like, the horn of a conch shell being sounded, and you will see the torches marching through and winding through the darkness. And you're like, oh, s here for the night, Marchers. Right? Even if you don't know what the Night Marchers are, hopefully this will scare you enough to run and not be like, oh, let me stick around and take a gander and see what happens. Because here's the problem. If you are a holly or even a Hawaiian who doesn't know what's going on right now, although that's probably not the case, because it's apparently a widespread cultural tradition, if you stick around and the nightmares find you and they notice that you are gawking, they will kill you right there. They will shout something that means, pierce that person, and you will be killed. Yeah. Like, if you make eye contact, supposedly, and not only will you be killed, you'll be killed by supernatural beings, which I would guess is way worse than being killed under normal circumstances. That's right. So what's supposedly happening is I think it's the chiefs are traveling at night to avoid being spotted, and they are they all chiefs, or is this the chief and people in his guard sort of protecting them along the way? The latter of those two. Okay. That's what I thought. And it's not just like, the supernatural. So these are the ghosts of chiefs who were protected and the people who protect them. It's all this ghost procession through Hawaii at night, and it's actually something that used to happen in the old days because it was a longstanding tradition among Hawaiian culture that the chiefs were so divine that a normal person couldn't look upon them. Right. And you certainly couldn't be in their presence while you had clothes on. Right. Which is why if you're just kind of a tourist gawking and you run across the night marchers and you're wearing clothes and you're looking at the chief, that's why they kill you. So in real life, historically speaking, some of the better chiefs would say, well, I can't just go wandering around from place to place in the daytime where somebody might see me accidentally, and then they have to be killed. I'll just take to the trails at night, and me and my procession will travel at night. This is the ghostly continuation of the actual historical tradition. That's right. It's very much like a Scooby Doo plot, if you ask me. Oh, totally. I can't believe they never did this. Yeah, because they went on sort of exotic vacations occasionally in some of those later years. And Hawaiian real estate is so valuable that a real estate developer might actually go to this length to scare people off of land that he wanted for cheap. Oh, really? So, yeah, it would have been perfect for Scooby Doo. All right. It would have been the most realistic Scooby Doo episode ever. Yeah. But you got to get, like, the three students out there or something. Great. With Shirley Joe. Yeah. All right, so let's take a quick break, and we will come back and talk a little bit more about what happens on this ghostly journey right after this. All right, so the lunar cycles have something to do with this as well, because apparently they tend to appear usually during the last four Hawaiian moon phases when it's darkest. Yeah. Hawaii has their own lunar phases, and they're more distinct than ours. They have, like, 30 of them, where we have eight. It's pretty incredible. And their last four are Kanye, Lono, Mauli, and Moko, and Ralph and they're basically Joe, they're the dark phases of the moon. Yeah. So it's darkest out then. They're usually marching toward some very sacred sites or very popular and notable cultural sites. And like we said, if you hear this and you're like, oh, my goodness, let me go check this out, just don't do it because you're going to die, even though it's not real. Right. If you are an ancestor and you have some kind of family tie to someone in the march, they know to respect it, but you will also be protected. Right. So here's the thing. If it turns out that you happen just coincidentally to be a distant descendant of one of the ghosts on the march in this procession, they will say, this person is one of my descendants, and don't kill him. And we'll just go ahead and encapsulate them. At least that last part about encapsulating them or protecting him or her comes from a real life Kahuna by the name of Lopaka Kappa NUI. Is he the big kahuna? I think he's just a regular Kahuna. Okay. But he is a kind of a cultural historian and a kahuna, again, kind of a spiritual leader of Hawaiian culture. And he said that at one point, he encountered one of these nightmare, ghostly processions, and he was protected, ostensibly because one of his distant relatives was one of the marchers. Yeah. There's another couple of things that can save you. One is if you have a plant, very specific plant, called the T, I guess. T-I-I think so. It is an evergreen plant. And if you have that planted around your home, which I bet a lot of houses in Hawaii do just for maybe superstitious sake, you will be protected. And the other is, if you just happen to be out there and you come across one of these marching groups and you accidentally make eye contact, and you're like, hey, what's up, man? And they're like, you're about to die. And they say the thing you are supposed to strip down naked, lay down face down on the ground, close your eyes, pee yourself and play dead. Yeah. Just basically showing complete deference and fealty to these things, to these ghostly warriors and their king. Yeah. And the pee itself was not a chuck joke. That's for real. They say to Urinate if you can, and they'll be like, wow, I guess that worked. We scared the pee out of them. Yeah. Another piece of advice is not a whistle at night, because apparently, legend has it, you might accidentally summon the night Marchers. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any more advice. I think. Oh, Ron. That's what Lopaka Kapanui says. He says if you start to hear those drums at night in the distance, or you hear a conch shell, or apparently you can smell rotting flesh, that's part of it. Or if you start to see those torches coming toward you, you should just run. Don't stick around. Yeah, and this house works. Article. I said don't stop to take selfies like some people have done in the past. Just run. Is that all? Just tongue in cheek? I don't know. I can't tell anymore. The border between real and supernatural has been completely crossed. I totally agree. I don't know if I'd need to go to Hawaii now, because I have made fun of this and they know I'm doing so you are going to love it, Chuck. All right? You got to go, and you're going to love it. Okay? Deal. All right. Well, we'll see everybody in Hawaii, because short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts podcast to My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Philanthropy: Humankind and Loving It | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/philanthropy-humankind-and-loving-it | Sure the fatcats get all the credit for donating millions, but did you know US households making $20,000 or less contribute the highest percentage of their income to charity? Learn more (not to mention a sexy look at the U.S. tax code) in this episode. | Sure the fatcats get all the credit for donating millions, but did you know US households making $20,000 or less contribute the highest percentage of their income to charity? Learn more (not to mention a sexy look at the U.S. tax code) in this episode. | Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:49:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=14, tm_min=49, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=327, tm_isdst=0) | 43472023 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, buddy, if you don't mind if I plug my movember page real quick. Please do. I am growing a mustache this month for November for for cancer research, specifically male prostate cancer research. That's right. And you can donate to my team, which would be pretty cool because you get a free podcast, and it'd be nice to throw a little money toward cancer research. Yeah, Chuck's being nice here. Give him some money. He's growing on facial here to help a charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right. And you can go to Mobro Cocharles Bryant that is my page. Or just go to the mobilever site, type in Charles Bryant in the search bar, and look for the picture of me. There's only a couple of us out there, Chuck's, wearing a red shirt. That's right. Yeah. So what is that again? That's Mobro Cocharlesbryt. Yes. Thank you in advance. Yeah. That's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get to it. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. Charles W, chuck Bryant. Oh, hold on a second, buddy. Yeah, I think you've got something you need to say. Oh, yeah. Let's go ahead and plug our buddies over at Science Channel, our other home. Yeah. And they're airing pumpkin chunkin, the annual awesome fest of shooting pumpkins through the air as far as you can and then making them explode on content. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's a real thing. And then Science Channel goes every year and films it, and they air it as what? To become a Thanksgiving tradition. So they're going to air at this Thanksgiving, november 22 at 08:00 P.m., right? That's right. And we are still waiting to get invited to go chunk pumpkins ourself. We got invited last year. Did we? I think so, yeah. But it was like, you guys can come if you want, if you happen to be in the Northeast. Yeah, but it wasn't like I wanted a formal invitation to participate. Okay, I got you. And if you are into punk and chunkin, then you might want to go online to check out the road to punkinchunken that's already up there's some great video. Just search punkin. P-U-N-K-I-N chunkin. Chunkin and science in your favorite search engine, and it'll bring that right up. Yes. And don't forget November 22, this Thanksgiving at 08:00 PM. On Science Channel. Pumpkin chunkin, the tradition. Yes. Are you ready now? I'm ready. Okay. Back today is our good friend and longtime producer, Jerry Yay. Or she had the clap machine. Yeah, well, people are slow clapping all across the world right now. Right. Very sarcastic. Jerry, we're so glad you're back. We missed you so much. Now, a slow clap is meaningful. Yeah. But it can very easily be turned sarcastic. All you have to do is kind of cock your head inside. I wonder what the first slow clap was in a movie. It was such a trope at this point, but I wonder who invented it. I bet you that information is out there. I want to know. Don't you want to know? Yeah. Clearly you do. I'm sure some movie website has probably tracked this down first. Slow clap. Let's find it, everybody. Yes. Well, wait, we should probably just go ahead and do that. Yes, let's do it. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever given money to somebody who did nothing for you in return? Maybe didn't sell you a good or service? Just gave him the money? What do you mean? Just like someone panhandler charitable organization. Sure. That's philanthropy. You're a philanthropist. Great. Did you know that? Yeah. That's all it takes. And even better, this is the bright, shiny episode, in my opinion. I'm proud of this one. How philanthropy works. Yeah. You don't even need money. You donate your time. Yeah. Your time is very valuable, Chuck. Yeah. And I think well, I can't say this because I'm just speculating, but it seems to me that people are either like, my time is too valuable, but I can write someone a check. Yeah. Or I'm a little late, but I can't give my time. Or you can put it like, well, the government doesn't let me deduct time that I've donated, but they will let me deduct the hundreds of thousands of dollars I've donated this year. They should let you deduct time because they've actually figured out I have average. It's like an hourly wage of volunteerism. Yeah. Nice. That would be awesome. Let's get that in the tax code. That's a great idea. You can, however, like, if you were, say, donating your time by going down to, like, Louisiana to help clean up after a hurricane or Kansas or Missouri to help clean up after a tornado. Yeah. And you bought a bus ticket or you drove, you can deduct transportation costs. Okay, well, that makes sense. But once you get there, the government doesn't care about you. All bets are off. Yeah. But you can deduct money as far as transportation. Oh, and just regular contributions. Right. It's depending on who you give to. And we have a very thrilling segment in this episode about the tax code, the ins and outs of it. Chuck is not very excited about it. I think this is kind of neat, but we're talking about philanthropy, and it's kind of become I don't want to say vogue, maybe it has for the ultra rich. Some of the richest people in the world, at least the richest people in America, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, to sign a pledge that Bill Gates created. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation created this thing saying, hey, we're going to donate at least half of our vast wealth, and they're trying to sign billionaires up to agree to this, and then we'll just be super wealthy. Right. Well, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is this, like, superstar foundation. The assets it controls is, like, the GDP of several nations. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's like $37 billion in assets right now. You can do a lot of good with that. And one of the people they signed on was Warren Buffett, and he's worth $49 billion right now. He's pledged 85% of his fortune to the Gates Foundation afterward, after he's dead, which, I mean, he's getting up there. So they may have about $80 billion in assets in their control. Go ahead. I was going to say that's almost as much as it's about three quarters of the assets or the value, the capital value of the most valuable corporation in the world, Apple, which, ironically, had a founder who may have never given a cent to charity. Oh, really? Steve Jobs died without officially having given any money to charity at all. Really? Any, he was notoriously stingy, and after his death, there was a lot of talk like, okay, did he really amass an $8 billion fortune and not donate any of it? And a lot of people were like, you know what? Even if he didn't, to heck with you. He gave this technology to the world, and people are using it to better humanity. Well, he doesn't need to give money, and other people are like, yes, if you have $8 billion in personal wealth, you need to give some of that for other things, like water and stuff that you can't use an iPhone app for. Right? Sure. I guess it depends on how you feel about it all. And then there's another camp that was saying, hey, it's totally possible that he was just not a jerk and he donated a lot of money. But he did anonymously. Right. He didn't want a bunch of glory or he didn't want a bunch of charities knocking down his door like, hey, give us some, too, for whatever reason. But you're saying that did not happen. He didn't give anonymously. No one knows. It's a mystery. Oh, I thought you said for sure he didn't give any money ever, because he was so cheap on paper. There is no there's no record of him ever giving a cent to charity. Got you. But it's pretty interesting. I can't imagine having a billion dollars and not giving any of it away. But Bill Gates approached him, and he's like, no, I'm not telling that pledge. And when you pick up the check right, exactly right. Yeah. I don't validate parking, either thing. I remember Ted Turner kind of was one of the original guys to give a ton of money when you gave the billion to the UN. I remember that was a really big deal at the time. Yes. I don't know that he gave it to the UN. What did they do with it? I don't know. Because they were in the general fund. I guess so. But it was a big deal at the time. This is a long time ago. Like in the 70s or 80s? No, 90s. I'll have to look $2,000. But it was long enough to go such that it was a really big deal that someone gave a billion a personal individual gave a billion dollars. I think at the time, it might have been the largest individual donation. That's crazy. Ever. That's neat. Maybe. I liked it, though. He's a cool guy. But this whole thing, this trend that's going on among the uber wealthy is kind of this throwback to the beginning of the last century when, like, the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's were setting up foundations that are still around today. Oh, yeah. The Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller, they created, like, a bunch of different trusts. Dirty rock. Yeah. University of Chicago. That was another thing that was involved. Setting up huge universities. Cornell, Stanford, all of those were rich people endowing universities. It was like there wasn't a university there. For now, there is. What's the one you always hear on NPR? The Ford Foundation. Joseph D and Catherine C. Catherine c oh, man. I know. It's still in my consciousness. I can't believe I can't just spit it up. Yeah, one of us will shout it in about 45 seconds. Yeah, exactly. Okay. But anyway, you usually associate philanthropy with the uber wealthy, but it doesn't have to be you can be poor. And as a matter of fact, the poorest Americans contribute the highest percentage of their income of any income bracket in the country. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. And in fact, if the richest people contributed that same percentage, then there would be fewer problems in the world. I would say so. But the rich people give the most because they have the most. Yeah, I've got stats, but we'll get to those later. Well, let's talk about a couple of stats. How many charities are there in the country? Well, this is 600,000 in the article. I think it's a little out of date. Is it? Yeah, because I found in 2011, there are approximately 1,080,130 charitable organizations. That was a decrease from 2010. So maybe this only counted, although this is accounts foundations. Yeah, I think there was an enormous increase. Yeah. All right. Because I have the feeling that this article is written about 2003. Okay. Well, that would be a really big increase in yeah. A million. Yeah, a million plus. So 355 of which are religious congregations, which we'll get into. That $355,000. Okay. And then in the United States in 2011, charitable giving totaled $298,000,000,000. Yeah. And that was an increase from 2010, which saw $286,000,000,000. Yeah. 217 from individuals, which is pretty amazing that 73% of all charitable gifts are from people. And if you factor in bequests like people leaving stuff in their wills, which is also individuals and family foundations, it rises to 88%. More than that, I think, isn't it? I saw 88% on philanthropy.com. Okay. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Well, I have foundations at 14%, bequest at 8%, and in last place, corporate donations at 5%. Apparently they give the lease. And you know what I just heard the other day? I don't know if this is true. Maybe we can get confirmation. Okay. You know when you go to the grocery store and they ask you to would you like to donate to March of Dimes or whatever, like a dollar on your thing? Where is this coming? A listener wrote in about this. Was that yeah, I think maybe that was it. Someone said that they call those donations under their companies, under their corporation, and the grocery store donated that money and gets the tax, millions of dollars and gets the tax deduction. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but it's just something to consider for sure. Let's say you're like, no, I'm not giving a sit to March of Dimes. Premature babies can all like, rock, but you really care about muscular dystrophy. So the time when they hit you up for that shamrock, you're like, of course. Not only will I give one dollars, we'll give $5. Well, TS for you because you have no say whatsoever and where that money is going. Because they pull it all together in a pot that they sell out quarterly or annually, and then they take the tax. For whoever wrote that in, I've stopped altogether giving at the grocery store. Now I don't even consider I don't even feel bad saying no now. Yeah, I've kind of stopped doing that too, just because if you're going to give money that will explain, you should take the time to research and do it in a way that you feel good about and it's responsible and that you know where the money's going and yes, all that stuff. Let's talk about that, buddy. Well, one thing they point out early in the article, though, that we should say is that these days more and more nonprofits are seeking funds in different ways because a lot of government funding is declining and going away altogether. So they need money more than ever and costs are going up, obviously. So that is why you will see websites and billboards and door to door and flyers and everything to get in touch with the potential donate tour donor. Donor, right. That's a good thing. They read a word means that. But like you said, philanthropy doesn't have to be just about money. No, it doesn't. But the word philanthropy means that you love humans. Phil means loving is humankind. So you love humankind by giving money to it. That's how you're demonstrating your love of humankind. That's nice. Yeah. Checking out charities, though. This is a big one. It's a big deal. I don't know how many people do this. I don't know. I want to say trust you, because I don't. But I mean, normally the charitable giving I do is like whoever is ringing the bell at that moment or something like that or it was or it's on an individual basis, like it's not necessarily through charity. Right. I hear you. They say there are a few guidelines you can look for if you're checking out a charity to judge whether or not you think they're spending money wisely. Generally 50% to 60% of every dollar should go to the actual work, the charity work. Right. And then the other remaining for operational, marketing, administrative costs. So from what I saw, that's very generous toward the charity percentage. I saw 25% of your costs for administration and fundraising. The 75 75 should go to programs. But that's charitychoices.com that says that that's probably the ideal. Yeah, I'm sure. I think $50 to $60 is like anything less than this, and you should really examine what's going on. It means that there's people at the top taking a big paycheck or they're not doing a very good job of managing their money. But it could also mean that if you look at the age of the charity or the size of the charity, like, there's an economy of scale in raising money. So if you are established, you have an established name or you've been doing this awhile, your fundraising costs are going to be lower than, say, a new charity. True. Or a radical charity that does controversial work. Good point. They're going to have a harder time generating money. So just because their fundraising costs are high, it doesn't mean that they're all just enjoying lavish tuxedo based parties. And that's where all the money's got tuxedo based, white thigh affairs rather than business casual based got you rather than turtlenecks and jackets based. If you want to find out about a charity job and it's, you can write a letter to the local charity registration office, usually within the state attorney general's office, and six to eight weeks later you might get a letter back. These days you can go online. Yeah, and I went online, actually today and registered with GuideStar. Nice. As a charity? No. Has the money started coming in yet? No. GuideStar is one of the places you can go to check out other charities and you have to register to log in. Right, because I wanted to check out our friends at Cooperative for Education. Yes. All the records are there. Is what you're looking for. I looked at it tax form, and you know what my first thought was? Man, I feel so bad that Joe and those guys have to fill this thing out every year. Oh, man, I'll bet it, oh, dude, it was so long. But they don't have to file taxes. Yeah, true. Whatever. It's all a wash, right? But you'll be glad to know they're obviously doing great work. They're on the up and up. We knew that. Yeah, we definitely did know that. We saw it firsthand. We checked those guys out. Personally, I stand behind Cohen. The center for Better Business Bureau is another place. The foundation center is another place and you can get basically have access to the numbers if you really want to check it out thoroughly. Right. So the form 990 is going to have like a general description of the work they do, the programs they do, who's running the thing, where their money is going. And I think it gets a little more specific than just like programs, fundraising and administrative costs. Right. Doesn't it break it down a little more? Yeah. Like theirs had all the different drives that they did and it broke it down. Specifically if you were into looking all that stuff up, it's there. Right. And if you really want to know if you give to like a mega charity like the Salvation Army in the United Way or something like that, they have more than just one program, so they may be doing work that you don't necessarily agree with. So there's another reason to go look at form 990. That's true. Because you'll see what programs they're carrying out. Like all of them. Yeah. Well, that's the Common Foundation got in hot water. Remember with the whole Planned Parenthood thing last year? Yeah. Or was that early this year? It was at some point in the recent past, yes. So when you get that big, there are other associations you might want to know about. Yes. Depending on your affiliation, your sociopolitical affiliation. That's right. There's about three ways that they're going to be spending their money though program services. And these are what you want your money to be going to most if you want to just feel better about yourself at night. Right. You don't want to think I paid the water bill there at the building. You don't think I put a sandwich in a needy kid's hand. Sure. Right. A good one too. Management operational cost is next. Like I said, it's a little less exciting to think about that. But they need to pay the rent and bills. Definitely. They need supply. Sure. And then you've got fundraising. Yes. Which can really rack it up. I mean, it's everything from like direct mailers to lavish parties. If you're courting celebrities, they like that kind of thing. And a well managed charity can take X number of dollars, whatever their fundraising costs are, and grow it exponentially, use it correctly. But there are also charities out there that don't know what they're doing and shouldn't get the same funding. If you've got over a million, there's bound to be a handful that aren't quite right and some that are outright scams. Yeah. Unfortunately, I think we have one of those, don't we? Well, there was a guy in this article, there's a guy in Texas who, after a tornado, I think hit Austin, he set up a charity that asked people to mail one dollars donations checks made out to cash and mail them to this PO. Box. And people did. He kept the money unsurprisingly. There's a bad place for those people in their next life, for sure. It's about the worst thing you can do. No one likes you when you're a grifter. Other grifters don't like you. Right? Sure, they'll make movies about you, but I mean, like, that's about it. Josh, how would you go about soliciting money if you were a charity, if you were a nonprofit? Well, not for profit. One of the things I would do is probably take some of my initial money, my initial capital, and I would buy some mailing lists of other donors from other charities, which is extremely common practice these days. Yes. I wonder what kind of money they make doing that. Well, that's one reason they do it. Like, a charity will compile a mailing list and they'll sell it to other charities for income. They can? Yes. And again, it's common practice. They also will sell them not necessarily just for the money. They may swap them with other charities because if you've donated to a charity, you've separated yourself, I imagine, from a lot of other people, and you're somebody who may be willing to give money to a different charity too. So that's one way I would do a direct mailing. I would hire a bunch of clean cut teenagers who are enthusiastic about the charity that they represented and send them door to door, clearly labeled through uniforms and possibly matching khaki pants as representatives of the charity, complete with identification and lots of pamphlets about the programs that we have. Wow. You have the starter kit ready to go? I'm ready. I just need an injection of funding. I don't know the programs yet, but everything else I've got lined up. As this article points out, if you are getting more solicitation than you'd like, you can in write a letter to the organization requesting your name be removed. It may or may not work and keep a copy of that letter. Or you can just go to their website and unsubscribe. Well, I think one of the things that gave us away was, like it's saying, like, more and more charities are starting to go to the web now. Exactly. And I think the web was capitalized maybe in quotation marks and then in parentheses afterwards, it said, the World Wide Web. Right. We kid. If you want to donate, you can give cash. If you're walking by a Salvation Army Santa Claus, you can I mean, it's the way to go. You can throw your change in the bucket. If you've done the work, though, you're looking at stuff like that. That's probably supplemental to the actual charitable giving your daughter. Sure. So if you are, like, really seriously philanthropic, like, it's a pastime of yours or a tax strategy, as we'll see. You will probably want to write checks because they're good records that you want to keep. You might want to go down to your bank and get the canceled check after it's been cashed and keep it in a safe deposit box. Yes. Or because it is not you can donate on the Internet with your credit card. Yeah. I hear more and more charities are going to the Web, and they're just as many records as if you wrote that check. And it's all very legit these days. You probably don't need to worry about it. If you can't tell the difference between a reputable website at this point, then you're one of those people that falls for the Nigerian scam. I guess that's true. I feel bad for these people. I feel like I'm making fun. Well, go listen to the Con Artist episode. That will be helpful. Maybe that's a companion to this one. Sadly, you can also if you are loaded or if you really don't like your family, you can leave money, land, goods, your old mobile, all those things to charity. They'll take them. Maybe I'll will my squatted land to co ed. That'd be very nice. Thanks for this thing that we can do nothing, but we have to mow this. And Josh, the final way is really popular these days, donating old things that you don't use anymore. We've been doing this forever in terms of, like, furniture and clothing and stuff like that, but nowadays things like computers, as we mentioned in a recent listener mail or an upcoming listener mail, which you're still trying to get to yeah. About donating old computers to this group in Athens, Georgia, there are lots of organizations that do that. Now, you can donate your car, write that off, office supplies, building materials, emergency supplies. Those are huge, obviously, when catastrophe hits. Yeah. When the poop hits the fan. That's right. And you can write most of this stuff off as well. You can. You can write off the fair market value of it. And if you go to an auction and you pay way more than something's worth, you can write off whatever you paid over and above the fair market value of that thing. Oh, nice. Yeah. The sucker fee, the philanthropic fee. Well, that's nice that they give it back. Like, well, you're sort of an idiot for paying that much money, but they'll give it away, and we'll at least let you write it off. Okay. You want to talk about tax stuff now? No. Well, we're about to. There are two kinds of well, there's three kinds according to the IRS, the tax code, the US. Tax code. There's three designations and then a few sub designations, which we'll get into to the letter. The sexiest publication on the planet. The tax code for a charitable organization. Right. 50 Shades of Green is what they should call it the most. Have you read that? No, Emily didn't. What did she say? Does she, like, sweating all the time? Yeah, I mean, it was pretty racy. That's crazy. She blew through the series in a couple of weeks. That person was earning, like, a million dollars a day or some crazy amount from that for weeks for writing smut, I guess. Good for her. Yeah. It was a lady, right? Yeah. But she's got a man's name. Frank. No initials. It's very masculine. Oh, really? Yes, in my opinion. All right. JK. Rowling sounds like a dude. You think? Sure. I never really thought about it. And isn't it like PD. James it almost sounds like PD. Anyway, the three tax codes. Yes. So the one that everybody's heard of and is most familiar with is the 501 C three. You've heard of a 501 corporation? They'll pretend like you haven't. You're too cool to know about that. The Three, four and five, your favorite, I guess, is the three. So the 500 and C three, that's the money organization. That's the one that's like it covers, let's see, Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals, those kind of organizations. Awesome. Educational charities, straight up charity. Charities that help the poor and the needy. Religious charities. Scientific organizations. Yeah. Literary my favorite ones that support national or international amateur sports, which is pretty sweet. Yeah. You can give to the US ski team. Right. If Don King's involved, though, don't look for a tax deduction at the organization. And then testing related to public safety, which I was trying to figure out what that would be. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe an organization that goes around setting off incendiary devices and fallout shelters to see if they hold up. Yes. I'm not sure I was going to say like auto safety, but it seems like that would be the auto companies privately doing that independent organization. There are, yeah, there are. Yes. I bet you that's what it is. So, anyway, all of those except for the public safety one you can write off without thinking twice, without prejudice. Yeah, right. Unless that is a not for profit or nonprofit corporation that's overseas. Yes. And it means that they're based overseas. Not necessarily. That they do most of their work overseas. Right. That's where they're incorporated as overseas. Yeah. Because coed, for instance that's why I mentioned it, they are based out of Cincinnati, even though the work they do is usually in Guatemala. Right, that's an excellent point. So that's the 563. You've got public charity, you've got the private foundation and a private foundation, it gets its income from investments, endowments, and then it's basically a charity for other charities. Yeah. Then grants that to whoever they see fit. Right. And that's a good one to invest in because they usually know exactly what they're doing more than you. Yeah, that's true. And their work is charity. So they're looking for up and coming months once they're doing really great work, that kind of stuff. What's? Well managed, that kind of thing. And then you have a private operating foundation. Right, yeah. And they donate directly to the causes instead of granting grants to other charities. Right. Now the private foundation. If you give to one of those, you may not necessarily be able to deduct it, but a public charity or a private operating foundation, most of the time you'll get the full deduction. I think that's up to about 50% of your adjusted gross income. So if you make $50,000 and you donate $25,000, you can write that off. It'll take that right away. Yes, that's true. That's a pretty good tax strategy. It is. Corporations are allowed to deduct all contributions up to usually about 10% of their taxable income, which I bet you that's where it ends. But I mean, think about it. What about corporations that have zero taxable income because of their fancy accounting? Do they donate at all? I don't know. I have a big question about that, and I was quite cynical there, and I don't like cynicism. I said that's probably where they stopped donating is when they reached that threshold. Not necessarily true, but maybe it is. Well, you know, the deductible charitable contributions as it stands now is kind of under threat, actually, because the Bush tax cuts are going to expire. Possibly. If the Bush tax cuts expire, then for those highest income brackets, they'll lose about 80% of their deduction abilities, which I would think would show a pretty steep drop in charitable giving in that tax bracket. Yeah. And even though it's only 5%, that's still how much was it? Like $14 billion. Yeah. And then Obama has a proposal that I don't know if it's going anywhere or not, to basically, like, set 28% of your adjusted gross income is the maximum you can deduct for higher income tax brackets. Oh, really? Yes. I don't know if it will go anywhere, though, but we may see charities really getting hurt in the future. I'm so ambivalent right now. No, you're not. You're angry behind the ambivalence. What about the C? Four. Oh, boy. The C Four that covers organizations that lobby on behalf of specific causes, like social welfare and stuff like that. Yeah. Remember there was a big hub. I couldn't remember it before and I can't remember it now. It was a lobbying group that had 501 C Three status. Not C Four. No, C Three. Yeah, but they were lobbying on behalf of social values. Remember McDonald's got called out and left all these huge corporations left this lobbying group. It was like a Chamber of Commerce arm. And somehow they have 501 status. It was a big call for them to go back or to be forced into 501, which would mean a lot. They'd have to pay taxes. Right. That also will include volunteer fire departments, which I thought was interesting, and civic organizations. And they are not deductible as charitable donations to the C Four, except for volunteer fire departments. Veterans organization. Yeah, exactly. So I guess if you give to the VA, are they C Four or the VFW or BFW or the American Legion, not the French Foreign legion, though. They're overseas. That's right. The C six, Josh. The C Six. That's actually, I guess it should be that lobbying group shouldn't be a five one, C three. It should be a C six because this covers trade associations and boards, chambers of commerce, real estate boards. Yeah, we can't forget those. And you can't deduct any gifts to those as well. Basically just 501 C. Three. And you want to make sure it's not a private foundation, and that's a private operating system. And that's if you're donating money. But we mentioned you can donate your time. Right. As a volunteer, which I think is kind of a neat way to go about it if you're into, like, you know, grassroots, hitting the ground, getting your hands dirty. They have figured out that actually this article is I don't know. I'm sorry, I have a new staff for that. Oh, no. They have figured out that it is an estimated dollar value of volunteering time is $20.0.85 an hour. Wow. In 2009. Wow. That's great. And so in 2009, the volunteer time totaled about $169,000,000,000. I wonder how much of that is wasted, though, because in this article they cite Ups survey, ups foundation, that was taken it's back in 98. But at the time, they found that 40% of volunteers said that they stopped volunteering because they felt that their time was wasted while they were volunteering. Yeah, I've had experience like that. Sure. And I get it, because if you don't have a lot of time, you're like, I want to get my time. You want to have it be used. And I don't want to call out who this was, but it was a group in town. Volunteered, showed up, and they didn't know what to do with me. Yes. And I did it a couple of times. They didn't know what to do with me until Vinci. I was like, I'm not going to come back and sit around here. I'm going to go find somewhere else. Or maybe you should get your act together a little bit more. But it's tough. It's easy to criticize. It's tough to manage volunteers. It's one of the most difficult I think it said in the article, one of the most difficult parts of running one, a nonprofit is managing and maintaining your volunteers because they walked in brand new, and I'm sure they want to be the one doling out soup where we really need someone to lift those boxes in the back, which is unglamorous. It's unglamorous. And so it's probably not the easiest thing in the world to manage expectations and what they're supposed to be doing and training and the like. Yeah, I got some stats. Let's hear them. 65% of households give to charity. Average household contribution, 2213. Wow. Majority of charitable dollars went to religion, 32%. Education, 13%. Grant making, 9%. Human services, it just says percent. Is that like making electricity with bodies? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. 98% of high net households give to charity, which is great and beneficial for your tax status. Not saying it's why, but it's good that that's there at least and then 26% of people volunteer, and religion leads the way, again at 35%, which leads us to did you read the article? I skimmed it. Yeah. Let's hear what you got to say. Well, Mitt Romney was criticized recently because this is criticism by Bill Maher, so take it with a grain of salt. Right. But he counted 16.5% of his income as charitable donations, a lot of which went to the Mormon Church. So that brings up an important thing tithing. If you are a believer of the Bible, you are supposed to tithe 10% off the top. It's off the top, is it? According to Reverend Luff Joy. Okay. And you can write that off, which I didn't know that until today. I didn't either. So Bill Maher says that some churches and these well to do organizations like symphony orchestras, colleges and universities with large endowments shouldn't count as charities any longer. So he's kind of slinging some harsh words there. But that sort of says that the only people who can benefit from charity are the poor. And that's just not necessarily the case because then you've got, like, hospitals and libraries and museums and these other things, animal organizations that would be thrown out under the Bill Maher model. Well, I mean, all you need to do is inject a little capitalism like make the Humane Society and ASPCA really kind of compete for money. The one left standing is the one that gets to survive. And they did a study on church budgets in 2000, so this is not super updated. And Christian Today did this and found that an average church budget is about $292,000. 43% went to staff compensation, 20% for facilities, 16% for missions, 9% for church programs, 6% for admin and supplies, 3% for denominational fees, and 3% for other handling fees. Handling fees. And one of the things that got how much of that would be really going to charity? Well, that's the thing, though. The church itself qualifies as a charity with this non exempt status. Right. So I guess the 16% for mission work would be charity, 9% for church programs. A lot of that could be charity. But one of the issues is but is that also, like, the music program? Well, that's what I'm saying. That's one of the issues with considering churches charities and this is written by a Christian organization saying that churches need to get better about connecting the giving to the outcome because people like knowing the literal outcome of where I'm giving my money, whereas churches apparently are not very good at tying that together. And it's really just like it's your tithe. It's just for everything instead of it's for this program and this program. And it's used in this way. Yeah. You know, the solution to that what's that charging admission to church. If you want to know more about philanthropy or philanthropy, if you say things like a weirdo, you can type that word into the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com? Philanthropy. Philanthropy. And it's a handy search bar or search bar or something like that, which means it's time for listener mail. Listener mail today. Oh, goodness. Since we're covering philanthropy, we're going to support coed because we haven't done it in a while. Okay, awesome. You want to tell them about the organization, Josh? For those of you who don't know, you can go back into the deep archives and find our Guatemala adventure part one and two. It's I think, one only time you can clearly hear Jerry speaking, but we went to Guatemala to see firsthand what the cooperative for education does. What they do is they take money from different donors, basically pile it all together and buy enough books for a class in Guatemala. Then those kids pay rent on those books, something that's affordable. It's like $2 a year or something like that, that the average Guatemala and family can afford fairly easily. And that goes into a pool held in escrow. And then at the end of that year or a couple of years or a few years when the books are worn out, that school has the money to replace them. So it's a self sustaining model. And basically you can help a kid get out of poverty by getting an education where otherwise they would be working in the field and making tortillas, which we found out they do in addition to going to school normally. So they do great work. We've seen it firsthand. We stand very firmly behind this organization. Yeah. And not only they have a book program and a computer lab program, so some of your money can go to computer labs. And getting these kids not only computers but training, it's the same model rather than like a set of books, it's like a computer lab. Yeah. Pretty cool. I mean, stuff these kids have never seen before, and they're learning how to use computers, getting better jobs. It's good stuff. Yeah. All right, so you can visit cooperativeforeducation.org, and that's different from their old website. So go to cooperativeforeducation.org and there's a donate now button at the top right of the screen. Or if you want to go down there, you can go on one of the tours. We've had some listeners go. Guatemala got under Jerry skin. She became very much involved with coed after that first trip and returned several times. And when she went, she would go. And there'd be stuff you should know, listeners that went because they listened to the Guatemalan adventures. That's right. Yeah. And for 2013, you can go February 19 through 24th or August 6 through 11th to the land of eternal spring and you will not regret it. Yeah. It is a lot of fun. Very nice. I'll go again. What's the website again? Cooperative Education.org. Okay, cool. Yeah, go give. Your money is well spent there. Check out their form 990 or volunteer or help somebody help a panhandler out. Who knows? Just be philanthropic, not misanthropic. Right? We need a T shirt that says that. I bet there's one out there. And hey, Chuck? Yeah? Let's just take this moment to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Seriously? I don't know if you have traditions like sitting around the table and telling each other what you're thankful for. I like doing that. Maybe you don't even have family. Yeah, maybe you have no one in the world. Surely there's something for you to be thankful for. That's right. Yeah. Dig deep. I'm thankful for that wall in that carpet square. Yeah. That's awful. Are you ready? So after Chuck's feel yes, whatever your tradition is, we hope you're safe and toasty and happy and you have the warmth of the great turkey in your spirit. That's good. Thanks. We should make that our sign off every year for Thanksgiving. Well, maybe we will. Great warmth of the turkey spirit. The warmth of the great turkey in your spirit. Something like that. Except a little tinkering before we trade market. Agreed. Let's get to work on that. Okay. Well, until then, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Be safe. If you want to get in touch with us to wish us Thanksgiving tidings, even if you're from Canada, which celebrates Thanksgiving at some preposterously early time. Right. Yeah. We'll still accept your tweets at syskpodcast. Say hi on Facebook. Facebook. Comstytwo. And as always, you can send us an electronic mail to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com." | ||
429ae8c2-53a3-11e8-bdec-f3bc03a97846 | The Murder Mystery of Ötzi the Iceman | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-murder-mystery-of-tzi-the-iceman | About 5,300 years ago a Copper Age shepherd was murdered. He just happened to die in a place where his body was so well preserved that gave researchers an actual shot at determining the course of his final day on Earth. | About 5,300 years ago a Copper Age shepherd was murdered. He just happened to die in a place where his body was so well preserved that gave researchers an actual shot at determining the course of his final day on Earth. | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=323, tm_isdst=0) | 51376468 | audio/mpeg | "Seattle. We're coming to see you. Yes. And your little horn announcement is one of my favorite things that you do, because I know it means we're going to do a live show. And in this case, we're going to the great state of Washington in the greatest city in the United States, Seattle, at the greatest theater in the world. The more the more we're going back. It's like our home away from home in Seattle. We're going to be there Thursday, January 16, and tickets are already on sale. And they're going like, Washington hot cakes, which is fast. Yeah, they're going like TrueCar cherries. And you know what? If you want to save a few bucks, I think you can even go to the box office there and buy them without those Internet fees. Yes. Or if you don't care and you just want to buy them on the Internet, you can go to Sysklive.com and follow the links there, and it will take you right to the beautiful ticket site. And also, FYI, if you go to buy tickets in person, you want to go to the box office of the Paramount Theater downtown. Not the more the paramount. We'll see you guys in January. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and there's guest producer Josh over there, which makes The Stuff You Should Know and all inclusive and guest ghost host, Chuck. Are you a ghost now? Did you die? No, I just thought if there was two Josh's in here, I feel a little left out. Oh, I see. And ganged up on yes. I had no clever way to say it. Ghost toast. You're right about that. My mouth is working today. My brain. That's all right. It's been a long week already. It's only Tuesday. Really? Right. Is it just me? No, it's been a long week. Today is like I know. I don't want to complain. Never mind. Everything's great. Hey, let me ask you something. Does OTC have a new loud or not? Yes, it's Etsy. Okay. It rhymes with tootsie. I saw someone put it, I think our good friends at Smithsonian magazine yeah, etsy. There's a bit of an R in there. Yeah, I like Etsy. All right. Like titsy. Roll title. Dead Mummy. This is a good one. This is exciting. I've been wanting to do one on this one, too. I had two, but in what, spurned or spurred? Spurn is where you say get away. Spurred is like go ahead. Okay, nice. Yeah, that makes sense because you're using your spurs. Spurred. Sure. I'm sure that's where that comes from. Surely. Okay. Chuck just blew my mind. What spurred this was, let's see, made some news recently because they managed to trace his last day and a half. Yeah. Really? Like, in the past few days, even. Yeah. And about 5300 years ago, he had the same thoughts that we had when we started this podcast. He's like, It's only Tuesday, and this has been a long week already. A long, deadly, bloody week. Yeah. I've been interested in this since I saw the facial reconstruction photos. I was like he was Jack palace. Chris Christopherson oh, okay, dude, a little bit of both. No, it's like they said, mr. Christopherson, please come in so we can well, now that I think about it, christopherson and Jack Palance have some similarities. If you put a beard on Jack Pallets. Really? Yeah, sure. Squinty eyes. Yeah, I guess. Groundish face. Yes. I can see both christopherson, man, what a legend. Remember? Yeah. Look, there's Chris Christopherson. Kidding. That's it. See? Yeah. I mean, it's me and Bobby McGee right there. Exactly. Did you see the Ken Burns documentary? No, I didn't. Not yet. You haven't yet still? No, I went to buy it the other day and I just have. Not yet, so good. You get to buy that stuff, right? Yeah. All right. I just didn't know if there was a workaround, and you're like, oh, no, dude, here's what you do. I mean, I'll buy it. It's like $60. Oh, wow. PBS gives away for free. What do you got, some PBS connection? No, it was on PBS for a while. Oh, do you have cable or something? See, I don't have cable. I don't even think you have to have cable. Oh, you mean use a stream? Yes. You're up the creek. Yeah. I thought you meant no, you don't have to have cable to get PBS. You just like you can help people in the world. Exactly. Just beams into your eyelids. No, what I was thinking, you have to stand there and hold, like, a coat hanger a certain way. Your TV, in the other hand oh, sure, you can get PBS. I'm going to buy it, though. It looks great. Why not? It is good. And I would say I would say it's worth roughly $60. It's pretty good. But anyway, Chris Christopher some figures dig into one of the episodes. It's not worth more than 45. Go ahead and pay the right. Because it goes to Ken Burns hairdresser. That's right. And that's quite a collection of brushes that that person has to maintain. But Chris Christopherson is interviewed, like, today. How interesting. He looks exactly like, let's see now. Well, I tried to get him on Movie Crush because he played the City Winery, which is, like, attached to our building, basically. So I will try and get people from over there on the basis of, like, all you got to do is walk over the cost of parking lot. Right. His manager emailed me back and said, and this should harden you as well. Said, I'm actually a stuff you should know. Fan. Nice. The manager and said, but you know what? He doesn't really do interviews anymore, so maybe I just got the easy path. Right. But, man, I really wanted that one to come through. Yes. That would have been due in this office. It would have been pretty special. But I'm with Ken Burns. No. Who is Ken Burns? That's true. Alright, let's talk. Should we take a break? Let's go back, Chuck, a little bit. Let's get in the way back machine. It's been a little while. Okay, we're going to go back. We even know exactly what we're going back to. 130 p. M. On September 19, 1991 whoa. 91. I'm in college. It's a salad days. I'm wearing a Flavor Flav clock around my neck. I was a sophomore in high school. Yes. That's all I have to say about that. I never wore the Flavor flavor clock. And he should have let that be. Well, I should have. I was not cool enough. But I was listening to Apocalypse. 91. No, I'm saying you shouldn't have admitted that you didn't. Now I know. Okay. But no one believed that. I'm not that cool. You know, Aaron Cooper made a pretty awesome one of my favorite ones of all time was US as Public Enemy. And I think I'm flavour Flaving it. But you look like Chuck D. And Chucky it's a cool photoshop of us. I tried to get Chuck D on Movie Crush, too. Did he play? The City Winery. No, but he lives in Atlanta. Oh, I didn't know that. And at least part time. What did he say? He didn't say anything because the management company I emailed said we don't manage him anymore. So it was just a dead end. I got you. But chuck D if you're listening, Palm City Market, let's talk about your favorite movie. Right. And also shout out to Chris Christopherson's manager. That's right, of course. All right. Boy, we're going to have to go back and edit all this out. No, it's 130 p. M. September 19, 1991, and we are hiking with Erica and Helmut Simon. They're German, but we are hiking in the Otsal Alps. In Italy? Yes. Between Italy and Austria. Like right on the border. Yeah, very close to the border. And on this peak, the Simons decided that as they were descending, that they would take a shortcut. And the shortcut took them through this pastor crevasse and in this little shallow crevasse, they said, oh, there's a dead body. There's a corpse. And you were like, what? I was? Because we were there, too. Right, yeah. And I said it's right on time, boy. Right, exactly. Yeah. That's great. So the thing is, they could see it was a cadaver. Like they could see the corpses back of the head, arm hanging out. And they just thought, well, we heard that there was a hiker that was recently killed. And that's probably who that is. We'll take a couple of pictures and go down and tell somebody who owns like, the nearest lodge. Right. And on the way down, you and I are going like, that was not a hiker that was recently killed. No, even I knew that. Like, did you see that guy? He was super old. He was a mummy. The Simons are crazy and the Simons were not crazy, but I'm sure they were saying the same thing. They were just out of your shot, right? So some people went up and I think within a day or two, they went up to try to get this dead hiker, who they thought was a dead hiker out. And they did a terrible job with it. Yeah. They used ski poles to chip away at the ice. They used an ice hammer to chip away at the ice, damaged the body. But they think it's just like, some hiker or whatever. It'll be fine. Put them in a wooden cabinet kit. And this article makes it sound like he like the whole world or everybody who knew about this body just thought it was a modern hiker for a while until the body came down the mountain. That's not the case. One of the things that when they were getting this body out, they accidentally excavated was a copperheaded axe. And word got out that there was an axe with this body. And that is really weird. And it was copper. Copper with, like, a wooden shaft and everything. It was clearly a very old axe. And so pretty quickly they realized that they were onto something here for sure. And what they found out was this body. Hi, frozen body. One of my favorite Simpsons lines ever. That's a good one. 5000 years old. That's the same little bit as when he goes Moon Pie. Yeah. Time to be alive. Abe the best. Not Abe's buddy. What's his name? It'll come to me later. I'll say it. People are screaming. I can picture them. The long beard phil codes right now. Oh, what is it? I want to say, like Chauncey or Chalmers. It's not that. It's something very similar to that. I'm not going to look at it. All right. I'm going to keep going. Okay. So they get this body out and removed it on September 2391, sealed it up like you said, flew it out of town in a wooden coffin to Innsbruck, the Institute of Forensic Medicine. And there was an archaeologist named Conrad Spindler there who said this body is at least 4000 years old. At the very least. What's Abe's friend's name? Jasper Beard. Jasper, right, of course. So they nicknamed the Otzi because of the region of the Oatsol Alps. Very cute little name. It is. Other people call them frozen Fritz. Oh, really? Yeah. I like Etsy. Way more. Yeah, etsy. Is nice. Yeah. So in pretty short order, they realized that what they had just excavated in the roughest possible manner and accidentally come upon was the corpse of a 5300 year old body. Yeah. The guy said it was 4000 years old. He said that was the initial. Like he's at least this old. Right? Yeah. But it turns out that after further study, they figured out he was actually 5300 years old right. And that he lived in the Copper Age, which was a relatively brief period in human history, but a really important one between the Neolithic Age at the end of the Neolithic Age, when the first farmers started to appear in the Bronze Age, when the first what we consider society and civilization and history began. Right. And we know very little about this. And what these hikers had discovered was a snapshot of life during that time, because but see appeared to have just died where he died. Where he fell. Yeah, it was almost there. And leaving his belongings with him. And he wasn't like a great revered figure. He wasn't buried, he wasn't prepared. He was kept intact for 5300 years on this glacier. Yeah, that was the biggest deal, because they have mummies and they have older mummies, but like you said, their organs are removed. They're filled with embalming chemicals and things they used at the time for preservation, for the afterlife and all this. So this was a really big deal to find this body just really scarily. Well preserved. Yeah. And when we say well preserved, it doesn't look like Chris Christopherson, but not anymore. The organs were there and didn't the red blood cells have still inside. Still intact. Yeah, it's the oldest intact blood sample ever taken was. And the fact that he wasn't buried provides a snapshot. It wasn't ritualized. It was this guy was just living his life and he died and happen to be preserved perfectly. His belongings were preserved along with them, and things that are organic can typically decay long before 5300 years comes and goes. So his clothing, made of different types of leather was preserved. His coat or cape made of woven grasses was preserved. It was all really cool when you look at the shoes and the bearskinned hat and very cool. The bearskin hat was another one. His toolkit was preserved. All of this stuff that we had just kind of little hints and traces and glimpses of from different, like, burial caches or just happened to find some artifact or whatever. This was like a straight up Polaroid picture of life in the Copper. Yeah. It was almost like someone stumbled upon a Museum of Natural History display. But it was real. Right. You know? Well put, Chuck. You know who would have loved that analogy? Chris Christopher. So I can say either Jasper ortsy and I don't mean would have in the fact that he's dead. I mean would have had he heard it. I agree. He's never going to hear this. You never know. I'm like he's in reverse to call again his manager right now. Well, you might as well. Willie Nelson will never listen to these either. Neither will Daly parton. We want all the country legends listening. Ronnie Millsapp will never hear that. He's still with us. Sure. Okay. Not with us, though, because he doesn't listen to stuff. You should know it never will. So apparently where he actually fell was pretty lucky because it was in a very shallow crevasse and the fact that it was kind of walled up on both sides of them kept him. If he was just out in the open, the freeze thaw cycle over the years would have washed everything away and ripped him apart. And it didn't happen because he kind of fell in this crevasse. All five ft \u00a3234 of them. Yeah. Which is 158. That's right. He had brown eyes, apparently, at five two was even a little short for the time. But he was ripped. Yeah. He was pretty sturdy in his mid 40s, like we said, and really strong legs. And kind of the fun thing about this is the archaeological forensics of trying to piece together, like, what was he doing, how did he die? We'll get to all that, but just the fact that, like, he had big legs. They were like this guy, he's probably goat herder. He's walking up and down these mountains all the time. Right. Look at those calves. Yeah. He looked like the guy from that one Liberty Mutual commercial. I don't know what you mean. It doesn't matter. Like ten people just laughed. What else did he had? He had a dagger. He had that axe you're talking about. The dagger had a wicker sheath. He had a backpack. He had a leather pouch. Yeah. The backpack, by the way, will never know how it worked because it got destroyed by the people who went and dug him out of the ice. He had some rudimentary snowshoes hit a belt. He had a belt that matched his cape. Right, yeah. Oh, man. We'll talk about that. But apparently they think that was on purpose. Yes. That he was a bit of a fashionista. Yeah. He had a couple of vessels that were lined with maple leaves that he used to carry embers from place to place so you wouldn't have to start a fire again and all this stuff you're like, cool. A flint dagger, cool copperx, some embers. I think it's all cool. Yes, I do too, but I can see people out there being like talk about math or something. Right. The thing is, all the stuff that seems kind of boring and superficial has been so thoroughly studied that it's actually been used to paint a larger picture. Like, we understand the Copper Age in Europe way better than we did before he was discovered just from finding the few things that he died with and himself. He also, interestingly, had 61 tattoos all over his body. Chuck, I've been waiting for this day. What? You said tattoos correctly. Oh, you mean the tattoos. Oh, man. So, yeah, and they covered them from head to toe in different parts. And they didn't use needles back then, obviously, but they would rub or cut the skin open and then rub charcoal inside. And they mapped them out in 2015 and organized them into 19 groups. And they are basically like maybe three identical lines, short lines, like an inch long, or like a cross, not a spiritual, religious cross, but, you know, like a plus sign. Yeah. Or like a Chinese character that has some inspirational association. Right. Perseverance or something. Yeah. The lower back tattoo a thorny branch, but yeah, they map these all out and for a while they thought, and some people still think because they were largely found around the joints and along his back and he had back problems and he basically was marked up where he hurt, it looks like. Right. And they thought it might have been either puncture points to mark or it might have been the acupuncture treatment itself. Right. But they do think that it had something to do with acupuncture, which in and of itself was a big revelation because they thought up to that point that acupuncture had been invented 2000 years after Otzi and way further east in Asia. Right. But now they think that may not have been the case because they found a new cluster of tattoos on his chest that they didn't formally recognize and they were like, there are no acupuncture points there, and he didn't have any injuries there. So now they didn't throw it out with the bathwater. But there are people now that are saying, like, we don't know if that's true or not. No. Okay. So I'm really glad you said that. Everything that we know about Etsy, aside from the fact that he is dead, that we have a pretty good idea of when he lived, probably what his height, weight was, stuff like that. Everything else is interpretation. Sure. So you have to educate interpretation, super educated and usually displaying the current understanding of history or interpretation of history or events, but it is still interpretation that's part of archaeology and anthropology and history, especially when you're talking about prehistory. He lived during a time before anybody wrote anything down or recorded anything, which makes it prehistoric. But just bear that in mind that everything we're talking about and everything you go read about Otzie is very much described in absolute terms, but it is our picture and image of him, how he lived, how he died, has really shaped and shifted over the years since he was discovered. And it still is. It's still malleable. Nothing is definitive, nothing set in ice. All right, let's take a break. It was a bad joke. We'll talk about Urtsey's health, right? For this. Was he healthy? No, he was a person of age in his mid forty s of a time, where at that age he's going to be pretty beat up. Yeah. He wasn't unhealthy in the modern sense, where he's like, deliberately wrecking his health because he's eating too much junk food or something like me. But he was unhealthy in the way that a person would be unhealthy from living close to the land at a time before medicine had really developed. Yeah, exactly. No doctors, no dentists. So, as you would imagine, he had gum disease, heart disease, Lyme disease, gallbladder stones, hardened arteries. Gallstones. Yeah. The disorder is so nice, we named it twice. Right. He had a whip worm parasite in his gut. He had H pylori in his gut. And all of this is to say, like you said, he was probably a pretty normal dude of mid forty s of the time. Right. They couldn't find his stomach for a long time. It's amazing how much of the stuff it was found over the years. Like this tattoo. This new tattoo was just found a few years ago after many, many years of study. His birthmark that looks like Abraham Lincoln eluded people for decades, but they couldn't even find his stomach. And they found me, like, oh, here it is. 20 years later. They found it wedged up between his ribs and his lungs. Yeah. And they found it because they noticed he had gallstones. So they basically traced the path from the gallbladder to the stomach and said, there it is. We found it. And they were really happy they found it because when they started to dissect it or take samples from it, they found that it was full. He died, like, within an hour or so of eating his last meal and hadn't digested it. He had food in his colon. He had food in his intestines. He had a turtle head peeking out. Right. That's awesome. His last meal was dried IBEX and deer meat with ink horn wheat. Yes. And slow plums. I don't know why that wasn't mentioned. You can get that same meal in Brooklyn served you by a guy with a waxed mustache and, like some sort of arm band. An arm garter. Yeah, an arm guarder. That's it, isn't it? Yeah, that's it. So they think some sort of, like, fatty cured meat, kind of like a cured bacon today. And the ICORN wheat was from bread. And he also ate slow plums. Got you. Okay. Slow plums. Yeah. That they make slow gin from. Oh, really? Which I've never had. Have you? That's lo e, right? Yeah. Right. It's like, supposedly a very tart, kind of bitterish plum, but it's, like, loaded with vitamins. I've never had it. I remember it seemed like an old person drink was a slow gen fizz. Like an old person who's like, 150 years old? Yes. When I lived in Arizona, all the snowbirds are down there. They drink, like, slow gen fizz. Really? I've never been present when somebody ordered a slow gen fizz. Yeah. I would like to try one. Sure, I'll try one. Okay. Josh, go get us a couple of slow gen visits, stat. Make it AII. Guarantee you there's a bar in this dumb building that has slow gen business on it. Sure. With arm guarders. Can I keep the arm guard? It comes with the drink. So let's talk a little bit more about the Copper age. I guess he had well, we'll save his injuries for a minute here. Okay. We'll talk a bit about his lifestyle in the Copper age. Like you said, he was as demonstrated by his meals, he lived a pretty farmy, pleasant life down there, it seems like, but not one without conflict. Sure. Based on his meals. Well, based on his meals, he lived a farming type lifestyle, but based on injuries, we're going to talk about it seems like that he had some enemies. So from what I saw, and we used a lot of different articles, but National Geographic is very well represented in here. Live science historycom. The BBC. I came across something from the Pennsylvania, the Penn Museum or UPenn Museum, I think they have a magazine called Expedition that was pretty awesome. I had a pretty great thing and I saw a couple of things from historians that wrote up basically descriptions of etsy and thought co, which is just a surprising great resource. Have you ever noticed? Yes. So in one of these I saw that it was kind of put like he lived as a farmer and enjoyed the fruits of village life too. So things like cheese and processed grains and cereals. So bread and stuff like that. Right. And the idea is that he didn't know how to bake bread or make cheese. He was part of a village or a society where somebody knew how to bake bread and somebody knew how to make cheese. So the professions were starting to emerge, but that he also was pastoral and that he herded sheep and that's probably what he did most of the time. And then he also lived very close to the earth, the land as well. Like his last meal was wild game IBEX and deer and slow plums that he probably plucked himself. So he was kind of like this transitional human from the hunter gatherer past into the agrarian agriculture based future that spread out just ahead of them. Yeah, just ahead of them were like real deal Italians out there. Bacon baguettes. Yeah. Well, that's French. Yeah. What do I mean? Italian bread. Yeah. In Italy they just call it bread. That's right. I mentioned earlier that it's closed matched. And they do think, and of course, again, this is all speculation, but these garments were pretty refined even when you look at them now, like he had these fur skin leggings that were held up by suspenders by Alexander McQueen. Oh, man, I wouldn't saw that. I know. That was amazing. So good. And a great documentary on him too. It's good and sad. They talk about the color of the animal skin zone and the contrasting colors they think were actually matched, like elaborately. And he had, like he said, a sense of style. Is that possible. Yeah. But it seems like a lot to extrapolate that his coat and his belt matched. And so they were like, hey, he had a real personal identity. Whereas it could have been just like that's. The materials that he had on hand that fit. That's possible. But I think what they would assert is that it has enough panache that the chances of it just being random are very unlikely or less likely than it being asserting his sense of fashion. Well, anyone's Italian. That's right. So Italians in their fashion go hand in hand. I love it. Everyone who's been to Milano knows that Fiorenze. I remember when I was touring Europe as a youth, my friend and I laughing at the Italian guys in the hostels where the 19 year old dudes were so put together and would spend so much time in the mirror wearing the cologne and getting their hair just perfect. And we were just disgusting humans. Sure. And they got the girls. So yes. Turns out that they were onto something. A little bit of extra effort really does it. And the big hair. Yeah. They were great guys. So we met some cool Italian dudes. One of the other things, too, though, that the fact that he clearly was involved in a village. They think that he was associated with a particular village to the south in a valley near the mountain. There's things like bread and cheese that they think they found in his body, but also the fact that he obviously didn't know how to make his own tools. Somebody else had he probably did not know how to weave the cape he was wearing. Somebody else had done that. Yeah. They all had their specialties. Yeah. The tattoos. He couldn't have put some of them on his own body. He probably went to see a medical practitioner to do that. So yeah, this is at a point when specialists and specialized professions are starting to emerge. Yeah. It's a really cool time. Yeah. And these are the things that we've learned that we've gleaned from the stuff that we found with them. I think it's just astoundingly fascinating. Yeah, it's really cool. This is a really interesting period, I think, of human development. It's also called, by the way, the copper Age or the chalkolithic. I like Copper Age. I do, too. Chalkolithic just kind of coughs out of the mouth, isn't it? Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about what might have happened to Urzzi and how he found himself dead on that mountain. Okay. Because there are quite a few theories over the years, and like you said, even this week, they have some more leads. But he was wounded. He had a really bad wound on his right hand. They found out he was right handed, too. So this is a big deal between his thumb and his forefinger there. That area went all the way down to the bone, but it looked like. It had healed up a little bit. So it probably happened, they said, within a few days of when he died. But it was healing. But it was a big injury, like we said, because he was right handed. But it's not the kind of thing that killed them. Like, he didn't bleed out from that or anything like that. No. So it makes you think, well, what did kill him, then? Right. Well, they think that might have been from a fight, perhaps, that wound that has been almost universally agreed upon from the outset, that he probably didn't inflict that wound himself, that it seems to have been a defensive wound. Right. There was a guy named Alexander Horn who is an inspector with the Munich police. We should give just a little background for a second. When Itzi was found, he was taken into Germany, down the mountain. In Austria? Inbrook Austria. And the Germans were heavily involved, as well as the Austrians and the Italians were less involved. And that's where he kind of stayed for the first few years, I think about a decade or less after he was discovered. And then eventually he was transferred to Italy. The Italian side. Yeah, because they were like, he's the founder on our side, just to barely I think also, I don't know if this contributed to or if it came later, but he does seem to have been linked to the Italian side, where, like you said, he was an Italian. Right. So he was transferred to Italy, and when they took custody of them, man, they pulled out all the stops. They put them up in Belzano, Italy, near about, I think, like 30 miles or something from where he was found. They built a museum specifically for him, an institute built around studying him, and they proceeded to study him more than any other mummy has ever been studied, probably any other body than has ever been studying in the history of the world. Yeah, for sure. And have just turned out paper after paper after paper based on their findings from them. But at first, some of the ideas that we have about Utzi and what happened to them comes from the earliest interpretations posed by the Germans and the Austrians when they had custody of Itzi. Right. Which weren't necessarily right, as it turns out. No, but some may have been. But my ultimate point was, everybody says from the outset that he wound the wound in his hand was a defensive wound that came from close combat with somebody else. That's right. For a while, they thought there was an Austrian archaeologist named Conrad Spindler that I mentioned earlier that they sort of recreated the scene, and their contention early on was, like, man, that axe is leaning up against the rock. It's propped up there. We think everything is literally frozen in time from how it was. And I think that's one of the things that they've later refuted right and they said that it looks like things might have moved around some. Yeah. They think that the what would you call it? The site, I guess, from the freeze thaw cycle just kind of distributed redistributed the stuff. Yeah. Which it's still all valid, but it was not necessarily exactly as it was at his moment of death. Indeed. They did find his hat, though, off of his head, as if it just kind of fell off of his head, which might have been true. Right. So some of those early stuff, they also found what they thought were fractured ribs that had not healed. Right. So the earliest picture was this. They treated it like this is a dead body mystery. Where did this dead body come from? How did he die? Yeah. Well, quickly, though, they also found pollen in his gut that they thought came from an autumn plant. So they were like, he died in the fall. Right. Okay. So that's the full setup of the bad information. So the first idea and I think it was Spindler who came up with the disaster theory, wasn't it? I think so. Conrad Spindler said okay, here's what happened. He came down from the mountain, probably hurting some sheep or goats in the fall, went down to his village and got into an altercation with somebody, cut his hand. You're looking at my wife. Right. That kind of thing. That's nice. And he fled. And part of the altercation also resulted in some cracked ribs. Right. And either fled or left or escaped up the mountain again, where he became exhausted from his cracked ribs and his cut hand, and lay down and fell into this little shallow crevasse and died of exposure to hypothermia. That was a disaster theory, and they had that for a few years, and somebody came along and said, I don't think that's right. That's right. Because they found out some of the things like the site had melted some, and then things were in different positions. They originally thought probably they examined the ribs again and said they were actually not fractured before he died. Yes. They were just a little bent. Yeah. After his death. Probably from the push of ice. The pressure from ice freezing on him again. Exactly. That will crack your ribs in a second. Sure. Or bend your ribs. The big one, though, was what they found in the X ray in 2001. Right. You know what they found? Should we take a break? Oh, yeah. All right. We'll discover what they found right after this. Where did they find Chuck? They found a freaking arrowhead lodged in his back shoulder. That was a verbatim quote from the press conference. This is a big deal. They missed it for ten years. They missed this thing and they found it. Yeah. It was just a regular X ray. And they said, Wait a minute. That looks denser than bone. What is that? It's a triangle. It's a triangle, and it was a 13 millimeter gash along a major artery in his chest. And they're like, he bled to death up there in this area. They said, there's no way he would have survived this. It was unhealed. This is finally what killed him. So this disaster theory that he got in an altercation but ultimately died of exposure or hypothermia was replaced by the murder theory. Right. Which is very similar. But there are some important nuances and differences. One so the cracked rib thing, just throw that away. Sure. That was a red herring, but the altercation is still the same. He comes down the mountain, he gets in a fight of some sort, goes back up the mountain with his cut hand, and while he's hanging out, maybe tending to his wound, maybe trying to figure out what to do next. That's my arrow impression. Message for you, sir. Yeah. Right in the back. In the back. From a distance, they think, due to the penetration from the arrowhead, from about 30 meters. Yeah. It's a good shot. That is a good shot, because it was a kill shot from 30 meters, 150ft. That's a way I can't quite put it into an easy analogy, but that's a long way. Yeah. And the fact that it was in the back, you never saw it coming, and it would have killed him pretty quickly. It was a punk move is what it was. It was here's the thing. Because his possessions were left intact and because he had that defensive wound, they think that this was the result of his death. His murder was the result of a personal conflict. There was no theft involved or anything like that. Right. Because his copper acts alone would have been pretty valuable at the time that somebody would have taken it had they killed him for something like robbery. Yeah. So this was a vendetta. Yes. Or at least a personal fight that happened that day. Yeah. Or maybe a long standing feud. There's no way to tell. Here we reach the point where the historians and the archaeologists are like, we really can't say. But here are some ideas. Yeah. For me, it's either the person who he fought came back for revenge, I think, and this is a total guess, but I was trained in history, so I'm allowed to do this. Sure, you were trained in history? Yeah, I was. I studied history in college. That's what they call it. They're like, this is how you do it. You train history camp. Right. He was successful in that hand to hand combat and killed the other person, whether it was offensive or defensive. I like to think it was defensive. He didn't have a choice. But the person's family came back and killed him up on the mountain. Got you. That's the current idea. Well, not that last part, that it was his family, but what I said leading up to that, everything about that everything else about that. I'm really sorry, Chris. Christopherson. That's the current idea of what happened. So you're not going with my jealous lover theory? No, I'm not. All right. I think it was a woman with that arrow. You think a woman shot him? Yeah. Jealous lover. I think he was stepping out and he was, like, holding up his hands like, baby, baby, it wasn't me. And she slices them with her implement of choice and then dies them with the arrow. And then he's like, this is getting too serious. You're crazy. And so he heads up the mountains, and she's like, I'll show you crazy. She turns into Glenn Close. She goes and forges an arrow. And then in that time, it took her to forge that arrow from hardened molten, you know, flint. Flint church. He's up that hill a little bit, and she's like, no problem. Watch this. Right in the back. I like that one, too. All right. I'm going with family. Family. Because, I mean, you know the rule. Can't trust family. Can't trust family. So speaking of that church, he didn't have blanks. Yeah. So this is evidence that he didn't know how to create his own tools. Yeah, he replicate these tools, which apparently were sort of on their last leg. Yes. That was another thing, too. So he did not have what he needed. Like, imagine if you had, like, a tool. An axe? No, a knife. And it's made of flint, and you use it over and over and over again, it's going to get worn down, and eventually it's going to get so worn down that you just can't use it anymore. This is essentially the state of his arrowheads and his knife and some of his other stone tools in particular, that he was not in a position to defend himself with his own tools because he'd use them up. And I wonder if he's not making these in the village, if they're like, have you guys noticed he's on the way out? Like, we're not going to be making any more tools for etsy. We don't have many. He'll just make do with what he's got. But he owes me money, so should we talk about moss? This was astounding to me that this happened in the last few days because did you pick this out before this happened, or was it Sarah did? This is what I saw that made me say it's time. Okay, I got you. So researchers found these mouth spores that were inside of him that he had ingested and just on him and around him. 70% of the 75 species of these masa and liverworts were not local. And they basically said there's no way this would have been on the side of the mountain if not for him. Right. Like a bird couldn't have transported it this far or something like that. Brought these up here. And so in doing that, in tracing, like, these mosses and spores, and everything. That's the clue. They've been able to retrace his steps that last basically 33 hours of his life, the last day and a half. And it was not a great day and a half for him. He had his hand wound by now. By the time we're coming in here, he's already got his hand wound. It's got to be smarting. And it's a real problem for him, too, because even if he could make tools, he would have been really troubled to do anything because he was right handed. And that's where his wound almost down to the bone, was in his right hand. So that's a big problem for him right there. Yeah. So what they found in his lower colon, which would have been the last I'm sorry, the oldest stuff that he had eaten that has not yet been the turtle head. Not turtle headed yet, or I guess currently turtle headed. Yeah, we're pine and spruce pollen and it's kind of neat. That's what I love about this historical forensics, like, oh, well, we know what was in his body and we know where that stuff is. Yeah. It's not at certain altitudes. It was a high altitude for us, around 8200ft. And they know because of where it was in his body. This is 33 hours before he died. Right. But the middle tract of his colon, that's where all the secrets are. In the colon. Yeah. I had pollen from Hop hornbeam and that's stuff from lower altitudes. It's from lower altitude, but also it grows only in the spring and summer. It decays very quickly. So it's not something that you would preserve and keep for the fall or the winter. So throw out the autumn theory. Yeah. So they say he definitely died in the summer. Right. In spring, I guess that means that he probably descended maybe all the way to the bottom of the valley within 12 hours, maybe nine to 12 hours of his death, and then all the way back up again right where he was found dead. And they figured all this out, they retraced all this just from those spores and mosses. Amazing. They think maybe he's down in the valley to begin with or in the village, gets that hand wound, flees up to the tree line, and then they think because he's like the little lady, always needs a few days to cool off. Right. Oh, man, you're going to get some email for that one, I reckon. My right, by the way. And then he goes back down, they think, to get some mosses because they have antibacterial properties. Yeah. You can also wrap meat in it, apparently to, I guess, keep it or whatever. But also he may have wrapped his hand in it or something as well. Or maybe he went to a doctor, maybe. Then he goes back up to above the tree line where he dies at about 10,500ft along the way. He had that last meal of IBACs and deer and bread and slow plums. Pretty good meal. Not bad. I wonder if he was panicked, if he knew I'm in a bad way because of this cut on my hand and my tools and arrowheads are not in good shape. I don't know, because it's interesting you only know that stuff from seeing it. At that point in history, it would have been like, boy, I've seen that kind of wound before on Tuktuk, and he did not last long. But if you thought somebody was coming after you and you knew that your arrowhead was useless and your knife was, like, dull and your stabbing hand was cut to the bone right. You probably wouldn't have had to have seen that before to be like probably. So well, he was in full retreat from what it looks like. Right. Yeah. And that's why he was going up that mountain. That's what most people guess. Yeah. So he was probably scared. Yeah. Which is sad. But that's how he spent his last day and a half kind of on the run, up and down the mountain, which is pretty impressive that he was able to make. He went up and down the mountain. Don't forget, he was wearing moccasins and stuff with grass. And he was old for the time. Sure. And he had gingivitis. Kind of a neat thing is they have found they found some weird markers on his male sex chromosomes, and they've actually traced some genetic relatives, at least 19 people living today. Yeah. In Austria. Not married, but related to Etsy. Yeah. Pretty neat. Yes, I think so, too. So check. There's another theory that says, hey, your whole murder theory, it's BS. Maybe the murder part is correct, but he was murdered ritually. This isn't a vendetta or anything like that. Otsi was buried. Right. They think that this was a ritual burial on top of a mountain, but it's not the kind of maybe they just want a group that removed the organs and did that stuff. Right. Yeah. So the premise of the burial theory, called the social theory, is that he's not a snapshot of everyday life. Right. He would have been so heavily laden with all of this stuff, because we didn't even say he had a bow, an arrow. He had a lot of stuff. A knife, a hatchet. He was wearing moccasins with grass. And they're kind of like, seriously? That's the best they could do at this time for hiking a mountain? That's the shoes you wore. Like, those aren't mountain hiking shoes at any point in history. And the fact that the shaft or the arrow was removed, I think they point to as an example of the idea that he was buried that he was killed ritually and buried in this. Oh, so they think the killing was a ritual killing, too. Like a sacrificial killing? Yeah. I didn't get that part. And the other thing is, they're saying like this stuff, these fancy Alexander McQueen leggings that he wore that were basically the predecessor of later hosen. That is some pretty nice stuff for a simple, like, sheep herder, is it? To be wearing that's what this is what the social theory people are saying? Yeah, they're like, we think this guy was actually kind of important, and that he was buried here as a sign, a symbol. And what they found, or what they point to is that there's Stella like monoliths that were carved in the lake Copper Age, 1000 or 2000 years after Utzi, because he was born at the beginning of the Copper Age, that are depictions of somebody dressed a lot like uzi. And they think that these are like heroes and legends, ancestors. And they're saying, this guy's wearing what these people were carving images of a thousand years later. Maybe he was kind of important and maybe this is a big he also had some ornamentation too, didn't he? Yes. Like a marble bead. Yes. Which could mean something. Or could not. But the fact that he had so much stuff with him does kind of support the idea that maybe it was a burial. I could send him into the afterlife with all the things he would need. Right, exactly. And then the other one is no one's ever explained how he was so well preserved. That apparently being frozen by ice doesn't cut it. Oh, really? Yeah, that other people have been found who died far later and were in way worse states of decay than Ozzy was. But they found no chemical preservation evidence or anything. No. Admittedly, both sides, if either one of them are being honest, they will say, we don't know how he was this well preserved. Quite a mystery. Still, to this day, as much as we know about him, he is still a mystery. He's our loving mystery man. That's right. If you want to know more about etsy, go type Otzi in your favorite search bar and it will bring up some fascinating stuff. And since I said that's, time for Listener ma'am. I'm going to call this the accidental Iron man. Hey, guys, big fan for a long time. I accidentally did my first Iron Man in July 2018. And you might think, how in the world would that happen? I was thinking exactly that. Here's how that happens. I've been doing triathlon since 2015. I always planned on doing an Ironman at one point or at some point. My plan was to do a half Ironman in 2018, do the full thing in 2019. I wanted to do the Ironman Lake Placid since it's reasonably close and has a lake swim as opposed to a river or an ocean swim. Okay. That's a hard race to get into there because it sells out so fast. I got an email telling me registration was open, and in my excitement, I misread it and thought it was for the half. So I signed up and realized after the fact that it was the entire 140.6 race and not the 70.3. Well, triathlons don't do refunds. So I paid my $800 plus entry fee and couldn't get it back. I could have deferred for a year, but I decided just to go for it. And I finished the race in 15 hours, two minutes and 43 seconds. Nice to work. And that is from John Pataniac. And I emailed John back, you want to give me a couple of little tidbits here for listener mail? And he said sure. And he wrote back and he said, one thing I can say is it really takes over your personal life. At my peak, I was training 20 hours a week and he said that is literally just pool, bike or running. He said doesn't count. Travel to and from the gym, cooking meals, prepping equipment. He said it's literally like a part time job. And he said the race was a lot of fun. He said Lake Placid course goes through the old Olympic structures from the 1980 Olympics. Oh, cool. And you finish at the finish line in the speed skating oval. Oh, that's neat. Yes, it's pretty cool. It's like urban exploration. Iron man. And he said one of the cool things they do if you're a first timer is you wear an orange wristband so all the volunteers and crowd will give you extra support. And it says, I will become one on it. And he said it really works. And he said, and finally at the end. The race is so meaningful to so many people. Everyone has their own story, but almost nothing is better after a year of training than hearing you are Iron Man, when he crossed the finish line. That's awesome. They have Ozzy singing it. I would. I would too. Who else? I don't know. I guess Dio could. Again. That is John Patoniac. Dio is dead. Oh, is he? Yeah, ronnie James dio's passed on. Since when? Within the last couple of years. Okay. Yeah. One of the coolest tattoos I've ever seen. Somebody got like on their arm, their forearm. I have seen that. So that when they make, like, the devil horns or whatever. It's Ronnie Dio making the devil horns and the person's fingers like his arm becomes your arm. Yeah, it's really neat. It is. I saw that and I thought, man, that's the coolest tattoo I've ever seen. I think it might be. It's pretty. Hats off to Chris Christopherson's manager, who actually is the person with that. That's right. If you want to get in touch with us who is that? John Patoniac. Thanks, John. If you want to get in touch with us, like John, congratulations too. You can go on the Stuff You Should Know 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. 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. New episodes of Morbid, one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
Can Lifestraw save the world? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-lifestraw-save-the-world | Over a billion people do not have access to clean water, and many die from water-born diseases. With 6,000 people dying each day, this situation is increasingly urgent. Could Lifestraw filters resolve this crisis? Tune in and find out. | Over a billion people do not have access to clean water, and many die from water-born diseases. With 6,000 people dying each day, this situation is increasingly urgent. Could Lifestraw filters resolve this crisis? Tune in and find out. | Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:40:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=21, tm_min=40, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=322, tm_isdst=0) | 32048355 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetop workscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuckle. If Brian isn't in his proper place across from me, that makes us stuck. You should know. Let's get physical. Let me hear your body talk. You ready? I couldn't quite do it. You should probably explain that. I put my hand into my underarm and kind of made, like, a chicken slapping motion to try to make sounds to make my body talk. Okay. I didn't know it. I had no idea why you were doing really? I get it now. My hand smells funny now. Olivia Newton John would not approve. I was once kicked out of an Olivia Newton John concert for being too rowdy. Are you serious? Yeah. I need a little bit more on that. I'll tell you why struck and wait. I'll tell you another time. No. Okay. Wow. Chuck. Josh, you've heard of this body called the United Nations. Some say it's fraudulent. Some say it's official. Yeah, of course. But you are familiar with the been to that building, have you? Really? Sure. It was like a Mike Brady design, that building? Yeah, sort of that era. It feels like awesome. Call the flags. Wow. What were you down there for? Well, I didn't go in. I just have been to New York and said, oh, look, there's a UN. Building. You just shouted at it. You just thought of UN. Exactly. The UN. In my opinion, is a legitimate body, and I like it because it does things like trying to reduce the number of people who don't have ready access to clean water by half by 2015. It's a huge undertaking, great initiative. But that's something that's going on right now, thanks to the UN. That's what they can do. That's one of the things they can do, is kind of like, throw their spare tire about and be like, hey, China, let's do something. I say that's a substantial undertaking project, because there's about 1.1 billion people as of 2006, I believe, who lacked ready access to clean drinking water. Right. And it's hard to imagine here in the developed west where we just waste water at a startling degree. I know. It's so cheap and abundant and plentiful, especially in areas like the South West or the Southeast, which here in Georgia, we have our own reservoir. The Chohuti River starts in North Georgia, so we have that. And then South Georgia has this huge aquifer, so we're set for clean drinking water. It's hard to imagine having to walk 20, go get water, and bring it back, and that'd be part of your daily life. But it is. And it's stuff like that that keeps the developing world undeveloped, because how can you focus on anything innovative if you have to walk 12 miles to get water every day? Yeah. If you're struggling, just to stay alive. What else are you going to get done that day? Besides meeting the goal of staying alive for yet another day? Staying alive also, again, it's hard to envision. We talked about food and water. How long can I go without food and water? Right? And all that was like we were trying to make it human, but it was tough to conceive. Imagine if the water that you did go get when you brought it back to your house, you drank it and then a couple of months later it killed you. Like you died from diarrhea. Literally. Yes. You want a couple of stats? Yes, please. About 50% of the world's destitute people, Josh, suffer from disease because of the water that they cook with and drink. And this is really startling. 6000 people per day die from waterborne. Illness could have been prevented. 1000 people a day. I know. It's such a huge figure that it becomes like this mass that doesn't have any real definition. It's hard to put faces to that. Yeah, think about that tonight when you get a glass of water from your tap. Just fucking bum everybody out. Think about it. Today 6000 people died because they can't do something as simple as this. Exactly. The way that people do die, it's not necessarily from thirst. It's usually not from thirst because there is water out there. The key word here is sanitary, clean drinking water. Yes, exactly. There's water out there, but they're full of all sorts of bacteria and pathogens. Apparently there's about 4 billion cases of diarrhea every year. I account for about 200. That is gross. This article cites about 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhea. But you become dehydrated. You do it so often that you become dehydrated so quick that you die, then it's dehydration brought on by diarrhea. And if you're already malnourished, that's where the problem is. I could get dehydrated and drink more water. But if you're already malnourished, if you say like have HIV in your child, or even an adult with HIV, I think children get diarrhea at a rate of four times that if they have HIV. And adults are seven times more likely to get diary if they have HIV in developing nations. A lot of people have HIV. Yeah, about like 95% of HIV cases are found in developing nations. So couple that altogether and you have people dying because of something as simple as diarrhea. That's just a nuisance to people like us. And we said, yeah, we just go get the ammonium. But imagine a world where there is no modem. I don't take a mode, so I can imagine that world. Yes. Weird. Anyway, the article cites 1.8 million deaths from diarrhea. I would dispute that. I found that Giardia, which is a diarrhea parasite, causes 2.5 million deaths alone. And Cryptosporidium, which is also a parasite that brings on diarrhea, causes about 3.5 million deaths worldwide alone. So just between those two bugs is 6 million deaths a year from diarrhea, dying of diarrhea. And again, as we're saying, this is all from lack of access to clean drinking water, right? That's right. Josh and hopefully there is a solution on the horizon. And about five years ago, someone made great strides in solving this. A guy from what was his name? His name is Torbin Vaster. Guard francis. Yes. He's Swiss. Yes. But he's Dutch or Danish. Does he? I didn't know the Swiss had names that fancy. The Swiss are going to write in and say, of course you have names that fancy. Yeah. How dare you? Yeah. Josh he developed something called Life Straw, and it's a company based out of La Sang, where losing I said it like I was from Laos, though. Luzan is it Luxan in they basically produced stuff for clothing, but in 1992, they started to make relief products like tents and blankets. About five years after that, they phased out all their conventional textiles to concentrate on relief products. And in 2005 is when Mr. Franzen developed the lifestyle, because he was looking at a way to help guineaworm. Right. Do you remember when that speaker from the Carter Center came and talked to us? Yes. Remember that pipe straw that they had? Yeah. So that was the original life straw. It's just this no frills black tube that has a steel mesh filter in it as big as a Volkswagen. Yeah. And it has a string that allows you to wear it around your neck so you always have it with you. It's not cumbersome. And then what you do is you just lean into the water and you drink it, use it like a straw, and it filters the water. This specifically, the original, it's still called the personal pipe filter. It originally was designed with the help of the Carter Center to fight guineaworm. Yeah. We actually mentioned this in that Food and Water. Or is it the parasite? I think it was guinea worm was one of the three gross parasites. Yeah. And I think I had a little sidebar on it, too, in the Food and Water Architect. Let's hear it. Now is the time we talk about guinea worm. I don't know. I was talking about the lifestyle. I got you. We had previously mentioned this, but we felt like it deserved its own full podcast. Well, it's what gave the Life Strawberries, I guess, in 2005, I guess, is when they really came up this personal pipe filter. And like we said, it filters out do you remember how to say this? Check. Is it Draculaquilus? That's what it is. Dracunculus the guinea worm. Right. This little sob goes down in your intestine, lodges, reproduces, and then eventually travels down, usually to your leg. Right. And then when it's exposed to water next, once it's ready to come out and it's grown to about a meter in length, the next time it's exposed to water. This milky substance is actually millions of guinea worm larvae go right into the water supply and the whole life cycle is brought on again and again and again. Yeah. So what happens in these developing nations? People go down to the river to wash their wound or just to be in the river, and then everybody all of a sudden the river is infected and people are drinking out of it. And that's just one of the diseases. There are many, many. Right. But that's what gave rise to this life straw. The problem is the original personal pipe filter. It was large. The filter was large. So the guy Torbin, right, mr. Flourish name, went back to the drawing board and created life straw, which is much more, I guess, detailed and is much more effective at removing pathogens and bacteria and parasites. Yeah. And as it exists today, the personal life straw is about ten inches long, 25 CM for our friends everywhere else in the world. I'm sorry, about an inch around. It's made of plastic, like you said, you wear it around your neck, so you've always got it. And it takes about eight minutes to drink a quart of water, which you probably shouldn't be drinking a quart of water faster than eight minutes, you're going to give yourself a tummy ache. Should we walk through how this one works? Actually, yeah, because that's what we do. It's ingenious and it's simplicity. Well, it is. And I've had these with emergency drinking straws, filtration straws in my backpack for years. So it's not like it was a brand new idea. No, those are all classified as what's called the pou water purification systems point of view. Yeah, exactly. Right. Look at you. So what happens? Obviously, you suck the water through. It goes through a filter at first, that removes the big stuff, 100 microns, like dry mud, nobody then there's a polyester filter that gets things much smaller, down to about 15 microns, which is about a 10th of the diameter of a human hair. Yeah. And that's actually small enough to catch bacteria. Most bacteria, yeah, that's true. So that's really small. And then it goes through iodine coated beads, resin beads, and iodine is a halogen. And I used to put iodine pills in water when I was camping, too. So it has the same effect. It kills parasites, viruses, a lot of bacteria, and they are in a little chamber that gets the most bang for your buck as far as touching the water. Then it goes into an empty chamber and then it passes through the carbon filter, which is the final step. And everyone knows that carbon helps. It tastes better and very porous and does a good job of cleaning things, like odors. Right. So you lean down and you drink the water out of any water source, and then when you're done, you blow air through it and that pretty much blows out the stuff that you caught in boot filters, and then you go back to doing whatever you're doing. This could be the end of our show. Eight minutes later, drink after drinking a quart of water. But it gets better. It does. With the life straw family. Yeah. So, Chuck, over its lifespan, the personal life straw can filter about 700 quarts of water. So taking that, that's about two quarts a day that lasts for a full year. Right. Okay. So you get your lifestyle, you use it for a year, you get another one. The family one is much more effective. I think it filters enough to keep a family of five in water for three years before it needs to be replaced before the filter goes out. Ten quarts an hour by comparison, which is obviously why they call it the family one. Right. And it does about 18,000 courts over its lifespan of three years. Right. Yeah. And it's kind of similar. Right. But it's just larger and it uses gravity and it's got a couple of more parts to it. And you just said the magic word. Like there are all sorts of water purification systems out there that require things like electricity or a diesel generator or something that you don't necessarily have. Right. The cool thing about lifestyle and the lifestyle family water filters is that, like you said, it uses gravity, right. Or with the lifestyle, personal suction. But with the family version, there's like a bucket at the top that has that initial filter, and then it goes down through increasingly smaller by micron textile filters, it goes through a halogen chamber that releases a low level amount of chlorine. Right. And then it hits the plastic hose. So just exiting the bucket, it's already been filtered three times. Yeah. It goes down this hose, down to another cartridge. This is where the ultra filtration takes place and it's also where it's discharged after that. And the cool thing is, after you're done, you can squeeze this cleaning bolt three times and basically it backflows all the impurities and there's a separate tap to get rid of that. So you clean it very easily. You don't need anything extra. It's all self contained and it uses gravity. No electricity, no anything. Yeah. Brilliant. And it's simplicity. Just like it's smaller, buddy. Right. But also it saves five people's lives for three years rather than one person's life for a year. Right. And then have a little spike at the bottom so you can kind of use it as if it were a repository of water. Yeah, that's exactly what it is, too. By the time it gets out of that tap, no matter where it is, it's gone through this filtration process. So, yes, it is a repository. That's right. And at the end of this process, my dude friend, you are going to have nothing in there, particle wise, larger than a droplet of fog. Right? A droplet of fog. And that would be 99.9% of bacteria and viruses, including things like salmonella and chigila and intracocus and whatever that last one is. Staff. Yes. The problem is that there are some pretty nasty bugs that are smaller than a droplet of fog. Right. 15 microns. Right. Because we said with the lifestyle, I think both of them, the smallest the filter goes down to is 15 microns. Yes. Some nasty ones, too, unfortunately. Yeah. Remember we talked about cryptosporidium and Giardia? Both of those are smaller than 15 microns. And even worse than that, giardia is actually resistant to iodine, which I hate. The lifestyle personals, that last death blow is running it through those halogenized resin beads. Right. And actually, we need to point out that's just for the personal, actually, the family one does filter out the Giardia and the cryptosporidium okay, which is good, but the personal doesn't because it's about as good as they can do for a little ten inch personal system. Right. It also doesn't filter out heavy metals fluoride. So if you don't want to get dumber, you're out of luck, slayer. What? Megadeth. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Sorry. You know, it's sad is it took me a second to figure out I know you didn't laugh at first, and then I was like, I just want to crawl under this desk. Arsenic. So if you're a poor person in a developed area that has all sorts of factories but no environmental regulations, you're kind of out of luck with lifestyle personal as well. Well, that comes into effect, though, in the case of, like, urban disasters, because they started to send these to places like New Orleans. Right. And so in that kind of case, you'd be kind of out of luck with the fluoride and stuff. So there are some things that the lifestyle can't do. Right. And as a result, there's a lot of people out there who are dedicated to making sure that people get clean water, who are saying, like, this is great, this is helpful, but at the same time, it's not really solving the problem. So, like, in this article, there is a guy named Paul Hetherington. He speaks for Water Aid, which is a British charity, and I think there's a lot of people who agree with him that the way to really solve the water crisis in the developing world is to educate people on how to treat their water, how to take care of their water. And then after they understand this, or probably simultaneously, is an even better idea, give them a clean source of water that's nearby. Dig them all. Well, remember, if you're walking to and from water 12 miles a day, you haven't gotten to the point where you're manufacturing heavy equipment that can dig you a well that will supply your village. That comes later. Right. So a multi pronged approach. Get life straw in the hands of these people. Work on the education. That's Chuck's advice. Right. I should go to the, um, lifestyle so they can stay alive long enough to go to these education classes. Exactly. Obviously, Josh, education and changing an entire culture of water, sanitation, and hygiene is going to take a long time. So in the meantime, get Lifestyle on the hands of these families. And luckily, there are a lot of companies, relief organizations, charities that are getting on board, because even though they're only think, like, you get a deal in bulk, you can get them for about $3 a piece if you're a big organization. But I think they're like $5 just to buy a single one. And that's even too much money for these people. Yeah, that's part of the problem. That's another thing. I didn't see any criticism of Lifestyle, the company that manufactures Life Straw. But I got the impression that there's people out there, especially NGOs, that are dedicated to water, that feel like companies that produce relief products. Right. They're not selling to their clients. They are end users. They're creating these things or selling them in between to people like you and me or Rotary clubs or large corporations. Right. So I went on, and there's links on how do you say this company is again? Vestergard Franzen. And it says donate. There's, like, a whole thing where there's links to the Rotary Club. There's one in Spain, there's one in the UK. And then there's one in the US. They have different sites you can donate. So in this, it was supposed to be $3. I've seen $5. But then where the rubber hits the road on this Rotary site, it's 650 for a Life Straw and then 25 for the family unit. Right. And ultimately, it doesn't really matter. It's 650. You and I can afford that. Sure. And I think we should kind of put out something of a challenge to stuff. You should know, listeners, to donate one of these each. What do you think? Don't you think so? Dude, if we get, like, a couple of hundred thousand life Straws out there, that'd be awesome. Okay. You're looking at me for approval. Like, I can say, no, let's not do that. I don't want to do that. Today I feel like going back to bed. And luckily, Josh, like I said, there are companies getting involved and think this was just released today. The Danes have teamed up with Coca Cola, our own Atlanta base. Coca Cola? Right. And Western, a branson and a group called Water for all. And they have a deal going. Coca Cola, apparently, is the leading bottled water seller in the Nordic region. It's called Kildevald. Is there water that they sell there? You are good at Nordic. Nordic probably not. Right? But they have a program called Three Liters of Clean Water. And it's this partnership where they donate three liters of clean water to Africa for every purchase of Coca Cola's bottled water brand there. And just yesterday, they donated 27,000 lifestyle personal life straws through this partnership to Africa. I didn't get to finish my point. Westergard Francis. Right. They are making this product that is very helpful. It's literally saving people's lives. I think anytime you combine capitalism with relief efforts, it kind of turns my stomach a little bit. I don't mind it, but that seems like when I really step back and think about it, that's such a Western elitist view of things. Right. Because it's like arguing with somebody, like, why don't you charge a little less? Why don't you donate some of these and having a disagreement while there's somebody dying at your feet? Right. Sure. I think this is one of those cases where it's like, just let's get these people their stuff and then we can have this conversation later. Well, yeah, but unless it's an NGO that has developed this and invented this, then you can't expect this guy to just go broke giving these away. I don't it's tricky, though. I know what you're saying. It is. And same with CocaCola. It's like, awesome. You helped foster this transportation of 250 lifestyles to people who didn't have them, but people to begin with. Exactly. Which a lot of people have a problem with buying bottled water in the first place. Exactly. So I think there's problems with it. But ultimately, it's very important not to lose sight of the end user of lifestyle who's like, please send me one so I don't die. We should also mention, too, that the reason that we said that the Franzen Company quit making their other textile products in was because they probably found that was a good market for these other things. Like, they also make the permanent and zero fly, which are these things, I think, is it. Julia Roberts is really involved with the netting, the anti malaria netting. It seems like in Charlotte, Angelina and Jolie thing to be involved in. She's all about everything, isn't she? Yeah. But they also do manufacture those two products which help prevent malaria. Not prevent malaria. That would be a whole different price with malaria. Come and get it. So they also have these care packs for HIV positive families. And you get, like, a permanent and a life straw and antibiotics, condoms, things like that. Some brochures and brochures to educate you. So they're doing good and we love it. We're behind it all the way. I don't want you to get the wrong idea from Josh's. Harsh words. Right. Thank you, Chuckers. They're not the only people creating stuff. Oh, no. And the Rotary Club isn't the only group that you can go through to donate things again. Carter center is dedicated to Guineawm. They kind of have their eyes on that prize because we're on the brink of eradicating it from the planet. Like, literally, it won't be found on Earth. I think two countries, maybe three, have it left, and it will be the second time that's ever happened in the history of the world. What was the first one? Polio? Yes, Josh. I think it was polio because this is the first parasitic disease, second disease overall. So the Carter Center really wants to get rid of this. You can donate to the Cartercenter at cartercenter. Orghealthgineworm. And that will take you to their little mini site. You can do all sorts of donating there. You can go to Vestergardfransoncom. We'll go ahead and spell that one for you. Okay, bestergaardfrandsen.com. And then donate. That's going to take you to all these CowanA sites. And then there's a group called Projecthdesign.org. Yeah. So in this article, it cited that they're passing out life straws to people in India. I didn't see that anywhere. It's not just in Africa. I mean, this is happening all over the world. But Africa is obviously a big ground zero for waterborne illness. Yeah. In India, as developing as that country is, I think a significant portion of people in that nation, 16 million residents, which is surprisingly that's 25% of New Delhi's 16 million residents don't have access to clean drinking water. So, yeah, it's not just in Africa. I didn't see Project H designs water or Lifestyle project, but they did have something called the hippo roller. What's that? You know what a sod roller is? Yeah. It's like a big drum with, like, I guess, handles attached. Yeah, like a lawn mower handle. It's this. But the drum in this case is plastic. And you take it to your water source, fill it up, up to 25 gallons, and just roll it back home. So you don't have to have the big vase on your head. No. And it's huge. Most of the time, apparently, people can haul five to six gallons at a time. This allows them to basically make five trips in once. Those are $100. And you can go on to Project H and find out about doing that. And they have a bunch of different cool ones, cool projects that they're funding. That's awesome. Yeah. And here's my final call. Josh. I would encourage people to try and conserve water on their own. It's not like the water that you can serve in your house in Peoria is going to be bottled up and shipped to Africa. Right. But we went through our drought here in Atlanta last summer, and we had all kinds of water restrictions. And Emily and I really got used to the idea of water is a limited resource and you shouldn't just waste it. And we really got that. We're not, like, using our bath water to do our dishes, but we collect our water from our AC unit and water our plants. And I never pour water out like that. I'm drinking that's gotten tepid. I always like pouring a plant, just try and reuse what I can. So I would encourage people to do that. I always pour it on myself in a sexy manner, get my T shirt wet. That's what I do with it. And that's not wasteful at all. It's well worth it. So we'll see what happens after the giant nations of the world are drawn into World War II in the Balkans over water conflicts in 2024. Until then, we'll keep podcasting, right? I hope so. And if you want to learn more about lifestyle, I strongly recommend you guys go type that word. L-I-F-E-S-T-R-A-W. Into the swingandsearchbar@housetepworks.com and chuck. Now, Josh, I'm going to call this a couple of emails about Modafinil. Okay? Remember we talked about that. And is science facing out sleep? I do. I like that one. You want to give a quick rundown on what that product is? Medaffinil is a non stimulant, I guess drug of arousal that was originally designed for narcoleptics. And suddenly people who don't like to sleep and like to get things done for 48 hours at a stretch without feeling tired started taking that's. Right. So we got one from a neurobiology major. So he is a neuroscience major and he's Dave, aka the professor, and he has to say, guys, I'm writing in as a neuroscientist, and you're probably scared that I'm writing you with a pocket protected complaint about the number of times you incorrectly said manafidil instead of Modafinil. Seven, he points out. Really? Yeah, we got it backwards, which is not unlike us. But fear not, guys, that come in peace. I'm a PhD student from Toronto, Canada, studying neurobiology of cocaine addiction. I'm familiar with Medaffinil because it has recently undergone clinical trials for uses of treatment for cocaine addiction. It is thought that Medaffinl could work for cocaine dependence the same way methadone works for heroin as a maintenance treatment. But the results are inconclusive right now. A word of caution, too. Just because a drug like Medaffinyl doesn't directly impact dopamine systems in the brain doesn't mean it can't have rewarding and addictive effects. Do you ever think of that? I did. Any director can keep you up all night so you can be twice as productive as the potential to be addictive because productivity itself can be extremely rewarding. I never really thought about that. That is great. So it's like indirectly addictive, then? Yeah. Lastly, at the risk of being too technical, more and more evidence is suggesting that Glutamate and GABA GABA, the neurotransmitters directly impacted by modafinl, play an important role in addiction, perhaps even more so than dopamine. Crazy. In fact, by altering dopamine levels, drugs like cocaine make long term changes in Glutamate and GABA circuits in the brain, and these changes are thought to underlie addictive behavior. You say cocaine exactly like Glen Fry. It's chilling cocaine. Yeah, see, thanks a lot, guys. I swear on my Medaffinil that I won't sleep until I see a podcast on addiction. Man, this is so crazy. He's like the fifth person in a week to upcoming podcast. Yes, or that would have already come out. By now. That's right. Yeah. That was from Dave, the professor. And then we had another note from Andrew. He said, an angry note. Now you went too angry. I just listened to your podcast on phasing out sleep. I was a little bothered by your one sided bashing of modafinil. Yeah, a little bothered. That's angry. You focused on people who abused medaffinil by using it to avoid sleep. I've been using it for my sleep apnea for three years and has greatly improved my quality of life. Prior to this, I would sleep 8 hours a night and still be tired all day. Now I sleep 8 hours a night, feel awake and alert the rest of the day. Ethical, doctors aren't prescribing this to allow patients to avoid sleeping. They prescribe it to patients who have a medical condition which caused them to be tired despite having had enough sleep. And he says it's still love the show. So he wasn't really angry. Sign the chairman of the maker of Mandafidil Manafael. I mean, Dan Andrew. See, you got it wrong. That's right. If you have a correction, specifically if you're a neurobiologist, we love hearing from experts. We should keep his email address, too. Okay, let's do it. In case we have questions. And don't forget, we're all starting the push now to donate life straws. Right, Chuck? Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to figure this out. Look for more information soon. In the meantime, if you want to donate a lifestyle, knock yourself out. Agreed. If you are an expert in your field and you think that what you have to say would interest us, we want to know. Yes, we do. Send us an email at stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. 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Do objects or experiences make us happier? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-objects-or-experiences-make-us-happier | Since Sartre classified things that make us happy into the categories of having and doing, science took up the investigation into materialism and experientialism. The results have been in for a while: experiences win by a wide margin, but why exactly? | Since Sartre classified things that make us happy into the categories of having and doing, science took up the investigation into materialism and experientialism. The results have been in for a while: experiences win by a wide margin, but why exactly? | Tue, 11 Feb 2014 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=42, tm_isdst=0) | 33289782 | 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. Jerry's here and stuff you should know. We've got the 18 in the house. Not the Chuck Hologram. Not guest producers matt or Noel. It's not pocket Josh. Not pocket Josh. Although I do have a pocket Josh on me. He's always there. That's a voodoo doll. No, it's not. It's clearly a voodoo doll. That's my hair. I recognize how's that back pain treatment. You hurt so bad. How's it going? Pretty good, except for the back pain. Oh, well, let me just massage your little pocket Josh. I'm excited about this one. Our ongoing series on happiness. Yeah. We've covered it with Bhutan. A Gross National Happiness. Yeah. And then we did our audiobook all about happiness. The Super Stuff Guide to Happiness. Yeah. And all that was, I guess, a holdover from was it right before or right after the financial global financial collapse? I feel like it was sort of in the midst of okay, because I think what it was, was the world got cocky, especially the developed world. Sure. Like, hey, things are going so well. We're all rich, everybody's pretty happy. We're at war with not one, but two countries at once. Look at us go. Let's start talking about happiness and what makes us happy. Let's start blogs about how we try to be happy and enter it in once a day, every day, and then get a deal out of it. Let's just think about happiness. Happiness, happiness, happiness. Well, a few years on, there's been some changes over time. Everybody's sad. People don't talk about happiness anymore. Like, there was a little while where there was a period, basically from my impression about 2005 to 2009, where you could get substantial grants to conduct research into the nature of happiness, to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy, how to make people happier. And there was an offshoot of psychology called positive psychology that we talked about and the Superstar Guide to Happiness that said we're good at diagnosing maladies, which physical maladies no, like problems, psychological problems. Got you. But we're terrible at how to make people happier. So hence, now we're going to have something called positive psychology, which appears to have fallen by the wayside. Oh, yeah. Now it's all negative psychology. Well, psychology itself, as a field, is under tremendous amount of attack, and positive psychology, I think they gave the chance to retreat. They're like, look, you're pretty easy target. You should probably go, what do they say? Like, this isn't even a real thing. I don't know, maybe it was a valiant attempt. I think it just came at the wrong time. But the point is, if you look up happiness now, you will notice just about everything cuts off. In 2009, I did notice that actually america doesn't care about being happy anymore. Or maybe they just hanging on, studied and learned everything they need to know. And we're like, all right, here we are. You know what? It's funny that you say that, because if that's true, you could be right. That represents them possibly the shortest amount of time any subject has ever been studied. No, really? Because it started in what makes people happy? In maybe, I think, 2003, I read a study, and it was about how this was one of the first studies to ever try to figure out what makes people happy. So then this field of study existed from 2003 to 2009, and they were saying that the reason that this would be the first study is because it's been so accepted for so many years, ever since the philosopher Hume david Hume. Robert Hume, the Scottish philosopher. It's one of my favorites. Just if you were in Jeopardy, you could just say, Hume. Hume. We'll go with Hume. Yeah. Who is Hume? If you're on Jeopardy? He was a Scottish philosopher. No, I had to phrase it. Okay, got you. He said he was one of the first people to mention this concept of what makes people happy insofar as what we're talking about today, which is, does an object make you happier or does an experience make you happier? Yeah, I think they've done, like, the lottery studies before 2004. It's lottery winners. But that's a pretty specialized study. Yes. So my point is to try to quantify happiness, that kind of thing, and really investigate. It started in the early 2000s. It ended by the mid 2000, the first decade of the 2000s. Well, while I'm reading all these studies, I'm looking seven, eight, four. Yeah. Very keen observation. And I can't quite figure out obviously, I think the Great Recession is almost entirely responsible for that falling to the wayside. But if you look still today, there are still related studies. It's just not happiness studies. Yeah, I found when I was reading this, I disagreed with a lot of these findings and studies. They didn't seem fully fleshed out, did they? Well, for instance, we'll go ahead and start with this supposed fact. Researchers have done some studying, and they have pinned down how long a material object will make you happy. And they say between six and twelve weeks. Then you get bored with it, basically. Right. I just don't know about that, because to me, it depends on what the object is. If it's something that gives you ongoing pleasure, like a guitar, let's say yes, because that is also an experience object. But I will love my guitars till I die because I play them and enjoy it and play them with my friends. Right, yeah. And what you're talking about is the gift that keeps giving. Right, exactly. That's called active engagement. Okay. It is a purchase. And when we say purchase, we're not talking about necessarily just an object. Sure. Which we'll talk about in a little bit. You can also purchase experiences as well. Yeah. In fact, they say that's the way to go. Right. So there's a happiness purchase, is what we're saying. Yeah. And your guitar that you purchased, that's an object, but you purchased it, but it's making you happy over and over and over again. The reason why is because you become actively engaged in it. And active engagement in anything that is positive or that makes you happy can continue to make you happy for longer than, say, another object that doesn't actively engage you. Like a pair of shoes that you wanted really bad and then got and then sit in your closet. You don't wear them anymore because after well, you may still wear them, but you're wearing them as shoes. You're not wearing them like, I'm the king of Rotterdam here, check out my shoes, that kind of thing. That lacks active engagement, that lacks social interaction, and that lacks exercise. And those are the three, those are the big three things that you can buy objects wise, that kind of sit outside of that six to twelve week happiness adaptation is what it's called. Okay. So, yeah, you kind of nailed it right there with the guitar. It's not just guitar. Yeah. Video games are another good example. Yeah. Like, you buy your PS Three and you may get sick of some of the games, but they're always releasing new games. Right. If you bought a language module, you learn a language or something that actively engage you, something that you use for exercise or something that leads to social interaction. Okay. Are the three object types that make you happier longer? Well, that makes me feel better, then. And that whole six to twelve weeks, though, whether that's an accurate number. Not the chuck, remember we talked about the Hedonic treadmill? Yes. It's evidence of the hedonic treadmill. There's this thing called Hedonic adaptation, and that is that something that makes you happy isn't going to make you happy forever. And something you've purchased, pretty much whatever it is. Yeah. You're going to eventually subsume it into your everyday life. You're going to end up taking it for granted, basically, is another way to put it. Yeah. How short that happens or how long that happens is it definitely differs depending on the type. And we'll talk about the type in a minute. But what people end up getting on once an object stops making them happy, they still want to be happy. So they end up on the Hedonic Treadmill. They buy another pair of shoes, and then another, and then another, and then another, and you end up just trying to keep pace, buying all this stuff, accumulating all of this material stuff, and it's just kind of keeping you at a steady pace of happiness without any kind of real enrichment. And that's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah. And that's materialism, which they've done studies on materialism. There was one by these dudes, Chaplin and John in 2007, where they linked it to low self esteem, generally, from childhood, you're sort of always trying to gain your self esteem through material objects. Right. They've linked it to narcissism people who try to build themselves up through having fancy things and showing them off. Yeah. That is a real technique that people use to establish their identities, establish their worth to others. And ironically, it's a cheap and easy way to do it. Sure, it may be very expensive, dollar wise, but you don't have to put a tremendous amount of thought or effort into it. You just go buy the most expensive, most obviously expensive item you can and wear it out and broadcast it and get your sense of self worth from that. So it is a very shallow thing. Materialism. I think everybody kind of knows that intuitively, but it's been studied. It is linked to all these kind of personality disorders. There's a guy named Russ Belk who's a marketing researcher, and he was the first one to really research materialism. Owner of the Bell chain of stores, I wonder. And he found it to be a character trait marked by envy, non, generosity, and possessiveness. Yeah. Materialism is so hard to define for me, though, because it's like a guitar is a material object, and a nice guitar is I don't know. I'm definitely not materialistic, I don't think. But I want a nice guitar because it sounds awesome. Sure, it looks cool, but I think that's why Belkin, Chaplin, and John went to the trouble of kind of investigating it. It's like, do you have a clinically flawed personality that's based on your desire for material objects? Yeah, but see, it's all personal. Like, I might think it's material to go out and buy a pair of $800 shoes, but the person might get a lot of joy out of those shoes and say, I think it's stupid to go pay $1,000 for a guitar. Sure. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. No, I think you raise a good point, and it's valid because the research isn't that deep. I mean, you could be exactly right. Subjective, too. Yes. And not only is this whole the findings subjective, the reportings are subjective, too. Like, there's a study in San Francisco in 2009, the last year that happiness was ever studied. Last year, happiness mattered. And basically, this group had 154 college students. Yeah, it's pretty small. Fill out a survey. They said that, we want you to write down a little bit about an object that you purchased to make you happy in the last three months or an experience that made you happy in the last three months that you purchased. Yes. Which is important to distinguish that right. Because you think you can have free experiences, too. You can. Yeah, and we'll get to that. But the college students selfreported that at the time of the purchase, the experiences made them happier, and the happiness lasted longer than the ones who reported an object made them happy. Yeah. I mean, every study pretty much confirms experiences over material objects. Yes. My point is it was self reported, so it's subjective. Right out of the gate. And that's the problem with studying things like happiness. It's an emotion which is subjective. And then it was also a small sample of college students. Homogenous group. What do they know? They don't have money for anything. But there's an acronym for college, for studies like that. It's weird. It's Western educated, something rich and democratic. Oh, really? Yeah. I can't remember what the I is, but weird. And it's saying, like, there's a lot of studies out there that people rely on that are weird, that the population sample are, like, 18 to 21 year old, fairly well off Western kids. Right. Like, what does that really tell us? Yeah. So this is an example of that. I saw another study that I thought was interesting. As far as objects go, like we said across the board, they pretty much have said experiences purchased or free mean more to someone in the long run than an object. But when it comes to spending on objects, this one study did find that spending on others across the board, even on an object, brings more happiness than spending on yourself for an object. Yeah. And in fact, people were assigned to spend money in one of these studies, and they experienced greater happiness than people assigned to spend money on themselves. Like, here's $100, go buy yourself something nice. Or here's $100 to go buy someone else something nice. People are happier that bought something for someone else, which was interesting. And you were saying that's, like the case with objects and experiences as well. I think that was just objects. Right, okay. But I would say it probably holds true for experience. Like, you take someone out to dinner, you feel good about it. Sure. So what you have there is you're spending on another person. It's fostering social interaction, which is another key. Huge. And it's an experience. Yeah, pretty much. Like you couldn't get happier than that. Yeah. The social thing is kind of the key to all this, they say, because generally, your experience happiness is usually not alone. Like, you'll go to a concert with someone or to dinner with someone, but not always. Right? And not always is a pretty good little buzz term for this part of the podcast, because there's also research that shows that objects can bring more happiness than experiences depending on the experience. Like, for a long time, the literature just basically said experiences make you happier than objects. What if it's crappy? Exactly. And these researchers found that an unhappy experience, especially one that was meant to be happy, like, let's say you went on a cruise or you went on a vacation, and it just sucked. That compared to an object that's supposed to make you happy, that object is going to beat that experience, and you're going to have that bad memory of the experience longer, too. Yeah. You know what else I think I've seen pointed out is you can't get your money back on a bad dinner in play. Yeah, that's true, too. But if you get an object like this, thinks you can usually return that. Right. Unless you took a bite out of it already. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. But you know what I'm saying? If you take a vacation that ends up being a disaster, I would be more upset about that because it's like you've lost your money, you're going to have this bad memory, but if you buy some stupid thing, you can just resell it or on Craigslist or send it back. Sure. Right. So that's one distinction between materials, I guess, objects and experiences. We should give a shout out to SART here. Who SART? Sartra. Oh, yeah. John Paul Sartre, the philosopher who is kind of credited with really introducing this concept or codifying it into the mainstream. To start, there were three paths to happiness or three types of happiness. There was having, doing and being and being. We're not even talking about in this one, but having and doing. Materialism and experientialism start in the think, just kind of introduce us into the literature. And that, ultimately, is what kicked off this kind of study into which one's better, which one makes you happier. Yeah. And I like how you wrote this. Right. I like how you point out about Buddhism, how they feel that material objects actually get in the way of happiness. Not only may they not bring you happiness, but they will prevent it. Sure. And it's not just Buddhism. For centuries, it's just basically been accepted that an object is less desirable if you're seeking happiness than an experience. That's why the researchers were saying we're one of the first studies to conduct an investigation into this because it's just been generally accepted that that's the case, but no one knew exactly why. Yeah. So now we've kind of reached the why parts, and one of the things you said is you can't take an experience back. All right, hold on to that thought. Let's take a quick message break, and we'll get back with the why. Okay, chuck. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard this or not, but the cost of a stamp just went up to $49. But not if you have stamps.com, buddy. Oh, yeah? Yeah. With stamps.com, you'll pay less for postage than you would at the post office for First Class Mail, priority, priority, express Mail packages and more. Well, buddy, it's awesome and convenient. Super easy to use with stamps.com you can buy and print discounted stamps, shipping labels and more using your own printer and computer right there at home. And not only will you save money with stamps.com checkers by not paying full price for postage, you'll save valuable time, too. Stamps.com always keeps the rates up to date, so you'll get the exact postage you need every time right from your desk. And here's the best part. You may never have to go to the post office again. That sounds good to me. So right now we have a very special offer. You can use our promo code stuff for a no risk trial plus $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale and up to $55 in free postage. That's right. 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. Okay, so why? Well, you mentioned that objects, you can take an object back. Sure. You can't take an experience back. One of the big differences that researchers came up with is that with experiences, because you can't take them back, they're kind of esoteric. They're also more subject to revision, right? Yeah, sure. So you can think back to an experience and over time pump it up, altered slightly, make it more meaningful, whatever. You're just kind of adding to it. You remember when we did that thing on memory? We researched memory. It's like every time you bring up memory, you kind of add to it. When you store it away, it's different. It's altered in one way. Well, you're remembering an experience. You're not remembering an object because you have the object in your hand and you're shaking it and you're like, why don't you make me happy anymore? What happened to you? I wanted this object so bad, and now it's whatever. And the reason why is because it's part of your present and experience is part of your past. It can be your immediate past, your past, whatever. And that is subject to revisionism, which is one of the reasons why they think that when you especially self report what makes you happier, you're probably going to go with an experience. Yeah, and I'm kind of that way. I think a lot of people, even with bad experiences later on, you might think, oh, it was bad at the time, but we laugh about it now. Or how you can reframe bad experiences. Or if you're like, super on the ball in the moment, you can say, maybe we'll be laughing at this in ten minutes. Some terrible vacation. I have fun memories about bad experiences. And I don't think it's revisionism. I think it's just time. And maybe at the time you're not looking at the positives, right. Because your genes are expressing all sorts of horrific things that are making you so mad. But once the genes go back to normal, things kind of take on a different cast. Like, for instance, we went on a big group camping trip, like five or six years ago, a bunch of us. My dog got in a fight with my friend Justin's dog. It poured down rain and it was the worst camping trip I've ever been on. But now we look back at it and we laugh, and we remember the midnight dance party we had in the rain, and we made the best of it, but at the time, we were all like, man, I got to get out of here. This is miserable. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, I look back on certain miserable experiences and kind of laugh about them. Yes. There aren't many awful experiences unless it involves something really bad. Right. And life changing. I don't look back at the death of a relative and say, that was really pretty fun. Now, I thought that dress they buried her in was horrible, but now it's hilarious. Yeah, exactly. You can't do that with an object. No, you can't do that. And even if you say, well, I remember when I was eight, I got this awesome Castle Grace goal play set, and it was the bomb, and I was so happy. What you're doing right there is remembering an object, which is significant, but sort of the experience of having it, though. Exactly. Yeah. That's the big distinction. And I don't think anybody in the literature has done a very good job, or did a very good job over that six year period when happiness was studied, of explaining that when you're talking about materialism versus experientialism, objects versus experiences, like, you're talking about the object itself and not your propensity to generate memories and experiences through the object. Yes. Which is kind of confusing and cluttering, frankly. It is. But it's an important point. There's a book out. People love writing books about this stuff, too, selling them for 895 online. Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton wrote one called Happy Money the science is Smarter spending. And they track down some key principles. They obviously say experiences are more valuable than objects, but they break it down further and give you some advice. Like, you should buy an experience. First of all, you should make it a treat, which means it makes it more special if you limit your access to these things. And I get that. If you go to some really fancy restaurant, it's great, but if you go, like, every week, you're kind of like, all right, I'm kind of sick of this place. For sure. It's the Hedonic treadmill. Exactly. They say you should buy time, which I'm not fully sure I understand what that means. You go to another human being and say, I would like to purchase one to two years of your life, and you just put it onto my little watch here. I'm going to take it from your watch. How much do you want? And then they give you some of their life. Okay. And then they say to invest in others, which goes back to that original study I was talking about, and then pay now and consume later. And that delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment. Oh, yes. Which is the opposite of one of the tenants of materialism. Like immediate gratification. Exactly. And then you pay now apparently people who are, I guess, registered materialists, I don't remember how they quantified figured it out in the study, but people who are materialistic have more credit cards, typically have at least one loan of $1,000 or more outstanding. Sure. It's just kind of not only does it lead to or is it associated with character flaws yeah. It also has other pitfalls and patfalls associated with it, too. Like debt. Yeah. That's the exact opposite that's consumed now, pay later. Exactly. Whereas the other is like tantra, and this is like whatever the opposite of tantra is. I don't know. Yes, but there's this kind of unspoken or very rarely spoken indictment of material culture. While I ran across this one quote, it said, consumer materialism is a degrading outcome of untrammeled marketing power. That it's kind of like you have people who possibly have low self esteem, low self worth, and are looking for a way to generate their own identity right. Who are more highly susceptible, maybe two, being marketed to like, if you drink this liquor, you're going to turn into a lion and own the bar you're in. No matter what your salary is, as long as you can afford a bottle of this. Right. No matter how much it puts you out, you're going to be awesome. Your friends are going to be awesome. And some people say, like, I need to feel awesome right now, and I'm willing to shell out $50 for that and I'm going to do it. And who knows? Maybe it does pump them up a little bit. Hopefully, though, ideally, if it does pump them up, pumps them up to a level where they realize that materialism isn't going to make them happy. What about a facelift that's neither an object nor, I guess the experience is having the new face. Apparently plastic surgery people are reported to have plastic surgery people, they are reported to have longer lasting happiness. That hedonic adaptation takes way longer for plastic surgery than other, I guess, purchases. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Well, going back to the whole lottery thing, I think everyone knows that all the studies generally point to it's like a baseline happiness. Objects can make you happy in the moment. But with lottery winners, they did find out repeatedly that they generally go back to their baseline happiness from before they had the dough. Yeah. And I would say that's the case for most of these studies. It's not about how happy you are in a moment or even in a given experience or holding an object, but eventually you're going to return to the schmuck that you are. You're either happy or you're not. Right. Remember when we did our Superstar Guide to Happiness? There was that one of the founders of Transhumanism who was saying, we need to figure out how to ratchet up everybody's base level happiness. Yeah. Like, even with pills and things. Right. Or genetic manipulation or whatever, he's like, whatever it takes. That's one of the things that should be a pursuit of humanity is making everyone happier by nature. I don't like that. I think you said the same thing in the stuff, guy. Yeah. Because I think pathos is valuable. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we made that point. Yeah, it seems like something you would say, and I'd be like, yeah, I do. I think it's valuable to the human experience. I think it can do a lot of good to be briefly depressed. Yeah. Well, here's an example of that. The Great Recession. Since the Great Recession, teenagers have been reporting less desire for material objects than the teenagers from a decade before. Right, but you're not talking about my smartphone. Right. Everything but that. Well, they were saying that they were scoring on materialism surveys as less materialistic than their counterparts a decade before, and they were more likely to say things like, I want a job that benefits society. Yeah. They're becoming less materialistic and more prosocial. And they were saying that that's a direct result of this Great Recession. Lessons learned. Yeah. Your point? That depression of one sort or another can be beneficial on a social, societal level. That's true, too, apparently. I dig it. Happiness, objects or experiences. What do you think? I think objects. Super shiny, golden, sparkly objects. Yeah. Just one last thing. I think you made a really good point. Like wanting a guitar doesn't make you a materialist. Okay. You don't have to reject all possessions to be a good, grounded, normal, happy person. Yeah. Listen to our podcast on freegins dumpster diving. Those people are happy. I say yes and go check out our superstar guide to happiness. It was very good. It's on itunes. It's available on itunes. Is it still there? Sure. Yeah. Just blow the dust off of it. It's still relevant because everything stopped in 2009. It was so interesting, too. Yeah, it was a good one. And if you want to learn more about objects or experiences, you can type those words in the search bar@housetofworks.com and it will bring up this article that we are working off of. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this grocery waste. We did our podcast on defriging and we got a surprisingly lot of responses from people. Yeah, I was kind of surprised. It really hit home. So this is from a former grocery store employee when he was in high school. He said, Part of my job at the store was to find all the eggs, bread and milk that had a sell by date within the next three days. And it's really terrible because sell by dates are designed with some wiggle room just to make sure nothing is spoiling before the date on the carton. When I had the cart loaded up with perfectly good food, I had to throw the bread and eggs into the garbage compactor and pour all the milk down the drain, dozens of gallons a night. It's just like Maddening, isn't it? I got with the local FFA teacher, whatever that is, and asked if Farmers of America oh, yeah, good. You got four H. Okay, whatever that is. I don't remember. They asked if all this wasted food I asked if all the wasted food could be used to slop the pigs, see that the students were raising. And he said, that'd be a great idea. So I went to the manager of the grocery store, said, we should do this, and it might even be good PR for us. It turns out the grocery store got back partial store credit from their suppliers for expired food that they threw away. And here's the hitch. They would not get any credit if any of the expired food was put to any use. Isn't that awful? Yes. Some suppliers would even refuse credit if they decided the store wasn't doing enough to prevent dumpster divers from retrieving food. What's worse, many foods that don't actually spoil for years and years, but they have arbitrarily short sell by dates because they found that people don't trust foods that have an expiration date too far into the future. Yeah, remember, didn't we talk about, oh, I did a brain stuff on water going bad, and it's like there's no reason for it to have an expiration date? Yeah. So he says. Thus, I spent one memorable evening throwaway throwing out hundreds of dollars worth of cheese. Oh, man. That was a known danger of spoiling anytime soon. I even asked if I could take some home, and they said that that would be considered shoplifting. Wow. So I don't see food waste being addressed until it becomes a matter of public outrage. On the level of sweatshop labor, there are just too many economic barriers in the way that is from Todd from okayc, thanks, Todd. And that is just his store. We heard from other people, some stores have different policies where they can actually put some of that food to use, but I don't think that's the norm. No. And we heard from another guy, too, who was fired because he got so tired of throwing stuff away, he took a bunch of baguettes to a homeless shelter, and they found out about it and he was fired because of it. But he said he didn't regret it. Still, to this day, good for him. Yeah. Thanks, Todd from OKC. I would say go Thunder, but go Heat. Instead. If you want to get in touch with Chuck or me or Jerry, you can send us a tweet. Our handle is S-Y-S-K podcast with a little at symbol. Ahead of that, we're on Facebook. Comstuffynow. Check us out there. You can check out our YouTube channel, Joshandchuck. That's the name of it. You'll love it. You can also send us a regular old email stuffpodcast@discovery.com and join us at our home on the web. It is awesome stuffyoushaneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. With over 1000 titles to choose from, Audible.com is a leading provider of downloadable digital audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. Go to audiblepodcast. Comnostuff knowstuff to get a free audiobook download of your choice when you've you sign up today." | ||
6378ca0a-811f-4a5e-8cd2-ae71012b4ae9 | Short Stuff: Animal Politicians | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-animal-politicians | Small towns around the world have a longstanding tradition of nominating – and voting for – animals in elected positions like mayor and some animals have made it to being nominated for president.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Small towns around the world have a longstanding tradition of nominating – and voting for – animals in elected positions like mayor and some animals have made it to being nominated for president.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 13 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=103, tm_isdst=0) | 14031834 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Short Stuff. Dave's here. He says hi. It's not really here. Jerry's here. She says hi, too. At any rate, this is Short Stuff, and I've just wasted a terrible amount of time. That's right. And this episode makes me think of the great song Pet Politics by Silver Jews rip Dave Berman, full stop. Okay. So it makes me think, Chuck, of animals that have been elected to office. Because that's what we're talking about. Yeah, we are. There's apparently a long tradition, not just in the United States, where it's surprisingly prevalent, but around the world, people have elected animals to office. Sometimes to make a point, sometimes to raise money for the local whatever, sometimes to insult people, usually other politicians. But there's, like a pretty lengthy history of it. There is. And it's funny, when you sent me the sources for this photores how do you pronounce it? I think he just said it for doors'was. One of them. And then I was like, Reader's Digest has got to be one of these. And sure enough, Readers Digest was one of the sources. Yeah, totally. So one of the first examples I came across, a guy who was a mayor, he was a human. His name was Kenneth Simmons, and he was the mayor of Milton Washington back in 1938. And he put up a donkey. He nominated a donkey as a committee committee man, a precinct committeeman to, I guess, work with the donkey. And the donkey's name was Boston Curtis. But the thing was, Milton Washington didn't tell anybody that Boston Curtis was a donkey. He just nominated him and added them to the ballot. That's right. And this was clearly one of those cases where someone was like, our constituents don't even do their due diligence. They don't do their homework. They don't even care. They would just assume vote for a donkey is how the movie scene would go. And even though this mule ran unopposed, I think it was a mule. There is a difference, right? Oh, yeah, there is. Please, God, tell me it wasn't a mule, because I've been saying donkey this whole time. Well, Photos says it was a mule. Okay, I'll take it. I'll take the hit. So the mules did run unopposed, but still, I think the point was made that the constituents still did not do their due diligence because it's not that they didn't think he was going to win, because it was uncontested, but the fact that it got so many votes clearly indicated that no one was doing their homework. Right. Yeah. I mean, even if it is uncontested, if you know it's a donkey, you don't just vote for the donkey. Exactly. Unless it's possible that all those voters were like, yeah, I'm ready for a change. Yeah. So that's a pretty good example. That's an unusual example. More often than not, if an animal is elected to office, it is out and proud as an animal. You know what I mean? Everyone knows that they're voting for an animal, and it usually takes place in a town that's unincorporated, so there's not an actual official mayoral position. Sure. And then usually they're trying to raise money for that town. Yeah, and it works, too. It's a fun thing. So they will put up here's an example. In Michigan, in Omina, Michigan, they raised seven grand for their historical society. And this is just a few years ago in 2018, when a cat named Sweetheart, which I love, great name for a cat. Really? Yeah, one as mayor, and then they just filled up the town's government with other pets. I think the vice mayor was a puppy named Punkin Anderson. Harder. Special assistant for Foul Affairs was Penny the Chicken. And then Prestige Secretary was Harvey the goat. I'm sorry. Harley. The goat. Right. Not Harvey, the goat. That would not have worked out. So me and Michigan is actually fairly well known for that. And there's another town that's pretty well known for it called Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. Let that one sink in for a second. And then Rabbit Hash, they had a long standing mare, a dog named Lucy Liu, who was mayor for eight years. And then I think Lucy Liu resigned. Or retired, I guess. Not resigned in disgrace or anything like Richard Nixon, but instead said, I'm going to go, you know, enjoy my retirement. And so Lucy Lee was succeeded by a dog named Brynneth Paltrow. And Brennan, I found out, ran on a platform chuck of restoring the general store. It's a pretty good platform in a town like Rabbit Hash. And then, quote, to bring the yokles of Rabbit Hash and beyond plenty of peace and love. I thought the platform you are going to say was that they ran on was cruising together. All right, man, you just triggered me. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks. Should we take a break and talk about more of this silliness afterward? I think so. All right, we'll be right back. So remember way back, probably a week or so ago in the choir that escaped that explosion episode? Sure. Like, five minutes ago for us. And you said that you were glad there wasn't some dark part to the whole thing. Well, this one does kind of have a dark part. And we're about to enter. Yeah, I believe you're probably talking about Lahitus, Texas, in an unincorporated town. And they have another symbolic camaro seat that they do for animals. And this one involved, I guess, what you would call a dynasty, a family of goats. The first one was Clay Henry, not Henry clay elected in 1986. And then Henry was and this is all just, like, shameful. They fed Henry beer, and it was like, look at that. Go drink beer and get, like, wasted drunk. From accounts that I read, yeah. It said up to 35 beers in a single day, which you should not give an animal alcohol. This is all very shameful. And this animal, Clay Henry, lived at the general store there, where it would lap up this beer, and was succeeded by Clay Henry Jr. Who it looks like killed Clay Henry Senior. Yes. Allegedly, they were both drunk and Clay Henry Jr headbutted Clay Henry senior and killed him. Oh, my Lord. And then took over as mayor. Or was appointed mayor, I guess, by the human who runs the general store by Divine. Right. And then there was a third, too, right? Yeah. You talk about the third. All right. Clay III was also a beer drinker because these people in Texas just kept giving these goats beer. Not just any beer, two Lone Star beer. Oh, of course it was. And this goat was castrated by a local man who was upset that the goat mayor was drinking on Sunday. And as I was about to crawl out of my skin with anger, I read the next line that this person did face animal cruelty charges. Yeah. So that's according to Roadside America. I couldn't find it anywhere else. But it's a heck of a story either way. It is. And thank you for putting that last part on me. You're welcome. Sure. And then also another long tradition of animals becoming elected to office, Chuck, is to basically shame politicians to basically say, you stink, we think you're terrible, and animals better than you. And as a matter of fact, we think you're rat, so we're going to elect a cat or we think you're lazy, so we're going to elect a cat, or so on and so forth. I'd say a sloth, but sure. Yeah. So that's kind of a tradition as well, right? Yeah. There was one actually happened in Mexico not too long ago in 2013, and they were upset about the rats in the town or rats in the political sense, and maybe rats, period. Who knows? And they elected a cat named Morris, who was not orange tabby, but a black and white cat named Morris, a tuxedo, I guess. And Morris was nominated for mayor of Wahapa. What's? What? I took it as Wahapa halapa. I think it's Wahapa. Probably Wahlappa. I nailed it that last time. Did you? Okay. And there was a couple of students, and as you'll see with a lot of these, sometimes it's the younger generation who would do it as a joke, but then it caught on. On social media, this cat gets about 150,000 likes on Facebook and then got 7500 actual votes on Election Day, which in the 21st century, if you get the most votes on Facebook, you automatically are elected to political office. That's right. Another cat, this one in Alaska, was elected because he was a write in. I believe the town 900 residents wrote him in, even though there are humans on the ballot to basically just show their disgust at how bad the human candidates were. And a similar thing also happened way back in 1959 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where there was a rhinoceros called Kakareco, which means garbage, and he beat 500 other city council candidates, garnering 100,000 votes, which is pretty great for a rhino. That's right. And then about ten years later in Canada, there was an actual Rhinoceros Party. And I don't know what's it literally inspired by the Brazilian rhino. I couldn't tell. Okay? I could not tell. But it's obviously a satirical political party. And the argument that was being made was they're perfect politicians because they are, quote, thick skin, slow moving, not too bright, but can still move fast when in danger. And not the rhino that you hear these days bandied about in American politics. Different kind of thing. What's a rhino these days? Republican in name only. Yeah, man. As I was asking, I was like, Shut up, Josh. Shut up. You know this dumb. There's another legendary one, too, that I had not heard about. But when I started researching, I was like, oh, this is a thing. There's a pig called Pig Assist the Immortal that was nominated as president for President by the Yippies back in the 1968 Democratic Convention. And that was an enormously, turbulent, brutal convention that took place in Chicago. The CPD showed up and beat everybody up every night, arrested everybody for protesting the Vietnam War and all sorts of stuff. And the Yippies were the Youth International Party cofounded by Abby Hoffman and eventually became the Chicago Eight and then the Chicago Seven. So that whole jam. And then Chicago. The band. That's right. And then just Peter satiro in the midst of this crazy, chaotic event, the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, the Yippies nominated Pig Assist, and they brought this 145 pound pig to a press conference to dominate him, basically saying, like, we're just going with a real pig because all the other politicians are pretend pigs. Why not just elect a real pig this time? And they got about half of that out into the microphone before the Chicago Police arrested him for breathing in public and confiscated poor Pig Assist. They arrested a pig? Yeah, technically they confiscated it, but we like to say arrested the pig along with the seven Yippies that were protesting and I guess caring for this pig. And I believe that Pegasus was handed over eventually to the Anti Cruelty Society, and the Yippies would go and visit and then was like, you got a free Pegasus and let Pegasus fly. And they did so eventually in Pegasus, if you believe the story that you tell every kid when you actually put an animal down. They went to live on a farm outside the city for the rest of his life. I saw it in the Chicago Tribune, so I'm hoping it was true. And then we really can't talk about animals in politics if we don't talk about the OG, right. Caligula's horse. Yeah. In Satanic. Yeah, that's what I think too. All right. Pegasus in Satadis. This is Kohl's favorite horse and was appointed to serve as council to the Roman Senate. But aren't people saying that this isn't true? Actually, this didn't happen? Yeah, they think that it was part of a smear campaign by some of his contemporary or shortly after him, like political enemies who are smearing him. And they're saying that it's probably not true. But they also caveat that, which is another kind of Roman thing with the idea that if Caligula did do that, he didn't do it because he was mad or insane. He would have done it as an act of humiliating the senators, saying, like, my horse is a better senator than you guys are. Yes. Which is sort of in the tradition we see today. Yeah, exactly. It's a long standing tradition. I love it. All the way back to Roman times. Yeah. So get out there and vote, everybody. Rock the vote by rocking your favorite animal candidate next time you go to the poll. The End 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." | |
What Makes a One-hit Wonder? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/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 episode is based on. Join him and Josh as they get t | 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 episode is based on. Join him and Josh as they get t | Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:38:53 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=20, tm_min=38, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=64, tm_isdst=0) | 26300997 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles. Debbie. Chuck Bryant. Say something. Yeah, I didn't even say that to say something funny. I just said, say something. I know. A froze. Yeah. It's all right, man. It's good quality in a broadcaster to freeze up on the air and 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? You know, 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. Loubaga. Yeah. At 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. Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting, though, 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 Onehitwondercentral.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 pointers. 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 with that. Thank you, man. 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. 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. There actually is like a definition for one hit wonder. There's a hit I guess you define a hit, and it's gotta be on the because we're so American centric. So it has to be on the Billboard Top 100 and 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. Yeah. Like Jimi Hendrix. One hit. Janice Joplin, one hit. Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines. Yeah. That's his only Billboard hit. Yeah. Billboard Top 40 hit. He had country hits. He just lived on the top ten, but yeah, in the mainstream Top 40, his only hit was Chris Gates with the haircut and the full patch. Yes, man. Yeah. I don't know what song that 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, like, their one the one thing their one shot was covered in blue. Blue cheer did summertime blues. Green Tambourine. Remember that song? No. 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. But I bet 99 people out of 100 have never heard of the band Argent. No. They probably think, oh, wouldn't that be Guess who? Or wasn't that in Joe Dirt? Or yes. Was it? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. I never saw that movie. What? I never saw Joe Dirt. Oh, man. Such a great, like, keep your chin up movie. It is so good. You 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. Yeah. I had friends that worked on it. And that's where I had my Gary Busey insider story. Oh, 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. Well, 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. Gary Busey. All right. So that was the that's generally when the rock era in the when people say you can start talking about things like one hit wonders. Yeah. 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. Was the green tambourine 70s songs like Spirit in the sky by Norman Greenbaum. Yeah, it'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. Revive. And you also make the point that the 70s were lousy with disco. One hit wonders. 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 O'mickey are so fine. Tony Basil. I want candy by Bow wow. Haja. Gogu. Remember what song? I don't remember, but tu shai. Is that who that was? Tusi Shi. Yes. So the 80s was lousy with it, but a lot of those 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. 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, an 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. Yeah, 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. Yeah, that dude was a good musician. Well, and he was hugely popular and still like tourists today. So he's one of those guys that's like, please don't call me one. I wonder. Right. I've had a long, successful career. Right. Look at my house. It's a car. No, I think it's like a mansion. He lives in his car. That's where I feel safest. Got you. He can lock all those doors. Falco and Nina were really big in German speaking countries. Yeah, I can see that. But had the 99 red balloons. Balloons. Lou balloons. And then Falco's rock meal modeus. Yeah, 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. It's a movie soundtrack. Well, the point with this, though, is that one hit wonder is sort of a derogatory term to throw on earnest. So a lot of these people are like, in America, like, you jerks. I was huge in Europe or maybe some other country. Yon. Yeah. 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. 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. Yeah. And that lead singer, what's his name? Mike something. He's, like, super respected. He's been in other bands, 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 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, 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. Yes. 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. He 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. 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, or 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. There's 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. Yeah. 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. 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 GregoryPeck. I mean, talk about one of the best castings, but all of those actors were amazing. Every single one of them. That's good stuff. She wrote the one book and she worked on a second for a while called Long Goodbye, but shelved it. And in the 1980s, she started another book and never finished that one either. I guess she just procrastinated. No, I think she just I don't know. I don't know if anyone has an answer why she never wrote again. Same with Salinger. Yeah. Catch on 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. Yeah, 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 the guy's name is perfect as well. John Kennedy Tool. Yeah. Or the character the author. Got you. Yeah. Well, he 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 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. Oh, 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 Belgians. 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 Plath herself. 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 Chimino. Yeah. He did. The Deer Hunter, of course. Yeah. One Best Picture and four other Academy Awards. Did he mail? Huh? Did he mail? That's what they tell them when they're, like, making them play Russian roulette diddy mow. Yeah. 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 was it like Water World? Was Heaven's Gate a Warren Beatty movie, too. Or is that heaven? Kim 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. Yeah. And it was just a notorious failure and a very expensive one. And then Chimeo 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 Rourke was 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. Not. Hodman was great, but the remake was really bad. Was it? 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 afterwards. 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 reboot it or remake it again. Never again. It sounds like Hudson tell you a valuable lesson. Yes. And I like Russell Brand. And I thought they made Helen Mirror and John Gilgood's character and was just enough of a spin. And 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 I was like, hey, let's make the man a woman. Let's make the white guy Puerto Rican. And it was like Louie Guzman. It was bad. So bad. I got you. Yeah. Well, that's it for Arthur. Yeah. 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, nothing 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@housetofworks.com and it will bring up this article again. Commendable article. Thanks, sir. And I said commendable. So it's time for word from our sponsor. Now it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this. We're going to give this guy's wife a tongue lasting 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 especially enjoy listening to it while I'm stressed out. It always soothes 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 insist that you two are stoners and that your ritty riparte is contrived. This is 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. Yeah, 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 sense, 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 is a neurologist and he said the alien hand syndrome part stuck close to his heart. Awesome. And Devin, if this doesn't do it, then Elizabeth can just go listen to this American Life and Radio. Yeah, let her hang out with Ireglass. 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 be 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 stuff podcast@discovery.com, and you can always find us at our home on the Internet stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstough works.com." | ||
SYSK's Halloween Horror Fiction Winner! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysks-halloween-horror-fiction-winner | Josh and Chuck have been planning this thing since spring and it's finally here! Tune in to hear which listener's scary story won the SYSK Halloween Horror Fiction Contest -- and prepare to have your socks scared off just in time for All Hallow's Eve. | Josh and Chuck have been planning this thing since spring and it's finally here! Tune in to hear which listener's scary story won the SYSK Halloween Horror Fiction Contest -- and prepare to have your socks scared off just in time for All Hallow's Eve. | Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:48:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=16, tm_min=48, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=304, tm_isdst=0) | 21905749 | 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. US 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. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. This is Stephanie Chanel and friends, it is on the following just do that. Benji doesn't have to do anything. Yes. Just keep my mouth making like wind blowing and Wolf Alley. Yeah, that's good, Chuck. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween, buddy. It's good to be back in the old studio. It feels nice. Yes. We have the lighting dim. It's actually a little spooky. No one's here. It is Friday. It's like 28 days later, right? Our guest producer Matt, survived the zombie apocalypse. Still here and still normal, right, Matt? Pretty normal. Pretty normal, says Matt. I guess if you hadn't figured out by now what we're about to do is read our annual Halloween scary story, but this one is a little different. Yes, I know some of you know, but maybe not everybody knows that we held a Halloween horror fiction contest. We reached out to our fans and said, hey, scare us. That's right. Some of them did. Yeah. And hats off to you, my friend, because this was Josh's idea, and I think it was a great idea. And we got over 100 stories and 104. Yeah, and you guys ultimately decided in the bracket game, but I would have been happy with any of those 16 and strong entries. Yeah, they were probably even more than 16 because it wasn't easy to pick those 16. We got 104 entries that were qualified. I believe we had another maybe eight that were disqualified for 100 reasons. But I appreciate you taking your head off to me. I take my hat off to everybody who took the time to send their stuff. Agreed. Some people sent stuff they had sitting around. Other people whipped the stuff up just for us. And thank you to all of you who sent in a story. Yes, and we want to say that obviously, if you send us a story, we could tell by the caliber of the writing that we got that you are professional writers or aspiring to be professional writers. So if you publish a book, whether it's horror fiction, short stories, or whether it is a children's book or anything like that, we want to show our appreciation to you for entering the contest by saying, let us know, and we'll tell everybody about it on social media, on the podcast, whatever. And we can start that little courtesy now, Chuck, because one of the guys who made it to the Sweet 16, his name is Adam Prakt, and he submitted a story called framestory, which was awesome, and he went ahead and published it in a book. He's got a book called, appropriately enough, Frame Story. It's seven stories of Sci-Fi and fantasy, horror and humor. It's available in Kindle as a Kindle ebook. I think he's got pretty much every ebook covered. It's a mobi file, which means that you can use it on just about any ereader. You can go to Smashwords.com and find it. You can find it on Amazon, and you can find it as a print on demand paper book if you're not into that whole new fangled ereader thing@createspace.com. 402-3576 so, Adam Prax Frame Story, seven story collection, heck of a deal. And it's out there already. Wow, look at you. So I guess we'll explain quickly. We divided the story not by paragraph this time, but by style, because this story deals with a communique that someone is sending. And there is another part of the story where this man exists. And so I will be reading that. Josh will be reading the communique. Yeah. And I think that was a good way to do it. Oh, I agree. And that was your idea. So let's continue the pat on the back fest. And we should probably tell everybody what story we're reading. Yes, this is the winner of the Stuff You Should Know horror fiction contest. First ever. I would say inaugural, but that would indicate there's more to come. Yes. We haven't decided that. Yeah, and you technically should never say first annual. People say that a lot until there's a second year. It can't be annual. Right. You say inaugural. Oh, is that what the replacement is? Okay. Got you. It's a good point. But the winner is a guy named Brett S. Arnold. And Mr. Arnold submitted a story called Sign Forever and Ever, and we think it's awesome, and we're proud of one. Yes, agreed. Again, thank you to everybody who submitted your stories. You can go to the blogs at How Stuff Works.com and read all of the suite 16. They're still up there. They will be in perpetuity and leave some nice comments. Nice comments. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So let's read. All right. Henceforth here with here too, we read signed forever and ever by Brett S. Arnold. Edmund thought of holding his breath as another splinter formed in the window, the creaking of vessel under the pressure of well, what exactly was it brought to mind images of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea. And suddenly he was cold. Some people think all they're doing in death is returning to the sea. But no, he thought, that's too short sighted. He would be returning to the stars. For the moment, everything was stable. He exhaled and returned to his electronic courier. I never told you the truth because I didn't want to hurt you. But we're past that now. When she left, I was destroyed. I didn't know how to raise you. I feared you would be different without your mother. How would they treat you at school? What about when you were older? Her leaving hurt me too, of course, and very deeply. But it was you that I was worried about. Sarah, I want you to know I've thought about this every day since she left. I shouldn't have told you she died. That was wrong. Still, worse things have happened since, and I need you to know the real story. After she left, I found it was to chase down another man. It makes me sick to think about. Sick to my stomach. Who was he anyway? Some nobody. A drug dealer, whoever. It's a good thing he died, Sarah. Bad things happen to bad people. But that's still not the worst of it. He paused to look at the small crescent window, 26 inches thick out to the sun. The direct light heard his eyes, and when he closed them, he saw small purple streaks. When he rubbed them, there was another murmur from the vessel metal compressing in on itself, on him. The vessel turned on its end and threw him and his courier to the ground. He caught the edge of the bed frame he was sitting on and steadied himself. The vessel's course smoothed. The splinter in the window was longer now, with new, smaller splinters fracturing away from it like cobwebs. He was panting and out of breath. He picked the courier up from the floor and propped it against the dashboard. I love you, Sarah. I wish I had more time to say that to you right now. And back at home, too, when I heard that the man had died, I was at work, sitting at my desk, reading the newspaper about the problems the Mars colony was having and how the first settlers were facing more challenges than they'd expected. I received a message via post from your uncle. He said the man died from disease, a slow moving cancer whose long treatment bankrupted your mother and him. And then after she was coming back to the only place she knew. He studied his gray standard issue uniform with the red circular insignia and the numbers five two seven below. This far past the moon, communications other than electronic courier was impossible and even those took hours to transmit across the cosmos. He had sent one to Cape Canaveral 40 minutes prior, only to alert them that a red light on his dashboard titled Relay Valve was suddenly on, and he couldn't recall from his brief training what that meant. He was sure it was serious. There's no reason for me to be here, he thought, for anyone. The world isn't ending. There's no impending cataclysmic event, no threat to the species as a whole. It was just in case. That's how they praised it to him in training, just in case. He mulled the words over, angry. I don't know if she was going to try to contact us. I heard from a friend that she was staying at the Late Sleeper motel outside of town. I like to think that if you had been in my head then and heard everything I was thinking and experienced the rush, that you would have done the same thing I did and I wouldn't be here. But that's not how life works. I couldn't stand the thought of her meeting you after I raised you, or her asking to come back, or coming to take you away. That's when I took the lumber axe in the yard and drove to the motel and pushed your mother on the bed and laid the blade into her, missing the first time, but not the second or the third or fourth. I lost count. That night, I didn't sleep. I thought about what you would have done if you saw me when I came home and showered and grabbed your sheets from your bed and wrapped them around your mother in the back seat of our automobile and drove her to the lake and dumped her in on the north side, which was more shallow than I had thought. I watched the current move her body down to a small pocket of water lined with rocks that her clothes must have snagged on. A tree grew overhead. It was pretty in its own way. It was colder the next morning and overcast. I tried to ignore everything like I had done before. The vessel shook again, sending Edmund to the floor, his face hitting the side of the bunk he had been sitting on. From that perspective, he could almost make out the shape of the Milky Way in the landscape of lights now blinking on his dashboard, red and orange and yellow. He reached to study the sharp pain in his jaw with his left hand, but jolted when he made contact. He could barely move it, and when he did, he could hear a loud clicking sound against his eardrum. Probably broken, he thought. The blood ran thick, like half frozen water down his neck and chest, where it collected in pools in the folds of his uniform pants. He sat as quiet as possible and tried not to think about the window in its new splinters and fractures. The silence is good, he thought. Today's episode of Stuffy Shannon is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family, so they offer advanced, whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7, professional monitoring simply saves agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah, and SimpliSafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch. And SimpliSafe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes@simplisafe.com. Stuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to Simplisafecom stuff. 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 by the time I thought to move your mother before anyone else found her, it was too late. The sides of the river and all the shallow areas had frozen over in a matter of days. I came at night and discovered this. I tried kicking through the ice with my boot. I used the tire iron. Nothing. The second time I came within the day, I walked past the spot, never stopping, and looked in passing to see if I could see her, if she was still there. But the ice was like frosted glass. Every few minutes, a truck or some other vehicle would pass on the highway and I would crop low to the ground. I let a week go by and came back at night. I parked down the shoulder of the highway half a mile up, and walked back to the river with my flashlight off. I tested the ice of my boot again and walked out onto it. I laid my head against the ice and looked down for your mother. I couldn't see her. I put my ear to the ground as if testing for a coming train by listening to the tracks. But all I could hear was ice splintering in the distance, a low echoing sound. I turned the flashlight on and pointed it to where I left her. Beneath, I saw the faintest blur of her, the smooth edges of the structure of her face. Her white sweater was clear against the brown river bottom. Tiny air bubbles were frozen everywhere in the ice, but most of them seemed to be around her head, and I wondered what caused that. From then on, I came back. Every night I waited until a few hours before sunrise. I put my ear to the ground and listened to the shifting ice and I waited until I had seen no headlights for several minutes before I turned on the flashlight and pressed my face as close to the ice as possible, for as long as possible. The blue moonlight mixed with my yellow flashlight made her look green. It did not matter what color she was. I hardly recognized her after all those years anyway. I felt sick at home when the sun came up. But every night I went back, I think more than anything. I was waiting for spring, for the ice to melt. There was too much blood. He felt lightheaded and stood up and immediately fell back down. He felt short of breath. Outside his window. The red planet was bigger. He could see individual caverns in the details of ridges. The color was more vibrant where Earth was still so blue in the distance. He could now be sure first hand, and not by matter of faith, that there was no water where his vessel was heading. It would be nice, he thought, if he could fly the vessel far enough to at least make it into orbit or the red planet. He remembered setting benchmarks for himself, most of all as a young man, about his death. If I could only make it until Christmas and die the day after, if I have to, that would be best. Then Christmas would come and go, and he would think, if I have to die now, at least let it be after vacation, or at the very least during vacation, so I can go while looking at the beach or the cabin or the city lights. He ripped the sleeve off his standard issue uniform and held it firmly against his wound. The harder he pressed, the more it hurt. He put his full weight into it, eyes closed, sweating, thinking of the window. In September, before all of this, I received a letter thanking me for my application, etc. E and that, yes, I had been selected to join the second colonizing group of Mars. I had not decided if I would go with you. Going to college, it seemed like the right thing, a fit, a way to support us while you're away. I could not protect you anymore while you were away, but I couldn't do it. I took out loans I borrowed against the house. I would be there for you when you needed me. He reached for his wallet and took out a small picture he kept in one of the card pockets. He could not remember his daughter's eye color. He remembered when Sarah was four or five, his wife and him had a fight at a restaurant about what color her eyes were blue or green. The night ended with them being asked to leave and Sarah crying all the way home. Edmund didn't speak to his wife for a month. The photo was of her on her 17th birthday with two of her friends at her side. At the aquarium, but her eyes were too small to see. The color of a large blue tank with a school of silver fish filled the background. It felt trivial now, but also fundamentally basic. Any other father would know this answer and probably whispered it in their sleeve my daughter's eyes are but the answer didn't come. I didn't have hopes for the program, knowing they took a local geologist with my credentials, if you can even call them that. I'm guessing I was chosen because I could be spared. Older single men seem to get that wrap. The first wave of colonists was mostly hard laborers and criminals and their elected leaders. But all we were good for was bringing supplies. We had almost no training. These vessels fly themselves. I had only a passing interest. The forms were too easy to fill in and submit. I was told I would be taking part of the future of mankind, a planet for tomorrow when we needed yesterday. People never change. Humanity, that is, but as people, as individuals, too. It applies both ways. No one cared who we were, just that we were healthy and willing. I was still not committed in full, to go through with it. The slow hips began in the machinery somewhere beneath him, in the vessel. It was quiet at first, and louder. It stopped suddenly. The overhead light turned off. Edmund sat very still, his pulse visible from his jugular, the lights of his electronic courier illuminating his sweaty face. The air conditioning unit was no longer functional, and the absence of this white noise made the silence even more pronounced. He felt lightheaded. The vessel will not make it, he thought. I was going to leave town a few days before we were set to leave on our individual vessels. By then, spring was coming, and something changed my mind quickly. There was no moon at one of the nights I was visiting your mother. The ice had begun to thaw slowly over the past few nights, and I could make her out more clearly now. I had no plan for when the ice melted. I wanted to be there when it did, though, to move her out of there. I was looking at her then, brown skin and the deep cuts that exposed bone all around me. It was black and cold and completely silent. No cars passed. I was alone. A branch snapped somewhere near the shore. I was laying down and turned off the flashlight. Had I been followed? I waited, turned the flashlight on towards the sound source, but didn't see anything through the trees. I didn't want to leave the body there. The sounds could have been anything. I waited all night with my small pocket knife drawn. At first day break, I walked back to the automobile across the highway and drove home. I did not go to work that day or ever again. The next night, I returned. I made sure I was not followed. I wore black and felt stupid. The ice was thinner. I looked at your mother. The strands of her hair that were beginning to break free in the current sway back and forth. The next night I planned to bring a hammer and break through the ice and move her. The purple rings on her skin that formed just before I threw her in the lake were now black. I sat waiting in the silence for the first time. Without meaning to, I fell asleep on the ice. I awoke with a startle covered in cold sweat. Something didn't feel right. I turned the flashlight on and scanned the trees and saw nothing. Another branch or twig snapped under the weight of something I was too far away to see. I turned the flashlight off and another branch snapped closer than another. Then there was the sound of ice breaking on the shore like metal striking metal. I turned on the flashlight and pointed it at the sound like a spotlight. A thin woman in white stood looking at me, her eyes knee on yellow in the reflection. She was older and midstep on the ice coming toward me. I dropped the flashlight and ran across the lake in the other direction. I hit all night in the woods on the opposite end of the lake, completely separated from the highway. Had the body been found? When I finally got back to my automobile, I didn't know where to drive. I headed for home, turned around and drove through to Florida. I went straight to the mission base and waited to go to Mars. The vessel was quiet. Outside the window, the blackness was almost beautiful. He thought soon he would be part of it. I wanted you to know the story from me before anything happens and you hear about all this from someone else. You don't have to lie about it if you don't want to. You don't have to say anything about it. You won't hear from me again. I want you to know I don't understand any of this. There was never a plan. But I can tell you, and not many people get a chance like this to say it when they really need to. I love you. Signed forever and ever. Edmund. He directed his fingers across the glass surface of the electronic courier to hit send. One more thing. If you haven't decided for yourself yet, let's agree your eyes are blue. Is that okay with you? And the message was sent off to the blue planet, so far away from him his daughter would not receive the message for several hours. Even if she replied right away, he would never receive it. This he knew. He closed his eyes and thought about his actions leading up to this. He realized what he wrote to Sarah was true, that he didn't understand the meaning behind anything that had happened. He didn't want to. And if he didn't understand the past, he thought there was no way he could comprehend the present or the future. So he thought of nothing as the vessel rocked violently and a gasket was it a gasket broke in the dashboard and shot white smoke into the cabin. The vessel shook again and the glass window splintered. More and more. The fat lady sings. He thought it happened very quickly. There was immense pressure from within his body, pushing outward. His sight was accentuated with purples and blacks, his heart beating rapidly and then hard and slow. He could hear it in his eardrums. The wound on his chin reopened, and the last thing he saw before suffocating to death was his blood rushing out of the window and then floating in outer space in tiny red and possibly beautiful globules made magnificent by the unfiltered sunlight. Dying this way was, to his surprise, pleasurable. Way to go. Wow. That is a heck of a story. Signed forever and ever by Brett S. Arnold. Do you know what it read like to me? Was a graphic novel. Yeah. The way he wrote it. And I think some artists out there should get in touch with us to get in touch with him and make this in a graphic novel. That would be awesome. We could be Middlemen. Yeah, we got like a cut of that or something. Yeah. We'll call ourselves collectively colonel Tom Publishers. Right? Yeah, that's what they call herself. And that was awesome. That was great, man. There were plenty of other awesome stories, and they are published. You can go on to the blogs@howstepworks.com and look for read the horror fictioncontestee 16 here, I think. And yeah, I think you'll enjoy all of them. And then you can email us and be like, no, this should have been the winner, you're two idiots. Yes. I almost feel like I don't know. We don't even need to have another contest. We've got like 15 years worth of Halloween episodes. Yeah, we do. We do. So we'll see what happens next year. Maybe we'll even publish one or two of the others that didn't quite make it, including that one disqualified one that we like. That was good. Yeah. Well, in the meantime, everybody have a very safe and happy Halloween from Josh and Chuck the Great, all the people here@houseopeworks.com, and discovery in general. Today's episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family. So they offer advanced whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7 professional monitoring, Simply safe agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah. And SimpliSafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority 911 dispatch. And SimpliSafe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires, you can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at SimpliSafe. comStuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe.com stuff. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us, but first you should try us on Twitter at syskpodcast Facebook at facebook. Comstuffystemail. And then if we still don't respond, try the email at stuffpodcast@discovery.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 daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during play time, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health help. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | ||
c3e86892-5460-11e8-b38c-934ee860c7ea | SYSK Selects: Jellyfish - Even Cooler Than Octopi? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-jellyfish-even-cooler-than-octopi | Jellyfish are among the most adaptable, competitive organisms on the planet. They can grow back into their juvenile stage when resources are scarce, reproduce in massive groups and kill an adult human, among lots of other neat stuff. Learn all about em in this classic episode! | Jellyfish are among the most adaptable, competitive organisms on the planet. They can grow back into their juvenile stage when resources are scarce, reproduce in massive groups and kill an adult human, among lots of other neat stuff. Learn all about em in this classic episode! | Sat, 11 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=11, tm_isdst=0) | 50429803 | 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. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com. Hello, everyone. It's October 23, 2016. What? No. But this is Chuck from the future past telling you to listen to the select's pick for the week. Jellyfish colon even cooler than the octopi. You decide. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Oh, man. Let's start over. All right. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm jet lag still. I'm coming out of it for sure, but, yeah, I'm a little jet lag. I just was explaining off Mike, that my body is at 430 or five. Every morning says, Get up, dummy. It's ten. 1511. Yeah. And I go, no, it's not. It's dark. No, get up. Internal struggle. And it's a British voice, too. Get up. You need your beans and blood sausage and pork pies. How was that? Man, I want another one so bad, you know? Save that. Okay. My jet lag is not so much pronounced in the morning. It's just at 930 at night. I fall over wherever I'm standing or sitting. You're just like cooking in a walk, and you just fall face forward and face. You notice the burn face? Yeah. That's dangerous. Well, it hurt pretty bad because that walk grease gets pretty hot. It does walk. What is it, like, two walks still? Dude, are you kidding me? No. Entire continents of people walk. Oh, well, sure, but I guess I just imagine, like, wearing a tennis sweater tied around my neck. I didn't say fondue. I should have. Yeah, you're having a fondue party, right? Pot of boiling cheese. That's pretty seventy s. You know what? If you ever want a fondue pot because you think it'd be fun to have a fondue party, don't buy one new. Just go to Goodwill. Sure. You buy one for, like, $3. Yeah. You mean I have an unused one? Sure. Is it pea green? No, I don't know if I would cook out of a pea green anything. No. Yeah. All right. No, I wouldn't. Pea green refrigerator would need out of it. Pea green car. I just throw up anytime I want to go driving. I'll tell you what I am excited about, though. Jellyfish. Yeah. This is now officially my second favorite seafaring creature after octopus. Yes, for sure. Yeah. And this was close, too. Like, the jellyfish was really tugging at my heartstrings. Oh, really? Yeah, and the octopus just kept saying, you know what? Remember me? Remember the chromatophores? Watch this. Bam. That looks like something completely different. And then I remembered I was like, all right, octopus. You're right. Right. Jellyfish can't do that. I'm lucky to squirrel. Now. I'm a Roman soldier. Now I'm a cornucopia of vegetables and an oil painting. They are pretty cool. Yeah. But the jellyfish is really amazing. Yeah. The octopuses, though, they're doing it on purpose. The jellyfish just accidentally kind of stumbled backwards into awesomeness. Well, after 500 million years of practice, maybe 700 million. Yeah, we'll see. It's amazing. So when you're talking about jellyfish, a lot of people say, well, there's jellyfish that's jellyfish. That's a jellyfish. That lady walking down the street with a leash got a jellyfish on the end of it. Right. And you would say, jellyfish, jellyfish, comb, jelly dog. Right. Or weird cat lady who walks her cat. Yeah, that's unwholesome. That's as unwholesome as walking a jellyfish down the street on a leash. So there are such things as comb jellies, and there's jellyfish, and you out there who's lived maybe 1020 years on this planet or more, have probably seen them both, but it turns out that they look very similar. But as we're finding out, as we get deeper and deeper into using genetics to do taxonomy rather than our peepers, that doesn't necessarily mean they're related. And actually, there's some tremendous debate between just how closely related jellyfish and comb jellies are. Tremendous debate. Yes, we're very subdued. It depends on where you are among, like, 50 people. If you're in the jellyfish department of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I'll bet it gets nuts. Little vigorous. Yeah, they down some old English 40 malt liquor and argue and get out the brass knuckles about taxonomy. So the two philo, they are different. We're talking respectively for jellyfish and comb jellies. Nadaria and tenafra. Yeah. Nice. And there's seas before both of them are both silent, so it looks like centabytes in sephora. Yeah. Centimete. Yeah. What is that, a cinnabun? No, cena bites. They were the monsters in hellraiser. I thought it was, like, a cinnabon. That was in handy. Bite sized pieces. That's a cinebite. These are cenobites. Got you. Where did this research come from, by the way? Big shout out. Smithsonian. They have a site called the Ocean Portal. Amazing. That has all sorts of great stuff on it. Yeah, you can't go wrong with Smithsonian. That's their logo that forms the basis of this one. But I also want to give a huge shout out to another article I read a while back that I went back and reread. Actually, it's called they're taking over. And it was a New York Review Books article on it. Well, it reviewed a book on jellyfish. Yes. Specifically jellyfish blooms. Or when you see on the news, like, oh my gosh, there's 5000 jellyfish right here, right now. Right. Or 33,000 sq mi of jellyfish. But we'll get to that. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So there's jellyfish and comb jellies, and we don't know if they're related. They look a lot alike. Very much they seem related. So we're going to talk about both. Yes. Right. So let's talk about them, Chuck. All right, well, we'll start off with the body. They're kind of all body, both jellyfish and comb jellies, they have a lot of differences, but when you look under the hood, they have a lot of similarities, which is why you would expect when people use their peepers, they would just think, oh, yeah, of course, you're the same. Look at them. Yeah. Don't overthink it. Yeah. That was early science. Right? Don't overthink it. Yeah. So both of them have a couple of major cell layers, the external epidermis, and then the internal one called the gastrodermis. And in between those is what you think of as jellyfish. That's the mesoglia. Yes. Which is a great name for that. And it's the filling. Yeah. It's 95. And in fact, jellyfish and comb jellies are about 95%. Water. Yeah. Seawater, actually. Salt and water. They're basically made up of the sea I saw put somewhere. It's amazing. So they have basically one mouth where stuff goes in and comes out. It's like an oral anus, basically. Yeah. I don't even know if they refer to it as a mouth. Do they? Like, somewhere in this thing, didn't they call it literally like a body hole or something? Yeah, it's a pretty basic organism, but it does a lot of things. Yes. When you think of mouth, you just think eating. Not necessarily, hey, let's put some sperm and egg in there too. Right. It's like all purpose. Yeah. But they don't necessarily need a mouth for eating because apparently they can absorb nutrients, like, just through their skin. Yeah. So they don't have a stomach, they don't have intestines. Right. They don't have lungs. They're just, like, get in my skin nutrients. Yeah. And oxygen. And if you think about it, then they don't need lungs. No, they don't need a mouse. So they don't need to chew. All this stuff requires a lot of energy. They actually are extraordinarily efficient organisms. Sure. So they get a lot more energy out of the stuff that they take in than other things, which actually gives them a huge advantage, as we'll see later. So the outer cells, they have this epidermis, like we said, and it has what's called a nerve net, and it's just this net of nerves, literally. And that it's their nervous system, basically. And it's the most basic, I guess, brain like structure of any organism. On the planet of any multicellular organism. I guess that's right. And so, in the nerve net, not only does it have nerves, it also has some sort of specialized cells, like some that detect light, so they can know that they need to move away from that boat spotlight. Sure. And then some that tell them whether they're moving up or down or whether they're upside down. Yeah. Big dummies. That's a big one. You think about it. But I mean, like, that's if you don't have eyeballs. No, but this is the weird part, man. This is so disturbing to me. This is almost as disturbing as squid having beaks. Okay. Some types of jellies, box jellies in particular box jellyfish, have eyes. Yeah. They have retinas that's creepy lenses, but they don't have a brain. So scientists are like, how are you processing these images that you're clearly taking in and responding to? Like, we've shown you pictures of, like, Cheryl lad, and you gave a thumbs up, so obviously you can use these eyes, but how are you sorting these images? Yeah, they think it's that nerve ring, but they're not sure. Right. And that's a ring around concentration of nerves, basically, that they haven't figured out yet. But they think that's there and it's the secret. Right. I can't come up with a good analogy. There's a million of them out there, but I'm not still jet lagged, I guess you'll think of one. I just want to apologize to everybody because that could have been great. I was on the edge of my feet. So, comb jellies, they have a few things that the regular jelly does not have, most notably the comb. They're named for these cilia, these giant fuse cilia. There's eight rows up and down their bodies, and they basically are their ways of locomoting. They're like little bitty ores paddling around in the water. And there are other animals that do this, but the comb jelly is the largest one to do this and to use this kind of locomotion. Right. And it looks like a rainbow. If you look one up, you think it might be bioluminescent, but it's not. It's just light catching the cilia and scattering it. It's beautiful. Yeah, it is quite beautiful. But that's the thing that separates comb jellies from jellyfish, most pronouncedly. Right. Yeah. Because a lot of their activities and just the stuff that they do, it's fairly similar. The TV they watch. Yeah. But their means of locomotion are really the big, huge distinction. Yeah. A lot of the comb jellies have a single pair, just two tentacles, but it looks like more because they branch out. Right. And they use those, like, little fishing lines because they have sticky cells. Cola blast at the end. And this is different big time than jellyfish. They don't sting. No. They use glue. Yes. Which is pretty neat. So you won't be stung by a comb jelly. So just swim up and hug one. Yeah. They love it when you do that. So when you think of a jellyfish, like a true jelly is what they're called, you think of kind of this bell shaped, umbrella shaped thing with the tentacles hanging down. Yeah. Beautiful. And if it's a jellyfish, that's actually one of two forms that it will take in its lifetime. Yeah, right. That's the medusa form and it's the adult form. There's a juvenile form called a polyp. And depending on when it is in its life cycle, it will either be in medusa form or polyp form. Yeah. And we'll get into the more of the life cycle. But a polyp can end up becoming a medusa or just might be happy as a polyp and just stay as a polyp and create more medusa. Yeah. And the polyp looks like a plant. It looks like a little stalk attached to something. Usually the sand, or as we'll see, maybe an oil rig out in the middle of the ocean or something. Or share a lad. That's right, because she's a deep water dweller at this point. So it looks like a little plant, it looks like a little stalk and then the tentacles are blooming out of it. Almost like a flower. Yeah. Like anemone or something like that. Yeah. And sometimes you see them, many of them, together in a colony, you think, that's an amazing plant. It's actually a jelly. Yeah. Pretty cool. You would be able to tell if you poked it with your finger. That's right. So the size among jellies and comb jellies, some are just microscopic, others get pretty big. There's one called the lion's main jellyfish, which, on the whole, across the whole species, they are the largest jellyfish known to humankind. Did you see this thing? Yeah. It looks like photoshop when you see a scuba diver up next to one of them. Yeah, it definitely does. The bell actually gets to be 6ft wide. Yes. Unbelievable. Yeah. And the tentacles are like 49ft long, 50ft long. Yeah. And some get bigger than that, but that's the average size of one of those. It's pretty neat. Yeah. I mean, they're not to be feared, but swimming up to something that large and that kind of creepy looking is not for me. Yeah. That's all I'll say. That eats anything. It'll eat anything, like people? Yeah. No, it won't eat a person. I don't know if they were big enough, it might. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the various types. We'll start with nadaria, which is the jellyfish itself, not the comb. There are more than 10,000 species, and about 4000 or fewer actually are what we think of as the true jelly, the medusa that we know and love. And within that, there are quite a few different types. One of which is the schiff Azoa. And this is the most common true jellyfish that you can imagine. When you picture jellyfish in your mind, you're probably thinking of the Skiffozoa. Right. The hydrazoa are imposters. Well, they're the ones who they spend most of their time as polyps. Right. So the Skifozoa spend most of their time in the medusa phase. The hydrozoa are the ones that look like plants at the bottom and are just reproducing like mad. Right. And they actually can come together and create what are called colonial siphon, of course. And that's a Portuguese manavour. Yeah. Okay. So that is actually not a true jellyfish. It's actually a collection. It's a colony that comes together to act like one large organism. Right. Oh, wow. And it's made up of persons. So, like, there's the person that is in charge of digestion, there's the person that's in charge of catching prey. There's the person that's in charge of locomotion. And rather than these things being body parts, they're actually individual organisms that are genetically identical to one another because they all come from the same egg, but they're actually a colony. Does that make sense? Imagine if your organs were various actual organisms that came together to make you it's like the polyphonic spree of the ocean world. Exactly. It's amazing. That's exactly what I was driving at. Next up, we have the Cuba ZOA and that's you mentioned, the box jellyfish. They look like a box. It's more square looking. Those are the most dangerous ones. Yeah. They have the most potent venom, and it is serious stuff, not just of jellyfish. Of any animal on the planet, the sea wasp has the most powerful venom for humans, I should say the sea wasp. That just awesome sounding. Yeah. That sounds like something you want to avoid at all costs. Yeah. So these guys are the ones that have a more complex nervous system, that have the eyes right? Yeah. With the corneas and things. Yeah. So they're the most deadly, and they're looking at you. Yeah. They're saying, I'm coming for you. The star rozoa stalked jellyfishes, and they don't float. They actually like to cling on to things and attach to things, and they're mainly cold water, but you can fall kinds or not all kinds. You can find some kind of jellyfish in almost any kind of water, any kind of ocean water in the world. Well, not just that. Some thrive in freshwater. There's a type of jellyfish that is all over the Great Lakes. It was originally it's native to China, and they think that it was brought over originally from China to England in, like, a water lily shipment because it was first discovered in the west in, like, garden ponds, and it somehow made its way to the Great Lakes. Now, there's a freshwater jellyfish that's about, I think, the size of your thumbnail, depending on what size your thumbnail is in the Great Lakes, that's a jellyfish, and it's a true jellyfish. Wow. And we should say also with jellyfish locomotion, they don't use the cilia like a comb jellyfish does in medusa form, expand and contract the bell. Right. So beautiful. And I was reading I think it was a Scientific American or Popular Science, one of those two. I'll post it on the podcast page, but some researchers examined how jellyfish move, and they found that not only are they able to move when they expand and then contract in the resting motion of their bell, a vortex actually forms in the water above them and moves beneath them and moves them up that way. So they're constantly moving, but they're only exerting, like, half of the energy needed to move forward, to propel forward or upward. Right. So that's even one more way that they're incredibly efficient type of animal. Yeah. Without a brain, they're pretty smart. You know what I mean? Shall we take a break? Yeah. All right, we'll take a break, and we're going to come back and dive into the wonderful world of comb jellies. 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. 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All right, so we talked about just a few of the standard jellyfish. The comb jellies are way fewer species of the ten of fours. We're talking, I think, 10,000 for the other. This is about 100 to 150. Yeah. Not even $150,150. Yeah. But they're saying that it's possible that these are just the ones we are aware of because we've encountered them in coastal waters that may be way more in deep sea. Yes. They don't know much about those guys. Right, right. And the ones that are in deep sea that we've encountered tend to be so fragile that we can't collect them. Yeah. Because they're not tough. Because you don't have to put up with no, they're current and waves, and they just float out there, and you look at them too hard and they crumble. So one type of a comb jelly is sadipped, and they are all round. They're spherical or oval. They have those branch tentacles that we talked about. Those tentacles are a little unique and that they can actually draw them back into the body when it's cold. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. Really? No. Okay. So I believed it. Yeah. And they have, like, sheets on the sides of their mouths that it draws back into, which is pretty cool. Amazing. Yeah. Then there's lobates, which have lobes on the sides. Right. And that's about it. They have the lobes, and that's what they're known for. Yes. Baroids. These are kind of cool. These are the dudes that have no tentacles. So the way they eat is they have a big, big mouth that draws in a lot of stuff and then a very tight, almost zipper like thing that shuts, and then they can shut that mouth really hard and just mush all that stuff up. Well, they have cilia inside their mouths that act like teeth that pull their prey apart alive. Teeth? Teeth. Teeth. Yeah. Oh, man, that was weird. Jet lag. But the teeth just pick it like their prey and just pull them apart. It dissolves them basically mechanically. Amazing. Have you ever seen a video of the pelican who's just standing there and there's a pigeon, like, on the ground right in front of them, and all of a sudden the pelican just eats the pigeon. And the pigeon is like trying to get out of the pelican's huge mouth. No. And the pelicans just sitting there like nothing's happening. And then finally the pigeon stops moving. It is really disturbing. Wow. Because pelicans don't normally eat live pigeons. So it was like, there's something wrong with this pelican. Yeah, it was just like no remorse whatsoever. Yeah, it's a disconcerting video. Wow. Especially if you're a pigeon lover, which I'm not. Sound like I hate pigeons, but you don't want to see them get eaten by a pelican. Yeah, it's weird. That's totally strange. Where do you find this stuff? Just surround. So weird. I think Yumi showed me that one. Yeah, you guys always have a lot of weird videos at your fingertips. You and you me are just always talking about like, did you see the one where the pelican ate the pigeon? Yeah, I guess so. That's pretty neat. Sure. Comb jellies. Distribution wise, they are also all over the oceans. They do prefer a little warmer water though, but you can find them anywhere. Right. So we were talking earlier about the fact that they are from different phyla and that there's this drunken argument going on among scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium about how closely related they are. They used to all be described as Selenarata, which is hollow bellied oh yeah, makes sense. But they don't say that anymore. No, not in these pieces. Man. If you want to be ridiculed by your peers, call them that. But some people say their sister group, some people say no. They're not even that closely related to the debate. Rages on, I guess. Yup. So what's interesting is that we even know how long jellies have been around because they have no solid parts. Yeah. You'd think it'd be hard to find a fossil or no, they have gelatinous parts. They don't have any hardened parts that would be fossilized easily. But there have been some discoveries, some amazing discoveries of jellyfish and comb jellies from about 500 million years ago, I believe the oldest known specimens found. And there's this one found in Utah. Apparently Utah used to be a shallow inland sea and it had these jellyfish in it. And I guess something happened to this jellyfish. It was crushed by a rock impression something. A lot of pressure, I would think. But all of a sudden it just captured it because it's like a drawing of a jellyfish in a rock. It's amazing. And it's the oldest fossil and it's 500 million years old. So it was a pretty lucky find, actually, to find this jellyfish that should not have been fossilized, that was fossilized. So we do know that they're about 200 or 150,000,000 years older than fish. Fish weren't even around by then. And they think that possibly sea comb or sorry, comb jellies. Yeah, it's possible. They were the earliest animals to branch off even more, even earlier. Than sponges. Well, didn't they find that the jellyfish was the first animal in the sea that didn't just float along like a dummy, that actually used muscles to swim places? Yeah. And it was possible it was the comb jellies that did that. So it's possible the comb jellies branched off from the tree of life. So it's just one type of animal, then all of a sudden, there's a comb jelly. Right. What is this black magic you speak of? Right. And then maybe the jellyfish at some later point, branched off of the comb jelly. Right. Yeah. But either way, it would have been the comb jelly and or the jellyfish that were the first to say, we're going this way. Yeah. You guys are just floating around like a bunch of morons waiting for food to hit you. We're embarrassed for you. Well, speaking of food, they are all carnivorous and they eat, like you said, they'll eat anything. They love plankton, but they eat fish, they eat crustaceans. Some eat other jellyfish, which is disgusting. And those nematocysts and color blasts, the stingers, are the glue guns. They are good for defense. But there are 150 animals that also eat the jellies, fish and sea turtles. Yeah. The sunfish loves them. Leather back sea turtles love them. They journey to find them. Yeah, that's how much they love them. The Chinese. Yeah. They eat human beings eat jellyfish. Yeah. It's apparently a wedding delicacy in China. Oh, really? And has been for about 1500 years. Ours is catered salmon in Chicken marbella. Yes. 425,000 tons of jellyfish are caught each year in 15 countries, mainly in Southeast Asia is where they're eating these. Yeah. But I read that Georgia, our state of Georgia oh, wow. Has a commercial jellyfish fishery. Really? Yeah, big gems, jellies. You would eat preserved a moon chime. You totally eat jellyfish, wouldn't you? Sure, I would try it, yes. Apparently it's also served in Japan, too. It's salted, which would be good. I would try raw jellyfish and sushi or something like that. But I would guess that salted strips of jellyfish are probably vastly preferable. I'm not nearly as adventurous as you with my mouth and my stomach, but I might try jellyfish, even though I'm talking about how much I love it. Right. You just cry while you ate. Yeah, exactly. You were so beautiful one. Well, I would eat woolly mammoth. Oh, yeah? And you like them? You got to bring floss when you eat wooly mammoth, supposedly that does nothing. Have you heard about that? Oh, yeah. Then the new study says flossing is no good. Well, we talked about that. What they said it depends on who you talk to. Some people are saying, like, no, they just realize that no one's ever done a scientific study to back up that flossing is good for you. And other people are saying, like, no, they did some studies and found that it doesn't do anything, which. I cannot believe we either just talked about this, the last recording session, or we talked about it on stage. We probably talked about it on stage because it came out while we were in the UK. Okay. Yeah. All right. But the idea that getting rotting food out from between your teeth has no positive health benefits for you, it defies explanation. Agreed. It was on stage because I made a crack about missing my teeth. Oh, yeah, I remember. Now, as far as them feeding on other things, we talked about these tentacles that they have to capture prey and these nematocysts. It's amazing. Basically, they're described in the article as venom bearing harpoons. So what happens is there's a queue. It's either something has touched them or it's a chemical cue that something is around and they shoot out this little harpoon and within 700 nanoseconds, it spears the prey and releases a toxin. Yes. And it's frightening. Yeah. If you're a fish, you're in trouble. If you're another jellyfish, you're in trouble. Something smaller than that, you're just totally dead. And depending on the jellyfish, if you're a human being, you can die, as a matter of fact, too. Yes. We talk about that, dude. Yeah. So there's the sea wasp, obviously, which has the most toxic venom on Earth as far as humans are concerned. But then there's also another type of box jellyfish that are much tinier. I think they're about thumb sized or peanut sized. You don't even see these things. Or if you do see them and they brush against you, you're probably not even going to feel the sting that is so small. It's called irakanji. Yes. Which is an Aboriginal word for this type of jellyfish. Right. There's a dude in the Westerner who was like, what is with this jellyfish? I've heard weird things about it. I don't know much about it. I'm going to go out and let myself get stung by one. They get killed very easily by something at any given point. Australia. Yeah, exactly. Because they're the ones they've got the sea wasps, too, and they have to deal with the sea wash and these little guys, the ARU kanji. Is that how we agreed we were going to say it? Yeah. Irukandji irakanji. So this guy survived, but he not well. He had a hard time getting to the point where they're like, you're going to survive. Yeah. He was lucky to survive. Yeah. So you get a sting from one of these things, just a single tentacle, apparently, in about 20 to 30 minutes, what's called Irukandji syndrome starts to set in. Yeah. And you feel it in your lower back first, right? Yeah. And you don't know you've been stung, so you're just like, oh, man. Like, I tweaked my back out there in the ocean. And then things really start going south. Yes. Then you go and throw up your right kidney. Yeah. And the article, you said it feels like someone hits you with a baseball bat and your kidneys, and then comes to nausea and vomiting, which continues every minute or so for around 12 hours. Yeah. You get spasms in your arms and legs. Your blood pressure increases, your skin begins to creep. It's as if worms are burrowing through it. Yeah. I saw a video of a guy who was stung, and he said it felt like someone was pouring acid all over my body. Yeah. From just being brushed by this thumb sized, tiny little jellyfish. And then this is the creepiest thing to me. It says, victims are often gripped with a sense of impending doom and begged their doctors to kill them. Yeah. Can you imagine? And they're spreading their range. Actually, they found them off the coast of Florida. They found them off the coast of South Africa. Jeez. Yeah. So, yeah, they're not to be messed with. All right, so down with Iraqanji. Right. Have you ever heard that you should pee on somebody who's been stung by a jellyfish? I've seen Friends, so that's not true. Yeah, they've actually found that it could make it worse. Total myth. Yeah. But there's actually some science to it, right? Yeah. So if you get stung by a jellyfish, if it's tentacle hit you and you're stung by a nematocyst, there may be some leftover ones still attached to your arm, right? Yeah. And you want to get rid of those, but if you get rid of them, if you pour, see, just fresh water on them, you're going to trigger the little harpoons inside because they're held in place by a specific concentration of solutes. Right. So if you change that concentration by hitting it with fresh water, you're going to set them off seawater. Right. Use seawater, because they're held in check in seawater normally, so use seawater to wash it off, and then you take a credit card and scrape the rest of them off. But if you don't have your credit card on you, sure. If you're not but supposedly you're supposed to keep sand out of it, which is tough to do. I did the beach. I did it don't be dumb on it years back. Oh, really? Yeah. What did you do in the chair? All sorts of weird stuff. Do you remember? All right, well, getting back to the feeding, we covered the harpoon, the nematocyst of the jelly, but the comb jelly, like we talked about earlier, this is the nematocyst. They have the glue instead of the venom. Right. So what they do is they just send out that fishing line and release that sticky glue and it reels whatever it catches right on into the mouth. Pretty cool. Yeah. Like something being stuck toward the Death Star. Yeah, exactly. A tractor beam. You got caught in a tractor beam. Basically. Should we take a break? Oh, wait, there was one other thing. So, one type of comb jelly. This is so awesome. They actually eat true jellies. And then they take their nematocysts and use them for their own hunting. How so? Like, they absorb them and shoot them out in their tent. They save them? Yeah, they took them in their cheek for later. Can they get an unlimited supply of these? I don't know. I was curious if you could see one with, like 300 of them. Look how many I've eaten. Don't be a pig. Sure you spit some of those out. Now can we take a break? Yes. All right. By the way, we just satisfied that one listener because you rejected my break. Oh, yeah, that's true. How about that? Man a lie. All right, we'll be back and talk a little bit about defense. 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.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. 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 Afflack's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses, health insurance doesn't cover. Visit aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. So I promise. Talk of defense, these things you've probably seen jellyfish and comb jellies that produce light, this bioluminescence. Although when I said earlier, the comb jelly, when it looks colorful, that is not bioluminescence. They are still bioluminescent, just not in that way. Right. So confusing. They actually do produce light. They have these proteins that have a chemical reaction to produce blue and green light when something might touch it. Yeah. Like moon jellies are well known for this. Oh, yeah. And they're not exactly sure why, but they think that this could be a defensive mechanism to either scare someone trying to eat you by turning a light on in their face or turning a light on and attracting something larger to eat that thing. Right. Either way, they think it's defense. And then alternately, some jellyfish have camouflage. Actually not as good as the octopus. No, not at all. Okay. But I mean, obviously some are most are transparent. It's pretty good camouflage. Yeah. And then some of the deep sea ones are actually red. They produce a red pigment. And the red apparently is very difficult to see in deep water, which is like 200 meters or more. There's no light. Yeah. You'd think it would be black, but they say that the red is easier to produce than black. Exactly. So black would work. It's just you try making black pigment. You can't no red. And red is the same down there. Yes, it's all black. It's all the same. So some of them do that, and then others have just red pigment in their gut that if they eat a bioluminescent organism, it's not going to accidentally attract a predator to come check them out. Interesting. Yeah. See, this is really the octopus is threatened in my heart still a little bit, now that I'm talking about this. Again, it's unstable. We'll see. I'll give a final vote at the end. So to me, this is now we get to the most amazing part. Well, one of the most amazing parts about jelly's. Sexy time. Yeah. Which is not very sexy. No. Although it's like every kind of sex you can imagine jellyfish engage in. And not just different species like individuals. Sure. Some are hermaphroditic. Some are sexually divided. Yeah. Some are asexual. Yes. Some reproduce asexually. Sometimes in some species, like the moon jelly, I believe they'll all get together in one big mass and just start swapping sperms and eggs, spit them out of that mouth hole there. Get some boxed wine, the party's on. Put on Michael Bolton your house keys in a big wooden bowl. Right. There you have it. That's the jellyfish way. So the medusa that you know and love is the main true jelly they spawn. So what they do is they release a bunch of eggs and sperm into the open ocean a lot of times all together. And they do this from their mouth hole and take it in their mouth hole, and the sperm meets the egg. And that's how it happens. Yeah. Ideally, or in some kinds, the eggs stay in the mouth of the female, and the male just shoots sperm out into the water and the sperm finds their way into the mouth. It's the way to go. Yeah. Or they fertilize outside in the water, like you were saying. Yeah. And then in others, they don't even necessarily get together. Did the polyps yeah. A polyp will just be sitting there spewing out sperm or eggs gametes, like, all day long. One type spews out, like, 46,000 a day, every day, all the time. And then the whole idea is that eventually maybe it'll run into another gamete and fertilize out there. That's the comb jelly, actually. Oh, is that a comb that does that? Yeah. Okay. The polyps are the ones that are asexual, and they just bud and divide in half, basically, to produce a little identical buddy. And then that can stay a polyp or it can eventually become a medusa. Yeah. Because that's the thing. Like the polyp, it's a stage of the jellyfish life cycle. It can be. Which is it? Yeah, that's true. You can just stay a polyp or you can eventually become a medusa. Yes. And we didn't say that. Depending on the jellyfish, it might live for a few weeks or a year. Apparently, they do better in captivity and tend to live up to several years in captivity. Yeah, I get the idea. They're pretty fragile out there in the ocean. Yeah. But they can reproduce so frequently and so early on in their life cycle that they can populate an area very quickly, despite having a very short lifespan. And then in the polyp stage, some species can stay there for, well, basically almost indefinitely and just sit there and reproduce. There's a type of reproduction in the polyp stage where it's called strobilation. And the little polyp is sitting there just shooting off these little discs, ten to 15 at a time. And they found that depending on the temperature of the water and the warmer the water, the more they strollate, there'll be more and more jellyfish that they just kind of shoot off. Like this article put. It like shooting off clay pigeons. Yeah, right. And then each one just transforms into a medusa. Man, that's amazing. Yeah. Octopus. Yeah. It's in trouble. And then this is super cool. The turretopsis neutricula. It is basically immortal. It is a hydrozoan, and it can actually revert back to the polyp stage after the medusa stage through transdifferentiation and live forever, essentially, unless it gets killed, obviously, by something. And it is the only animal that anyone knows of that can do this. Yeah. Amazing. There's another type of territopsis, too, that when it dies, it disintegrates, but some cells, as it's decaying, come back and form another individual. Yeah. So it basically fertilizes itself using its dying body and regenerates. This is, like, forever. Yeah, it's tapped into the force. All right, so we talked earlier about these jellyfish blooms or outbreaks or plagues that forms. What else? That's it. Okay. It's great that these things are proliferating like other species that aren't, but it can get out of hand. It can interfere with people. It can interfere with machinery. At power plants on the coast cause power outages fisheries. They can get in the way. Where people are trying to fish for something else. They're getting their jellyfish. Yeah. And there's been examples of all this stuff happening over time. Like, they shut down the USS Ronald Reagan once, which is a nuclear powered warship, because a bunch of jellyfish got sucked up into the cooling system. They shut down power plants in India and Japan. In the Philippines, if there's a debate over whether comb, jellies and jellyfish are related, there's a huge debate over whether or not we're seeing a natural outcome of just jellyfish life cycles, blooms. Like, this is just happening. Yeah. Is this a normal thing or are we humans contributing to it? And if we humans are contributing to it, they basically say there's probably one of four ways that this is happening. Yeah. One of them is overfishing, basically, just less competition for food. They're eating this zooplankton, and if other fish that normally eat that aren't there, then the jellyfish like, sweet more for me than buffet open. Apparently, jellyfish are not known to go on diets. They just gorge themselves constantly. Really? Yeah. What else? Nutrients. Yeah. When we release fertilizers from cropland into areas where jellyfish live, we can cause algae blooms. Yeah. It runs off eventually into the sea. Yes. And it actually can deplete oxygen. So there's two things. One, you've got a bunch of zooplankton and phytoplankton, which well, I guess they're eating the zooplankton that jellyfish eat, right? Yeah. And then you have lower oxygen, which jellyfish can live in and survive in a lot more easily because, again, they have a much lower metabolism than most other organisms that they're competing for food with. So their competition, again, is dying off while they're just like, this is great. I'll just keep eating more all day. Thank you, humans, for putting all this nitrogen and phosphorus in the water. You started to get the idea why these things have been around for 500 to 700 million years. Yes. They can compete climate change with a warming ocean. Some of those jellies love it. Their embryos and larvae develop better and more quickly, so the populations grow more quickly. And a lot of them prefer that warmer water. So they say, Bring it on. Yeah. And like I said, there was at least one study that looked at how jellyfish reproduce in warmer water and also water that's of a higher acidity, which they're predicting through ocean acidification, which is the result of higher CO2 increases. And both of those suggest that jellyfish are going to do just fine under the climate change that we're facing. So cockroaches and jellyfish are the only things that are going to be around one day. Yeah. And then finally what they call ocean sprawl. We're building things out in the middle of the ocean now, drilling platforms and docks and oil platforms, hard structures. And jellyfish, the polyps especially, that we are talking about, that they attach to something sand or Cheryl Lads belly button is not the easiest thing to attach to. Oh, Cheryl Ladd was born without a belly button. It's a claim to think that was very insensitive of me. You just threw me there. Sorry. What they do love to attach to is something solid. So they love attaching onto the ocean sprawl and oil rigs and whatever else is out there, and they do very well attached to a firm not the Cheryl Ads belly button isn't firm. It's nonexistent. Certainly not an iron gerder. So there's this really great story about jellyfish and just how quickly they can take over, right. In the Black Sea, when a ship releases its cargo. Is it off the coast of Germany? Yeah. No, that's the north and the Baltic. Okay, don't try and screw me up here. Sorry. This is the Black Sea where they make caviar. Right. And actually, there are some entire national economies are based on things like caviar and sardines and anchovies and just all these amazing fish. Oh, wow. And this ship apparently took on some seawater after it released its cargo to keep itself stable. And when it got to the Black Sea, it released it. And one of the things it released was this type of jellyfish called the sea walnut. And this was in cute. So the first sea walnut makes its way into the Black Sea in 1982. In 2002, the total biomass of sea walnuts in the Black Sea, just the Black Sea, was ten times the total biomass of all the fish that were taken from the world's oceans by commercial fishing. Wow. It got jellyfied basically hospital. Yeah. And they were competing with the other fish for the zooplankton and the food source and winning big time. And so all these fisheries collapsed, all these economies are in trouble. And then it just so happened that some other ship had picked up a different type of jellyfish that actually was a natural predator of the sea walnut and came along and saved the day totally by a stroke. Of luck. The sea walnut cracker. Yeah. Wow. I did see that, actually. You sent me that. That's amazing. Yes. So it all worked out. Everything about jellyfish is amazing. Yeah. Final score for me. Octopus 100, jellyfish, 97. That is close. It is nice. Just one three pointer at the end. Could have won it, but it didn't. No, it rimmed out. So if you want to know more you got anything else? No. You want to know more about jellyfish and comb jellies and that kind of stuff, you can type those words into the search bar. Hastofworks.com. And since they said search bar, it's time for listener mail. That's right. It's 03:00 P.m., which means our bedtime is just in about four short hours. I actually tried to go to bed before my one year old daughter the other night. Yeah. And I said no. That's bad parenting. Sure, you put yourself to bed. Oh, wait. And she finally drifted off at 830. And I was out at 832. Nice. All right, I'm going to call this. You helped me get married. Hey, guys. I recently got married to my beautiful wife congratulations. With whom I've been with for over eight years. While the prospect of being married to her never frightened me at all, the thought of having to be in the center of attention, professing my love to my then fiance in front of all of our guests, and try not to look like a dummy during the ceremony was, how do you say? Nauseatingly? Frightening? Terrifying. Excuse me. Yeah. Steven was not a public speaker, I don't think. Got you. However, during the hours leading up to the ceremony, I kept my mind occupied by listening to the melodious tones of your voices teaching me about, well, some things I really don't remember. Honestly, I was a little occupied, so we were literally just like what is it called? ASMR. Yeah, just his tones. He didn't even know what we were talking about. It was just the sound of our voices soothed him. Which is very nice. Yeah, it is nice. Regardless, guys, everything ultimately went very well, and we are both now very happy to be together for good and to not have to plan a wedding again. Thank you for helping me get through the worst of my pre wedding anxiety. I was always going to say the worst day of my life at first, and for making such a terrific podcast. And that is Stephen Hall, who is a PhD candidate in pharmacology. Well, thanks a lot, Stephen. Congratulations. Send us some Xanax puppet in the mail. He's a candidate. A PhD candidate. He doesn't have access to that kind of stuff. Well, I guarantee you he won't be a candidate anymore if he starts sending us mailing people pharmaceutical. Give him his badge. Stevens almost in the chuck. If you want to get in touch with us for any reason whatsoever, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the web. Stuffyshow.com stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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. 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 the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How Gold Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-gold-works | Only 161,00 metric tons of gold has been mined in the entire history of the world. Considering about 85 percent of the precious mineral is recycled, there's a chance your jewelry may once have been part of an Incan headdress or Mycenaean face mask. Learn | Only 161,00 metric tons of gold has been mined in the entire history of the world. Considering about 85 percent of the precious mineral is recycled, there's a chance your jewelry may once have been part of an Incan headdress or Mycenaean face mask. Learn | Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:39:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=15, tm_min=39, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=31, tm_isdst=0) | 44107298 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworks. Comm. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be Chuck Bryant. We're doing this again. It's been a little while. Been a little while, but it's still stuff you should know. I thought the name had changed since we took our little Christmas break. Don't you remember our race to the patent office? The trademark again at the 11th hour. That was a good one. Boom. And they stamped it. Yeah. S-Y-S-K. Actually, they said S-N-S-K-S-Y-S-N is what we get from people a lot sometimes. And I'm like, no, it starts with a K, people. One of them does, yes. It's not stuff you should know. As you know, it doesn't make any sense. How are you doing? Oh, I'm great, man. Are you okay? Good. You want to do this one? We're talking about gold. Yeah, man. I've got a little bit of an intro. It might be a stretch. We'll find out. Okay, let's hear today's, January 15. Okay. Tomorrow's, January 16, fig Newton day. It is Fig Newton Day. And also on this day in history, in 378, the Mayan general Fire is born, conquered the Mayan city Takal, which was recently rediscovered. Okay, well, not recently. It's been rediscovered. They rediscovered a new one. And what this did was it enlarged the kingdom of King Spear Thrower owl. The Mayans had the best name. That's a great name. And all of this is going on in the heart of the Yucatan peninsula. If you went just a little to the north, you would run into another group of people called Aztecs, which were actually the Triple Federation is what they're really called. But if you were to stumble northward and run into the Aztec empire and ask for gold, what they would give you is what they would call excrement of the gods. Do you want to try to pronounce it? Yeah, I'm going to go with Teohu. I think that's pretty close. I think you may have done it, Chuck. The last part is Laudal. I love that language. It's similar to some of the native languages we heard in Guatemala. Just because they're Mayan. Yeah, exactly. But it's got that same, like I don't know, it's very staccato. It's kind of cool to hear, I think. Right. Like the Mayan city, the heart of King spear thrower. Owls empire is teotoi on. Right. Which sounds pretty close to that word, teo puillattle. Yeah. Which means excrement of the gods. And that's what the Aztecs considered gold. It was a holy metal, a very precious metal in every sense of the word. And by 378 Ad. They weren't the only ones to have loved gold for a very long time. No, egyptians were all over it. They thought it was also divine. Wait, hold on. How would you rate that? Intro. I would say that was on a scale of what, one to ten? I would say one to 20. Okay. One to 20. I would give it a solid like 16. Wow. Thanks, Chuck. Higher than you thought? Way higher. I thought I was going to get a ten. That's why I extended it 20. No. So the Egyptians, like I said, they also thought it was divine of the gods, indestructible. And they called it, I guess, nubb. Nub. And if you know of the African region in northeast Africa, Nubia, or if you're a fan of the rap group Brand Newbiens. Sure. You would have heard of this. I was, actually. Yeah, they were. And that name still holds a day because of the original Egyptian word for gold. And Africa, of course, has always been a major supplier of this stuff. Yeah. One of the first well, Nubia was, I guess, the first heavily mined area for gold. And then on the periodic table, the shorthand for gold is Au, which I've never understood until I realized that it's Latin. Right. Which makes a lot of sense. I thought it would be G-O-G-D. Right. Something like that. No, we had to go with the Latin Aurum, which means shining dawn. That's nice. Yeah. And we sell this to say that people have loved gold for a very, very long time. Can I drop one of the stats of the show for me? Right. When I saw this, I was like, chuck's going to say this is the fact. I think it's pretty good. I told Emily this last night and she was not as impressed as I would hope she would have been. Forever and ever, all the gold we've ever mined from the beginning of time is only 161,000 tons. Yeah. Which sounds like a lot. Yeah. That's a lot of gold. Right. For all of time. That's not a lot of gold. They compare it to something like aluminium. We get a 5.6 million tons a year in the United States alone of aluminum. And again, 161,000 tons of gold is all that's ever been mined. Yeah. And the secondary stat that comes later, which I'll go ahead and ruin now, is that 85% of all the gold we've ever found is still around. We've only lost or cannot account for 15% of the gold since the beginning of time. It's pretty good. That is pretty good. And it suggests two things that William Harris points out. One, that means that if you are wearing a piece of gold jewelry, it may have belonged to somebody else a very long time ago. And two, where exactly did they get that? Where are they getting these, like, gold masks and headpieces and stuff of melting the time and then melting down and reselling them? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's efficient and it's good because gold is really bad for the environment, as we'll see later on. Sure. But it's really recyclable, though. Yeah. It makes me wonder, like, how are they acquiring that? Yes. What is your wedding ring, sir? My wedding ring is platinum. Platinum. It's lovely, isn't it? It's very nice. What is yours? Oh, mine is, I think, titanium. It's very cheap. It's like $50. I could take a tooth out with that. I could. And this is actually my second one. I lost my first one inside of a turtle. Inside of a turtle? I have no idea where it is. Maybe it's inside of a turtle, but luckily, I had the old email, and I just sent the same order for the same ring, and boom, I'm married all over again. It's the second time. Did you guys have another mini ceremony? No, Emily's. Just like, you need to buy another. Damn right. Yeah. All right. So that's a lot of gold stats. And as I've been trying to hammer out people like gold for a really long time, let's talk about the history of gold, shall we? Speaking of hammering out, though, I knew it. One more cool little fact. Gold. 1oz of gold. 1oz of gold can be drawn out into a 50 miles wire or hammered into a sheet five millionths of an inch thick. So we'll get to all this, but it's not only a beautiful thing for jewelry, but it's super handy and malleable and chemically inert and all these great things you can do with gold. Yes. Because of its properties. It also makes it kind of ironic that the Egyptian is considered indestructible because it's one of the more malleable metals around. It's so malleable that it has almost no practical purposes as far as, like, hammering things go. Like, you make a gold hammer, you're dummy. All right, so element number 79. Let's get in it. Okay. So gold again, people go back to the Egyptians because they were the first ones to have, like, gold fever, but we've actually found evidence of gold being smith, I guess, during the transition from the Stone Age, the Neolithic Age, to the Bronze Age, which is the first Metal Age. Yeah. Before bronze even. Right. Some places that had easy access to gold, like Bulgaria, I believe, in 4000 BC, were already working with gold long before the Egyptians ever got their hands on it. Yeah. And the Egyptians, like you said, they really had an appetite for the stuff. Hieroglyphs. As early as 2600, Chad gold, and by 1500 BC, it was like currency, basically, in Egypt. Yeah, very much so. I don't know. Do they actually meant it as for its currency, the Egyptians? Yeah. I don't know if they meant to it. I don't think the minting came until the Greeks and Romans actually King Crossius, the ruler of ancient Lydia, which is a lost civilization, really? He was the first two mint gold currencies gold coins in widespread use in 640 BC. Wow. Okay. But it was the Greeks and then the Romans that really started to mint about 100 years later, though. Yeah. So that's a pretty nice jump on things he got. Yeah, he was like, hey, I like to look at this stuff. I'm going to put my face on it. Exactly. And you guys are going to use it. Yeah. By 550, the Greeks were doing it, and then the Romans, of course, with their more sophisticated ways, followed suit. The aureus coins, is that what they're called? Yeah, they produce millions of them. Those are the ones that they find, like, just some farmer in Devonshire. In England, we'll still find one will dig up, like, a chest filled with these things. Wow. Yeah, because the Romans were everywhere. They were, and they minted a lot of these coins. So as they're doing this, the same thing is going on about the same time in South America, because they have a lot of gold there as well. And what's it called? The Middle Sikon era? Yes. I couldn't tell if it was Sicon or CISAN. I bet it's CCAN Sizing. I bet it's not ad. 900 to 1100. And this is modern day Peru. There have been a lot of gold artifacts found in that region, so they were usually crazy, for sure. The Peruvians were crazy about the inka, like masks, ornaments, chalices, all that good stuff. And their specialty was hammering gold into sheets and, like, wrapping stuff in it. Oh, really? Like creating gold leaf. Interesting. Yeah, they were pretty good at that kind of thing. And then there's already a certain amount of gold fever over in Europe. I think the English minted their first gold coin in the mid 13th century. The same with the Florentine duket. Yeah, those were both about the middle of the 13th century. That's a popular coin. It was still is it among collectors? Sure. I like that. So there was people in Europe were exposed to gold. They like gold, they wanted gold over in Central and South America, over in Asia. They also had a thing for gold. But the Europeans were one of the first to say, hey, let's see where the edge of the earth is and if there's gold there. And one of the first people to do that was Marco Polo. And strangely, a lot of people hate Christopher Columbus or think he was one of the more evil characters in history, possibly rightfully so. But you can actually trace the infection that Columbus released, literally and metaphorically back to Marco Polo, because apparently there's evidence that Marco Polo directly inspired Christopher Columbus to set sail in search of gold. Yes. Growing up in history class, you always learned about the great explorers, and the more you learn about it, like the real histories, as you get older, the more you learn that many times they weren't just sailing upon the shore with a bouquet of flowers to deliver. Most of the time, I would say it was usually they were in conquer mode. Yeah. For one reason. To spread Christianity as the Spaniards really wanted to do. Yeah. That was the cover story. The cover story. But King Ferdinand in 1511 also sent word, quote, while you're there well, I added that part. While you're there, then start, quote, get gold humanely if you can, but at all hazards, get the gold. Right. So, I mean, that was definitely a charge. And thanks to the travels of Marco Polo, the book that he wrote, where he talked about palaces of silver and gold, people thought it was just like the streets were lined with this stuff. Right. In the New World. Imagine, though, if you were one of the conquistadors who started sailing west and you ran into the Maya or the Aztecs or the Inca, and you saw that they had all this gold. You would think, well, this is all very much true in this place. Gold city. Sure. So let's kill all these people and take their gold. And there was actually a famed gold city in El Dorado. Sure. That's what they're all looking for. Exactly. Like, everyone was looking for Eldorado. And apparently every time a concisted or would find a significant seam of gold, they found Eldorado and everybody else would come and it becomes like, a boom area. But of course, it was a mythical city, right? Yeah. It was just, like, legend. Yeah. And probably the closest thing to it, obviously not a city built of gold. Right. The closest thing to it is in Brazil in the minus jiree region. Okay. Minus jires. That looks good. Freaky Jurai's. Oh, we've been doing this, like, five years in. Our pronunciation is maybe even worse rather than better. Actually. We have a listener mail today where someone logs us just for taking a chance and being willing to be created. I'm corrected. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. I'll read that one at the end of this one. Yeah. That was in 1700 in Brazil. And there was a lot of gold there. And they were the largest gold producer. By 17th, 20 years, they became the world's largest gold producer because of this area. Using, of course, slave labor, paying for gold in sort of rudimentary ways. Yeah. Not good. No, we're not too far removed from that now. No. So on to America. North America, California, the Gold Rush. Like, the point here is that gold has rewritten history and how we form societies because of the search for gold. Yeah. It's like, spread people out over the world and intermixed and intermarried and inner did it. We have entire groups of people, ethnicities, who are the result of gold. Yeah. The gold rushes. Yeah. California gets a lot of press, obviously, because by the end of the first year of the gold rush, afterwards discovered in 1848, 5000 people were mining there. By the end of the second year, 40,000 people were mining there. But North Carolina actually was the first American gold rush. Yeah. And like you're saying, California gets all the attention. San Francisco 49 ers are named after the gold Rush. There was that great Scooby Doo episode with the minor 49 er. Remember him? Yes, I do. A scary guy. Yeah. When you think of Gold Rush, you think of California. Or I also think of Delaniga. He was in Georgia. Yeah. The mayor of Delonago was the one who said there's gold in them thar hills. Oh, really? Yeah. It was the mayor of DelanyA. I had no idea. His name was Todd something, I think. Have you ever painted up there in Daliana? I did that when I was a kid. Yeah. And it's fun if you're a little kid. Right. You think you're going to find a little gold fleck and be rich. Yeah. Or you just might find a little gold fleck. And if you do, you won't be rich. Yeah. You're going to find it doesn't buy you virtually anything. But you were saying North Carolina doesn't usually get much attention. And that was the first gold rush. Yeah, up until the 1830s. In fact, they supplied all of the domestic gold that was coined here at the US Mint in Philly. Came from North Carolina, or North Kakalaki, as we like to call it. Who calls it that? You never call that. Have you ever heard it called that? I have. There's a Tribe called Questong. Oh, really? I can't remember what it is, but somebody calls it North Cackleak and Compton. Check and check it out. No, I didn't make that up. I just wrapped you. Did you're, JT? So, yes, we talked about the gold rushes in the US. There was also a big one in Oz. Yes. We can't leave out our Aussie mates. No. Hello, Australia. Yeah, they're like, we got tons of gold. They're like it's so hot. I watched Mad Max the other day, by the way, all the way through the original. Yeah, that was good. It was. And it was I don't know, Road Warrior got most of the attention because it was bigger and more of an action adventure. But Mad Max was a really dark kind of revenge exploitation movie. Yeah, it's really good. Osploitation. Osploitation. So was that the one where the guys in the personal helicopter is that Road Warrior or Mad Max? That's Road Warrior. I don't think I've seen Mad Max then. It was when Mel Gibson was still a cop and there was this biker gang led by the tow cutter. And you know, when I was something cool. You know Justin, my friend. Yeah. His uncle was the toe cutter in Mad Max. Wow, man, I can't remember his name now. Uncle Toe Cutter. I didn't call him that's what it says in his Christmas stocking now. He just sends toes every year in a little card. Oh, man, I can't remember his name now. Uncle Toecutter. I think that's the better day. Yes, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So Australia has this huge gold brush in the, what, 1850s? Yes. Edward Hammond Hargrave found gold in New South Wales. Bam. Gold rush. A few years later, South Africa steps onto the scene. 1868, george harrison. He uncovered gold in south Africa. And how many contributions has that man made to humanity in 160 years? I mean, he wrote Here comes the sun. He discovered gold like, a hundred years before he was born. Not a hundred, but 100 years before he was famous. Right about the same time. About a full century. But down. South Africa is the leading gold producer in the world. Oh, today it is. Oh, wow. Followed by the United States. In the United States, nevada is the number one gold producer these days. You mean Nevada? Nevada. Okay. All right. So let's talk about how you get gold onto your finger. It's not as easy as you would think. Yeah. Well, it's at times rudimentary and at times a little more sophisticated, the whole process. Yeah. And complex, to say the least. Yeah. I mean, it really shows how much we want gold. Yes. It's sort of like fracking in a way, too. The one method. Yeah. All right, so what you got to do, you have to start by prospecting, which is the act of looking for gold. Right. And that's what you would call an old grizzled dude with a pack mule up in the hills in California. A prospector. Yeah. That's what you call a geologist who finds gold today, too. They're still called prospectors. And I guess the idea is that what are the prospects for finding gold? I'm sure that's where it came from. Right. Maybe to their prospect. That makes a lot of sense. I never thought about that. So, back in the day, there was a lot of luck involved, looking around for it basically where you think it might be. These days, it is way more precise. They have equipment that can tell you if there is likely gold there, and then well, here's the thing. There's gold everywhere, but it's just not concentrated enough to be worth mining. Yeah, that's an excellent point. In most cases, it's invisible, but it's still present in the soil. Isn't that crazy? Invisible gold and dirt and rocks? Yes. Or it's in gold slogger. That's crazy, too. It's like they're just throwing it away. Yes, throwing away. You're drinking it for a premium price. That's crazy. That's just gross. That was like a college thing. Oh, yeah. Give me a gold slogger. Goldslager jagermeister. Anything that sounded like, vaguely Germanic. That was a college thing. Meisterbrow right. So where they find gold in heaviest concentration is when they will say, all right, you know what? It's worth setting up a mining operation here. There may be other metals there, like silver, which is great. Yes. A lot of times gold is combined with silver in an ore, which I'm sure you're just like, okay, great. That's fine with me. That's twice the value, right? Well, not twice the value, but one in three quarters times the value. We could figure it out. So they drill down to obtain samples, analyze it, see if there's enough gold. If there is, they're going to set up a mining operation there. If not, they're going to move on and look at another place that they think they might have a lot of gold. Yeah. And then depending on how the gold is present in the area, there's basically two ways. One is the load deposit, which is combined with rocker ore, and it can be at the surface or underground. Yes. And with a load deposit, basically, you just want to blow things up. When you find gold like that, if it's at the surface, you're going to use what's called an open pit method, which is basically just drill a bunch of holes into the ore, the gold ore, put some explosives in there and blow it up and then haul the oar out. Yeah. Your goal here is just to make I mean, if they could load up that huge boulder and take it and do it neater somewhere else, they might. Right. But they're just trying to make smaller rocks. Excellent point for transport. Yeah. And then if it's underground, if the load is underground, they'll dig a shaft down to it and add it to go down to it. And this is a big shaft. I'm sure they go down to it and drill holes all the way through that or rock. And those holes are called stoves. And they pack those full of explosives and blow it up. So it's basically like the open pit method, but underground, because then they just truck that ore out and off to the extractor. That's right. If you're in Delanika, Georgia, or maybe at a river in Utah, why not why not give a Utah shout out? You might look for something called a placer deposit. And that is when you find the loose gold in a stream bed, the little flakes or the little chunks of little nuggets in a mountain stream or a beach. And this is where you would pan and you scoop it up in a pan and you shake it in the gold. A lot of water. Yeah, a lot of water. Because gold is more dense. So it's going to sink and collect at the bottom of the a little screen that separates everything. And now you got a little bit of gold, hopefully. And then the 6th graders are all very happy. That's right. Or I imagine if you were a prospector in California back in the day, you could do quite well as a planner. Yeah. You'd look around and be like, It's mine. It's my goal. All right. So then you have to extract it. That's the next step. Right. So you've got all these big rocks that you've blown up. Yes. I guess this is mostly the first couple of steps are from load deposits. You have a bunch of rocks. You put them on a conveyor belt, and they go into a machine that's appropriately called the crusher, which breaks the ore into gravel. Then you take that gravel and you put them into drums with a bunch of little steel balls, spin it around real quick, and the steel balls collide with that gravel, and they turn it into basically like a powder. And you add water to that powder. You form a slurry, add cyanide to that slurry and expose it to oxygen. And all of a sudden, you're starting to extract gold from ore. Yeah. The pulp. Basically the gold in the pulp dissolves with that chemical reaction, the cytinide and o two, and the little carbon in there, like tiny little carbon greens. Sure. And the gold is going to adhere to it. They like each other very much, so they're going to get together and party for a little while. Then you filter that and you have gold bearing carbon. At this point, still not pure gold. Right. So it's gold with carbon. Then you move that to something called a stripping vessel. They put another solution, a caustic solution to separate the gold from the carbon, have more filters to filter out the carbon. And so now you have actual gold bearing solution. But you're still not done. No, this is my favorite part. Yeah, this is pretty cool. It's called electro winning, which, thank God, Charlie, she never heard of this because this whole thing would be even more annoying. But you put gold into a cell with positive and negative terminals, pass an electrical current over it, and the gold separates from the carbon solution or the gold bearing solution, and is attracted to the negative terminal. So much so that I get the impression that basically becomes embedded in the negative terminal. Yeah. I kind of wondered, because the next step is to actually melt that negative terminal along with the gold. Right. And then you begin to separate the two. Basically, you pour off the negative terminal metal, maybe steel or something like that. Smelting, by the way. Right, exactly. And I thought smell was just melting. Yeah. Why did they add the S? Because it's not melting, it's smelting. Exactly. So when you pour off the steel, I guess maybe that comes off first, and then what you have left is relatively impure gold. But as close as you're going to get in the extracting process, you pour that into bars called dore bars, and then you ship them off to the refiner. Yes. And that's not the bar that you will see in diehard three. Oh, man. This is a more impure Doray bar. Right? Sure. Still nice to have one. Yeah, I'm sure. You can be like, look at me. That's right. Okay. And then you need to refine gold from that point once you have it in its purest impure form. Right. So imagine the process that we just went through. It was like, add this, subtract this, remove that, but add this, and then, like, the gold adhere to this, and let's burn the whole thing up until it gets melty. And still impure still has to be refined. So when refineries get gold dory bars, they also frequently, when you sell your gold to JD. Wentworth or whoever, they take all this gold scrap and send that off also to these refineries, which also serve as recycling centers, too. Basically. That's like the saddest shipment. Yeah. It's just full of people's lost hopes and dreams and memories, wedding rings and gold bracelets, anniversary bracelets, all just sent back to be melted down because of the economy. Yeah. So when they throw all this into the same pot, they add a little bit of soda ashe, a little bit of Borax, and honestly, what can't Borax do? And the soda ash and Borax basically filters out impurities. And then what you have left most of the time, and they use essay tests to figure out the purity. But you have about 99.9% pure gold, and that's usually what they stamp on the bar that they pour. And those bars are called ingots. Yeah. Those are the ones you'll see in Heist movies. Yes. And if you have ever seen Die Hard Three, and you see them loading up these ingots into big gym bags and then throwing them over their shoulder and running out, that is not possible because each one of those bars weighs \u00a327. So if you have 50 of those in a bag, like, Jeremy Irons might jeremy Irons is not a strong man. No, you're not going to throw that on your back, like, \u00a3300 of gold and go running up a bunch of stairs out of the New York where is it? The New York, the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Bank. Yeah. Supposedly there in Fort Knox is where they have all the gold. Yes. Emily was talking last night about that. She's like, well, that doesn't sound really safe to have all this gold in one place. I was like, well, that's why they say it's built like Fort Knox. It's, like, super secure. She's like, yeah, but what if some terrorists just bombed it? She was like, you could just bomb it and then sneak out of there with the gold. And I went, you just wrote diehard three. She was like, Is that what happened? That's exactly what happened. But I think she makes a good point. I was thinking last night, too, like, if we have all this gold, and if it is all there, just keeping it in two places. I don't know, it seems unusually, like, tempting fate. I think I agree with Emily. Yeah. $6 billion worth of gold at Fort Knox? No, my friend. Is that more now? Dude, so when Harris wrote this one, gold was 42.42 point 22. Right now, it's $1,667.0.49 an ounce. What? So. That means that if Fort Knox holds 147.3 millionOz of gold, the gold is worth $245.6 billion. Wow. Just sitting there in Fort Knox minute, he write this article, like 1935. No, I think gold went up that much in the last couple of years because of the economy. Everybody flocked to gold, demand increased, and so the price did so amazing to me, after all these years, gold is still, like people hoard it. Yeah, man. When gold prices are low, you're very smart to invest in gold because there's always going to be another economic downturn and the prices are always just going to skyrocket. You got a couple of angles in your closet. I have them strapped in my leg. That's why I have a limp. Is that what you walk funny? Yeah. All right. So during the refining stage, we should point out that a lot of times, because gold is so soft, pure gold is they will combine it with other metals to form alloys. And that's why you will get something like white gold, which is gold combined with nickel or silver or platium. Red gold is gold and copper. That's pretty. And I've never seen red gold on there. You've seen rose gold? Surely have, I sure, at all my fancy. I mean, it has just a slight pink hue to it. It's very pretty stuff. Yeah. I'm not big into gold, like, as far as jewelry I know, I'm with you. And then, of course, you have to talk about carriage, and that is how much gold is in the object compared to, like, silver, nickel or whatever else is in that alloy. And interestingly, different countries have different preferences here. You always hear about 14 carat gold in the United States, which is only 58.5% gold. Apparently, in India, they're partial to the 22 carat, which is 91.75% gold. And the Europeans like to take that middle road and hit 18 carats. Yeah. It's very strange. I don't understand what it is. I can understand price being a factor, but maybe it's very odd to me that cultures prefer it. So 24 carats is 100% gold, obviously. Yeah. Twelve carat is 50% gold. Yes. And about two thirds of all the gold is jewelry. Yeah. Which makes sense. Sure. And what's interesting about the jewelry is that it's still basically produced, as it has been for hundreds or thousands of years, using the same techniques, virtually the same tools. I mean, I'm sure they're manufactured much differently, but they are kind of the same thing. Yeah. And while jewelry accounts for what, you say, two thirds of all the golden used yeah, nearly two thirds. There's a lot of other pretty interesting uses for gold, too. Electronics use a lot of gold and a lot of other rare earth minerals, apparently. Gold is very conductive. It's more conductive than any metal except for copper and silver. But it has a leg up on copper and silver, and that it corrodes it's very difficult for gold to corrode. Yeah. So that means that if you want something that's going to last a very long time and be conductive, you might as well use some gold. So they do and things like processors and hard drives and that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, you might see gold on your headphone. Plug your headphone, jack might be gold plated. Because if it's higher end, they might use gold, conducts electricity and therefore sounds better. I have seen that. I just thought it was like fancy high end or something. Here's a cool stat. Because they use it so much in electronics and microelectronics, NASA used more than 40 gold in the construction of the space shuttle Columbia. Right. That's a pretty cool fact. Electronics. And they used it as a reflective surface. They use gold film. Remember, you can go into like a zero thin sheet. It's amazing. So it's light at that point, highly reflective, effective against radiation. So that's pretty awesome. You also use it for crowns? Yeah. They still use gold crowns, I guess, I imagine, because it's not reactive, because when things are reactive, especially with cooking, it'll make things taste terribly true. There was something called a fish fork, and it was made of silver. And apparently if you had this thing, it was like a status symbol or whatever in the Victorian era. But it also did have a practical use in that silver didn't react with lemon juice, which is often used to serve the fish, so it didn't affect the taste. I imagine that's probably one of the reasons why they use gold and crowns, right. So that everything doesn't just taste better because it's not reacting with anything, because it's chemically inert. That's a good point. Because you don't want to be eating something and think, oh, man, my new gold tooth makes this tilapia tastes like squid or poop tastes like squid. I don't know. That's not so bad. No, I like squid. But if you eat tilapia, you don't want to eat squid. Do you eat squid? Will you eat octopus? I'll eat all that stuff to a certain degree. Emily, when it comes to calamari, she will only eat the things that look like little onion rings. Right. As soon as it looks like the little miniature creature, she's like, that's for you. And I popped that in my mouth. I will eat both. I'll especially eat squid. You and me won't eat octopus because remember, one of our friends had a friend, they told us a story that their friend was a cook for some couple down in the Caribbean. And the couple caught an octopus and was going to cook it, or they gave it to their cook to cook, and the cook was going to put it in the pot alive, and the octopus was wrapping its tentacles around the woman like, please don't kill me. Oh, my God. And she said it was one of the worst things that ever happened to her, because she did it anyway, when you literally have to fight to put the animal to their desk. So that combined with, I think, being inspired to go research octopi and finding that they are very intelligent, I just can't eat those anymore, which is they pop up as a pretty delicious dishes, I imagine. But they're a very smart animal. I'm just going to eat them. Animals. Just stupid ones, right? Yeah. I could see that I would be traumatized. Oh, my God. Yeah. Because it was like, no. Yes. I would just walk slowly into the ocean until it released itself and swam away. Yeah. You'd be like the woodsman in Snow White. I don't know what happened to it. But then you start to walk back, and the octopus reaches up with one hand and holds your hand. It's like, I want to be your pet. I don't want to go back to the sea. Just don't cook me. Don't cook me. All right, where do we live? Off food and beverage. You can get it in gold slogger in certain jellies. Gold, by the way, not octopus. Yeah. And that's all just for marketing and making things look fantastic. It really is. They have, like, the world's most expensive Sunday or the world's most expensive salary. I've got gold flakes. It does. So much so that I think we've talked about this. They have another category for World's most expensive non gold, because it's like any smoke can spit out a hot dog and relish and then put gold flakes on it and be like, world's most expensive hot dog. Yeah. And that doesn't really count. Yeah. So then that means some of the gold that we've lost, that 15% has been pooped out. Yeah, I guess so. That's sad. Is it? I think so, since it's so limited in supply and bad for the environment to get well, I guess we should talk about that. Yeah, we probably should, because I was very surprised. I'd heard that gold was bad for the environment, but I didn't realize this. You want to tell one of the facts of the podcast? Yes. It is like most mining operations, not great for the environment. In order to get just 1oz of gold, you have to get out 250 tons of the rock and oar. Yeah. And a lot of times well, of course, just the cyanide, which is never great when you're introducing those kind of chemicals. No. And apparently they take this affluent, right? Yeah, we're affluent. And they dump it out in the ocean. Oh, really? Which probably affects octopi. It's like, hey, here's a bunch of cyanide water. I'm sure the ocean will eventually even things out, but for that local area where it gets dumped, that can't be good. Of course not. And that's why there's a group, a nonprofit called Earthworks. It runs a campaign called no Dirty Gold. Yeah. So I imagine if you have a gold wedding band and a blood diamond on your finger, then you're just like that's? A double whammy? Well, no. Hetric will be three. Not in this case. Okay. That's as good as you can get. Or as bad as it gets. So we should talk a little bit about gold. Although I think we should do a full podcast in the gold standard at some point. I know we've touched. I agree. At some point. Let's do that. But the gold standard, wasn't it, like, every dollar amount that you could print, there was a certain amount of gold that had to be in reserve that match that? Was that what it was? Yes, exactly. And if you had enough money, you could go up to the federal reserve and say, I want to catch this money out for gold. And they had to give it to you by federal law. And that was from 1900 to 1971. When didn't we just start putting more money than gold and said we should abandon the gold standard? Yeah. And I think when you detach your currency from gold, it becomes a fiat currency right to the whims of the market. I seem to remember discussing this in one of our econ podcasts way back when, maybe even audiobook, how the economy works. The superstguide to the economy. That's what it's called. It was a good one. So 236 tons of gold are being so called hoarded by people and governments. Is that all 236 tons? Yes, it seems like it's. If there was still 85% of the 161,000 tons, that doesn't seem like much. But it doesn't. It's a lot of jewelry being worn. Yeah, but they think there is actually gold out in outer space, and some of these big asteroids flying by that are chock full of minerals and other metals. There was a 1098, the near earth asteroid rendezvous spacecraft passed close enough to the asteroid arrows to actually send back data. And they think the arrows might have as much as 20 billion tons of gold, which would probably really drop the value of gold here on earth if anyone ever got their hands on that. How do you go about capturing an asteroid, I wonder? We did a podcast on asteroid mining, remember? Is that the same thing? Okay, that's what they would do. I retreat, then. We should just do that. Could do that. I thought it's Bruce Willis up with a lasso, a golden lasso riding a jackalope. Yeah. And attach it to the Jackalope's tail and write it back to earth. You got anything else? No, I don't. I have one more thing I want to recommend. Harris didn't mention this. One of the other really bad environmental impacts of gold is illegal gold mining. Apparently, Guiana has a lot of illegal gold mining. Oh, really? And one of the things that if you're an illegal underground gold miner, you're not going through this elaborate extraction and refining process. You are basically taking your ore and you're refining or extracting on site using mercury. Mercury is what they use. So there's not only a lot of illegal, horrible for the environment gold mining going on, there's also a lot of mercury mining and a lot of mercury like runoff. So there's mercury poisoning all over Guiana right now. Wow. And there's a really great article. It may have won a Pulitzer. I found it on Pulitzer.org, but it was originally in Harper's. That's where I read it. Gold guns and Garimperos. That is Garimpeiros, and it's by Damon Tabor. Good stuff. Awesome article. It's so engrossing. One of those that makes you want to not ever use cold for anything. It has that effect a little bit, but it's more just completely fascinating. Like, you can't believe that people are doing this. Wow. Yeah. And child labor, too. Right. Isn't that a big problem? I think that was part of it, but more, it's just you really risk death in these, like they call wildcat camps, these illegal gold mining operations, because, I mean, if some eye and the explosive in the mercury and the guns and people staking other people's claims, bad news. Wow. So there you go. Gold. If you want to learn more about gold, you can type that word into the handy search bar@houseetworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Josh. I'm going to call this the ten commandments of Chuck and Josh, although there's only eight, and this is from Professor Tom. Okay, guys, I teach a communications course at an area community college and universities. I often recommend your podcast in my classes, especially the students that seem to love learning but may have not been encouraged by family or friends. I'm hoping that they may pick up a few important life lessons from you guys, as well as interesting facts. Here are a few life lesson highlights that I think you guys display. Number one, normal guys can talk about something other than sports. True. Normal sports. Number two, good presentations begin with an attention getting introduction. Josh will tell you this is sometimes easier said than done. Yes. No, that's absolutely correct. If you don't know something, look it up. And if you're looking it up on the Internet, check more than one source. This guy is really paying attention to what we're doing. Yes. Learning involves mistakes. Number four, take a shot at pronouncing a new word, get it wrong, venture a guest, share new hypothesis. Then invite feedback, which is the important part. Guarantees. Number five, you don't have to make fun of people to be funny. If you absolutely must mock someone, mock yourself. And you're good at that. Number six, it's okay for guys to have a variety of emotions. There's nothing unmanly with being sensitive or expressing emotions other than anger. It's even healthy for guys to talk about their emotions. They like the new rosy cream. Yeah. Number seven, it's worth the effort to be respectful of others. Sometimes you have to stop yourself before you make an offhand joke, which we do. Sometimes you have to use a term that is more accurate or up to date, which we try and do. Sometimes you have to remember what it feels like to be seen as different and see if your language could be more inclusive or encouraging. Even if only one person in your audience notices the efforts, it's worth it, man. Is this my conscience writing? It number eight. Curiosity can last a lifetime. And that was the last one he said. Guys, there's a lot to be said for teaching by example. Whether you realize it or not, you're doing it every week. And he goes on with an interesting PS from Professor Tom. Yes. If you have my gay male friends and I got talking about your show, we tried to figure out which type you would be if you had been born gay. It was unanimous. Chuck is clearly a bear. If you have a gay brother, Chuck, I have a few friends who would like to meet him. I do have a brother, but he's not gay and he would not be a bear. He's prettier than me. He is very pretty. You would actually love my brother. Yeah, he's got great hair. I thought you guys would like knowing that you were being stereotyped by a bunch of gay guys standing around drinking beer at a bar called The Hole performing Stuff You Should Know. Podcast analysis. What a world. Thanks, Professor Tom. Yeah, that's a great email. That was a great email. We got to print that one out. Frame it. If you ever do analysis of Stuff you should Know, we want to hear what you've concluded. You can tweak to us. If it's a short conclusion at Syskpodcast, you can join us@facebook.com stuffyhennow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can join us on our website. Always the home of stuffychano that is Stuffysheanow.com. Hey, and don't forget to watch our TV show Science Channel Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. That's exactly right. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-04-04-sysk-composting-final.mp3 | Composting: Nature's Most Interesting Process | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/composting-natures-most-interesting-process | You may think composting is just a bunch of old banana peels rotting away into dirt but, friend, you're not looking closely enough. Inside that compost pile is a microcosmic universe doing some magical stuff. | You may think composting is just a bunch of old banana peels rotting away into dirt but, friend, you're not looking closely enough. Inside that compost pile is a microcosmic universe doing some magical stuff. | Tue, 04 Apr 2017 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=94, tm_isdst=0) | 49745599 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, you may have noticed this past Saturday, you got an extra episode of Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, that's right. It was not a mistake. What we decided to do here after nine plus years is maybe you don't know that we have 900 plus episodes, so we're going to start throwing out a I don't want to call it a rerun. Well, no, it's a hand selected curated episode by us. Yeah, a classic, if you will. But Josh will pick one out. I'll pick one out. It might be newsy. It might just be one of our favorites. And we're going to run those on Saturday. If you haven't heard it, check it out. If you have, we'd love for you to listen again. Sure. So check it out in your podcast feed. As simple as that. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuckworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh the Man Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and I think I neglected to say last time you did guest producer Noel is with us. That's right. So if you listen to the Shroud of Turin episode and you're like, man, that sounds great. Yeah, that was Noel. Thanks, Noel. This show today, I've been replaying one of my favorite Simpsons jokes ever. Over and over in my head. I laughed already just hearing The Simpsons joke. It was from one of the Halloween episodes when they did the Nightmare on Elm Street riff. This is old, old ones where Groundskeeper Willie was Freddie Krueger and he turned into, I think, like a shredder or a tractor or something and ran over people or something. Sure. And said, When I'm done, you're going to need to do a compost. Border dumb. Oh, wow. That is a bad joke. Yeah, it was really good. I mean, The Simpsons didn't get too punny, but that was a good one. Well, anything goes on a tree house before. Yeah. So there's a bunch of cities that have kind of gotten woke to the idea that we should be recycling or composting our food. Did you know that? Sure. I saw a stat that said something like, 40% of food gets wasted, but I got suspicious because I also saw that 40% of the stuff that goes to municipal landfills or trash is food waste, which doesn't necessarily mean it's wasted food, because I don't think you would count, like, a banana peel as food waste. Food waste waste. No, because the box, they're not counting food packaging is food waste. No, but I think they're counting everything that has to do with food that could conceivably be eaten as wasted food, which is not the same as food waste. Okay. The point is, the legitimate stat that I saw just about everywhere is that if you took all the garbage that the United States throws away into a landfill, 40% of that is food waste. And I'm sure some of it is a whole cake, some complete moron threw a whole cake away for no good reason. I was on a diet. Well, that's actually a pretty good reason, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. 40% of all that trash is food. The problem is, you might say, well, who cares? Trash decomposes. That's great. That's true. It does decompose. But in the landfills that the United States uses, we make sure they're anaerobic. Oxygen doesn't get down there. So a whole different decomposition process takes place. And in a landfill and anaerobic decomposition, methane is produced. And methane is bad news. Yes. Methane is something on the order of 70%. Worse. I know there's a much more scientific way to put it, but it's 70% better than carbon dioxide as far as greenhouse gases go. Yeah. 70% more potent. How about that? Yeah. Okay. So you don't want methane. If you have to choose between methane and carbon dioxide, you want to go with carbon dioxide. And it just so happens that if you compost food waste, mostly carbon dioxide is produced, methane is not. So if you're diverting this food waste from landfill, there's a whole bunch of different stuff you're doing. Number one, you're saving all that space for actual trash. So you're extending the life of your land. Sure. You're keeping all that methane from being produced. And as if it couldn't get any better, you are creating an amazing fertilizer that you can use. You could grow a tree out of a shoe. This fertilizer is so good. The old shoe tree. Sure. Yeah. We danced around this a lot. You just referenced our and I don't like to toot around horns a lot, but that landfills episode was great. Landfills. And don't forget the plasma incinerator one. Yeah, great. Basically any of our waste management ones are. Yeah. What else? I think guerrilla gardening. We touched on this and a couple of others. We've mentioned composting, and to the extent where I thought we had done one on composting, that's it. But we had not until about five and a half minutes ago. And that's a guess. So if you write and say, like, it was eight minutes, Chuck, you're grounded. So, like you mentioned, I don't think these numbers are accurate anymore, but we generate, let's just say, a lot of millions of tons, hundreds of millions of tons of trash. And about 25% to 30% of that is recovered through recycling, which includes composting, which is good. But that number, if it was 70%, would be amazing. Does that include composting, that recycling number? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If it'd be 70, that'd be great. Yeah. 90. Why not? Yes. Let's shoot for 90. Well, supposedly, Seattle itself has a goal of something like 60% to 70% of all of its trash being recycled by the end of the year. Of course they do, because Seattle does it. Right. And they actually have compulsory, mandatory composting. Now you have to compost if you live in the city of Seattle, why don't I live there? I don't know. I don't know. I ask myself that a lot. You know, Emily and I went for two shows ago on that lovely spring weekend. Oh, it was gorgeous. And we stayed extra in Seattle, and after we were like, we're moving here. That's it. It's a great town. I've said it before on the show, dogs and Bars. That was all it took. Dog, bartenders. But again, dog explain poker. Sure. Again, it's easy to fall in love with Seattle on a perfect weekend in April. Yeah, I hear it rains there a lot, though. I still live there. It's a great place. And you know what? You may see us again this year in Seattle. Tease. Tease. You're such a tease. All right, so composting is great for a thousand reasons, but one first and foremost is that it's not hard to do and it's not expensive to do. No. If you would just want to be. And there are many different levels of composting, from big city programs to the home farmer that takes it super seriously. If you just want to lessen the impact a little bit on your landfill, your local landfill, feel like you're doing the right thing and get a little bit of nutrient rich goodness fertilizer to use, you can have just a little, small, little composting operation going on at your house. Yeah. This is all you need. Organic waste. And we don't even mean something that is like, organic. We mean, like, organic, meaning it's composed mostly carbon. It was once alive at one point. Right? Yeah. And I made a poopy noise, which you can't use poop? No, that's night soil. That's the opposite of what I should have done. What's a banana sound? That's a banana sound, right. You need soil. You need water, air or oxygen. Right. So the organic waste is the stuff you're going to have broken down, which in this case, in the case of a compost pile is food. The soil, partially, sure, but no, it's food for the things that are in the soil. Yes. Right. It's an energy source. Yes. And nutrient source for what's in the soil. So you add soil. When you're adding soil, you're basically adding starter culture to the compost. What you're doing is grabbing microbes from, say, in your yard and putting them on the compost pile and say, Dinner is on, boys. They eat and poop. Yes, but you don't want to poop in it. You need a little bit of water, like you said, to keep it moist, but you don't want to keep it over wet because microbes like slightly moist soil and then air. Because, again, this is really important. You can let your compost pile degrade anaerobically, but it's going to produce methane, which is bad for the environment, bad for your neighbors, bad for your neighbors, bad for you. It's going to stink. It might blow up. Who knows? You don't want to smoke near what's called a passive compost pile. So you want to just introduce oxygen and all this sounds very complicated. It's not. It's hitting it with your hose. And by that I mean spraying water on it with your hose. I just realized you can hit with your hose, too. It's like turning it over. Right. The pitchfork to add oxygen. It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's really easy. So what you're going to end up with the end, like we said, is really fertilizer. But it's called humus. Don't call it hummus. No, that's different. That's two M, right? This has just one M. And those little microorganisms in there, they're going to break this stuff down. They're going to eat it. They're going to poop it out and they're going to multiply. And we'll talk about the critters a little more later. But they're going to be different critters along the way that eat those critters. Right. Then critters that eat those critters. And it's going to get really hot up in there. It might steam. Then it's going to cool back down. It's going to get smaller. And it's just like this little micro environment. It is really neat. There's actually a food web in there. There's a lot of physics and chemistry that's going on. It is very neat. I'm fascinated by it, too. But the upshot of composting is that you're taking something and it's being broken down into its constituent parts so that it can be reused by plants and the whole circle of life can start over again. Yeah, you're sort of just accelerating the natural process of rot. You're optimizing it. Yeah. Like you mentioned a passive composter, which is to say lazy hippies. You could just throw all that junk out of your window if you wanted, in a big pile and throw some grass clippings on and throw your fall leaves on there. Just leave it there. And that thing will eventually compost itself well again. It will produce methane. You'll blow up. Or you could turn it every now and then and maybe avoid that. No, I think that makes it an active pile. Well, slightly active pile then, right? I don't mean like every other day just to avoid methane maybe, but that would still technically be an active pile. It would be a poorly managed active pile. Yeah, slightly active. Poorly managed. I'm serious. That's what they call it. I know. Okay. We'd like to make up our own names for things. I didn't know you were going to cease that in year nine. I got you. Sorry. We'll call that the doobypile. Okay. No, it's called active management. I just wanted to make sure that we got it on the record. So the big goal here is to reduce your waste, they say in this article, ultimately will save you tax money because your landfill won't. I thought that was hilarious. Yes. I mean, don't count on seeing any tax breaks coming anytime soon. But that got William F. Buckley's attention. Probably. So how do you do this? Let's say you want to start composting. There's a 12345 step process to get this thing going. Okay, well, let's talk about them. The first thing you want to do is just pick out the place you want to do it, all right. Because it's a bit of a mess. It doesn't have to be, necessarily, but depending on your neighbors, they might be like, well, great, I'm glad you started an unsightly pile of kitchen rubbish and food waste I can see from my deck. Thanks a lot for that. So that's something you want to keep in consideration, apparently. Even if you do have a very well managed active pile, what would you call that? I'm not making that funny name no more joke. Ruined it. It still may stink here or there. Sure. So you want it kind of away from the house, but not so far away that if you're feeling lazy, you're not going to go out and tend to it on a daily or every other day lead basis. Yeah. And if you have that much land, you have a compost pile a mile from your house. Good for you. Yeah, sure. You got some acreage. There might be some local rules either from your HOA, heaven forbid if you have to belong to one of those, or maybe just your municipality might have rules and regulations. Yeah. So check with them first. Sure. That's what everyone does before they start a compost pile. They go down to City Hall and say, tell me the rules and regulations surrounding composting in my yard. I think the first thing everyone does is start throwing their eggshells out the window. Sure. That's how it always starts. Right. It's like, I'm tired of these things being in my trash. They recommend downwind because, like you said, it might stink a bit. Sun is good in a way, but you don't want it baking in the sun all day. No, because it'll dry it out. Remember, you want it to be kind of moist. Yes. And the sunlight can actually dry it out. Sure. So you want apparently the best place to put it is under a deciduous tree. Good spot. Yeah. Because in the wintertime, there's no leaves on the tree, so the sun is going to keep it warm when it's cold. But during summer, it's going to be shaded by the tree so it won't dry out. It's just perfect. It is. Deciduous tree equals love. Wind is good to provide little air, but you don't want it blowing, scattering the stuff all over the place, drying it out again. Right. No. Good. What else? Drainage. Don't start one in that old baby pool that you don't want to throw out, especially if your baby is in there. Yeah. You want good drainage. Generally, you either build a bin we'll talk about this stuff, actually, right now. But it's off the ground. Sure. It's on legs. Yeah. Although you can't have a pile. But generally you want to build a bin or buy a bin and those things sit off the ground because of drainage. That's part of it, for sure. Yeah. You also want dirt rather than say like a concrete pad or something like that. Yeah. Don't compost in your driveway. It's not a good idea. As far as structures go, like you said, you can go buy one. They're not very expensive from what I understand. Right. Yeah. It depends on the size. You can also say go buy some cinder blocks and build something like that. Sure. But basically you can cut compost structures into two. There's a single bin and there's a three bin system. So in the single bin system, you put new stuff on top, new banana peels. This is what I think of when I think composting banana peels. Sure. Yeah. You put new stuff on top and then you take a pitch fork or shovel or something like that and you'll you work it in to the compost and at the bottom of this structure, so it's open when you're walking up to it, the finished compost will accumulate at the bottom. And the reason it accumulates at the bottom is because it's a finer grain and that's it. Single bin, new stuff at the top, easy peasy. Stuff that's in process in the middle, stuff that's finished in the bottom. And it will just naturally kind of separate like that. Yeah. And when we're talking structure like that, if you want to build one, build a wood frame and it's like got chicken wire walls and a chicken wire bottom and that gives you the air. And if you've got something to collect it underneath, it's going to fall when it's small enough. Right. Some other stuff might fall. You may need to add it back in. Yes. But with the three bin system, you've got three bins, you've got the starter stuff once it starts to break down, a little stuff, and then you have the more finished product. Right. And you have to actively manage that system. Yeah. That system sounds unnecessarily difficult. Kind of like it. Oh, you're a three bin guy. Well, we're about to get into this for real. We've been lazily composting for a while, but we're doing our whole backyard. We're getting rid of our grass, basically. Oh yeah. 100% of it. What are you going to do? Compost mulch and beds and plants and herbs. There escapes, cacti and all that. No cacti. We do have a palm tree. We've had that forever though. Yeah. Just getting rid of the grass, basically, because it takes up so much water. It's not good grass to begin with and I'm not the best about cutting it. Lawn mowers are terrible. Plus you don't water enough. You never let a quarter inch of water accumulate. Exactly. Yeah. It'll look nicer. So part of this and this company that's doing it is not just a landscaping company. They're a bunch of hippies. I got you. So they're designing it in such a way that it feeds itself. And part of that is composting. Got you. Anyway, long way of saying we're going to start for real composting very shortly. And you're going with the three bin structure? I don't know. I think I'm going to build it. Well, it's the structure Emily tells me to build. Okay. It's the easiest way to say it. Got you. Yeah, but if you buy one, like you were saying, there's all different kinds. Just look it up online or go to a hardware store, and many of them will look like a big barrel on legs, and it literally turns, like, has a crank on it to where you can turn this thing in circles. It's old timing, so you don't have to use a pitchfork at all. Right. You don't have to must your hands or your hair. It's like a bingo spinner, but with banana pitch. Have you ever played bingo, like legit bingo in a room with hundreds of people? Not hundreds. Well, more than, like, you and you're. Me? Yes. Like a bingo parlor. Is that what they're called? Yeah, I've actually gone to a couple of senior retirement homes and helped out with bingo. Well, and that's a pretty cool experience, actually, because do you run the bingo? You just play qualified to run the bingo? Just walk around and point out if somebody missed one, that they were called, that kind of thing. But did you want to talk about taking it seriously? Do they? Oh, my god. And then you have to be a certified bingo master to run the show. Yeah. And they'll tell you to hurry up and shout if you're not loud enough or fast enough or going too fast. So the point is not to have fun. No, the point is to win. Wow. What do they win? Their prizes? Yeah. Nothing much, usually. But you can I think you can play bingo in casinos for thousands and thousands of dollars. Yeah, usually old folks homes, they don't sure. There's not thousands of dollars prizes. Like honey bunny. Right. Exactly. All right, well, let's take a break here after we have talked structure and we'll talk a little bit about what kind of junk you want to throw in that pile. 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 so we're talking what you want to throw in the pile, right? You got your bin, either a triple three banger, got your site, or single, you got your site. You bribed your neighbor to look the other way. Bribed your neighbor? Exactly. You bought a goat. Oh, man, talk about green living. My neighbor has goats now, like, five of them. Are they loud? No. Oh, that's great. Every once in a while I hear them, but it's a joy to hear. So it's not like a rooster. Do you wake up and look out and say, Morning, Satan? No. Well, goat is one of my favorites, so it's kind of nice to have them around. Are they baby goats or adult goats? No, they're big ones. I mean, she got them to maintain the property because she was tired of cutting. I guess she did want to zeroscape it, so she bought goats. Right. Anyway, it's awesome. Kitchen waste. Josh that's what you want to throw in there? Well, yeah, that's the first one. That's the one that everybody says, that's why you compost, right? Yeah. And yeah. Banana peels. Everybody knows that. But did you also know you can compost apple cores and orange rinds? You can also eat apple cores. Yeah. You believe there is no such thing as a core, right? Yes. Because there's not saying people who leave their apple cores left over. They can compost those things. Those are the easy ones. You can also do coffee grounds. Yeah, that's a good one. Paper filters. Throw that filter and all in there. Okay. So let's just say I ate maybe a whole pizza to myself. I've got a couple of napkins lodged up. What do I do with those? Chuck I think you can throw those napkins in there. Josh yes. Isn't that crazy? It is crazy. Newspaper. Yes. Corn cobs. If you still read the newspaper, if you get your news on the Internet, throw your laptop in there. Watermelon, rice. Yeah. Seeds, leaves, the butt end of the asparagus that no one cooks that junk in there. You can also do yard waste, too. Sure. Right. So you've got grass clippings, which we'll talk about in a second. We got a couple of warnings as far as grass clippings goes. Not too much, but, like, let's say you're raking leaves or something like that. There's some leads on there. Yeah. Good, crunchy brown ones. And you can also throw, like, trimmings from shrubs if you trim your woody shrubs. Okay. The key here is this, Chuck. You want to cut all this stuff up in small bits. Yeah. Don't throw a whole corn cobb in there. You can no your compost pile. Just throw it right back out. Yeah, it'll just spit it right back out. Right. It's very funny. It'll make a burping noise. Yeah. They say to shred the corn cob. I don't have a corn cob. Shredder. I don't either. I've never thought about that. I wouldn't waste my blender blade on chopping up corn cups. I think the point is breaking into little pieces. Sure. You can break it into little pieces, though. Yeah. You probably cut a corn cup up. Yeah. And you can take all this stuff and chop it. Anything you can put in a smaller pieces, the better, because as we'll see, what you're really doing is you're not just breaking it up. You have to look at it like what you're doing is increasing the surface area the more microbes can work on it at once. Yes. I know you hate broccoli, but I hate broccoli. You cut the little florets off and you've got that big green broccoli stalk. Cut the thing up as small as you can. Set it on fire. You have patience for. And throw that junk in there. Yeah. Basically channel your inner anal chef. Do you remember him? The anal chef? Yeah. Is that a real thing? Yeah. Live Bill Hartman. No, I don't remember the anal retain of chef. Oh, okay. I forgot the retainer part. Yeah, I remember the qualifier. I don't get that joke. Mommy, remember the anal retentive chef? Yeah, I do remember that. Now, if he was dicing, like, green peppers and one of them was bigger than the rest, he'd just be like, okay, well, you want to take those chunks, and you want to put them into a paper towel. And then you want to fold that up. And then you put that into some aluminum foil. You fold that up and you put that in a paper bag and you roll it up, and then you staple it, and then you throw it away. Boy, man, what a lot of that was. Still makes me sad. So you mentioned newspaper earlier. If you live near the ocean and you've got your hands on some seaweed or some kelp, you can rinse that stuff off. Right. So you don't want all that salt content in there. No, but it's really good and nutrient rich. If you rent that off and put it in your compost pile yeah. And it's also good for you to eat, too. I know I sound nuts, but just eat that stuff. What do you mean? People good for you? Yeah, salt dust. You know I eat that. No, but, like, I'm building my compost bin. I can put that sawdust back in it. How about that? Yeah, pretty neat circle of life, baby. What should not you compost? Night soil. Which is poopy soil. Yes, poop cat. You don't go take a big dump of dumpsters file. No, I know you want to. No, that's not good. No. Disease garden plants. That's a big one. Yeah. Some of this stuff, though, as we'll find, doesn't quite make sense. But it's just good to err on the side of garbage in, garbage out. Except with compost, if you put garbage garbage in, then it's going to be really bad. If you put good, healthy garbage in, it's going to come out is quite good. So you don't want to put any disease plants in there. Invasive weeds are another one, too. Yeah, but it says you can also put weeds in there. So I guess you just need to figure out which ones are the bad ones. Yeah. So this specifically calls out buttercups, Morning Glory and quack grass. I'm quite sure that there's plenty of seeds that wouldn't survive the composting process, but apparently these two. So stay away from the quack grass. Yeah, I think that was the big mantra of Woodstock. Sure. It's a gateway drug. Don't have the yellow sunshine or the quack grass. It was the brown acid. Brown acid, which I mean, who wants brown acid? And what about you're talking about kitchen stuff? What about meat and dairy? Oh, okay, that's controversial. It is, because Emily has taken classes and they were like, no, don't use any of that. Yeah, that's like animal cells and fats in particular, they putrefy. They don't decompose and putrefaction makes them stinky stuff. And I think it can also generate a lot of disease bearing pathogens. So I was surprised to see this article say, put it in there. Well, and they kind of said in this article, if you're really heavily managing this thing, you can do it. But I don't know. I just don't they said turn it into a slurry, which is gross. I don't want to see Freud and Rich's blender at home. The steak fat slurry with corn cobb leavings on it. But he said whip it up into a slurry, and as long as it's a good, hot, actively managed pile, it won't be a problem. I'm going to go ahead and say, I don't think you should do that. Okay. I don't know what to do with the animal leavings, but I don't think you should compost it. All right. It might make sense to you to say, hey, I have an outdoor fire pit. I bet that would be great in my composter. No, incorrect. Although this specifically says charcoal ashes. I think that's any kind of charred ashes yeah, like burnt wood is called charcoal. So are you sure? Because I know what you just said was true, but supposedly the entire Amazon basin, and I learned this from the Greatest Book of All Time, 1491 by Charles C. Mann. The entire Amazon basin was a managed. Forest that the indigenous peoples down there had made completely fertile and feacant by instead of slash and burn, they were using slash and char techniques. And there was way more carbon locked into the charred tree stumps and there was the ashes, so it became more fertile. So I have a question about that one. You know, I'm going to back off of my determined stance because, I don't know, it would make sense if it was coal charcoal briquettes because they have cement and all sorts of chemicals and junk in them. But if it's charred wood or wood ash, I wonder. All right, well, somebody let us know. Chelsea Mann, tell us the pesticide treated plants. You know my stance on pesticides, period. Sure, don't use them. But if you do, definitely don't put that stuff in there because your whole thing here is you want a more or less organic compost pile right in the end. And so one of the things that people love about composting is it actually is organic. And we're going to explain how I didn't know this until we did this research, but we'll explain how because we're going to go through the process that your compost pile undergoes 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 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. Alright. I did something we rarely do, which is look something up as we're podcasting because it just sounded lazy to be like, oh, we don't know this one. Gardens alive.com says wood ashes are so strongly alkaline that it doesn't take a lot to upset the balance in the pile and stop the processing. You can add a very small amount of wood ash from your fireplace or wood burning stove, but apparently not much. Okay, I think you're kind of right in that it's not completely foreboding. Right. But it sounds like too much is not a good thing. I think that's what Freudian roots are. Saying, like, don't even mess with it, okay? Bother. Put in animal fats instead. Well, and that's what the person from Gardens Alive was saying, is it's so little that it's not really going to make a difference? And if you're trying to get rid of it in a different way right. She's like, It's not really going to matter. But it raises a great question, Chuck. Why in the name of all things holy, would it matter what the alkalinity is of your compost pile? And I'll tell you why. It's a chemistry experiment. It is. It's a chemistry experiment, but it's also a biological experiment. You have a microcosm growing there, and there's actually really easy things you can do to optimize this and basically create a zanadu paradise for the microbes and primary and secondary and tertiary consumers of this stuff that you're putting in there to break down so that they just have the greatest life that any invertebrate or microbe ever had. All right, should we talk chemistry a bit and come back to just the management and stuff? All right. What you're really talking about here, for an ideal composting scene, you need a disco ball, right. And you need a proper CN ratio, which is carbon to nitrogen ratio. And depending on how wonky you want to get if you want to start measuring things, you can do that. But from what I gather, just try and do a lot to a little about 30 to one carbon to nitrogen. Right. And eyeball it. And the rule of thumb is this if it's green and recently deceased and by green, like, a nice banana peel would qualify as this. Right. Pliable and green, or, again, recently deceased, it is high in nitrogen. Right. If it's brown and dried, it's high in carbon. So you want to actually, when you're adding the compost, you want to just kind of layer this stuff in about those ratios, 30 to one. And there's actually tables like, if you're big time into this, there are tables out there that tell you just about exactly the carbon and nitrogen ratio in each individual thing. But what we said earlier, you want to avoid grass clippings. This is why. Because they're too high in nitrogen. Right. And what happens when you have too much nitrogen? It's bad. Right. It makes your pile stinky. Yeah. Is that where the methane starts creeping in that actually leads to ammonia gas. Okay. Right. But you also don't want too much carbon either, Chuck. Yeah, because carbon and nitrogen carbon is like the building block, and it's an energy source for these microbes. Nitrogen is essential to their growth and their metabolic activity as well. But when they have this in these concentrations, that's when they flourish. Yeah. And the other problem with carbon, too, is just that it breaks down so slowly. Well, it depends on the source. Yeah, that's true, but generally, a lot of the carbon sources, like newspaper and corn cobb and stuff like that. It's just a much slower process. Right. So, like, they have much tougher structural support in their cells. They have structural integrity. Exactly. They need to have a good saying. That rhymes. If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. Sure. I thought you were heading toward that. I was just kind of, like, on the edge of my seat. No, like, if it's green, I walked right past it. It's brown. Maybe there is one that we don't know. Or maybe someone can write one. Like a creative listener. I'd love to hear. I'll bet we get a bunch of those. All right. Oxygen. If you're talking if we're talking ratios. And again, you can walk out as much as possible. But the good news is about your compost piles, it's not like it needs to be like the oxygen that you need walking around to breathe, which is, I think, 21% in the atmosphere. Yeah, that's what we have going on. It can get by these aerobic microbes as low as 5%. Yeah, that's cutting it close. That's cutting it close. They say try to hover somewhere around 10% or up. Right. How do you measure that? You don't. You just aerate your pile, and it's fine by either turning it or you can do hold PVC. And I guess it brings us kind of to the management part. Sure. You don't just sit there unless you want to have a totally past a pile. And who wants that? You have to manage this thing either every day or every other day. Turn it like we were saying. Sure. Either with the little crank, if you got a handy little barrel unit, or with a pitch fork, or they call it a composting fork in here. It's pretty fancy. Probably the same thing. It's the same thing as a pitchfork, except, like, $50 more. You want to water it some. But again, do you want to give watering advice? You don't want it for me. You don't want it to be soaking wet. No, you want it to be moist. Yeah, damp. People hate that word. So we'll say damp. And again, I mentioned the perforated PVC pipes. That can help. It says you can avoid turning it by having those pipes. I would still turn it. I would, too, just to mix it up. Right? Yeah, but putting PVC pipes throughout your pile would make it really difficult to turn. Well, you can pull them out. I guess you could, but getting them back in is a real pain. You can stick them back in. Another way to get to introduce oxygen is earthworms. Oh, man. This is where I go crazy. Oh, yeah. We have a lot of worms on our property because there's a lot of worms in Georgia. Yeah. We did a great episode on Earthworms, remember? Yeah. And every time I find them, I pick them up, I show them to Emily, and she immediately says, throw it in the garden. Sure. And that's because we weren't composting heavily. Now it's going to be throwing in the compost BIAL. Sure. But these guys are great because they naturally I mean, they do a lot of things, but one of the things they do is naturally aerate by just tunneling through that stuff. Yeah. So earthworms and then worms in general are probably the most important non microscopic resident in your compost pile. Yeah, because they do so much. So worms, especially earthworms and most types of nematodes, they actually go in and eat a lot of the stuff that's in the compost pile. A lot of the food waste. Right. Or organic waste. And in doing so, they break it down. And as they break it down, they make it easier for the microbes to digest themselves. Should we start with the microbes? Yeah. Okay. So again, this compost pile, when you add food waste to the pile and add soil, you're introducing energy source to energy consumer. Okay. Yeah. And at the base of this is microbial life, bacteria mostly. But the bacteria go to town, they start eating this stuff, and the smaller it is, the more service area there is, the more the bacteria can eat. And they actually take the nutrients out of this and use it for cellular respiration, which is why they need oxygen, because they take oxygen and combine them with the carbon and they create ATP, which they use as an energy source to power their cells and live in frolic and play. And in doing so, they create carbon dioxide. That's right. So as they're doing this, they're actually breaking the stuff down from what you'd recognize as a banana peel closer and closer to that finished humid product. Yes. So you got bacteria and they're a big part of it. And depending on the phase that the compost pile is in, there will be different kinds of bacteria in your compost pile. Yeah. And it's not just bacteria. There's fungi doing lots of work. We mention nebatodes, you're going to eventually get mites in there and Slugs, you've already thrown your worms in some millipedes, doing some action. Right. All those cute little legs. And overall, these are known as primary consumers. Some are all of them primary consumers while they're listed, okay, by this person who made this fancy chart. So then above that, Chuck, you've got the secondary consumers secondo. And those are the predators of the primary consumers, right? Yeah. And then you have tertiary consumers. They're the predators of the secondary consumers. And so you put all this together and what you have is a food web. If microbes breaking the stuff down, worms and stuff, doing the same thing in some ways. And then other predators, different graduated levels of predators, preying on the smaller animals to keep their population in check and to keep everything in a perfect balance so that it's as efficient as possible. And eventually a great white shark comes along, eats the whole pile, thanks to a sharknado. What gets me, though, the best part of all this to me is that if you look at the lifespan of a compost pile, from brand new to finished humus, from banana peel to humus yes. It forms a bell as far as the temperature gradient goes, right? Yeah. It's really kind of cool. So the first stage is the mesophilic stage. Yeah. Temperatures get up to, I think, 40 deg Celsius. I can't remember what that is in Fahrenheit height. Yeah, we'll go with Celsius. Okay. So it's warmish, and then as the cellular respiration mounts and builds and more and more bacteria are born and start eating and carry this cellular respiration out, the byproducts are CO2 and heat. And heat starts to accumulate in the compost pile, so much so that it gets up to something like 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, which is like 100 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit height. Yeah. And it's hot. At this point, your organisms are going to change. You're going to have thermophilic. These are little heat loving critters, and they move in because it's nice and warm. They're snowbirds, they're desert dwellers, and they like it when it's warm. But here's the thing. You don't want it to get too hot, so you want to continue to aerate and keep that temperature in check. What you want is that natural bell to happen on its own. Right. So the mesophilic bacterias die off or they go kind of dormant as it enters the thermophilic phase. And then after the thermophilic phase ends, the reason it ends is because they've eaten up all of the stuff that's there to eat, and only the hard stuff is left over. And so the thermophiles go away and some of the mesophiles come back and new stuff comes in, like ten of my seeds, which are kind of like a weird fungi, bacteria cross and they break down, like the really hard, woody, shrubby stuff, and they finish it off. And this third phase is called the curing phase, right? Yeah. And at the end of all of it, you have this great nutrient rich hummus. Humus. But in the middle of that, when it gets really hot, it gets so hot, Chuck, that pathogens that can make you sick, that can make animals sick, that can make plants sick, are actually killed off in the face, which is why when you get your hands on compost on humus, it's organic. It's been basically treated naturally to rid itself of parasites, pathogens, all sorts of bad stuff. And all that's left is the nutrients that have been broken down in the process that a plant can use very easily. And again, the circle of life starts over again. Yeah. And I mentioned sun earlier, can dry it out, but if it gets over 65 Celsius, it's going to kill off so many microbes, it's going to really slow down your process. So that's another reason you turn it and again, don't have a direct sunlight, but it's going to keep that temperature where it does its thing naturally. Right. Where you don't want to put a heat lamp on it. You want to keep it moist, turn it over and let it do its thing. And you might come out there on a chilly morning, there might be steam coming off of that sucker. And dude, that's when you just like you go, hot dog. Yeah, hot diggity dog. And you go inside and you eat a banana and you throw it on the pile. All right, so when is it all over? This is why I love earth science. Yeah, it's really amazing because it requires a little bit of human management, but then you kind of just step away and say, do your thing. Yeah, it's really neat. When is it over? Well, you can tell. There are a few ways of being able to tell. The temperature starts to go down. If it's below 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it's out of the thermophilic phase. Yes. And it's now into the mesophilic phase. This says that it's probably done. I disagree. I think you probably want it even cooler than that. Because the longer you let it cure. The more diverse the microbes inside are going to be. The better the soil that you use to amend it with is going to be sure temperatures. Wine. One of it is just eyeball it. And if it's about 50% decomposed. Like. If you still see clearly a banana peel. Then it's not done. Right. You don't want to recognize this stuff as food at this point, or an eggshell or whatever. And is it smaller? If it's been reduced by 50% to 75% and it's dark brown or black and crumbly and it looks kind of like soil, then you're cooking with gas. My dad used to say the texture did you say smooth or crumbly? Yeah. What about the smell? Well, it shouldn't stink bad at this point. No, it should smell earthy. And actually, one of my favorites, the actinomye sights the actinomycetes. Okay. They are the reason that soil and dirt has its smell. It's those guys, they give it its earthy smell. Isn't that cool? Yeah. And I think we didn't mention, you know, that it's doing well along the way. If it stops smelling like, it doesn't just stink the whole time. Right. And it's not going to smell earthy. The soil that you add will smell earthy, but when you grab a handful of humus, it should just fall through your fingers. It should be the closer to black, the better. And it should smell like everything associated with earth should smell like the word earth. That's what it should smell like. You'll understand what earth smells like? Yeah. They said peat moss. If none of this makes sense, go to your local hardware store or lawn and garden center and smell the peat moss. Exactly. So now that it's done, you've got your wonderfully natural fertilizer. Use it. Put it spread it out in your garden, spread it out around your trees, throw it in your yard, spread it around your naked body and run around your yard if you want to. It's got a dooby pile or quack grass. Yeah. Stay away from that stuff. It's basically like the easiest way to put it without getting too scientific is it's going to make everything better, right? It's going to increase soil microbes. It's going to increase nutrients and enhance them. It's going to improve the PH and chemistry of your soil, your yard. It's going to structure. And again, what you've just done is taken stuff and had it broken down into its components, unlocked. It for your plants to use. Yeah. So your plants are going to say, thank you, brother. Pretty amazing. Yeah. Some people create a lot of it and sell it, but mainly people do this to just use around their house. Yeah. And increasingly, towns are starting to do curbside composting, pick up, food waste, pick up neat. Where you got trash? Recycling bin, food waste bin, anafield, banana. That's it. All right, go forth and compost. Yes. If you want to know more about composting, you can type that word in the search bar athouseofworks.com Cornell. Actually also has a really great site about. Composting. If you want to know more about the science of it, you were very excited about it. I love that site. And since I said Cornell, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this child life specialist. We had a couple of these that wrote in. Remember we talked about this in the pain scallops and we kind of surmised what it was and it turns out we're right. And by the way, we heard from paramedics doctors, quite a few people about the worst pain. Yes. You don't want a long bone fracture. Yeah. Almost 100% of them said a broken femur is like the worst pain you can experience. And should we say why? Yeah, go ahead. Several reasons. Right. Because apparently it's a very sensitive area, but also because without that structure, your muscles start spasming, which just rocks the whole thing back and forth even more and then like fragmented bone hitting nerve and all kinds of badness. Yeah. So steer clear of that. All right, so we heard from two. I'm going to read the one, but I'm going to shout them both out. Hey, guys. Very excited to hear you mentioned child life specialists during the recent episode of Pain Scales. As a child life specialist myself, I thought we'd take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about our profession. You are right, chuck a child Life Specialist we help kids deal with being hospitalized. That's really the essence of our job. We support children and families throughout stressful situations such as hospitalizations, using our knowledge of child development and play. To facilitate coping, child life specialists provide children with developmentally appropriate education about diagnoses and treatments, preparation and support for procedures, and opportunities for normalization and play. What a great job. Seriously. I can't think of too many jobs that are more rewarding than that. Seriously. We also provide support for siblings and provide legacy building and memory making in end of life situations. Our profession is very rewarding. Josh, you were right. She predicted you would say that. And I love going to work every day. To become a CLS, you must have a bachelor's or master's degree in child development or related field, complete a 640 hours ChildLife internship, and pass a national certification exam. You can visit www.childlife.org to learn more about it. Thanks for what you guys do. You've made all my road trips interesting. And thanks for spreading the word about child life. Maybe you can do an entire episode on our profession in the future. She said okay. And that is Natalie Valentine, and also a big shout out to Amanda Butler from Auburn University, who does that there. Thanks for writing in, ladies. It sounds like it's a really great job. Yeah, thanks to you both for that. And thanks for everybody who has anything to do with making kids who are hospitalized feel better. Hats off to you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast or Joshua Clarke. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Comstyteo charleswchuckbright. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at how stuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
029a0334-3b0e-11eb-947e-9b8c15fd2d07 | Truffles: Underground Treasures | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/truffles-underground-treasures | Truffles are rare, expensive and apparently delicious. Learn all about these earthy fungi today.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 27 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=117, tm_isdst=0) | 38776246 | 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 SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Shady Rays is an independent sunglasses company that gives you the features of $200 sunglasses for a fraction of the price and the strongest protection program in all of eyewear. Every pair of Shady Rays includes lost and broken protection, meaning if you lose or break your shades at any point, they'll send you a brand new pair no matter what happened. Exclusively for our listeners, head to shadyrays.com and use code stuff for 50% off two or more pairs of polarized sunglasses. That's code Stuff for 50% off two or more pairs only@shadyrays.com. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and we're the Gastro Boys. This is stuff you should know. That's probably a podcast. The Gastro boys with azyzen. Oh, man, Chuck. It's like we share our mind sometimes. You ever eaten truffles? Sure. I had some popcorn once with truffles and Parmesan cheese. I'm sure it was real truffle. I was trying to think if I had and I think I'm a dummy because I didn't even know if you're like, yeah, I've had truffle oil. I know what it tastes like. Spoiler alert that's not made from real truffles. Right. It would be so expensive. You could never do that. So I thought I had had truffles through that. But then I think I remember at Staple house here in Atlanta, I think one of the things on their tasting menu had shaved truffle on it, but it wasn't like an extra $100 to cover your pizza. It was like the tiniest little shaving on top of a moose boost type of thing, right. Which is apparently the way that you're supposed to eat it. You're supposed to eat it with a very simple dish where the truffle is the star and just sit there and cry, maybe take your clothes off so you can get the full experience, okay. And not leave your house for three days afterwards, at least according to all of the people who have ever been interviewed about truffles, meaning foodies, who talk about this kind of stuff and use words like celestial and life changing and things like that when it comes to talking about truffles. So the truffles are one of the finer things in life. And another thing that I'd never had either here at my ripe old age was caviar until a listener recently who runs the California Caviar Company sent some caviar. And I had gone my whole life without trying it and I didn't know what to expect. I had no idea what it would take. It was awesome. I get it now. It's really good. I was calling it Ocean butter. That's kind of what it reminded me of. It's briny, but just buttery. And it tastes like a rich person's food. And I totally got it after I had someone like, this is really good. And I get it now. I also want to shout out a couple of people since we're talking about the finer things and people have sent stuff in one more time, we should shout out toag Over@downeysayboats.com for the Scallops. Amazing Scallops. Our buddy Addison Rex, who's Jurassic wines, he likes to send those once in a while and they're amazing too. Yeah, I think I've talked about him before. He has the company Wine Spies, which is a really kind of a unique take on a wine club membership. And I am constantly buying wines and adding them to my little locker. And then once you get twelve bottles in your locker, you get it shipped all at once. Yeah, he's just a cool dude all around too. He's awesome. And then lastly, do you remember we talked about in the Groundhog Day episode Pig Whistle? No. Whistle Pig. Yes, Pig Whistle. I'm so dumb. Whistle Pig makes rye and they heard us talking about them. Or somebody told them we talked about them and they sent us a whole bunch of rye, like really good rye. And I'm here to tell you, Whistle Pig is really good stuff. I have to say, after now, having experienced it first hand, I haven't been in the office in forever. Is there a Whistle Pig on my desk? Yes, it's two bottles, remember? I don't remember. It was a while ago. Yeah, it should be still there. If not, we got problems. Oh boy. We need to look at the security camera. But we're talking truffles and we're not talking chocolate truffles. I didn't even look this up, but I assume their name. So because they kind of look like truffles. Right? That's what I gathered as well. They're kind of coated in like a cocoa dust, kind of like spores a little bit. And yeah, they're bumpy and just kind of ugly. They do kind of resemble black truffles in a lot of ways. Let me ask you this. Did you read the Atlantic article? No, I did not, actually. Well, I skimmed it and I'm going to read it in full later. There's this writer, his name is Ryan Jacobs who wrote an article in the Atlantic. He was basically on a mushroom story about porcini mushroom foragers in Germany and people that weren't sort of not an illegal trade, but they were foraging where they shouldn't be. One of them ran over a forestry guard with a car, and they got away with it. He called his friend in the UK. Is there a story here? And he's like, not really, he said, but if you really want a crime story, look at truffles. So this guy looked at the truffle underground truffle market and wrote this article that turned into a book called The Truffle Underground Colon a tale of mystery, mayhem and manipulation in the shadowy market of the world's most expensive fungus. And I kind of quickly scanned it, and it is like anything else in the world, like fine arch or rare wines, anything that's sort of scarce and rare, there will be crime surrounding it, whether it's poisoning truffle dogs or blowing up someone's car or heisting and robbing people of their truffle take, or selling fraudulent fake stuff. Selling fraudulent fake stuff. I saw one thing they would do is try and cram dirt into crevices to make them heavier, trying to sell disease, like wormed out truffles and stuff like that. So just like anything else rare and expensive, there is a dark side to it. And truffles are no exception. None. And truffles are really amazing little creatures. I had no idea. I mean, I figured that they were like, I think, just about everybody else who never really looked into troubles that much, that they were very much like mushrooms. And they are related to mushrooms only in that they are both part of the same kingdom fungi. So to say, like, truffles are related to mushrooms is basically the same thing as saying that human beings are related to starfish because we're both part of the kingdom. That's how distantly related mushrooms and truffles are. They diverged at the division level, which is right under kingdom. So they're only related in the most basic way that something can be related, not in any kind of complex or even close way whatsoever. Yeah, one of the biggest differences between mushrooms and truffles are mushrooms grow above ground, and truffles, as most people know, grow underground, which is why you need to hunt. And it's called hunting technically. It's not called foraging or collecting. It's called truffle hunting that you used to do with pigs, because pigs don't need to be trained. They know where to go to get those truffles. Now, they use dogs for a few reasons. One is because dogs don't want to eat the truffles and pigs do. So a pig finds that truffle and then you got to get it away from that pig. Yeah, like really quick. Dogs don't want to eat those things. Dogs just want to make master happy. So you can kind of train a dog to do this and turn it to a game. And then the other reason listed here was, like, you truffle hunt three months out of the year, and then you got a pig for the other nine months, which I say is great. But other people are like, these are hundreds of pounds. And dogs are better pets and easier to care for. Right, exactly the reason people use pigs in the first place. It seems kind of weird on its face, but truffles produce a kind of volatile organic compound called androstenol, or endurostenol, and that is actually the same thing as a sex hormone scent that male pigs put out. So if you go truffle hunting, you want to take a female pig because they're actually rooting out a sex sent, I guess they think that a male pig and his junk are buried just between two and 15 inches underground. So they start rooting through the ground and end up finding truffles. And then, like you said, try to eat it. So you have to wrestle it away from them. Sweet pigs. They are sweet, but yeah, so dogs make a lot more sense. So it's pretty rare, from what I understand, to see somebody hunting with a pig these days, unless they're just like some old hipster purist who also butchers the pig after the truffle hunt, too, just out of respect, man. And then there's another thing you can do if you're like, well, I can't afford a pig, or I can't afford a dog because I've never found a truffle and sold one. I'm saving up. You can get yourself just a little there's a kind of truffle spade called a SAP in you can dig them up with. And there's actually other natural signs that you can look for when you look for a truffle. One is the suwillia fly, which likes to plant itself. It's burrows just above truffles. So you see this specific kind of fly. If you learn to identify that fly, there might be a truffle down there. Yes. And then also there's something called the brulee, like creme brulee, but it means burned in French. And it's a dark patch of earth around the base of the tree where the truffle is growing. And we'll talk about why they grow there in a second. But this dark patch of earth is actually basically antibiotics that the truffle itself, or the fungi that the truffle grows from, puts out to poison the ground above it, because it doesn't do very well if there's a lot of vegetation growing around it. It does really well growing among the roots of trees. It doesn't like a very thick underbrush. It likes it to be nice and clear and airy. So it kills off any potential seeds or weeds or grass or anything that might be growing right above it. Isn't that amazing? So the truffle says, I shall scorch the earth above me exactly. So that I can live. Yes, exactly. That's amazing. So you see those signs? You probably have a truffle down there. So you don't need a dog or a pig. You just need to be good at that. Yeah, a true hipster, the kind with the pointy chin beard, they just look for truffles by hunting for brulee. All right, well, let's take a break. That's a good set up. Are hipster still a thing? I don't know. I haven't been out of my house in a year or so, so I can't tell if they're still around or not. Maybe they all went away during the pandemic. They rethought their lives and they're going to come out as sincere, non ironic humans. All right, which is what we're going to do. We're going to take a break and come back as that right after this. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage Bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantageplatinum. Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. You know you're a pet mom when your camera roll is all ticks 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. All right, so truffles are these underground things that you eat. I don't even think we said that. We talk about eating truffles at the beginning. I guess. Surely now I'm all paranoid that we're not explaining things soon enough. Why? Because the foodies are listening? Well, because people are like, you waited 15 minutes before you even said what X was. I think those people are joking. They're making fun of our paranoia. That's how I've been taking it. I'm 13 years and it really doesn't matter, right? No, not at all. As long as people are still listening, we're doing okay. Truffles are these things that are very rare. They're hard to find, they're hard to get, they're very expensive, which we'll get to, and there are many different kinds. There are thousands of varieties of truffle. But if you're talking on a macro level, sort of the basics of truffles that you would hunt and eat you've got black truffles and white truffles and Burgundy truffles and then some other lesser known truffles. But you really want to talk about black and white truffles as the two leading truffles that you're going to find on a plate if you have a lot of money. Right. And if you're actually specifically talking about the black French truffle, the tuber Millennis Forum from Paragore, France, southwest France. So that's like the prized black truffle. The prized white truffle, which is actually even rare and even more expensive than the Paragord truffle, is the tuber Magnatum Pico, the Alba truffle from the Piedmont area of Italy. And then, like you said, the Burgundy one. Right. The black ones. If you look at it, it's sort of like a lumpy. It sort of looks like it has a texture of, like, a leachy, but it's not colorful. It's a black, and it's sort of lumpy. I know what you mean. Yeah. And it looks like a clump of dirt, maybe. Some people say it looks like poop. If you slice it open, it looks like it has that dense marbling, like a really nice cut of beef might have. Yeah, like wagu beef, which is just amazing to see. Have you ever seen that stuff raw? The beef or the truffle? The beef. Well, I've seen both. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So why did you even ask? I don't know, but they do look alike, that really dense, veiny marbling. The white truffle, on the other hand, it looks sort of like a little, you know, the little round white potatoes. It looks like those not like a baker potato, but it looks sort of like a white potato. Yeah like Yukon Gold. But white. Sure. I like Yukon Gold. Those are good. They're both pungent, and the odor, apparently, is really hard to describe. I've seen so many different creative kind of fun and goofy ways to describe the aroma of a truffle. I've heard a lot of people say they're stinky. Some people say, like, locker room. Like funky earthy. Yeah, funky and earthy. It's almost as much fun as describing what a thermomen sounds like. Yeah, exactly. I think Burgundy truffles are a little more aromatic, but it's a very unique smell, and I think they're kind of stinky, supposedly. Yeah. One of the reasons they're stinky is because truffles. So the truffle you're eating is the fruiting body. Just like when you eat a mushroom, like a button mushroom, that's not the fungi. That's the fruit that grows off of the fungi. And it has the spores, and the spores spread everywhere. And truffles have spores as well, but they're sequestered inside of it. They're not on the outside all hanging out, letting it junk hang around like some common mushroom. Right. They keep theirs inside until marriage, and by marriage, I mean until an animal roots them up and eats them and then poops it out somewhere else. Right. So in that sense, they're different from mushrooms as well. But they have that funky smell because on the outside when they're in the dirt, they're actually colonized by all sorts of bacteria and yeasts and all sorts of weird little things that help create the symbiotic relationship that the fungi has with the tree roots that it grows within. Yeah, you mentioned trees. This is really interesting. I didn't know much about truffles at all and my whole thought was, like, why are these things so rare? Why can't people just plant truffles like any other vegetable you might grow? And the reason why is you can't really there is a process, but it's not like planting any other plant. I think they've been doing it for 35 years in the United States at a 98% failure rate. Right. So it's really hard to grow and I don't even know if that's the right word. Yeah. Just kind of yeah. Because they're a miracle of nature in a certain way. They're a mycorrhizae, which means that they're a fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with the tree that they grow at. Right, right. In Europe, you usually find them growing around the roots of oak trees or hazel trees. In the US, they grow at the base of pecan trees and then oak trees. Here too, in Oregon, they grow at the base of Douglas fur trees. So, like, certain species of truffles grow, like, at certain bases of certain trees because they have these relationships where the truffle or the mycorrhizae, the fungus that gives rise to the truffle that we eat, it has its own symbiotic relationship with a bunch of bacteria and yeast. Like I said, that it colonized it. And those things take nutrients from the soil like nitrates and phosphates and convert them into nitrogen and phosphorus, which is usable for the tree. So the tree is growing around all these different forms of nitrogen and phosphorus, but it can't do anything with it. This mycorrhizae, this fungi converts it into usable form for the tree and pumps it into the tree's roots, feeds the tree nutrients, and in exchange, the tree says here has some carbohydrates, I'll trade you and the mycorrhizae, the fungi says, thank you very much. Yes. So if you're going to try and cultivate, I guess that's the word I'm looking for, a truffle is you inject these special fungi spores into this oak or this hazelnut tree when they're just little seedlings and then you plant that tree and then cross your fingers, basically, that tree is going to grow up and be healthy because that's the first step. You got to have a tree that works and then those truffles are going to attach to those tree roots underground. And I imagine it's frustrating in that you can't look at your harvest and just see it growing on top of the ground. Right. You just have to have a lot of patience because I think it takes like four years on average for this to work out to where you're yielding a truffle 2% of the time in the United States. We're trying here, apparently we have the right climate, like on the West Coast, where you're talking about some mid Atlantic states. Carolinas, Virginia, southern Kentucky, northern Alabama, and I think New Mexico and Arizona are only where it's possible to get a 98% failure rate. Right. We should say this is where they're trying to grow, like paragore truffles or alba truffles, like the really highly prized ones. The United States has its own indigenous truffles. There's something like 4000 or 5000 species of truffles. Yeah, we got garbage truffle. Right? They're garbage truffles. It's just that there's like three species that are genuinely prized and that can go for $1,000 a pound depending on how bad or good the harvest was that year. But the United States has indigenous ones. Like there's the Oregon truffle, which grows at the base of Douglas FIRs. There's Pecan truffles, which grow basically everywhere from Florida up to Nova Scotia, west of the Rocky, east of the Rockies in North America. And there's a couple of other kinds too. And from what I saw, James Beard, the revered chef and food guy, he said that you could substitute an Oregon truffle for a white alba truffle and pinch and it would do. Yeah, if he signed off on it, that means it's definitely okay. Well, they're not cheap either. I think these American varieties can go for like $100 a pound, which is a lot of money for a pound of something. Yeah, but it's not like we'll get to the crazy prices at these auctions later on. But it's nothing like European Truffles. Namely, Italian and French. Like you said. I think Spain is the largest producer of truffles. Then you have UK, Australia, Chile, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and then China apparently is really involved in the truffle market and kind of undercutting price wise. Right? Yes. I actually saw that Australia is killing it in the truffle cultivating game. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They started in 1091 and that was when they first inoculated their saplings. I also saw another way to do it. Chuck is even easier. You just take a bunch of truffle, pureed up, dip the oak sapling roots into this puree and then just grow those. There's no injection necessary. No injection necessary. I'm sure the oak prefers that way too. It's just a little baby. But Australia got their first harvest in 1998 and they are growing paragor truffles. Which paragraph truffles are less rare maybe because of Australia than the white alba truffles from the piedmont of Italy and Croatia. And the alba truffles are far more expensive. But a lot of people prefer the paragraph black truffle from France. Just taste. In general, a lot of people prefer the black truffle. So that's the one that the Australians are growing and they now rival in the harvest by weight. What France harvests every year and they're good region. Yes, it's the same thing. It's that truffle, and they're supposedly amazing. Well, I'm sure there are some people, the French would probably say, no, the terroir is not the same. Of course. That's exactly what they would say. And the Australians would say, Forget that, mate. How's that? Australia truffle season is short, depending on the truffle. They're all short seasons, but you're going to get your white and burgundy's from September to December and then winter blacks from December to March, bianchetti in February and March, and then summer black and white truffles from May to August. And the reason why we are mentioning just when truffle season comes around is because truffles, they do freeze them and they do can them, but it's not the same. You want to eat a truffle within four to six days after you take it out of the ground. Yeah. The truffle market is one of those rare ones where there's a lot of hype and there's a lot of, like, Frazier and Niles Crane types running around buying this stuff up and caring about it and talking about it to their friends and all that. But it's not a bloated market in that respect. Like, it is genuinely scarce in supply. Right. And in the United States, it's even scarce because, like you said, we've got a 98% failure rate and growing them here ourselves. And they have such a short shelf life, ten days tops, if you're doing everything right and storing them that to get them here in the US in any kind of quick way from a place where they're already scarce, where they're growing over, like in, say, Europe, you can understand it actually makes sense why they're so ridiculously expensive. Yeah. And I went online today because I was like, can you even buy truffles online? Not right now. Yeah, they're just all out of stock, right? Well, no, I found some that were in a jar, and it's not like the whole truffle, it's just a piece of a truffle. And the price I found for the black French one was on this one website was $100 for .8oz. Okay. So less than an ounce was $100. So I saw some, they were all out of stock, but some like, gourmet sites so they can get them. And they're more like $48 an ounce for the small size, medium size. And I looked, I was like, Is that right? And that seemed kind of in line with it. But you also see crazy prices all over the place. Like, all these things are $2,000 a pound or $4,000 a pound or $7,000 a pound. Those typically are the white alba truffles and the black paragraph truffles are maybe a quarter of that. But it all depends on how the harvest was that year. And apparently the harvest has been going down, which is another reason it's so expensive, has been going down steadily for the last century or so. Well, climate change. That's a big one, apparently. Do you remember when I said that truffles like to grow in light airy regions, even though they grow underground? They like the above ground to be a certain way. They're real high maintenance in that sense. Right. And controlling. So many people have moved from the Paragraph region or the pediment of Italy into the cities since, like, the 1880s, 1890s, when they really started harvesting these for the international market, that these areas have become kind of unkempt and grown over, and that, in addition to climate change, is affecting the yields, like, dramatically. I think there was something do you have the statistics for the yields between the 19th century and today? I do not. Chuck, get ready for your socks to be knocked off. Oh, boy. Are they on right now? They're on. I just put socks on so you could knock them off. So in 1890, a total harvest and I'm not quite sure maybe this is all commercial truffles, but there was a total of 2200 tons that were harvested in 1890 around the world. That's still pretty scarce, if you think about it. For an annual harvest globally, in 1914, it was down to 300 tons from 2200 tons. Wow. These days, it can be anywhere from 25 tons to 150 tons a year. That is scarce, and that's why they cost this kind of money. And like you said, it's not an artificial market. There's one that sold in 2016 at auction, a 4.16 pound white truffle for $61,000. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me because it's like, well, it's just a big, giant truffle that seems way more than it would be if you bought that same amount, just the same weight, but in multiple truffles. It just seemed really exorbitant. I don't know if somebody's like, I want the world's biggest truffle kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's absolutely it like, were they bidding using, like, a giant foam number one hand? Is that kind of guy maybe he paid a million dollars for that foam. The largest foam rubber number one hand. That's right. You got to use it. One of the things I was seeing also about climate change affecting truffles is that truffles like it wet, they like it somewhat cool, and they like it kemped. And like I said, the regions that they normally grow are getting unkempt, and they're getting hotter, and they're getting drier. Like, climate change is bringing more extreme weather, like droughts kind of thing, and they're also bringing hotter weather to regions like the southwest of France or the Piedmont of Spain or Italy I'm sorry, where it didn't used to be that hot back in, like, say, 1890, when you're getting, like, 2200 tons annually. So all of these combined, on top of the idea that even under the best of circumstances, the normal life cycle for a particular mycorrrrhizae that produces truffles, that you want, like an alba or a paragore. Maybe produces truffles for 15 to 30 years in the wild. And then after that it says good night forever. And the French and the Spanish and a lot of the traditionalists in Europe say, well, then that's that. We just need to move on and find another tree. Well, they're finding that they're not growing under other trees. And so there's kind of this push to start inoculating trees there in Spain and in the southwest of France, and Europe has long been pushing back on the idea of kind of introducing man's hand to this humankind's hand, I should say. And I think they're starting to kind of rethink that kind of thing these days. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll take another break and we'll talk a little bit more about the flavor and the trade and what these things are even used for right after this. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for take off into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantage. Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support, and strengthen energy. Find Halo elevate at Petco Pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. Hey, everybody, chuck here. Did you know there were 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. All right, so the truffle trade, like we said, check out that atlantic article. I'm going to read it closer after this because it's just really interesting. There is a dark side, of course, to this trade. There are people poison each other's dogs. It's awful. The guy who wrote that article said that he anecdotally talked to different veterinarians that said that they've got two or three a week dogs being poisoned, and there were a lot of vets in the area that were saying the same thing. So that's horrific on its surface. Slashing tires, of course, robberies, heists fake truffle. Well, not fake, but just inflated truffles with the weight like we were talking about. And you might hear all this and just be like, why? I know they're rare, but is this caviar to chuck? Is it this thing that is so delicious that you must have it? And I don't know because I've never had it. I do like the taste of truffle oil and this fake truffle. I think in the 70s, an italian chemist isolated one of the flavor producing compounds and recreated it. So we do have the asynthetic truffley taste, but apparently that's like they isolated one of these compounds. That is not what a real truffle tastes like, is what people say that have had real truffles. No, it's like so complicated and complex because, again, at least some of the smells and tastes that are coming off of the truffle you're eating are coming from the colonizing bacteria and yeast that are growing all over it, too. And as they're exposed to air, they start to kind of die off, and that's where the smell and the odor goes, at least in part. So to just kind of nail one particular flavor compound and say that's truffle flavor, I think it's two, four diethypentane that's worse just to say that that's truffle flavor not only misses all of the nuance of truffles, apparently I'm speaking from just somebody who's only been exposed to two, four diethya, pentagon, pretty much. But then also if you eat enough of that, if you eat too much truffle popcorn with parmesan shavings at the nice movie theater in town, you are going to kind of desensitize yourself the actual truffles. So if you actually say, I'm going to get some truffles this season, and try it. It might be lost on you because you're just used to kind of the clunkiest version of the truffle flavor. I'm taking that risk, I guess. It is good. Truffle flavor at anything is pretty great. I like it. It is even hard to describe with just that one compound. It's hard to kind of sort of an umami richness. It is earthy. I like the flavor, and I'm not going to be eating many real truffles in my life, if any, so I'm not really worried about ruining my truffle palate. So I'm happy to have that stuff. It's fine. Sure. For this guy, it's truffles for the rest of us. That's right. So if you do come upon some truffles that you want to if you just say, okay, I've got $100 I'm going to spend on truffles, I'm just going to do it. Uncle Joe Biden sent me a check, and I'm going to use $100 of it on truffles. I'm going to stimulate the economy, trickle down. So what would you do, Chuck? What's your first move? Well, you want them within five to six days after they've been harvested. You want to keep them in a closed container wrapped in a paper towel because you really want to keep them dry. Wet truffle is no good despite the fact that they love wetness to grow. You want to keep that thing dry if you want to get a little more bang for your buck and not actually use any of the truffle, but impart that flavor. You want to ford die by a pentagon. Store it in a closed, like, glass tupperware. It's not tupperware if it's glass, but you know what I mean. Sure. Glass dish with some cheese, open cheese, or even eggs that have not just eggs in their shell. And it will actually somehow, by way of magic, the cheese makes sense, but it will actually penetrate that egg and flavor that egg somehow. Isn't that nuts? It is nuts. That's how potent those things smell, that they actually make it through eggs, shells inside and then just inculcate them. But like you said, you want to keep it simple. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say bland, but they say, like, shaving truffle on a very simple risotto dish. Or just plain parmesan. Yes, scrambled eggs, plain parmesan. Pasta pizza is a big one. Like just sort of a cheese pizza, like a really nice one. Wood fired pizza with shaved truffle on top. It's supposed to be great. Yes. That's the thing. You don't have to do anything with it. You just shave it raw. You don't have to cook it. It's not like some hard thing to use. You just shave it onto something and let it shine. Apparently the ancient Romans used to cook it and eat it with honey, but they also thought that truffles were created when lightning struck damp earth. So don't put a lot of stock into their thoughts. Just use it. Shaved fresh truffles onto a very nice dish. Yeah. And if you want to go to a nice steakhouse and get truffle butter on your steak, it's not going to be real truffle. But who cares? I don't know. I could see Kevin Rafin using real truffle. You think, how about this? If you are getting that steak and it's outside of truffle season, it's not real truffle. But if you know when truffle season is right, so say you're going between November and the end of March to a really nice steak house, it's possible that they are using real truffles that night. Yeah, and it's shaped super thin. Like when you see it on a food item, they have these razor sharp well, I guess they're razors. And it always reminds me of Good Fellas. I cannot think of shaving something with a razor blade and not think of the scene in Goodfellows in prison where Polly had his technique, where he would shave it so thin. Liquefying the fan. Yeah, it's so great. Man. I love that part, when they were in prison and just, like, living high on the hog. Yes. Have you ever eat roasted garlic? Like, on toast? Not on toast, but I roast garlic plenty. Sure. Okay. But yeah, just, like spread it on toast. I bet that's just take a whole bulb, spread it on some toast and thank me later. It's really good for your guts. You know what I've been doing lately? I don't know why. I didn't know it existed. Everything Bagel is my favorite bagel, and they make Everything Bagel shakers. Trader Joe's. No, but I'm sure that's good, too. But just at a regular store. So I just keep that. I put that on a lot of stuff, like just avocado toast with that stuff my buddy Eddie turned me onto that was shaking that stuff on some avocado toast. I know you can put it on just chunks of avocado. And it tastes very good, too. You can put it on anything. Let's be honest. You can put it on an old shoe. Sure. What else you got? I got nothing else. That's it. I want to eat a real truffle. If you eat a real truffle, it'll probably taste so good, it will make you do the truffle shuffle. All right. Very nice. Well, since I said truffle shuffle, everybody, I think it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Titanic role play. Did you see this one? No. This is really neat. This is not tricky. No. I mean, it doesn't even cross my mind on its face. It's hilarious. Okay. Hey, guys. My name is Annika, and I've been listening since about 2018. Really love learning from you guys and listening to your episodes. Last year, during the beginning of quarantine, many of my family members, including myself, were quarantining at my mom's house. And as you and everyone else knows, we hit a point in our house, where everyone got a little loopy. Not really sure how it got started, but we decided to have a Titanic party on the anniversary of the ship sinking. Everyone was assigned a real passenger crew member on the Titanic and had to act out the part for the evening, including dressing up. Even dogs got parts, too, by the way. They sent in pictures of them dressed up with their animals dressed up, and it was pretty great. That is adorable. We had a meal based off one of the menus recovered from the ship nice. And we had to eat in certain areas according to our class. Wow. This is so great. After dinner, we read a short memorial and with my friends, my friend playing near my God to dee on the cello, and this was all on video. It's fantastic. Took a five minute plunge in the freezing pool to commemorate the sinking. Then to finish out the night, we found out if our passenger crew member had lived or died and then watched the movie from 1997. I want to go to the party, man. Yes. How much fun is that? It's pretty cool. Your episode was more than perfect because we decided to make this an annual party. Oh, there you go. And they held it a few weekends ago. Well, Annika, send me the invite. I don't know where you live, but your family looks awesome, and I want to go to that thing. Yeah, totally. I can't find that listing or mail anywhere. I want to see these pictures, but all right, I'll try and find it and send it to you. Her name was Annika. Maybe you could search that way anika that was an amazing listener mail, and we appreciate it. That does sound like a lot of fun. We need to go on the cowboy weekend with the black cowboy who get in all over the and then go to the Titanic role play party. And then in between, we'll maybe cross the country and marry a few couples officiate at some weddings. That sounds great. I just found the email and send it to you. And I'm looking at that picture of that dog dressed up. Gets me every time. It's going to be the summer of stuff you should know. Chuck. I love it. I still don't have a Chuck. I don't know what's going on. Oh, there it is. Do you have anything else to talk about while I look at these? No. Let's just sign off. Okay. Well, since we're signing off, everybody, if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email like Annika did. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet at Halo. We get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopetscom. Hey, it's Delilah. We can all use a hug now and again. I wish I could deliver them all in person, but since that's not possible, my daily podcast, hey, It's Delilah is the next best thing. It will wrap you in ten to 15 minutes of happy, heartwarming, hopeful radio content every Monday through Friday at whatever time of day you need it the most. Find. Hey, it's Delilah. And get your radio. Hub bug." | |
How Pizza Works! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pizza-works | Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite. | Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite. | Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:07:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=20, tm_min=7, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=285, tm_isdst=0) | 48261396 | 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 a little under the weather, a little rundown, but I feel better than I sound. I am over the weather. Yeah, whatever that means. It means you're in great spirits. Good shape. Sure. Put your hand through that wall next to you. I probably could, actually, on certain days, but not today. That's good talking. You're doing okay? Yeah, great. Okay. But you're feeling better even though you sound crappy? Yeah, I really do, don't I? It's always reminiscent of the six month period that you're sick early on. Now, I'm healthy. I don't smoke, I exercise, I eat right. I juice. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick as often when you live? Right. Yeah. When you treat your body. Correct. Exactly. Well, Chuck, it's an excellent segue because in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat your body is to stuff it full of really good pizza. Yes. Have you had pizza before? Yeah. Dude, I love pizza. I don't eat that much of it. Oh, really? No, I don't know how much. I mean, we have stats on the average American and stuff. May I spell out? Sure. Every day, Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza. I guess it would be Sicilian, because an acre would be squared. Although it doesn't have to be square. No, you can have a round acre. Yeah. I guess you could just forget what I said. I've never seen a round acre before. I imagine an island, if it's round oh, yeah. Would be round acreage. There's not really any real round islands. There's no such thing as a perfect circle. Sure. Gilligan's island was so round. No, just a circle. Yeah. I love pizza. I don't know how much I eat of it, though, compared to most people. Like, I'd say we order a pizza, like, maybe once a month. What? We'll order a pizza are the only pizza you have every month? Yeah. We'll order a pizza delivery and then probably we'll throw in one visit to Antiquo, which a month. You got me beat there. I need to get out there more often. Yeah. Once every six weeks to two months. For Antico? Yeah. Here in Atlanta. Chuck and I have a pizza place. I guess everybody in Atlanta has it. But we're very fortunate to have a place called Antiqua Pizza. It's really good. And now I understand the name after researching this article. Yeah, it's kind of close to the original Pizzeria. I think that's the point. Is it? I would imagine. I don't think they follow the traditional rules, though. Okay. We're just toiling all over. Well, for my part, you, me and I are crazy about pizza. And we eat it, like, all the time. Everything from frozen pizza to Domino's to pizza out by the slice. It's good. I eat a lot more pizza when I lived up in the New York area. Yeah. Because I would like to get it after class. Just a single slice. Big, huge slice. Yeah. And you fold it in half and it's just great. Did you want pizza while you're researching this? No, I did. Did you? Oh, yeah. All right. Antico, though, is really good pizza. The best pizza in Atlanta most people agree on. And judging by the line out the door every single day, then I would say we're right. I've even gotten into an argument with them on the phone, which I don't do very often, about whether or not you can order a pizza without cheese. And I'll still go back there after hanging up on them in anger. Wow. Yeah, they do it their way. They definitely do. That's amazing. They also have the big dressing station, which is like the basil plants. They don't even have like it's not dried basil or even leaves. It's like the plant. You pick the leaves off there and they got the big chunks of garlic, and it's just so good. I can hear your food go now I want pizza. Okay, good. All right. That's what I was going for. Chuck, you got me. It worked. So everybody, I'm sure, is familiar with pizza. I don't think there's going to be too many huge surprises there. No, but there is a lot about pizza that I would imagine you don't know. We're going to tell you that kind of stuff. Agree. Like, for example, at its core, pizza really is bread, cheese, and sauce. Yeah, that's it. Tomato sauce. Right. Unless you're getting funky, but you can't get funky and still call it pizza customarily. Yeah, it's one of those things where it has to be made a certain way or else it's not really pizza. It's like a tomato pie. I don't know, though. I would call, like, a pesto pizza pizza. But you were born American. Yeah, sure. What do you think? I was speaking as, like, a native Sicilian? Well, no, but I'm saying, like, maybe as a citizen of the world. Okay. We're in the midst of globalization, Chuck. Let's do this. All right, let's talk piece of history then. Yeah. I used to hear from uninformed people, like, you know, pizza is really American. It didn't even come from Italy. Right. They're talking about chop suey. Just not true at all. Yeah, pizza did come from Italy, in a way. We need to back up even further, probably to Greece, where some people attribute, like, the original flatbreads that they would decorate with things is like the first pizza style thing. Right. You're talking like, third century BC. Yeah, long time ago. Right. But they didn't call it pizza until, what, 81,000 in Naples. Yeah, of course. Well, Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yes. I didn't realize. I didn't notice that it went back that far. That's pretty interesting. Well, that's what was first named pizza, meaning pie okay. So I also saw a discrepancy here. I saw pizza also could mean to pinch. Oh, really? Or slice. That's what I got. Pizza, not necessarily pie. Well, that's what this person says. Okay, so we're at Ad. 1000, right? Yes. This is such a cool date. It is. And the reason pizza started to take off was because the peasantry didn't have that much money, and this stuff was kind of easy to come by. You made your bread, you had some cheese, maybe some kazuma zoo with the maggots, and maybe some seasonings and some olive oil. That's about it. It wasn't until one of the biggest main ingredients it wasn't until the Colombian exchange started to take place that tomatoes were introduced to Italy, because those are a new world food. Yeah. I did a little tomato research because that's kind of fascinating on its own, I think. Tomatoes come from Peru, they believe, originally. And because the fruit of the night shade, the deadly nightshade, looks like a tomato, a lot of people thought it was poisonous over the years, many years ago. And actual stems and leaves of a tomato plant do contain a toxic tonetine. A lot of it. But what will happen to you? Well, I think there's been one reported death for me. Tomato stems and leaves. Yeah. Crazy. Supposedly. I don't know if that's true, though. They figured out, well, the stems and leaves are kind of gross. Anyway, let's eat the tomato. So thank you, Spain. And also interestingly, even though it came from South America, you would think it made its way up through the States via Central America and Mexico, but it didn't. It took the circuitous route via European immigrants, probably through the Philippines, too. If you're interested in that, dude, you should really read 1493. It's all about that stuff. Is that guy going to just keep writing books? Is there going to be a 1494? There is a benevolent God, yes. Okay. Anyway, tomatoes, people discovered, hey, they're not poisonous. They're really delicious. Yeah. Let's start throwing them on the spread. Exactly. Then now we have pizza. So we're talking like the 17th century, I think was when the term no, it wasn't. Okay. Yeah, that goes against that research, too. I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined in the 18th century, like 17th, 38. They started making pizzas as we know them today. I think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore. Yeah, because that long ago. I don't think they're necessarily keeping track of all the stuff like we do today. Okay, so possibly in ad. 1000 or in 1738, about 750 years later, the word pizza was used to describe this flatbread. Right. Consisting of now, tomatoes, sauce, cheese, bread. Right. But the one thing that is not disagreed upon was that both of these took place in Naples. That's right. Naples was the center of it. Like we said, the peasantry was really hip. The pizza, because it was cheap, and it was abundant street food. Yeah. And so if you wanted to go find pizza, you basically had to go into the peasant district of Naples, and there it was in abundance, being sold from street carts. Now, is that where the first pizzeria was? Yes. Okay, so antiqua pizzeriaa portalba. Yeah. So antique. I wonder if that's the same as antiqua. I don't know what the difference is. I don't know. Someone will probably explain it to us. Hopefully an Italian. Yes, they're an authority on that. All right, so that's 1830, the first pizzeria. Right. And also I didn't see it in here, but I came across the pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name of a pizza maker, the peasantry in Naples. And probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that. But the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for well over a century, almost two centuries by the time Queen Margarita and King Umberto. Queen Margarita? Yeah. Does that name sound familiar in regards to pizza? Yeah. Especially when you see it spelled out right, you're like, oh, wait a minute, that's where it came from. Exactly. Reportedly. So Queen Margarita is apparently, like a pretty hip queen. She was down with the common person, and she and Umberto went and toured the country in 1889, and one of the places they went was Naples, and one of the things they did was eat pizza. And she was like, I love this. I want more of this. Bring me Raphael Esposito. Her personal chef. Yeah, I don't know if it's a personal chef. It was a personal pizza chef, at least. And he said, queen, I'm going to make you some good pizza, including one of the Italian flag. And that is the legend, at least, of how we got margherita pizza, because you have the red tomato, the white mozzarella, and the green basil, and there's your Italian flag. Yeah. It's a great story. Hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the Margarita pizza, which she liked the most and is named after her. Another one with pork fat, cheese and basil, which sounds pretty awesome. Yeah. And then another one is garlic oil, olive oil and tomatoes. All of them sound great. Yes. But she chose the margarita, and that's the one that was named after her. But the upshot of all this is that the queen was suddenly eating peasant food. The queen's the most popular person in all of Italy all of a sudden. And now all of a sudden, in places other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't heard of or eaten or whatever, people are starting to make it. That's right. And that's like 1880, 918, which is a great time for pizza to be coming into its own because there was a little country called America coming into its own. And with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, in places like New York and chicago and Philly, New York Light, they would eat pizza. And it was, again, sort of like street food at the time, at least. Right. So about the time, I guess, when Margarita was extolling the virtues of pizza, I guess her this wave of immigration had such a tangible connection to the old world that almost immediately they were making pizzas in these cities, like you said. Yeah. Apparently New York was the first city with an actual pizzeria. I believe that Lombardi, Janaro Lombardi, apparently opened his shop in five at 53rd and a half Spring Street in New York. I wonder what's there now. Lombardi. Oh, is it still there? I believe Lombardi is still functioning. Wow. That's pretty great. Yeah. And did we say that Antiko pizzeria in Naples is still in the same spot, still selling pizza since 1830? We did not, but that is true. Yeah. And that's very cool. That makes me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah. I mean, you could get an original pizza from the original pizzeria. Yes. That's pretty cool. And we'll get to this in a little bit, but you may be kind of surprised when you eat a pizza, a Neapolitan pizza, at the place where it all started, compared if you're used to like Papa John's. I had pizza in Italy once I was there, and I figured, why not? I guess I'll do as the Italians do. Exactly. Okay. So that's pretty much oh, no, we didn't finish the history. Yeah. United States was coming into its own. Italian immigrants coming in, bringing in pizza. Then after World War Two, of course, with a lot of things, GI's came back with these flavors for different countries foods and drinks. Right. And they said, man, this pizza stuff is really great, so let's start building chains and degrading the product. And we did that with Shakies in 1954. It was the first pizza chain in the United States. Yes. California chain. Pizza Hut was founded in Kansas, of all places, for pretty cool. And the reason, apparently, as legend has it, that they're named Pizza Hut is because the place the building kind of looked like a hut and there was only room for nine spaces on the sign. So Pizza Hut. That makes sense. Yeah. Shaky, have you ever been to Shakey's? No. As a matter of fact, no. The only time I've ever seen Shaky's was in the movie License to Drive with the two cores. Yeah. They're all over La. And sort of pizza huddy and feel like a family joint. Pictures of beer, not so great pizza. But apparently Sherwood Shakey Johnson got that name because of some affliction he had that made him Shake. No. Goodness. But I guess he embraced it. Well, yeah, he named this very popular chain after it. And they're still around, huh? Oh, yeah. I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now. 1954. There's Pizza Huts everywhere. Yeah, I think they have them outside of california, although I'm not positive I didn't get to look that up. Got you. But I know they don't have them over here. Down south. Over here in the Southeastern Bible Belt. Yeah. All right. Dough. Yeah. So that's a piece of history. Yeah. We should probably get to the basics. Yes. And there's nothing more basic than dough. No, there's an art to this. There are three ingredients that are demanded flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Yeah. But you probably are going to throw a little salt in, a little sugar, little shortening to make it do the things you want it to do. Perform like you want it to perform. Yeah. And you can go to Mellow Mushroom Pizza and get a gluten free pizza. I myself have not had one because I don't have celiac, and I'm not about to just no, but if you are gluten free, you are sol in a lot of ways, because the flour used in pizza crust pizza dough is high gluten flour. That's why gluten free pizza tastes like crap. I've not had it, so I can't say. Yeah, well, that's just my opinion. Yes, you've had it. Yeah, I've tried it. It's not the same. I'm sorry, everybody. They need gluten in the flour because gluten makes the crust tough and it won't crack apart. It makes it stand up to the water. Keeps it ropey. Yeah, it keeps it nice and ropey. And I guess we need to talk about water at some point. Anytime, because water is the old saying about New York pizzas, is because of the water. Oh, yeah. That's like the old saying. I don't know, but they changed their water. Now they have, like, water you can drink right out of the tap. Did they change their water? Oh, yeah, man. They overhauled their sewer system. There's a bottle of water you can buy now it's just New York City tap water and stuff is so, like, clean and pure. Well, because it comes from 90% of it comes from two aqua ducks. And the cat skills ship it into Manhattan. We should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water. It's pretty amazing. Oh, okay. Now can we wait until we research it? Yeah. It's pretty amazing, though. But I read this Wired article that kind of broke down the pizza water New York thing, and they got in touch with Mario Batali, very famous Italian chef yeah. And asked him, and he said, well, one of the reasons before we get to water is that the oven, he said, captures the gestalt, or if you're driving the gestalt of a beautifully cooked pizza, basically, over time. I totally did say that. Well, it makes sense. Over time, you're going to get volatile particles caking onto the walls and the roof of your oven, and then the convection process will just work that into whatever you're cooking over the years. Right. So because they've been making pizza for so long in New York, some of these old ovens, like, have this gestalt that can't be matched anywhere else. No, he says, okay, in Chicago as well. But then with the water, he says, yeah, the biggest problem with California pizza is the water. It's just not the same soup water. Although he doesn't he doesn't use New York water at his restaurant, del Posto. He actually clones water from Italy. No, he doesn't. He does. No. Yes. Clones. It's what he said. He's created his own mineral water composite working from a chemical analysis of la COA Italiana, and it said basically, it's a clone of this Italian water. It sounds kind of pretentious. We should go sell home something like real estate or something. But that's why I think the food Detective show did a test, a blind test on New York water and pizza crust, and everyone picked the New York pizza in a blind test. So there may be something to it, the mineral composition. I'm sure there is. Yeah. I mean, if you have even the slightest belief in molecular gastronomy, sure, it makes sense. Which would explain why New York bagels are the best, too. Because bagels are boiled. Everyone else or the right if you make it the right way, it's boiled. Chuck. That's my water side bar. Chuck water. Well, I've always heard that in your pizza because the water is because the water from the catskills. Yeah, I had heard that. I didn't know it was from the cat skills or it had anything to do with just stalk or anything like that. Yeah. All right. The third vital ingredient is yeast, and yeast basically creates the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode? Can you imagine if there was no yeast, we'd be in big trouble. No pizza, no beer. What's the point? No bread. This world would be sad. Actually, there's yeast free bread, I think, but still. Yeah, no, I know. So what's the deal with yeast? Well, basically, the yeast goes in and eats the sugars found in the flour. And then you may also add your own sugar to increase the fermentation, but it causes the dough to rise because it expels gas as a byproduct. And that gas gets trapped in the dough and it causes it to rise. It makes it more malleable and makes it tastier. The texture of it is softer. It's just basically yeast. It's the happy fungi that you add to the whole the magic ingredient. Yeah. If you add a little salt, it's going to add some flavor, obviously. It's going to slow the fermentation. Shortening is going to make it more pliable by providing lube. And shortening would be like olive oil. You're not going to use crisco unless you're some sort of heathen. No, you can use canoe oil. But olive oil is what I would go with. Sure. Yeah, crisco. Crisco is great, though, for some things. Oh, yeah. For like sugar cookies, especially the kind that's, like, just the shortening the thickness solid. Yeah, shortening. This stuff is crazy. That's the only way I thought you could cook growing up, because of, like, my grandmother's. Yeah. I thought, well, when you cook, you get out that big can and big ice cream scoop, and you go to town with that watered up piece of wax paper in there that you used to scoop it out. Yeah. It's completely covered in crisco now. Either that or the grandmothers also used they saved all their grease, so they would be cooking with grease that they've been using for the past year. Yeah, it's really good. That's nice. Sugar changes the fermentation rate. It can accelerate it. It can increase the amount of gas released, and it also causes the crust of brown. Oh, yeah. That's the sugar. So what if you don't put sugar, you get a glowing yellow crust. Oh, really? It doesn't brown as much. Doesn't brown. Okay. You want to bottle it up, use your hands. Yeah. I think you should say here, like, you're teaching people how to make legitimate, real pizza dough here. Yeah. I mean, gold in rough strokes. Okay. I don't think anyone could like we're not providing measurements. You know what I'm saying? No, but I'm saying once you've created the stove, now you're about to tell them what to do with it, how to make it. You want to bottle it up with your hands. You don't want it all cracked. You want it tight, and you want to put it on an oil sheet pan and then proof it, which means you cover it with wax paper and let it sit and let the yeast do its thing until it doubles in size. Yeah, because the yeast is just sitting there eating sugars and pooping out gas. Gas. Then you need to retard it. You need to put it in the fridge for about 12 hours, and then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing its thing. They're like, this sugar is so good, it's cold. And then if you do this, you've got pizza dough that you can use for, like, three to five days. Yeah. I would imagine most people who are really into pizza would be like, you can't save that for three to five days. You think? I would think so. Fresh. You think it's almost always the same day? No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, a pizza purist can't use five day old dough for a decent pizza. True. But I buy the dough sometimes, like Trader Joe's or the farmers market, like the premade dough balls. And those are not necessarily that day or the oven. Well, you left out the sauce. Most of the time, it's tomato sauce. But if you're still worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is trying to kill you by giving them to you, you can eat garlic butter sauce, which will give you a white pizza. Yeah. You don't like white pizza? I love white pizza. And if you go to Felines, we're going to name every single pizza place in town. If you go to Felinis and order a white pizza slice, they use the premade slice, and then they build a white pizza on top of it. So you get a little tomato sauce with your white pizza. It's really good. But it's not white pizza then, right? No, you're the one who calls, like, everything pizza. You run around and that's a pizza. Look, there's a pizza over there. I don't want to hear it from you, all right? I'm not a fan of white pizza. I like some tomato sauce online. Yeah, I'm with you, but I like white pizza, too. Okay. And the cheese mozzarella, traditionally. Right. And the way you build it is actually kind of important, too. Yeah. Depending on where you are. It's not just the ingredients, it's the amount and the distribution. Yes. Where they are in relation to one another vertically. Well, let's go ahead then. New York is sauce, then cheese from the dough up. Yeah. Dough, sauce, cheese. Right. And then not that many toppings if you're a purist. Again, a cheese slice is what you're going for. I'm not big on just cheese. What are you, pepperoni guy? No, not anymore. Not since I was a kid. I'm just kind of like pepperoni, so bless. I like a good homemade Italian sausage. Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's really good. I like sliced tomatoes on it. Not dried, fresh. Yeah. Basil. Black olives. Yeah, basil. Always ham. Not into olives. I like sausage. I don't like the green olives. I like black olives. Do you like the Hawaiian pizzas? I've only in the last couple of months gotten into pineapple, and I'm still feeling my way around it. Pineapples and strawberries. I used to eat strawberries when I was a kid, and I've rediscovered them recently. Yeah. When we were in the suite at the Marriott and we were doing interviews at Comic Con. I ate, like, \u00a315 of strawberries. They were so good. The chocolate covered or regular? No, they're regular. Okay. Yeah, I don't even need chocolate covered anymore. It's like I'm free. Strawberries are delicious. Yeah. But Hawaiian, I'll tell you in a month or two. I'll try it. Emily likes that. She's big on mushroom, green pepper, and pineapple together. Yeah. She doesn't do the meats at all, just as a food. While we're talking about wives and pizza preferences yes. You may have this place in DC. She used to go to, and she'd get, like, a huge slice of pizza. And this place also sold Indian food, so she'd get chicken SAG and put the SOGG on the pizza, and she said it was really awesome. Wow. Yeah. We have to do the half and half, and I get, like, sausage on half, and she does veggie, and then it's like your sausage juice got on my half. I'm like, well, your mushroom got on my half. You like a cheeseburger pizza. I love cheese. I'm not too big on beef on the pizza. I'll give you one more tip, okay. Get yourself some complete seasoning. I can't remember what it is in Spanish, but complete seasoning, it's like a Mexican blend. Okay. And put it on your pizza. It doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is. It works on popcorn, too, but on your pizza, it will make you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who would say, get a bottle of ranch dressing and you're all set. Oh, yeah, that's good too. All right, so man wow. That was a sidebar. So you're saying New York, you build from the dough up? Dough, sauce, cheese, and then maybe a couple of toppings. Yeah. Chicago, it's the opposite. Yes. And this is apparently a tomato pie, the way it's built. Yeah, it's super deep dish baked in a pan. And then you've got the cheese on the bread itself on the dough. Right. And then the toppings, and then they put this, like, ungodly, thick, delicious sauce on top. Yeah. I have not had it. Really? And I love Pizza Hutspan. Pizza? Well, I mean, you should definitely have, like, a true Chicago style pizza. It's great. You eat it with a fork and knife. I am a New York pizza guy through and through. I like it too, but every once in a while, it's like when in Chicago. Well, this is like when in Italy. Exactly. This is one of those things where I don't think you have to choose sides. No, let's just all eat all kinds of pizza all the time. Yeah, but people get really passionate about their pizza. I know, but these are like, man, it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza. If there's one thing we can all just settle down about, it's pizza. Even Mexican pizza. Come on. Yes. What are you, crazy? You can't just run around saying that what you eat is not pizza unless it's exactly what the Neapolitans are making. It's not pizza. It's not neapolitan pizza. No, it's not pizza. All right, so now the ovens. I guess I thought this was an odd little thing that they put in there. What about the different kinds of ovens? Yeah, it just seemed intuitive to me. Well, sure. Well, you use appeal. Not many people know that big spanking paddle is called appeal. I didn't I have to say. Okay, so you slide it in there. They can be electric. They can be cooked right on a conveyor belt. Like if you're at a big pizza chain or if you have a conveyor belt oven at home. That's true. But the kingdom of the all is the brick oven pizza cooked with wood, and your crush should have little bits of black char on it, if you ask me, for the best taste, which is actually so it's been carbon. Yeah. Little. Spoiler there for an upcoming show. Yeah. And then here in Atlanta at Antico, I think they brought those three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I can see that. There's a lot of gestalt going on there's. Tons of gestalt. Neapolitan pizza. Yeah. So Neapolitan pizza is extremely thin crust. It's bubbly crust. You put out sauce and then maybe basil and mozzarella. You don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much equal parts. Just visibly looking down over the pizza, it appears like equal splotches of basil, mozzarella, and sauce. Yeah. Kind of spare. They don't overdo it. And to be a true Neapolitan pizza, as of December 2009, the European Union issued a protection that regional protection. That like champagne. And what was the other thing we talked about recently? Was it a cheese? I had to a bit, probably, yeah. And also, I think New Chatel has regional protection as well. Okay. But basically, it has to be produced in the area under these certain guidelines to be considered that Neapolitan pizza enjoys the economic protection now as well. And to be Neapolitan, it has to be round. It can't be ostentatious, no more than 13 and a half inches in diameter. It can only be a 10th of an inch tall, which is thin. And it's center. Yeah. The crust has to be no more than three quarters of an inch thick. So this is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yes, but not ultra thin. I got taken to task on Facebook today oh, yeah? Because they said it was ultra thin. They were like, that's not ultra thin. Ultra thin is a tortilla. I guess. So Mexican pizza, you have to knead the dough by hand, right? Yeah. And I got a couple of more that weren't in the article. Supposedly, it has to be in a wood fired oven above 905 degrees Fahrenheit only San Marzano plum, tomatoes. Okay. Which to me, that's the only tomato if you're going to be cooking Italian. Is that right? I think so. Is that canned? Yeah. Okay. Now I know what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure you can get them fresh, obviously, but yeah, the cans and marsanas are like what I use in my spaghetti sauce. Have you been to the Italian market by five seasons on the West Side? I have not. It is like, right, like, half a block down, and it is authentic. Really? Yeah. You should check it out if you're into that. I am into that. We'll check it out. All right. And I think that's all to by law. And of course, they pointed out an article I read that no one's going out and punishing anybody. It's just a set of standards that they like to hold dear. They're not going to throw you in jail for calling something a Neapolitan. Right? Yeah. Although they should. So that's Neapolitan. We talked about New York and Chicago, california pizza that is super thin crust. Yeah. Usually made with what vegetables are in season. I like California Pizza kitchen. It's okay. It's pretty good if you like barbecue sauce on your pizza. No, they have a toastata pizza that's really good, too, man. You got to expand your horizons. It's not just New York and Chicago. There's a whole world of pizza. I've been to CPK. It's fine. The black bean salad there is delicious. They're guacamole is pretty good, too. All right. And then Greek. Yeah. That's also in a pan like Chicago. It's just feta. I'm not thinking of feta. Feta and spinach. Sometimes olives. Yeah, I like feta. And then Sicilian and there's American. Sicilian and italian. Sicilian, that's right. And if you're an American, you're making a Sicilian pizza. It's rectangular, square, thick crust, not a fan. The reason it's thick is in Sicily, they bake the ingredients into the crust. Yeah, I'd like to try that, actually. It's like they heard about stuffed crust pizza and started mimicking it. Oh, man. Pizza drives me nuts with all those things. It's like the rope of cheese in the crust. And then they had the one crust. It was the one the pizza you eat backwards. Yeah. They just come up with all these things that are completely unnecessary. There was the pizza that eats you. Yeah. The pizza that eats you. Yeah. And speaking of Soviet Russia, there's some pretty crazy toppings around the world. What do they eat there? In Russia, they eat something called makba, which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions, and salmon, which I have to say, sounds kind of good. You know what I thought was good? The Japanese. The mayo. Yaga. Yaga? Yeah, mayonnaise, bacon and potato mixture. They put their hot dogs in there, too. Yeah. To check that out in India. Little pickled ginger and tofu, maybe. And little minced mutton. That's good to me. You don't like mutton? No. I had a pet goat. This is a lamb. I know. Totally different amino. They can't even mate, I don't think. I bet they could. Well, they can, but they can't reproduce. Okay. Brazil, you might get some green peas on your pizza. Yeah. Costa Rica. You might get a little coconut. Equally woof. Yeah, I think so. I'm not big on coconut. Anchovies are generally regarded as the least favorite pizza topping. What's the number one pizza topping in America? It's pepperoni, of course. Wrong. Really? It got toppled this year. Wow. Chicken. As far as protein goes. Chicken, really? Yeah. How do they calculate that? Is that, like, in restaurants or there's actually a surprising amount of pizza industry, marketing and lobby groups. Trade groups, yeah, that's true. That pizza. And this owners association. I ran across a blog post, and I don't remember I followed it to this press release from some pizza association, and I don't remember which one it was, but they said that chicken topped pepperoni as far as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means that Americans consume more than \u00a3250,000,000 of chicken on their pizza. Yes. Which makes sense because chicken is heavier than pepperoni. That's true. That's a lot of pepperoni. Maybe they go by weight. Yeah. We've got some awesome stats here, don't we? Yeah, go ahead and fire some of those out. So the number of pizzas sold in the US. Each year, 3 billion. I'm responsible for at least a million and a half of those 350 slices sold every second. Yeah, not bad. And every year the average American eats 46 slices. That's child's play. 93% of Americans eat pizza at least once a month. Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, that means almost every American eats pizza at least once a month. That is pretty staggering. I can't imagine that there's any other food like that except maybe a cheeseburger. I bet pizza tops that even I would think so. It's just such an easy because vegetarians can eat pizza. Cheese pizza. Yeah. And if you go to McDonald's or something like that and you have a family of four, you're going to spend more than you would on a pizza that will feed that family of four, too. And you don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Exactly. With McDonald's. You do, but what else? Was there anything else? There was a guy in my elementary school, actually, remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas? There was one dude, Brett Standish, that did not eat pizza. And he was like the only kid I ever knew that didn't eat pizza. So every time we had pizza, it was like there was a battle royal to find out who would get Fred sandwiches, pizza. And he would like, up his asking price each week when it was like a valuable commodity. Smart kid. Yeah. What was the most he ever got for it? I have no idea. Probably a bunch of pringles and like a little time behind the school. You know what I'm saying? No, but my imagination is racing right now. Okay. Yeah. There's this little sidebar in this article that said that more than 30 pizzerias in New York are operating under the name raise. That sounds like a lot. Until you realize there's $9,000 and pizzeria is in New York alone. New York City. Well, I thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about raise? Sure. If you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's, got four raised pizzas. Is that right? Famous original race. Atlanta has raised New York pizza since whatever year. Since 1990. Right. In Atlanta. That's not too bad. But yeah, by the count I got there are 49 pizzerias in New York that use some form of the name Ray. And here's the story behind it. Ralph Cuomo opened the first race on Prince Street. He's grandfather to Rivers and father of Mario, we're going to say, and his nickname. He claimed to be Ray because he said it was Ralphie, then Rayfy, then Ray. I'm not quite so sure about that. Okay. He opened a second one in the 1960s, and then someone named Rosalino mangano. Mangano bought the second race, changed the name to Famous Original Race, even though that wasn't true. So things start to get a little messy. The Manjano now goes by Ray, which is also bogus, opened several more famous original Rays all over the city, sold that to a new owner who began using other variations of the Rays. So it kind of just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together to trademark the name. None of them are named Ray yet. They have all gotten together to try and trademark the name Ray. Right. And to shut down, at least in name places like Atlanta's, raised near Pizza in Atlanta. Who. You just probably got in trouble. I don't think so. They know about them. You don't know that. It sounds like a cartel. I think it is. Speaking of cartels chuck the big three. Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's. Yeah. Of those three, the one that has the most urban legends associated with it is Domino's. I had heard, I think one of these, the 30 minutes or less went away because they killed some kid in a car. A delivery person did it's. Such a ready made urban legend. Supposedly there were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person was hit, but they didn't say it had anything to do with 30 minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah, that's right. One person killed, at least. So then at least one person hit both kind of. Right. But they did do away with that. There was also a rumor that the owner of Domino's contributed a lot to anti abortion groups, which may or may not have been true, but he didn't know Domino's probably at the time because the guy who founded the company, Tom Monahan yeah. He sold it in 1998 for a billion, which is pretty tiny. But he is a staunch Catholic and obviously a supporter of pro life and is building his own little Catholic town outside of Miami. Yeah, and I've heard of these before. We basically like, I'm going to build my own little town filled with people that are like me. Exactly. Because I'm incredibly wealthy. Exactly. So I don't know what the status is on that now, but supposedly more than 30,000 residents will occupy this town and eventually they'll go to war with celebration Florida. And then there's all these goofy pizzas. I don't get into all this stuff. Like the 3000 Euro pizza with cognac, marinated lobster and edible gold. Okay, so that holds the record. And soaked caviar for the most expensive with gold. There's actually two categories in Guinness as far as most expensive pizza with edible gold and without. Apparently, if you just want to throw some edible gold on your pizza, you can just tip the scales burning wise. But if you want the most expensive pizza in the world without gold. That record was recently broken. Stevenson pizza company in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with the guy from Hell's Kitchen. Oh, yeah. Shut it down. Yeah. Gordon Ramsay. Yes. They have a $450 pizza called the C six pizza. It has lobster, thermador black Alaskan cod and caviar on it. It looks kind of good. They do stuff like that to get press and get people in there. I get it. What about the largest pizza ever built and eaten? I like that they have that caveat. Yeah. Agreed. Havana, Florida from 1987. I'm surprised no one has tried to break it since then. \u00a344,457 of pizza over 94,000 slices. Yeah. Devoured by at least 30,000 people hanging out. How did they bake that thing, I wonder? I don't know. That's a great question. That's the one I want listener mail on. Not your favorite pizza topping. No one cares about that. How did they bake that thing? I mean, maybe it was sun baked, I don't know, in Florida. Or maybe they're like, wow, this is really chewy. Like they make it and they're like, oh, wait, yeah, because it says Eaton. Or maybe there's another record tied to it for the largest pizza oven I would have worn. And then the longest pizza delivery. 2004, a Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough delivered a pizza 10,532 miles, 16,950 km from London to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian pizza as part of the Make A Wish Foundation. I was about to disparage it. I know. That's why I got all that out in one breath before you could break it. Yeah. Okay. I was saving you from yourself. Make a wish. Then I supported. Way to go, Chuck. That's pizza. Yeah. You know what's awesome about pizza? I guarantee you there's dark corners to all this that we didn't even hit. That we're going to hear about. That we want to hear about. This will be one of those which I love. Yeah. I love pizza. If you love pizza, you can read more about it@housedofworks.com. Type the word P-I-Z-Z-A into the search bar at our belovedhouseofworks.com website, which is now two words, I think, as far as AP goes. What website? Yeah, for a long time. Late. No, I was taught when I was hired here. It's capital W-E-B. Separate word. Lowercase. S-I-T-E right now it's lowercase. All one word. Oh, it's all one word now. I thought you're saying it's two words now. No. Got you. Yeah, no, it's one word. Okay. Which is great. And if I did say two words, I was wrong. We'll find out anyway. I think I said search bar in there. So it's time for the listener mail. Chuck? Yes. We should tell everybody about something very special and dear to our hearts. New York City. That's right. We are going to Comic Con and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October 12, at Comic Con at the Jabit Center. It's like our new thing. We did San Diego. Now we're doing New York. That's right. Next up, Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con, you should come by and see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of our famous, famous to us all star trivia nights. Right. Where is it going to be? The Cutting Room? It is at the grand reopening of the Cutting Room in the Flatiron District, which is what's the address? It is in New York and it's in the Flatiron, you said? Yes. And doors open at 730. Trivia goes down at 830. And what is first come, first serve, right? Free. First come, first serve. We will have a bar there that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drinks. That's right. We're going to basically be having a really good time. If you're not familiar with our trivia nights, just come out and check it out. It'll be worth your while. Absolutely. And stay tuned for info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the Allstar team. We are filling that out as we speak, but we will have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah. And at the very least, you can come take on me and Chuck, right? Yeah. Okay. It's just fun. So what is it? That's Friday, October 12, right? Yes. The panels at when the panel is at, I believe, 645. Okay. And then we're going to be at the Cutting Room starting at 830. Trippy starts at 830, doors at 730. Be there. Be square. You're good at this. Thank you. All right. Is it time for listener mail? Yes. I'm going to call this accidents. Thanks to us, we caused an accident. A good one. No one got hurt. Okay. This is from Annie. And Annie was going off to college, which was several states away, so her family decided to road trip with her to the college is a little mini vacation. That is very sweet. Depending on how Andy feels about her family. Well, you're about to find out. It may sound fun, but it's not easy to agree on music when you're James Blunt loving mom, miley Virus loving younger sister she is just heading off in college. Yeah. And weird European loving older brother are all crammed into a car together. After a few hours of me wondering if I could get a refund on my soundproof headphones, they agreed to let me pick the music. And I picked stuff you should know. Turns out everyone loves doesn't hate stuff you should Know. That's good. We were all interested. More importantly, not yelling or throwing CDs out the window. Plus, it was fun to go back through. My favorites. Jack the Ripper, for instance, made my mom a little green. That's a good one. However, you know what? We heavily edited that one. Yeah, it was worse. It was way worse. I think. Yeah. I remember going through there and being like, dude, we can see this. It was factual. No, it was. However, during a time when it was my goofy brother's turn to drive parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is. At the end of the cast about genius, you were reading some other listener mail from a lady truck driver and told her to honk her horn, which my brother did really loud, like a truck would do. It wouldn't have been a problem. But we are in one of those curvy two lane highways behind a senior citizen, and basically this old lady thought that they were honking at her. Oh, no. She slammed on her brakes oh, no. And caused the person riding behind her to butt into her rear end. Oh, no. No one was hurt, but I was laughing because over the screech of tires, I actually heard Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause an accident. Wow. This is everyone is fine. There was no damage to either car. But my mom made my brother give them both info because my mother thought that he was liable. Thanks, mom. Yeah, exactly. She just drove him straight to jail, and she says I was the one to awkwardly explain to the old lady what a podcast was. PS. I hope my dorm mate likes you guys. That's from Annie. Thanks a lot, Annie. That was really nice. I'm glad everyone's safe. Me too, man. That's crazy. It sounds a little made up, but oh, yeah. We've fallen for it before. Sure, man. Either way, the marriage, the wedding proposal. Yeah, I still have to egg on my face about that. It's all right, man. We all do. If you have a great story about how your family's been brought together by stuff you should know, we want to hear it. We also want to know how the citizens of Havana, Florida, baked their 94,000 sliced pizza. Yeah, we really want to know that. Agreed. And how delicious it was. Yeah. You can tweet to us all of this information to SYSK podcast. Seriously? Our Twitter is killing it. Yes. That's great. It's one of the best Twitter feeds on the Internet. Wow. I scout it all, man. It has wacky news. It has important news. Criticism of Twitter. When they suspend people's accounts, we talk to people back and forth. Sometimes we pester hodgman for no good reason. There's just all sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or we'll see a tweet from the Jim Henson Company that they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah. So, like, pretty cool. Stuff like that is going down. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. So you can follow us on Twitter. So it's the at symbol and then Syskpodcast at S-Y-S-T. We're also killing it on Facebook. Our Facebook page is awesome. That's Facebook. Comstnow. Yeah. And you can just send us an email like a normal person would, to s y two stuffpodcast@discovery.com for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit How Stuff Works.com." | ||
How Noah's Ark Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-noahs-ark-worked | Stories of a great flood and a man who managed to stay afloat while the world drowned abound in ancient traditions. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the possible evidence of the Great Flood and whether Noah really existed. | Stories of a great flood and a man who managed to stay afloat while the world drowned abound in ancient traditions. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the possible evidence of the Great Flood and whether Noah really existed. | Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:10:32 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=16, tm_min=10, tm_sec=32, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=68, tm_isdst=0) | 30196370 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. It's Charles w chuck Bryant. And since the two of us are in the same room and there's microphones that are recording, this is stuff you should know. What do you sniffing? Grapefruit essential oil. I don't know why it's here, but it sure is a pleasant smell. That's weird. You never know what you're going to get when you walk in the booth here. Let's doubt the place like this. That is lovely. Essential oil. Which means all natural and that it's necessary. Well, it's not a fragrance oil. Right. Which is not all natural. Oh, yeah, you would know all about that. Yeah, Emily's all over that stuff. You want a plug? Sure. Mamabat body loveyourma.com. And that is Emily's soap and toiletries and candle. Toiletries? Yeah, like brushes and stuff, right. No, lotion and scrubs and candles. Those are all essential oils. All natural. Boy, this is just really sure. All right. We haven't done that in a long time. True. Hey, Chuck, I know I asked you so I know the answer, but have you seen Zeitgeist, the movie? I have not. I have heard about it before you even said anything. Yeah, it's definitely out there in the Zeitgeist. Guest producer Mattie was all over that stuff. Oh, yeah. When it came out? Yeah, I finally saw it. I would have these conversations with you and she's like, you really need to see Zeitgeist. How have you not seen Zeitgeist? Right. We finally sat down and watched it and it's really good. I mean, the guy made it for seven grand and just did an incredible job with it. I'm not going to give it away. I would recommend everybody seeing it. I'm sure it will offend a lot of people and it will take a lot of people off. But then there are some people out there who will be like, wow, this is really cool. Right. But one of the things, one of the first ones first segments is talking about how there is like basically all of the religious figures can be dated back to or traced back to Horace, the ancient Egyptian god. I think we've mentioned that before too. Yeah, well, that guy in the movie really goes into detail about this. But the whole thing kind of begs the question that's related to Noah's ark, which we're about to talk about. And that when you have cultures all over the world that share a similar story or have a similar idol or something like that, there's some sort of commonality and they resemble one another so much. Is that evidence that something took place or is that evidence of cultures borrowing from one another and forming a cultural tradition that can be traced back to a single source or both? Yeah, it definitely can be both. To an extent. Sure, there is a disparity between the two also, but the flood definitely falls into that because there are stories of the flood, of a global, worldwide, catastrophic flood that just changed everything all over the place, many religions and many religious texts. Yes, that's true. Usually accompanying that flood legend is a man who built a boat, was commanded by God, or warned in some traditions, and built a boat, put two of every animal you could find on them, or two of every animal, and basically sat there and waited for the rains to come. Steve Carell. Exactly. Did you see that? No, never. Yeah. Did you? I saw parts of it, enough to know that I was disappointed in Steve Carell. I got into the TV ads. Oh, sure. Yeah. But that's kind of the story, though, is that a man named Noah is chastised by the people in his town, in his area, for being foolish, and there's not going to be a flood. He's warning us of this flood, you're silly man, building your crazy, silly arc. Right. And it's definitely part of the allegory the moral tale is you should be able to withstand the ridicule of your non believing heathen neighbors. Sure. When God talks to you that's right. Let's talk about the other, more possibly scientific aspects of the flood. Because it's so ubiquitous, a lot of people have dedicated scientific inquiry to it, big time. This article says outright that a literal flood that would submerge the Earth to its mountaintops is not possible because that would require five times the amount of water in the oceans and atmosphere put together. Right. Because one of the aspects of this flood legend is that the whole Earth was flooded up to the mountaintops. Right. And here's where we get into that whole ball of yarn of literal bible literalists or biblical fundamentalists, maybe the whole world at that time meant that area, the Middle East. Well, yeah. This is a time when there was no communication other than maybe a baked clay tablet. Right. And travel was fairly limited and regional in nature. So if you have a big enough flood, by all intents and purposes, like the world is flooded, the world as they know it. Yes. Right. I just found out, though, bible literalist, they don't literally believe every word of the Bible is like they still believe in metaphor and parable in allegory and stuff like that. I kind of thought those people believed exactly what you see in the Bible is exactly what happened. Yeah. Why would they call themselves literally? Well, because they're more literal than, I guess, the other camp got you. That's an entirely different podcast altogether. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of stuff with that. And one will probably never record. Probably not. Well, let's talk about some of the theories behind all this. You said that it's physically impossible, it's biogeochemically impossible for the Earth to have flooded up to the mountaintops. That's what they say. That's what scientists say. You said that it was probably a little more local or regional and there's actually evidence of flooding in the right place at about the right time. Sure enough to support what's called the Noah's flood hypothesis. Right. Aka Black Sea deluge theory. I like them both. Yeah, they're both good. It doesn't say the band name thing. Like 80 people just went like I didn't think about that. Black seas don't lose theory. Yeah. A little too long. Okay. For my taste. So you're talking about William BF. Ryan Walter C. Pitman of Columbia in New York Times. Actually, before they even published it in like, journals, the New York Times published it. They postulated a theory that the Great Flood was resulting from rising waters in the Black Sea just as the last ice age was tapering off. Which makes a lot of sense. 5600 BC. Yeah. Basically the whole idea was that the ice caps overwhelmed the Mediterranean, which flowed across the Bosborous Strait and into the Black Sea. Right, right. And apparently this would have happened at about 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Those two guys reckon 60,000 sq. Mi they think would have been flooded. Yeah. And there's actually evidence the guy, Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic, who we'll visit with later, found evidence that the Black Sea was indeed at one time a freshwater lake. Right. Now it is a saltwater sea, an inland sea, and so most likely that was the result of the Mediterranean infiltrating it. Is that 2007? Was that his work? No. He searched for evidence of Norah's Ark in the late ninety s and two thousand s. They did find incontrovertible natural evidence, but they didn't find evidence that there were people that would have witnessed it. So they don't know if it happened at a time when people noticed it, or if it was cataclysmic, if it killed a bunch of people or what. Sure. 2007 they found evidence that ice caps melting from Greenland kicked the sea level up about four and a half feet between over the course of about 600 years or so. Yeah. But there was a five year study from UNESCO and the International Union of Geological Services in 2009 that said if there was a sea rise in a flood like that, it was probably over a longer period of time. And more mild than that. Yeah. 600 years. Is it more mild than 600 years, they were saying? Yeah, like maybe as much as 1000 years. Right. And here's the big problem. The Noah's Flood Hypothesis and all the supporting evidence, there's a really important piece left out, which is the rain. Depending on who you talk to, it rained for six days. Up to 40 days and 40 nights. Well, up to 150 days, actually. Whose is that? Well, that's in the Bible. Okay. I thought it was 40 days and 40 well, it says 40 days and 40 nights. But then I think, man, I wish I had it in front of me. Something about the waters for 150 days. So maybe it rained that long. And the flooding roads up to a point of 150 days right. Before it subsided. And he also took seven pairs of clean animals. Yeah. And then two, aka edible unclean animals, aka ferrets. They are really unclean. They're good eating, though. Jerry just laughed at that. It's also possible, improbable, that the whole flood legend since, remember, the world was a lot smaller even though it was really large at the time, was a larger than usual flooding of the tigers and euphrates which flood every year. Yeah, exactly. Every summer, I think. Yeah. It's seasonal flooding. We didn't mention Noah's flood and how Floods Work episode, do we? This is the follow up. But the seasonal flooding, if there was one, that was really bad. Right. These people, the people who started to first record the idea of Noah and this great flood were in that area at the time, the Mesopotamia area, starting with the Sumerians. Right. And some postulate, perhaps. Noah was wealthy and could afford a really great boat and the Tigris and Euphrates flooded and that became the story that eventually morphed into Islamic and JudeoChristian versions. Right. But about 2000 years before it was recorded in the Old Testament, the Sumerians wrote of a man named Zeusodra. Right? Yeah. And he was basically the archetype for Noah and the flood story. And then that was followed up by the world's first book. The world's first known book. One of my personal favorites. The Epic of Gilgamesh by John Grisham. Right? Yeah. That's a good one. Yes. I can't believe that twist at the end of the lady with $40 million. So you're right. That is the oldest book in recorded history. In the Babylonian say, there was a man named Utna Pichtom and he warned of a great flood, built a boat about the size of an acre and there were six days and nights of rain and he sailed to modern day Bahrain. Right. What's interesting is that the size of the boat is found just about the same in all of these traditions, starting with Gilgamesh, about an acre in size, up to the Bible, which mentions that it's 300 qubits. And let's just go ahead and discuss qubits for a moment. Okay. I think it's time in the history of stuff you should know that we finally got the qubits. Yeah. But qubit is an ancient measurement of length that runs from the tip of the middle finger to the inside of the elbow. It's usually about 14 inches or something like 45.72 inches or 45 CM. Right? Yeah. So 300 cubits is 5400 inches or 13,716 CM which means it's 450ft or 137 meters. Right? Right. Long, 50 wide, 30 tall, three decks made of gopher wood. All that equals would cover about an acre in area. It's a big boat. It is. But it is strange that it does appear with about the same dimensions and all these tradition. So it makes you wonder if there was a wealthy merchant right in the area at that time, did he really have an acre size boat or was it just like that's the opposite of an allegory for a really big boat? It's like really specific rather than hyperbolic, maybe. So maybe hypobolic. That's a big boat for today. With today's technology in the Quran for people out there that are going, what? Noah's in the Quran? Yeah. No, no nuh. He's one of the five prophets of Islam, along with Abraham, Jesus, Moses and Adam. Wait, did you just say Jesus? I did. Did you know this before this article? Yeah, I took religion in college. Okay. I had no idea. Jesus is a venerated prophet in the Islamic tradition. I bet a lot of people don't know that. We do now. So the book of Surah, or S-U-R-A-H surah tells of New or Noah speaking as a prophet of God, warning his neighbors, turn from your evil ways. And aside from the name differences and where the ark eventually lands, which in the Bible it's Mount Ararat and the Quran, it's Judy, or is it Judai? I took it as Judy. Judy. Those are really the only differences other than that they're pretty similar to each other. Right. But those locations are very specific on a mountain somewhere. Right. And there are also two very different locations, both known at the time. So I mean, it's not like they were confused or anything like that. There's also another location that people search to mount Suleiman and Iran. But those are the three big mountains that are being looked at currently. That is correct, sir. So let's talk about the search. There's been a number of searches, I think there still are for the Arc. People want to find evidence of the Arc because if you find the Arc, well, then everything really happened and the creationist and literalists are like, hey, I told you it's close. A lot of people have kind of looked into this and we talked about the geological evidence. There's a little more. There's some evidence that the Tigers and Euphrates River did indeed have a pretty big flood around 2900 BC. And that it wiped out entire cities in sewer. Right. That's pretty good evidence that this flood did indeed happen. Right, a flood. But we're still lacking one of the main components as far as biblical scholars are concerned, which is the Arc fingerprints. Let's go to error, which is particularly tantalizing or was at one point in time. Yeah, sure. I got a little info on this special. In 1993 Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark, CBS aired this special that they later on said was entertainment and not documentary after the fact. It was hosted by what's his name, darren McGavin from Christmas Story. He's awesome. And Billy Madison was awesome. Yeah, billy Madison. Did I ever tell you I saw The Christmas Story at a screening in La? And they brought him out? No. The director was there and told stories. He made porkies so he could make a Christmas story. Oh, yeah, you did something. And they wheeled out Darren McGavin. Or they didn't wheel him out. He was in a wheelchair. Kind of back into my right. And everyone stood and clapped and he was just kind of like it was kind of sad. He was old. He waved like the queen. Yes. And his wife was like, this is for you. I don't think he quite got it. Oh, wow. He's that old? Yeah, he died not too long after that, I think. When did you see him? So this is definitely post Billy Madison because he was totally sharp and mobile and everything. This is like 2001 ish or 2000, somewhere in there. Wow, he went downhill quick. Yeah, it's very sad. I love that guy. He was great in Colchck, too. In what? Colchk, the Night Stalker. Do you ever see that? Is that a movie? No, it was a TV show. Really? Yeah. It was like kind of like Outer Limits kind of thing. But it was mainly monsters. He was a private detective who would end up on a case and there was a monster behind it or something like that. Or a ghost or something crazy like that. It's like a supernatural detective series. Yeah, it's cool. I can't believe I've never heard of that. It's crazy. He had this tagline. Who loves you, baby? Not a finger. All right, boy, we can get distracted so easy. He hosted the show, CBS ran the show. And a guy named George Jamal, supposedly his story was that he and a companion named Vladimir crawled into a hole in the ice at the top of Mount Ararat into a wooden structure. All right, I've seen it so far. He says, quote, we got very excited when we saw this part of the room was divided into pins, like places where you would keep animals. And so this is on TV and people are getting really excited about this guy. He took some wood with them. Then tragedy struck. Vladimir was taking pictures and basically backed up, like fell out and tumble down the mountain and died, destroying the film evidence. Wink and of course, if you can't see where this is headed as it later comes out, george Jamal is an actor. He'd been telling this story for years. He's never been to Turkey. There is no Vladimir. The whole thing was completely made up. And it gets a little more fun, though. They had experts paraded about throughout the show that claim certain things, like biblical people developed batteries and with those batteries, they ran air conditioners. Wait. I've heard about batteries. They did have chemical batteries, like back in Egypt. Oh, really? Yeah. Did they run air conditioners. I don't believe that. They said that the flood occurred in subterranean chambers bursting up through the Earth's surface with the explosive power of 10 billion hydrogen bombs. And it's important to note that none of this is substantiated. It was all just, like, made up stuff. Okay. And then finally, they found fossils of animals buried in swimming positions and fish found in positions of terror, fins extended and eyes bulging. So, like, these fish were so scared, they were fossilized flash, fossilized flash fossilized with their eyes intact, bulging the water, because I guess a lot of water is intimidating to a fish. I would think they would be, like, sweet. Do you think they really need to pile on more lore? I know this. It was weird. Can we just stick with the existing lure and try to figure that out? So anyway, that was the big hoax, and it was found out to be a hoax and a big disappointment for some people, I'm sure. Some people. Other people are probably like so I mentioned Robert Ballard, the guy who found the Titanic. Famed explorer. He led an expedition in 1999, in 2000, and he was looking not so much for Noah's Ark itself, although if there's any place on Earth that would be a great place to preserve a wooden boat for several thousand years, the Black Sea, the bottom of it is currently perfect. Very cold, very low on oxygen, and they have found some pretty ancient wood structures. But they haven't found any Neolithic structures. Right. Although I said they did find the ancient shoreline. They found seven kinds of muscles, like ancient extinct mussels. Five of them are saltwater, two are freshwater, which is incontrovertible evidence that they found this old, ancient freshwater lake shoreline. And at some point, that's what the Black Sea was. And then it was inundated somehow, but quickly. Not from the Neolithic period where this would have taken place. Yet he just found some stuff, but not necessarily that. And that would suggest that the slide did happen, and it did happen quickly, and there were people around to witness it and create a story about it. But wood experts think that there is no wood that would survive that long. That's likely the case in ice and water and whatever. And also, if it was trapped in ice, like, say, on the side of Ararat, right. A glacier wouldn't have frozen it in place. It would have moved it down the mountain. That's what they say. So what about suleiman? Well, let's talk about the erratic anomaly first, because that's pretty interesting. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought we already had did we? I guess not. I think we're about to we took a step to the left. There are photos that were taken by the CIA back in the day, and I think it was actually film as well. And they've got film frames now that they've released. They were classified and then released in 1999 under the Freedom of Information Act. And if you look at pictures, there's a dark spot and it looks like a big old boat. Yeah, it looks like a big old boat. They called that the Error Anomaly, but most experts claim, like you said, that it wouldn't just be stuck frozen up there. It would have moved down from the mountain. Not at 15,000ft. No. And that's where George Jamal said he found it was on Ararat. Yeah. Okay. Which he'd never been to. Right. And then Mount Suleiman. That's the one in Iran. And that's been of particular interest to the Bible archeology Search and Exploration Institute. Did you see this one? I have not. Does it look like it too it's rock? Well, they're saying yeah, it looks like it's rock, but it's actually petrified wood. But it's not. The big problem is it's missing, like, obvious cuts and joints and evidence that it was a man made wooden structure at some point in time. Yeah. There's a Christian apologetics group called Answers in Genesis that you can find on the Internet. And they even came out and were like, I think officially they didn't have an official comment, but they said even Christian creationist geologists say that it's a rock formation. And this kind of stuff, if you push it, just makes us look bad. Got you. But they still said but you never know. But it is in the shape of a boat. That's cool. Of roughly the same size. That's very neat. Yeah. So it's still out there. Possibly. I like Ballard's approach. He's like, I'm not looking for the ark, man. I'm looking for evidence that this flood took place and there are people around to witness it. Yeah. If I find the boat, awesome. If not, whatever. And everyone else can just duke it out. Yeah, exactly. I find it interesting. I do, too. I sit ringside. Yeah. That's a good place to be in this one. Sure. You got anything else? No. My nephew's name is Noah. I know. I met him finally. He sure did. He is taller than you. That's crazy. Yes. 13 taller than me. Yeah. He's getting up there. Shoes. Bigger. Voice. Deeper. This little kid with this deep voice. I was waiting for it to crack at any moment. Okay, well, that's it. If you want to learn more about Noah's Ark, you can read this pretty cool article on the site by typing Noah's Ark in the search bar@howstepworks.com, our beloved site. And I said, Howstep works.com or search bar or something like that. Which means it's time for listener mail. Hold everything. Josh. Before listener mail, we need to announce one final time, which still won't be enough because some people will still say, I didn't know about it. TS. We're doing all we can. Yes. Seriously. Aside from coming to your house and telling you excuse me. March 11. On Sunday, we are live podcasting at south by Southwest, 03:30 p.m. To 430 and at the Drisco Hotel, Maximilian room. That's official. You need to be a bachelor to get in. That is correct. The following evening, happy hour, monday, March 12, five to nine Fideo Irish Pub street. Yeah, what's going on? We're having the stuff you should know live variety show. We're going to have our buddy John Hodgman there our soon to be buddy Eugene Merman doing some stand up. He's very funny. We're going to have music by Lucy Waynewright Roach, crooks local Austin band, and our good friends, the Henry Clay people. Your brothers in arms. That's right. And all of this is to show off clips from the public debut of our TV pilot that we made for Science Channel. That's right. A half hour TV pilot, half hour show. If you think you know what it's like, you are mistaken. It ain't no mythbusters. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, why would we want to do another thing? We're doing our own. Is that what people think it is? Well, I mean, that's what I would think it would be sort of like. Okay, but this is different. Definitely. My channel is rolling the dice here on us. It's neat. It is very neat and fun. And please show up to see clips. I mean, it's going to be like the party that evening in Austin. At least that's what I think. Oh, yeah. There's going to be a lot of parties, too. That's really saying something. So come on down. You don't have to be 21. Bring your kids. They can have some chicken fingers and iced tea, and it'll just be a good wholesome night of fun. You're really pimping the chicken fingers lately. Fingers. All right, let's get back to it. Yes, this is from Sarah, the amazing 14 year old fan. Awesome. It's been a while. We even psyched people out with the Hodgman thing, but this is real. Hi there. Epic people. That's the three of us. Wow. I just realized how long it's been since I emailed you guys. It has been forever. Over the past nine months, I've made some pretty big transitions. I'm now a freshman in high school. In my old grade school, we had about 30 kids in the grade. Now I have 100 kids. May not seem like too extreme to you, but it's a little bit of a change. I went from knowing all my classmates, middle names, birthdays, family members, etc. R. I'm sorry, parentheses, not in a creepy way. If you're with someone for eight years, you get to know a bit about them. She points out, like we would think she's some creepy right to not knowing everyone. Luckily, I knew quite a few people from the other two towns that we came together with to make a high school. So the transition wasn't that bad. When I was in grade school, I was involved in almost every extracurricular possible. Not much has changed. I played golf. I'm in FBLA. Remember that future Business Leaders of America student Council, which I was in scholastic Bowl International club band and drama club. Okay. I'm also taking singing and guitar lessons. So Sarah is continuing to her plot to overtake the world, clearly. And then she just realized she hasn't listened to a podcast in over a month. I literally Faceponed myself. And then she sent us a YouTube video, Josh, of a Macrame lady who was afraid of owls on PBS. She thought it was very funny. I did too. And it gave her an idea that we should do a podcast on Macrame or maybe do one over phobias of animals. And then I thought, maybe do one on public television. So she says, do you see my dilemma? I have too many ideas. In normal circumstances, this wouldn't be a problem. That's it. That's how she ended that one. There was some other stuff. Okay. I had to edit. It was a long one. Well, thanks a lot, Sarah. We're glad for another dispatch from you and not a phony one this time. That's right. It was a real one. I emailed her back. I was like, hey, have you listened? We need to send you your book. And she was like, okay, send me my book. I was like, okay, have your parents send us your address. Did they do that? She goes, I'll have to get back to you. So I suspect your parents don't know if she's an Internet celebrity. Probably. So well, let's see. What do you want to hear about? I don't know. How about this? If you visited any biblical locations okay, famous biblical locations. If you visited any famous biblical locations and you know of great restaurants and watering holes in Austin, we want to hear about them, one or the other. It's almost one of the same truck. You can again remember, follow us on Twitter at syscast and you can join us on Facebook at facebook. Comstepytonow. And you can also send us emails. Just a great, wonderful, full old fashioned email to 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 and possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
Is science phasing out sleep? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-science-phasing-out-sleep | Sleep is a restorative state that's vital to human functioning -- or is it? In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore different ways in which science is trying to minimize or phase out sleep, from pills to genetic research. | Sleep is a restorative state that's vital to human functioning -- or is it? In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore different ways in which science is trying to minimize or phase out sleep, from pills to genetic research. | Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:06:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=18, tm_min=6, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=285, tm_isdst=0) | 35332260 | 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. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. 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, Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know the Criterion Collection. What are you doing tonight, buddy? What am I doing tonight? What am I doing tonight? I know what you're doing. I know what we're doing. Oh, yeah. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight. So not like tonight in our physical temporality I mean tonight in the future. Yes. As of someone listening to this, it would be there tonight. I would say possibly on October 12, I am going to be at the Drunken Uni. That's right. The drunken unicorn on East Paul Steele Avenue in Atlanta. Yes. At the MJQ concourse. Yes. Sort of hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. Well, this is what you do. You go along Ponts until you see the Murder Kroger on your left or right, depending on where you're coming from. Chipotle opposite the Murder Kroger on the other side of Ponts. Yeah. And behind that is MJQ. Yes. Beside that is Friends on Ponts, the bar. Ever been? No. I'll take you there. Okay. It's going to blow your socks off. Really? And then below friends is MJQ. Yes. Very little nondescript door, gray steel door. I think some steps down, and I don't think there's any signage whatsoever. Chuck now we may have to stand outside and be like, here it is, everybody. Why are we there? Josh we're going to be there because our house fan, the Henry Clay people, are going to be playing there. That's right. And this is kind of the unofficial kick off for our big trivia event night, which is tomorrow. Tomorrow night, which is October 13. Yes. And that is at the Five Seasons Brewery, west side on Marietta Street. And it is going to be fun. I'm getting excited, Chef. I'm getting pretty excited. It's going to be pretty cool. We have actor and author and former literary agent John Hodgman. And we have former Dukes of Hazard. Costar, Joe Randazzo. And we have squid, billies, Cocreator and Aqua Team hunger Force cocreator dave Willis. Yeah, I've been really getting into squid. Billies. Yeah, it's awesomely. Wrong. I don't know if he still has it or not. An original Squid Billy's oil painting on wood. And I haven't talked to him in a while, so I don't know if they will actually painted it. But I mean, it is dead on. So I need to ask him, do you also paint? I was watching last night and Earl, the dad squid, he always has on different baseball caps to see different rhythmic things, right? Yeah. And one of them said beware in big letters and then in small little letters that said, good stuff. Good stuff. So there's your chance to come out and meet John and Joe and Dave and us and Jerry. And there'll be other podcasters there, I imagine the ones that don't hate us will be there. So Strickland strickland will be there. Yeah, Strickland will be there. Hopefully some other people. Yeah. So we invite everyone to come out. 06:00 Doors Trivia starts at seven. The Henry Clay People Show is one of those later shows, but we encourage you to come. That's on Tuesday. Trivia is on Wednesday. Five Season Brewery. Yes. West Side Experience. Some rock and or roll and then some fun Trivia and Chuck. Also, you can look up our event on Facebook and there's all sorts of details and directions and stuff on that. Absolutely. Yeah. Check it out. The stuff you should know. Trivia event page. And this is the last you will hear of this. That's it. And then what? We may be going on a national tour. Yeah, we're almost definitely going to Austin. It's so funny. Like, everyone else is so sick of hearing this, but I guarantee you we will get people on that Thursday on Facebook that say, well, I never heard anything about your Trivia event. And we'll just be like, go buy a tech hammer at your local Ace Hardware. Take it home. Yes. Put the receipt in the garbage can and smack yourself in the forehead with it. Don't return that after. All right, on with the show. On with the show. Chuck, that's it for Plugfest 2010. Yes, for now. Yeah. So, Chuck, I've got a story for you. All right, story time. Okay. So remember when we were talking about roller derbys? Yeah. And there was that whole transcontinental roller derby where it was really just a roller rink that people went around 57,000 times for 11 hours a day. Yeah. Until they passed out. So I know that, you know that there's all sorts of thorns or what they call what they're called what they used to be called people like to just do stuff to the extreme, test their endurance. Right. Dance Athens, hunt Nazis Athens, anything you could think of in like, the or 30s. Well, staying awake was not immune to the, ahon, fever, I bet. There's a guy in 1959, he's 32 years old at the time, his name is Peter Tripp and he's a disk jockey in New York City. New York City? Yeah. And he made a little studio in a storefront and said, I'm going to stay awake for as long as I can. And he did in DJ while he's doing it. Oh, yeah. Okay. He did for 201 straight hours. Wow. Yeah. This is kind of a mark against him as far as stay awake on enthusiasts go, but he was giving him feta means by two physicians to keep him up. Physicians? But the guy yeah. Well, back in those days, joey on the corner yeah. His physician, I was going to say, back in those days, doctors prescribed anything, I thought. Yeah, nothing's changed. But he stayed awake for 201 hours, assisted by amphetamines, but still. Right. Quite an accomplishment. It was. And it stood for a while, as I think, the longest anyone ever stayed awake. And then people started topping it and topping it. And then finally, 1964, there is a teenager in San Diego, which is a town I know you love, and his name was Randy Gardner, and he's actually still around. That kid stayed up with nothing, no assistance whatsoever, for 264 hours on purpose to try and set the record. Yeah. For a science fair. It was a science experiment. And the guy ended up setting the world record for a while. I bet he hallucinated like crazy. Yes. Here's the thing. I think Randy had a bit of a hard time. He had something kind of some sort of psychotic break here or there. Sure. Peter Tripp particularly had a hard time, especially because of the amphetamines. He hallucinated cats chasing mice in the little studio. I thought one of the desk drawers that he was seated at, where it was on fire, a man showed up in a dark suit and he confused him for an undertaker and ran out. Probably because it was an undertaker. Probably, yeah. There's all sorts of horrible stuff associated with sleep deprivation. Yeah. I don't like it. Bear with me. I'm with you. We're about to get to the want want moment. Okay. Okay. In 2007, you may remember, there was a guy named Mr. Wright I can't remember Mr. Wright's first name. Tony. He was from Cornwall, England. Oh, yeah. He stayed up for eleven days in Cornwall playing pool, just hanging out. We did down the webcast. Right. Yes. He broke the record, and I'm making air quotes here. Right. He broke Randy Gardner's record. What he didn't know is that a year after Randy Gardner set the record, a guy in Finland beat Randy Gardner's record. So two problems here. Tony Wright didn't actually beat the world record. And the second part is in 1990, Guinness stopped acknowledging the world records for staying awake the longest because of health reasons. Really? So Tony Wright stayed awake for eleven days for absolutely nothing? Well, he got a lot of coverage and he was a national hero in Wales, from what I understand. Yeah, I would have looked into that beforehand. I would have called Guinness the Guinness people. Yeah. One of his friends quote, is saying like, we've never heard of this guy in Finland. His name was Tomoi Soinoy. No. Toy me that's his name is TOYMy Soini of Finland. I've never heard of him either. Yeah. And that's the name you wouldn't forget. No. But thank you for bearing with me through that horribly long introduction. That was good. My point was this we have this weird obsession with staying awake sometimes, right? Well, some people do, yeah. It's like an endurance contest. And the guy in New York, Peter Chipp, was assisted by Amphetamines. These days there's entirely new classes of drugs that are designed to keep us awake, right? Yes. They're called drugs I don't want anywhere near me. So, Chuck, you're big on sleeping, right? Well, yeah, but I don't sleep like Emily sleep. She can sleep. Yes. You get a older you start waking up early no matter what. So even if I have a late night at 02:00 A.m., I'm still up at seven? Yes. Okay, but you still require sleep. Yes, I for 01:00 am. Alarmed at the concept of synthetically phasing sleep out. Oh, me too. Even if we don't need it, even if we figure out how to get rest without sleep, it just seems wrong. Well, it is. We'll talk a bit more about that because I have pretty strong feelings about messing with your natural human biology now. We do already, Chuck, through things like caffeine, speed, we stay awake. I know you're huge on speed drainies. Not true. No, absolutely not true. But what do these things do to you? There's problems, there's side effects. Right? Yeah, but there's a problem. Yeah. Caffeine. Although there are studies now that say that caffeine can be good for you in certain amounts, but caffeine can make you crash, it can give you diarrhea, it can make you really irritable if you don't get your caffeine in your system. Yeah, I know that's. Right. And the same with amphetamines. You'd have a serious crash after an amphetamine high. Yes. And that's not what you're looking for. No. That's called sleep debt. Yeah. And you got to pay it back with amphetamines. Right. So sleep for a half a day if you've been up on greenies. Yes, I think greenies, that was big. And Major League Baseball. They called them greenies. Is that a bunch of baseball players? I'm thinking. I'm used to them being called Benny's. There was a lot of caraway when I was in high school. Yeah. Benny's. Yeah. That's short for benzodia. Yeah. So that's the bad effects of caffeine and for sure jittery diarrhea. Plus, the problem is you're being kept awake. You're awake, but there's no rest whatsoever. Yeah. Your body is not getting used to it or anything. No. And your mental faculties begin to decline pretty rapidly once it starts. Right. So, Chuck, what's somebody who wants to stay up but doesn't feel like getting addicted to speed going to do? What can you do? Well, Josh, you should try modafinil. What's Modafinil? It is a sort of new drug. Was it about twelve years old in total? 98, 99? No. Some French researchers were giving it to cats in the early 90s, but it's really kind of taken off for human use beginning in 99, I think. Right. It's in a class of drugs called eugeroics. Yeah. Which is Greek for, quote, good arousal. Good arousal. Greek. Yeah. So the idea here is that you can stay awake with medaffinyl and it goes like all drugs, it goes by a dozen different names and you don't have a sleep debt. That's pretty amazing. It is more. This article was written by Julia Layton on March 7, 2007. It's changed a lot since then. It has. Quite a bit at the time. In 2007, Madafino was like this promise of the future, no side effects. No side effects, no addictiveness. All of this stuff has been proven untrue over time. I've read one study that found that Modafinil for use in shift workers, late shift workers, it kept them awake 1.7 minutes longer than a placebo. Oh, really? Yeah. So it may not even work. But let's take the 2007 view of Modafino first. Okay. Okay. So it's nonaddictive. How could that possibly be? Well, it can't. This is the 2010 oh, sorry, we're back in time. This is naive. Well, are we explaining how it works, specifically? It doesn't do. What? Caffeine and amphetamines do. Things like blocking neuro receptors that trigger Drowsiness. One is called adenosine and they block the receptors that bind to it. Caffeine does. And so it will keep you awake, basically, because you're not feeling tired. Right. So like your neurotransmitters, all of our neurotransmitters function by a release and they float around and have their effect and then they're taken back uptake reuptake. Yeah. Well, dopamine plays a big part too, in both of these. Right. But with the neurotransmitter, including dopamine, you can activate it to release and or prevent its reuptake. So you're either flooding the brain with it and or keeping it in the brain longer. Right. Well, and that's what amphetamines do specifically, is they give the dopamine nowhere to go. So you're just euphoric. Yeah. Sounds pretty good to me. It does sound good, but the problem is your brain's like oh, you want to play that game, huh? Well, I'm just going to withhold dopamine. Right. Unnaturally. So you're going to be depressed for three or four days. Absolutely. Okay, so that's how you get addicted to something, though. Anytime dopamine is released artificially in the brain, your body loves it. Right? And here's the problem. Dopamine is the centerpiece of the brain's reward system. It's how we learn to eat and have sex, to reproduce or have sex for whatever reason and anything that gives us a sense of pleasure, dopamine is involved. And we're taught we're motivated to repeat that behavior through the release of dopamine. So if we drink caffeine or take speed or do cocaine or whatever and dopamine is released, we're taught to do it again, which is the basis of addiction, which, by the way, I think we should do a podcast on just addiction. Yeah, it's a really interesting I wrote something about that. I wrote how addiction works. Well, let's do it. Okay. Let's do it right now. All right, you ready? I'm not prepared. So that's how those other well, in 2007, more nefarious drugs would help keep you awake. And Modafinil didn't do that for some reason, it activated dopamine, but just maybe not as much. Right. And they believe that Modafinil actually targets a neurotransmitter GABA. We'll just call it GABA GABA. Gabba. GABA. And that is the sleep regulator of the brain. And it seemed to slow down Gabba's release. So basically your brain didn't know that, hey, it's time to go to sleep now. Right? Like your circadian rhythm is thrown off. Right? Yeah. So it specifically targeted that well, not that alone because it did release a little bit of dopamine. Right? It did. But what they were saying was it's just such a little amount that you're not becoming addicted. It does, but you're not becoming addicted. Don't worry about it. Right. GABA is not the only and there's also from what I found, there are four types of GABA, and apparently GABA Four is like the most sensitive one. And that's like the real it's. The crux of research right now is trying to figure out GABA or GABA four. But in addition to GABA, there's also histamines, which make us drowsy. That's why antihistamines can jack you up. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate cover goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because adventure is around the corner. And there's a card that's going to get you closer. With the city Advantage Platinum Select card, every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs and with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. And there's also Glutamate. And Glutamate is basically the brain's natural speed. Right. I think they figured it out by now, but 2007 thought was that the modafinil prevented the re uptake of Glutamate, which keeps you alert and functioning. Right? Yeah. And the end result of all this is what they found was a miracle drug, is what they called it, because there was no sleep debt. When you came off of this drug, you didn't need to sleep for a half a day to catch up on things. You would just go back and fall into your regular pattern and be all rested. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, it does sound great. I mean, staying up for 48 hours and then just being able to get an average eight hour night sleep and you're fine. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Me personally? Well, we'll get to that later. Well, we should say, too, though, that it was developed to treat narcolepsy specifically. Right. And we should probably talk about this. There's a company called Cephalon, and Cephalon took metaphor and marketed the heck out of it yes. As provigil and Provigil, according to a 2002 New York Times article we read, said that it means provides vigilance, promotes vigilance. Vigilance, right. Yeah. And basically it was adopted for off label use by everyone from college students to the CEO of Cephalon. Yeah, Frank Baldino. He took it and he didn't say why he was taking it? No, but the only thing it's approved for is narcolepsy. Is narcolepsy. It's a treatment of narcolepsy. They've tried to get it approved for jet lag. They tried to get it approved for Shift workers Syndrome. They tried to get it approved for General Drowsiness. Tiredness, and they couldn't. The FDA was like, no, we'll let you sell this for narcolepsy, to treat narcoleptics. Sure. The problem is it's not how it worked out, though. Right. Well, the problem is there's only about 200,000 narcoleptics in the United States. Right. So Cephalon is like, we need to get this out there. And they started marketing it off label kind of nefariously as well. Yeah. It became a lifestyle drug, is what they classified it as. Yeah. A neotropic. N-O-O-T-R-O-P-I-C. Which means it's another name for smart drug like transhumanists love. Nootropics. Do they? Yes. All those pharma names are so, like I don't know, they rub me the wrong way. Yeah. So like I said, nefarious. I'm basing this nefariousness on this really great article, Chuck. There's two parts called The Rise and Fall of Provogyl, and it's by investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle. And I think everybody should read this. It's really interesting. This is hot off, like, yesterday it was released, I think. Yeah, it was hot off the presses. How odd is that? I know that you picked this. Yeah, because I had no idea that this was written yesterday. And we picked it, like, two days before. Crazy. A week before. Anyway, in the article, she talks about how Cephalon had physicians that they were underwriting that didn't reveal their relationship to the company. But we're saying, like, this is a great drug and it should be used for all these off market purposes stuff that if the company had done it, they would have been prosecuted federally. The Attorney General of Pennsylvania oversaw a bunch of lawsuits and the company hired him as executive legal counsel. Really? Yeah, just all sorts of stuff like that. There's allegations of pay to delay programs with their competitors. They found that 80% of the prescriptions written had nothing to do with Narcolepsy. Yeah. It was depression, Ms. Sleepiness, and like you said, the shift workers syndrome. They were prescribing it for all kinds of things, basically to make you feel better. They had their reps, actually visiting psychiatrists, dentists were prescribing this stuff. Really? Yeah. And again, 200,000 Narcoleptics, 25% of them were on the drug within a year of its release. Right. Yeah. And it just wasn't enough. Well, and then that's when they started jacking up the price, when they found out that people really love this stuff. From November to March, it rose 28% in price, and it was 74% more expensive than it was four years previous in 2004. And I think it topped out at, like, 1318. $18 a pill? Yeah. That is insane. Yeah. And the long and short of all this, as of this week, the European Medicines Agency basically came out and said, you know what? You can't use this for anything but Narcolepsy because we have found out that there are certain psychiatric disorders this causes, like, suicidal thoughts and depression and psychotic episodes and potentially life threatening skin reactions. And also, first I'm sorry, you're right, it topped out at 1362 a pill when it was originally $5.53 a pill. That's true. And for no reason whatsoever, it just rose in costs in the US. Make money. And you were talking about the psychiatric disorders that it exacerbated. Yeah. They basically reformulated manafidol into a kids version for the treatment of ADHD. And they found that what would be the equivalent in the actual population of one in about 2100 cases of things like psychotic breaks, suicidal thoughts and children. And this drug, it was called Sparlan was taken out of FDA testing. They just dropped it. Really? Yeah. Well, and not only that, but it's supposedly non addictive. Not so. In 2009, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist said to USA Today that he had seen his third case of providing addiction, and two doctors back to back admitted that they were addicted to it and they were also alcoholics. Right. It's kind of interesting. I guess. So the hammer kind of fell down on Monopoly and Cephalon kind of simultaneously. It's currently falling, it sounds like. Yeah. The FTC has a lawsuit. I think three different employees turned whistleblower on the company and filed lawsuits against it. And then yeah, that psychiatrist came out in USA Today and said that he was treating people for addiction to it, which is huge. And then Bloomberg also the same day, Bloomberg News released a report about its addictiveness. But it's really interesting to read the stuff that's going on now compared to our 2007 article that I think probably should be taken down and rewritten pretty soon. Yeah. Because it basically claims it's a wonder drug like Viagra. Yeah, it actually compares it to Viagra and says it's better because you don't get five hour erections. Right. Or worse, depending on your viewpoint. So Josh, that is just one drug that we have picked out, but that is not the whole story of science phasing out sleep. Yeah. And this whole podcast isn't intended to target Cephalon. It was just really interesting that we ran across this during our research. And again, I think you should read the Rise and Fall of Provojill by Evelyn Pringles. Look it up online. I think it's up there for free, right? Yeah, it's a good one. So manofidel is not the only thing, like you said, targeting sleep. No, there's another drug from Cortex, the pharmaceutical company called CX 717, and it works sort of like the other one in that it keeps you awake by triggering Glutamate activity. Glutamate was the brain. Yeah. Specifically triggers that. And it also targets histamine. So it sort of works in the same way. But science is all over. What they're trying to do is they're trying to research and see if they can get people by on less sleep with the same effects as having a full night of sleep. That seems to be the goal. Get 3 hours of sleep, but your body feels like it got 8 hours. Not only 8 hours. The best 8 hours. Yeah, the best 8 hours. And it's safe. It can't be addictive, which means it can't have any effect on your reward system. So no dopamine can be released. Right. And what you were talking about, CX 1717, CX 717, it's an amp. That's the class of drug. And like you said, it targets the reuptake of Glutamate. Has nothing to do with the reward system, as far as we know right now. Right. And that's the one that DARPA is looking into. DARPA's leading the way they're driving the sleep deprivation research. Because it's military. Yes. And apparently the Special Ops guys have to stay up for 72 straight hours, usually with very little, if any, rest sure. And be sharp enough to assassinate somebody. Right. Well, the military did a lot of testing on Monopoly. Yes. And this is I can't remember what article it was, but somebody talked to a DARPA researcher who said, we found it was about as good as caffeine. Oh, really? Which is weird. I don't understand, because the article that Layton wrote is saying that it has a huge following. People swear by the stuff it clearly did and probably still does. So I don't understand how clinical results could show it's no better than caffeine, while other people are like, this is the greatest thing ever. Well, it could be the placebo going on again. I guess it could be with the military, though, they would give it to these pilots for a couple of days, make them stay awake, and then have them go out and fly their fighter jet and just to see what happened. And they found that after that, it did a good job till about the 48 hours point. And then after that, regardless of what you're on, your body is going to start showing effects of sluggishness and maybe hallucinations and the things that you don't want if you're a fighter pilot. No. Or just a regular guy trying to make a living in this world. Exactly. There was a 2009 study manofidel actually did contribute to our understanding of the human brain. Some researchers at UC Davis slapped people into a wonder machine, loaded them up on monofidel, kept them awake and watched their brain, and they saw heightened activity in the locust ceruleus. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyberattacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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. I can't imagine being in a wonder machine for two days straight. I think they probably sleep deprived them, and then probably toward the end of the second day or something, they put them I don't know, who knows? But they also gave them tests and found that some tests have found that people actually do better on psychological tests, tests of skill, feats of strength, festival stuff on Monopoly than they do just awake or on caffeine or amphetamines or something like that. So there's mixed results. But we didn't know what part of the brain was keeping people awake or was subject to sleep deprivation. And now we do it's locus ceruleus. So that's probably going to play a role in this endless quest to do away with sleep, right? Part of it, yeah. It's not just drugs either. They're looking for a sleep gene. That one's really interesting to me, don't you think? Take it away. Because drugs are drugs, but they believe that there are people that can get by on less sleep. They're called short sleepers. About one in 1000 people can function just fine on a few hours of sleep. They don't need the big eight or 9 hours. Right. And they believe it's hereditary. And they're trying to find this gene so they can tweak it and make us all into short sleepers so we'd all get more stuff done. Yeah. And there's actually a species of fruit fly that is a short sleeper fruit fly. And it has a mutation. What they found is a mutation has to do with potassium channels. No one knows exactly what yet, but that's interesting because there's an autoimmune deficiency or an autoimmune disease called Morvan syndrome. And people with Morvan syndrome have trouble sleeping. And their syndrome, it affects the transport of potassium through cell membranes. So there's a tie there for sure. Definitely. It has something to do with bananas. Is that where this is all headed? Yeah. Wow. Fruit flies. Potassium. Oh my God. So if they find this gene, I think what they're looking for is a future where people can program their lifestyle how they want it. If you want to work 80 hours a week and work till 04:00 a.m. And get up at seven, maybe there's a pill that can help you do that with no side effects. Maybe. I don't buy it. What I find alarming is that sleep being synthetically, reduced or eliminated. Natural sleep. Yeah. Even among sleep researchers who are like, this is a horrible idea, they still say it's inevitable. And apparently the predictions are like ten to 20 years off, where we either have a pill that we can take and sleep for 3 hours, but feel like we slept for eight right. And keep going, or we won't have to sleep at all. The problem is, remember John Maynard Keynes, the economist, and he came up with the Leisure Society in the 1930s? He was like, people in 100 years won't even have to work, and we all just sit around and have fun. He was right about us being wealthy and having more leisure time. But what he missed the mark on was that we don't spend our leisure time on leisure. No. We'd spend it trying to acquire more wealth. Yeah. So why would you possibly want to have a 22 hours day of wakefulness? The whole point of our eight hour work day is to divide the day into three parts 8 hours working, 8 hours of leisure time, which we now spend vacuuming and going to the grocery store, and 8 hours for sleep. I find it really discouraging to think that we're going in that direction to where we're carving at the 8 hours. We've already done away with the 8 hours of leisure time and now we're going after sleep. I think it's a huge mistake. But there are some people out there that would love to be able to only get 3 hours of sleep a night and all the stuff that they could get done. I don't know, man. What is there to do from 02:00 A.m. To 05:00 A.m.? First of all, you got Taco Bell, right? So you can go to Taco Bell, that's one thing. Sure, there's all sorts of stuff you can do, but imagine if everybody else is up. Well, that's true. And I guess if they build a 24 hours society like New York City, those freaks in that town yeah. There would be more things. It would be libraries open, businesses would be open. Everything would be open for 24 hours. Everything would go to shift work. The key here is, if we're going to do that, don't ever, ever agree to a salaried position. Always make it hourly. Yeah. Or else you're just in big trouble. Yeah. So I say no, thank you. I do too. Chuckers. Great. Also, if the pills don't work, if they don't find the sleep gene, they've got this one thing, it's called brain polarization. Remember transcranial magnetic stimulation? How could I forget? Okay, so this is called the poor man's version of that, where rather than using electromagnetism, it uses a DC current to jolt your brain awake. Oh, that's that machine. Yeah. So look for that. Look for a future where you're great. You have a cattle prod in your brain so you can work longer. You think? Really? See if I'm falling asleep and it feels so good. Yes. Oh, I feel great. And I can get some more spreadsheets done. Yes. If there's going to be any future for humanity, we have to rail against this. Everybody, let's band together as everyone go to sleep. You should probably go on to housetoforce.com and read the hilariously out of date is Science phasing out Sleep. Type in phasing and sleep in the search bar@houseofworks.com. That will take you elsewhere. Also, don't forget the rise and fall of Providill P-R-O-V-I-G-I-L by Evelyn Pringle and also the Stay Awaken on the New York Times. It was an opinion column written by Thomas Bartlett. Pretty good stuff. Just his opinion. Yeah. All right, it's time. For what? Listener mail. Do we have listener mail? Yeah, we do. Let's do it. The return of listener mail. Josh and this is specific to our trivia night because it is about Aquatene. Hunter force. Awesome. This is from Kate and Hunter, who are married. Hey, guys. When I heard that the creator of Aqua team would be joining your trivia festival and a trivia festival, I felt compelled to write you guys to tell you of how that show changed my life. I was in my junior year of college when I went to a potluck dinner at a friend's apartment. I met a sweet, handsome and funny guy there, and we chatted most of the evening. At the end of the night, he mentioned Aqua Teen. He did his meat wad voice and asked if I'd like to go over to his place and watch Ath because he had season one on DVD. It's like the etchings of the 21st century. You want to come back to my place to see my etching? He's very smooth. Care. Yeah. We stayed up all night watching the show, laughing and talking. Two years later, we were spending our date night watching Ath and eating pizza when he proposed to me. When we were planning our wedding, we wanted to put meat wad and Master Shake on top of the cake as an homage to their role in our meeting with Frylock as the minister, but we couldn't find any little figures of them. We tried several times to get in touch with someone connected to the show, see if they could hook us up or tell us where we could buy them, but we never had any luck. Our wedding was perfect anyway, and we've been married close to three years now. Needless to say, we still love Aqua. Dean so if you guys think to share our story with Dave Willis, tell him thank you for us from Kate and Hunter, and this is our way of sharing it. And I hope they're really with everybody is listening to our show. Yeah, I wonder if he does now, now that he's like, oh, I didn't know these guys existed. I guess I'll listen to him since I'm playing computers. I bet he checked it out and may have listened to a poor episode and never tuned anything. Or maybe he's on a Moon fan. Yeah, I think that's a great story. And I for one, think that they should manufacture the characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Remember the little smurf figuring, yeah, perfect box handy. You know, back in the day when South Park first came on, I made little Sculpy. You know what Sculpy is? Sculpting. It's like playdoh and clay, but you can bake it in your oven at home. Yeah, Sculpy. I made little Sculpty South Park guys because they didn't exist at the time. It was so new, and people were like, oh, my gosh, where'd you get those? I said I made them. And then they started mass manufacturing South Park and everything after that. Anyway, I would have recommended to Kate and Hunter to get Sculpy and make your Frylock and Master shake and Meatloud. They're pretty demanding. They like things to just be kind of given to them. Sounds like it. Yeah. Well, thanks, Kate. Thanks, Hunter. Mazel to have a on your wedding. Sorry it didn't work out exactly according to plan, but we'll see if God can change things for you. If you have something you want to let us know about a wedding, a funeral, or a voyage at sea, we want to hear about it. Wrapping up in an email 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 blogs on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands? Find Halo Elevate at TECTO Pet Supplies plus and select Neighborhood pet stores." | ||
Some Movies That Changed Filmmaking | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/some-movies-that-changed-filmmaking | An estimated 50,000 films were made worldwide in 2009 alone. Many are surely clunkers, but in this episode Chuck and Josh talk about the ones that emerged throughout cinema history to change the course of all movies that followed. Get your popcorn. | An estimated 50,000 films were made worldwide in 2009 alone. Many are surely clunkers, but in this episode Chuck and Josh talk about the ones that emerged throughout cinema history to change the course of all movies that followed. Get your popcorn. | Thu, 26 Feb 2015 15:37:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=15, tm_min=37, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=57, tm_isdst=0) | 54231544 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, Aka, Siska and Ebert. Save us the aisles. And Jerry's over there. I guess she's Jean salad. That's the stuff you should know. Triumphant. I don't know why that tickled me so much. Because Jean Salad is a funny looking I guess Jerry's not. I'm just picturing her with a big afro and a mustache and, like, a tweed jacket and bad opinions about movies. G. Shell had a look for sure. He's around, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Rip. Both Cisco and Ebert. So sad. I know. Have you seen the Roger Ebert documentary? No. I've heard nothing but good things. Really good. Very touching. Yeah. What is it? Something life. Life like mine. Life with me. Life on top. Life itself. Life with thumbs. Life itself. Life itself. Life with thumbs. It was really great. And I watched it and made the mistake of watching on a plane, and I was just like, My allergies are acting up. Yeah, I was watering. Because of your allergies? No, because it was sad. It was crying. Do you want me to say it? Yeah. Crying on a plane. I was confused there for a second. That's better than when I watch other movies that are on my laptop that are, like, bad violence or nudity or something. I'm always just like oh. And I kind of lowered the laptop, and it's like, I didn't realize this was in here. And the lady next to me is just like, you disgust me. Yeah. Because I want to be sensitive to people around me, and I'm not one of those jerks. Just lives in my own bubble. It's like watching some sex scene on a plane. You're like, elbowing the lady? No, I hate it. It was so embarrassed. That happened to me a couple of times. I'm like, I needed to start going PG on movies. Yeah, you just look for, like, airplanes. Judd Apatow. Am I right? He's unpredictable. Yeah. All right, so, Chuck, this is your episode to Shine man. Is it? Yes. You're a movie guy, too, though. I like movies, but I almost consciously don't let myself watch movies on a film aficionado level. Right. Because it's pure enjoyment. Yeah. I don't ever want to see the individual shots and just be like, oh, well, that could have been better, or whatever, and just miss the movie as a whole. Yeah. I fall somewhere in the middle of that. I tried to let go, but our video producer director Casey, is pretty bad about that. And our buddy Scotty, who shot our TV show, he's the worst. He's just camera working out, lighting in that scene. Scott's awesome. Hey, Scott. Hey, Casey. They're all in here with us in spirit. And hey, this is the last show in this studio. Yeah. Last episode in the old office. The Murder Room. Couldn't feel more neutral about it. I actually feel less than neutral, less than zero. It's weird. That was a good movie. Thank you. Great shots. I say thank you as if I directed it. I not only directed it, I also played Andrew McCarthy. Yeah, I'm ready to get the heck out of here, man. Can't wait to get in that new office. Yes, it's going to be good. Tiny, little, dedicated studio. Whole new world. All right, let's do this. Okay, so, Chuck, films, you've seen one or two of them in your time? Sure. Have you seen any of the ones in this list? I know you've seen a few of them, but have you seen, like, some of the early ones I've seen? Well, we'll just go piece by piece because I have not seen Battleship Patenkin. Okay. But I do love Mandy Patenkin. It's a little different. Yes. In spelling, pronunciation, meaning, the whole thing. But it's close, I guess. But we're talking, of course, about films that change filmmaking in some way or another. And the first one on the list is from 1925. Battleship Patenkin. That's hard for me to say. Which is not the first movie, by the way. The first screen movie was Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, which is 47 seconds long and the most boring piece of celluloid anyone's ever put together. But it was the first. That's right. This was many years that was a full 30 years before Battleship Potemkin. By the time 30 years have passed, like, we were doing, like, narratives, and there was Banning and all sorts of great stuff, and Battleship Potemkin fell under both of those umbrellas. It was a narrative story. It was a silent movie. That's right. But it told a pretty clear story. And it was a bit of Russian propaganda as well. Yeah. It tells the story of a 19 five uprising where there were Russian sailors, basically. There was a mutiny aboard a ship, and then the bad guys, the Cossacks, came in looking for revenge. Yes. 19 five, that would have been rising up against tyranny. Would have been rising up against the Romanoff monarchy, I guess. Nice. But it was made 1925. So this is a time when Lenin and Trotsky and all those dudes were running around trying to do the great experiment. Yeah. And it turns out that the Battleship Patemkin was banned in some countries. Some countries are like, we don't want this rusty propaganda. Right. But Russia itself later on, banned it when Stalin came to power because he was a self aware dictator. Was that the deal? Yeah. Okay. He knew this could be a metaphor for rising up against my dictatorship, so I'm going to just ban that, even though it's Russian propaganda. Well, filmatically I need to bring the history, by the way, filmatically speaking, it was a landmark film because of the montage, most notably the Russian or Soviet theory of montage, which is basically that your impact is going to come from judge to the city of shots and not necessarily a smooth sequence of shots. Right. And it should be rhythmic instead of necessarily being tied to the story. It was like a rhythmic series of shots. And this one is popular. It was the Odessa step sequence. It's one of the five acts. And it is huge because it has been aped and mimicked and mocked and homaged probably more than about more but a lot of times in film history. Well, yeah, the montage, it's like a go to editing technique, right? Yeah. Well, the montage in general, but specifically the Odessa steps. Okay. There are two notable parts in that sequence. One is basically a big charge on these grand steps leading up to a building and a big battle in Odessa. Odessa, Texas. And there's a part of it where there's the old baby carriage going down the steps. What's going to happen to the baby? And it sounds tired because we've seen that in The Untouchables. Notably, I did not find it tiresome. Naked Gun 33. And a third. Everything is illuminated. The Great Movie by Leaf Schreiber that was from directly from the Odessa step sequence in Battleship Potenkin. The baby carriage. Yeah. And the old shot in the eye through the glasses. Oh, cool. That comes from this movie, too. They're the first ones to do it. Yeah. And you've seen that in Woody Allen's love and death and bananas. And of course, the Godfather. The great sequence where Mo Green is getting the massage and he looks up and puts on his glasses during a montage. Yeah. Because there was an assassination on the steps as well. Oh, yeah. That was definitely a double. Who was that? That was Francis Ford Coppola. Oh, yeah. He was clearly aware of Battleship Potemkin. Clearly. I was trying to think of other examples of montages and the only thing I could come up with was the 18 building something. But that counts as a montage, right? Yeah. It's like some related in some way related shots that are kind of put together that a little bit transcend. Like, until a story in itself, like Rocky training for a fight. Yeah, that's another good one. A lot of times it's set to music. Yeah, I love that. That's the only one you can think of in the great movie. Brazil, too, has the shot through the glasses bit, as I like to call it. So that's battleship of thinking, doesn't it? One of the Nazis and Raiders of the Lost Ark gets shot through the glasses. Maybe. That wouldn't surprise me. It's been off homaged battleship potempen. It made a pretty big splash in 1925 and 1926. The following year, the next movie on the list. It wasn't his first, but it really solidified. I think his Stardom buster keaton stardom. Yeah. The General rightfully so, too. Yeah, he was one of the great well, some people call him the greatest stuntman to ever live he's done some stuff that I think earns him that. Yeah. This is back in the day, too, where he was legitimately risking his life, right. Like, very famously, where he's standing on the street in front of a house and then the whole front of the house falls over him and the window just goes right around him. I watch that again today. I can't believe he did that. There's actually a half of a second where his arm jerks up because he's startled as the house finally makes its way into his peripheral vision. And it has to be one of the most dangerous things that human beings ever done on film. Yes, I'm sure. The whole time before that was like, we did the math, right? You did the math. Do the math again. Do the math again. Show me the math. Show me the math. Yeah, because that's all it was. It was math and measurements. Right. But yeah, he could have been squashed and killed very easily. And he had a lot of faith in everybody who was pulling off this stunt with him. He had to just stand there. That was his whole thing. He had to just stand there. And his bit was that he played it straight constantly. He was a stone faced actor. Yeah. Deadpan. Yeah. He kind of started that whole thing because his big I was about to say rival, but I guess just contemporary charlie Chaplin, while similar in some ways, was completely different because Chaplin was constantly mugging for the camera and asking for the audience sympathy. Right. Raising his eyebrows. Yeah. Look what's happening to me. Come on. Come on. Whereas Buster Keaton would just have that deadpan look the whole time. Yeah. He would go from, like, a house falling around him to jumping on a train or something like that with just the same blank facial expression. Yeah. And the reason this is a highly influential film, The General, is because it kind of showcases the best of both the amazing stunts that would be mimicked throughout the years and built upon and then the deadpan style that influenced everyone from obviously, Bill Murray is one of the great deadpan actors of all time. Yeah. You can count the number of times Bill Murray even smiles in a movie on two hands. Sure. Much less like apes or laughs or anything Michael Sarah's mentioned in here, and I'm like, I think he might have Bill Murray beat. As far as the deadpan actor goes. Yeah. Well, Zach Galifian, actress, is on the list. He's super deadpan. Yeah. Leslie Nielsen, of course. Amy Poehler, I think, is a woman that's a very deadpan has a deadpan style. Jason Schwartzman. Yes. But people say this all is a direct descendant of Buster Keaton's work. Yeah. And if you think we're overstating this, go watch any Buster Keaton movie. You'll be thrilled and delighted. And if your attention span has been shredded to ribbons by the Internet, just go on to YouTube and type in Buster Keaton and it'll bring up all sorts of clips of his awesome stunt. Pretty great. He will be thrilled and amazed, I promise. Yes. And I think I made a note here, by the way, that we have a Fatty Arbuckle retraction to make. Remember when we called him out as the rapist murderer? I didn't say murderer. Well, we said rapists, at least. Right. But we were taking the test by fan. He was acquitted of all that stuff, and apparently he didn't do either act. And his career and life and family name were ruined forever. So he was evidently done a grave misjustice. And we sort of cavalierly just still call them back today. Yeah. I need to look into it more. All right, so next up we have the Jazzinger, the 1927 edition. Not the Neil Diamond one. No. And there was one in between, too, with Danny Thomas, I believe. Neil Diamonds. It's good. I never saw it. Did you ever see it? No, it's not bad. But this is the original from Allen Crossland, and it is notable because it was the first feature length movie that was at least 25% spoken dialogue. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's totally new. Yeah. It wasn't the first talkie because they had short films that were talkedies. And there was a movie the next year I'm sorry. Yeah. In 1928 called Lights of New York that had 100% full spoken dialogue. But The Jazz Singer had a mix of music and spoken dialogue. Right. The first Big Daddy feature link film to do so right. With substantial dialogue. Right. Yeah. And they did it in the most roundabout, difficult way that you could possibly do it, which is to record the audio and the soundtrack, both the dialogue and the music, onto vinyl records, probably wax records. Really. And then the projectionist had to sync the record up with the film strip. So everything was in sync. Yeah. It was a device called a Vita phone that Warner Brothers sunk about half a million into the company called Western Electric, who invented it, and it was actually physically connected to the projectors Motor. While they did have to sync it, it was a physical connection between the phonograph player and the projection. Real, I guess. And it went on to gross three and a half million bucks for 1927. A lot of dough. That's a ton of dough. That's like five $6 million today. At least. Yeah, at least. But was ineligible for the best picture because they were just like, you can't compete with the rest. It's not fair. Oh, wow. Because everything else is silent and everyone's going to vote for you. Yeah. So that changed the whole game, for sure. We will continue on with our awesome and Grossing list right after that. So, Chuck, if you'll notice, the first three movies in our list, the first three films that changed everything happened in 1925, 26 and 27, things were changing. Vast. They really were. By leaps and bounds. Sure. But you can also make the case that there was a lot of new ground to cover. So just about anybody who did anything new that was noteworthy. Yeah, it was a big innovation. Harder to innovate these days. It is. And if you'll notice on the list, the earliest ones were, like, technical editing innovations. Now, starting with Citizen Kane from 1941, we start to get into innovations and storytelling, which is a lot more nuanced than doing your own stunts or using a montage or something. It's figuring out how to tell a story in a much less linear narrative fashion. Yeah. And Citizen came as one of the early ones to pioneer a non linear narrative. Yeah. You saw this? Yeah. Okay. I didn't see it until it was probably, like probably about 15 years ago, but, like, way later than you would think. I would have seen this as a big film buff. I saw it in college in a film class. Sure. Yeah. If you sign up for a film class, you're going to study Citizen class. Exactly. Pretty much. I finally found out what Rosebud was. Don't ruin it. I won't. But it is a landmark film in every way, and it has often been top of best films of all time lists for great reasons. One of which, like you said, the non linear narrative was a really unique thing at the time. Although flashback wasn't brand new, it was the first time it had been this extensive and effective in the story. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's substantial enough that it really cuts up the flow. Oh, yeah. It's not like a quick flashback and they come back and the actors like, staring off into space to transition back into the present again. I mean, it was all over the place. Yeah. Some of the more concrete cinematic landmarks. One was using deep focus. Director of Photography Greg Tolland legend. He had used deep focus before on a movie called Long Voyage Home. But it's all over the place in Citizen Kane. And that basically means if you see a shot where something very far away is in focus in the shot, basically, where everything is in focus for the background and the foreground are in focus, so you can press pause and look around. Exactly like you're sticking your head into a box. Yeah. That's called deep focus. And it was brand new as far as Citizen gain goes, is how extensive it used it. One of the other things was off center framing. It was a big, pretty common thing to just center whatever the main action was, either the character or the object. And Citizen Kane had a lot of things where the main focus of the scene, the character, maybe even off screen, which was really weird at the time. People didn't know what to think of it. Right. Expressionistic lighting, back then. They just lit it. They're like, make sure everything is well lit. There's an auto premature also. Like a big pioneer with that. Yeah, I think so. With dial in for Murder, I think he directed that. Was it Hitchcock? I think that was Hitchcock. Was it? Okay, well, Auto permit, stuff like that, though, right? He used moody lighting and shadows and stuff a lot. I probably messed that up. People are going to be dialing for Murder. I think it was premature. Okay. But Orson Wells, of course, I don't think we even mentioned that to wrote, directed, starred, and produced and I think even edited Citizen Cain. Yeah, I just assumed everybody knew that. Yeah. He came from the theater, where you create a mood with lighting only certain parts of the stage. So he brought that into the movies, and it was very evocative and set the mood well. And people are like, man, why are we lighting everything all bright all the time? Look at Citizen Cane. It really worked. Yeah. Couple of other things. One of which I know you will appreciate, sir, is that he pretty much invented the wipe. Oh, the star wipe. Not the star wipe. But it followed. Yeah, the star wipe followed. Okay. Which I know is your favorite transition in cinema, star wise, because it almost makes it and by the way, I want to say you're right, dallas for Murder, what's? Hitchcock, was it? Yeah. Okay. What was permitted? Did you look that up? He did. One called Laura. The man with the golden arm. It's not who I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of a director named Auto who directed in, like, the he directed moody movies. Like Murder movies. Yeah, like filmoir. Yes, Phil'nar, that's exactly what I was going for. And I don't remember who it was. Maybe his name was Autofo Moir. He's French. And then one final thing. Of course, you could study Citizen Kane for a week in a film class. So this is an overview, but the low angle shots, people didn't use a lot of low or high angle shots back then. It was kind of just shot from straight on. And Orson Wells even dug out cut out the floor a lot of times to get the camera lower. And for the first time, we saw ceilings in view in a movie, because quite often things were shot on a sound stage where you don't have ceilings. And he wanted those low angle shots, so they used fabric most times to act as a ceiling. But very effective shots from below of Orson Wells, as it wasn't exactly William Randolph Hearst, but it was an approximation of William Randolph Hearst. Right. It's a very effective low angle stuff that now we take for granted all these things, but there would be no Pulp Fiction in that non linear storytelling. If there was no well, maybe somebody would have done it. Maybe, eventually. But first he did the first, and that's why it was innovative. Exactly. It's Fritz Lang that I was yes. There you go. Fritz Lang, metropolis and M. Just M. Okay. Yeah, it's all making sense now. I get confused. Yeah, but you were right there. Fritz and Auto are not close. I mean, they're both German, but that's about it. Yes. But you know the difference between M and dial. M just a telephone. What's up next, Chuck? Breathless, one of my faves. So I am going to rely on you mostly for this one because I looked up what the French New Wave really did, what it accounted for, and all of the essays I found were hard to they were dense, and I didn't really understand. I understood that the French New Wave changed everything and that a lot of the movies that I know and love today are the offspring of the French wave. But I still didn't get exactly, specifically what the French Wave did then. You're going to allow me to summarize this? Yeah. No pressure. Well, for me, the French New Wave basically ushered in an era of what now I think most people might associate with Nd filmmaking. Okay. Like handheld camera work and what some people at the time considered amateurish camera work, movies where maybe not a lot seemingly happens. You know, nothing grand happened, which was the case in Breathless. A lot of people didn't like it at the time because it was like, not much happens. The two leads in the movie, Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seaburg, didn't show, express a whole lot of deep love. And there weren't these big moments of love and affection and these huge action sequences, and it was described as flat by a lot of people. And I think a lot of indie movies do that, just kind of show life as it happens. Yeah. So without Breathless, we wouldn't have, like, bottle Rocket, maybe. Wes Anderson is definitely a big French new wave guy. Yeah, for sure. But Godard, John Lew Gedart, who directed it, and Truffle and some other French new wave forefathers were film critics at first. Oh, yeah. And they decided as a group, like, we want to look at cinema in a new way and do something different. So they went and started making their own movies. That's like James Fennemore. Cooper yeah. The guy wrote Last of the Mohicans. Oh, really? Yeah. He apparently used to complain that nobody wrote good books anymore. And so I think his wife or something said, well, why don't you do a big shot? And he did. And the books he wrote really weren't so great, but he went and wrote them and he wrote a bunch of them, too. One of my favorite far sides ever is the Second to the Last of the Mohicans. It's just a line of Native Americans, and the second to the last one, they're online facing away. He's just sort of turning around and waving it. I guess the camera at Gary Larson's hand. So Breathless is notable for those reasons. It kind of kicked off the French new wave. But the use of jump cut editing, which we see so much now, it was the first movie, and it was very jarring at the time, to see jump cuts in a movie. Yeah, I bet. And that's when you're showing, like I guess the best way to describe it is multiple shots of the same subject or thing from different angles. Right. It's like you indicate the progression of time or movement or something by just cutting quickly rather than focusing on somebody walking down the street for five minutes, you cut a couple of times and all of a sudden they're just closer to the camera and then closer and closer, and then they're past the camera. It's a jump cut. Yeah. Or even something as simple as, like you're going to leave the house. So you go and pick up your keys and you put on your coat. Instead of showing all that, you come out of the bedroom. Boom, you're putting on your coat. Boom. You're putting the keys in the door. Right? Exactly. You're just showing the highlights of this progression of stuff where that would otherwise be boring to watch, the whole thing. But it also is used to create tension, too, because it's jarring, I guess, is probably why it creates tension. And Scorsese famously used it in Goodfellows yes. At the end when Henry Hill is trying to sell some guns. Yes. He's coached to the gills. Right. And he's, like, trying to sell some guns to niro, but they don't fit the silencers and the helicopters following them. He's got the sauce going. And all this stuff is being represented and compressed in a very short amount of time by the use of jump cuts. Yeah. Very effective. And for budding filmmakers, it's a great way to hide mistakes of things you may not have gotten that you thought you got. Jump cutting is a really easy way to just sort of hide your errors. I did a lot. In other words, when I was making those shorts, I realized in my head I was referencing the shot in soul taker. Have you seen that, Mrsan his last name is Estebez. It's Martin Sheen's brother. And he is a soul taker. And he's next to this guy who's a soul taker. You just have to see this. But anyway, they're walking down the road in this jump cut, like, has this progression of them. Right. It's so unnecessary. But it's a great use of jump cut. You could tell the director was like, I can't wait to use a jump cut. And that's what she did. She used it on but go watch the MSC Three case. A good one, man. Did you see every single one of those episodes? No, I still run across one that I haven't seen. Yeah. Nice. Hey. And the shout out to bill Corbett, who I know is a listener. Oh, yeah, he is, isn't he? Yeah. I don't know if he's going to hear this one, but the great Bill Corbett. So next we are going to move on to Federico Valenz Eight and a Half. You ever seen this one? No, I haven't. Now I understand why it's called that, though. Yeah, it was one of the first, although not the first movies about movie making and starting. The great Marcelo Mastriani, masteroyani from LaDolce vita Amuse of Felines over the years too. And this one really kicked off the surrealist filmmaking and sort of saying, you can play around and shoot a dream sequence where the guy's in traffic and then he leaves his car and floats up in the air and is being pulled down to the ground on the beach from a rope tied around his ankle. Just like go nuts. Yeah, and successive filmmakers did go nuts like Gandre did. Eternal Sunshine. The spotless mind. Oh, yeah. He's hugely influenced. Darren Aronofsky did some weird stuff here or there. David lynch and Terry Gilliam, of course. Yeah. Just basically surrealism is what I'm taking Felini introduced into this. Yeah, for real. And besides the surrealism, that opening sequence of Eight and a Half, where he's the director in the movie, Guido, is stuck in traffic. It's really claustrophobic feeling. And that's why he floats away and escapes that traffic jam. But that was directly mimicked in, like, REM's Everybody Hurts video and the beginning of the movie Falling Down, do you remember that? That started with the traffic jam. Yeah. Michael Douglas just left. He doesn't float. He gets like an oozy. I saw that again the other day. Most of it does it hold up. It's weird. It alternately felt way ahead of its time and also very dated because the stuff that Michael Douglas is doing felt way ahead of its time. But then there was I just forgot about that whole weird subplot with Robert Duvall retiring, and he had this wife that was him pecking them and like this retirement party they were trying to throw on. I forgot about that, too. Yeah. It was just so unnecessary and felt really weird and out of place. The other day when I was watching it was there like a jump cut montage where he's putting on his watch, his gold retirement watch. No, but then to the Barbara Hershey now is in Venice at home with the daughter, and he spends a whole day coming there to grab them, basically. And the whole time she just keeps calling the cops. I know he's coming. I know he's coming. And I was watching the other day, I was like, freaking leave. Oh, yeah. What are you doing there? Yeah, that's a movie character thing. That's just bad writing, bad directing. When you just walk right past the ability to leave, you missed a huge step. Where were we? Falling down. Yes. I think that. Pretty much sums up eight and a half. I think so, too. Falling down. Boom. So, Chuck, we got a little more left. We got more films. Is this making you want to watch films? Yeah. Me, too. I feel like eating ice cream, watching a film, and scratching from Poison Ivy lately. Yeah. And burning this office down. You know, if that happens now, suspicion is going to fall on you for saying that. That's all right. We'll be right back after this. All right, so we're back with our awesome jingles, which, by the way, we have to thank John Beggan Begin. John Begin to begin. He even emailed with the pronunciation of his name. But the original guy who did our first jingle ever, Rusty Matteus or Metallos man, I'm not good with the pronunciation. Well, anyway, Rusty, who's banned the sheepdogs, are on tour right now. Yeah. Just because his work was so original, we contacted him and said, hey, we got this other guy who's done, like, covers of your work. Can we use these? Totally match it up. And John's been making awesome versions of it ever since. Yeah, they're both great and talented, thanks to you both. And go check out, I think what did you say? They're on tour, right? Yeah. Sheep dogs. Yeah. Go check out the sheet dogs in a town near you. All right, let's finish with these two in reverse order. Okay. Toy Story was a big one. Hugely innovative. It's landmark, though. Huge. And again, it's one of those things where now almost everything about it seems pedestrian or what it did. It's still a great movie, I'm sure, but the innovations that it undertook just seemed pedestrian. But at the time, it was totally groundbreaking. Game changer. It was the first CGI movie, all CGI movie ever. That was enormous. Oh, yeah. And I remember at the time seeing it and just being like, wow, this is the future of animated films. What's the best all CGI animated film you've ever seen visually? Well, I haven't seen a lot of them these days because Emily doesn't like those. So I probably wouldn't be the best person to ask Holly from Stephanie history class. She'd probably be the one to ask for my money. Have you seen the adventures of Tintin? Oh, yeah. That was amazing. Mind blowing. Yes, I saw that on your recommendation and really liked it. Yeah, the story was great. The action was great, the characters were great. But the CGI, the computer animation is, I think, possibly the best ever done. Yeah. And that's a bit of a different style than, say, like, up or The Incredibles. It's not nearly as cartoons. I think it's the motion capture. I think that's what they did for that. Oh, yeah. With up, it would strictly be totally just animation, right? Yeah, but I mean, they're both animation, right? But yeah. Man, Tintin, that was really good. It was good. I was surprised how much I liked that. But up was good, too. And Toy Story was good too. But all of these things came as a result of the ground that Toy Story broke absolutely. In 1995. Like you said, what seems like a common thing today, you don't see cell animation anymore. It's almost I know, I kind of miss it. I totally missed it. Like, the new Mickey Mouse is all weird and CGI stuff from our generation should have just been discontinued. And then you just come up with all new stuff. That's CGI. Strawberry shortcake. Not supposed to be CGI. It just all looks weird now. Yeah, I wish they would have people would have done a little bit of both still because I think sell animation. I think the Iron Giant came out after Toy Story and they did sell animation. And that was great movie. I haven't seen that. It was really good. You'd like it? It was a movie for grown ups. And Toy Story sort of laid the way for that because it was one of the first movies, I guess, cartoony kids movies to really have a lot of dialogue that flew over kids heads that adults got a little nod in the wink. What, Toy Story? Yeah, yeah. Not like dirty humor, but it's not like Fritz the Cat. No, no. But little entendre here and there that adults might appreciate. The kids won't understand. Right. Those are the best jokes. Right? And now we have best Animated Feature in the Oscars, which definitely came straight out of the original Toy Story because movies started being considered before they created its own category, up and Toy Story Three were actually nominated for regular Best Picture. And I think everyone's like, oh, we need to get them their own category because we can't have an animated movie when Best Picture can't. Well, up would have come after the Best Animated Picture category came out. Oh, really? So that kind of goes as a testament to just how amazing that movie is. Yeah, that's right. But it was still up for Best Picture. Oh, it was both. I don't know if it was up for it probably was up for Best Animated as well. But it was definitely also up for Best Picture while there was an animated category. Yeah, I never considered that. Bam. That was a good movie. Yeah, sweet. So I got nothing else in Toy Story. Well, then what about the last one? Yeah. 2001 a Space Odyssey. Man, quite a film. You sent this essay on Criterion, I think. Criterioncom, but the Criterion Collection. Yeah, it was written, I guess, in 1988. Even though it says posted in 1988. Like there wasn't an Internet to post it on in 1988. Maybe it means posted, like, in the mail. But I realized I can read film essays about Stanley Kubrick's work all day long. Yeah, me too. I love the documentary. Room 2272 372-462-3237. You know, the one about the Shining conspiracy theory. Yeah. The number of the room is amazing. I can't remember, though. I read a bunch of articles, I think 237. I read a bunch of articles around the release of that documentary which were basically like film essays on The Shining. I read this one amazing one from several years ago about Eyes Wide Shut about how it's like a masterpiece of sociology. I love that movie. Sociology. A lot of people hate that movie. Yeah. And then now this, like, 2001. I'm sure there's tons out there to consume but I can just read that stuff all day long because that guy was so just amazingly detailed as a director. Yes, I agree. I can read more about his work, critical essays on his work than any other directory. Right. It's just unbelievable. It's almost like it's its own genre. It is Kubrickian. Yeah. It's got a word named after it and well, it should. So 2001 A Space Odyssey, 1968 blue Minds back then blows mines today. One for just the amazing look and the technical achievement. It ages really well. I mean, if you see a movie from 1968 about outer space, it still looks like the future. Yeah. He don't expect it to hold up well, but it totally does. So much so that a lot of the George Lucas and Ridley Scott were just like, It's done, right. Like, we might as well give up. Yes. George Lucas when Star Wars came out, said star wars is technically comparable. But for my money, 2001 is by far the better movie. Yeah. Everyone is sort of intimidated, I think, by how talented Kubrick was. Well, plus, also, you have to take into account that he made this movie at a time when other Sci-Fi movies were just pure schlock. Oh, yeah. So not only to make the movie in this way this visually amazing and amazing with an audio soundtrack and just totally innovative it also took that mindset completely going a different direction that everybody else has as well. Yeah, of course. I think about Ridley Scott saying that. And then he goes on to make Alien and Blade Runner. After that, he held Prometheus, man, people don't like prometheus. I don't care. It's a cool movie. No. I liked it too. I thought, okay, the big flaw to me was and I'm sure it's, like, part of the subtext or the context or one of the texts but the engineer coming back to life are coming out of hibernation after however long and just immediately, like, inflicting violence on these t brained humans who are showing him no threat whatsoever. I just thought it was a little it wasn't explained well enough, I think, for my taste. Yeah, I think I agree with you. But when I'm watching a Ridley Scott movie, I just assume if I'm missing something, he has an explanation for it. I'm just not catching it. Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I read some stuff about how it tied into the alien canon and realized I need to go see it again with all this knowledge that I wasn't really thinking about. And maybe I'd like it more, but I haven't done that yet. So, back to 2001. Oh, yeah. It was also notable for being bookended, basically, with 30 minutes of silence on both ends of the movie. The first 30 minutes. And when I say silent, I mean no dialogue. Right. And the last 30 minutes have no dialogue. Yeah. The last line comes like, a full 30 minutes before the end. Yeah. And over the 146 minutes, there are only 40 minutes of dialogue and the whole thing. And that's why when people compare something like interstellar and call it Kubrickian, I just want to smash. Did you not like interstellar? Not really. Oh, I liked it. I was super let down. Despite McConaughey doing Waterson in the Future, I still liked it. I even liked him in it. I liked a lot of the parts of it, but to me, it's anti Kubrickian, because every ten minutes they're explaining everything that's going on over and over again. That's another thing. Just like Inception, ellen Page's entire character was written in to explain what was going on every ten minutes. Yeah. And I felt like interstellar was the same way. It's like Christopher and Allen needs to just trust his audience a little bit, like Kubrick did, and say, Figure it out or don't. Yes. I'm not going to stop every ten minutes just to explain everything. Here's what's going on. Remember, if you didn't get it right, here's what's going on again. Well, I think if they are labeling something like interstellar as Kubrickian right. One of the ways that you can interpret that is that he rooted his 2001 in science fact, the stuff that the astronauts are dealing with and the things that are going on and the conditions of space, it was all factual. Whereas with interstellar, same thing. They went to really great lengths to do what they could to make everything scientifically factual. Aside from the fact that the idea that you could go into a black hole and then come back out or something like that drifting in space, that's not going to happen. But for the most part, interstellar was scientifically accurate. So maybe that's what they meant when they called it Kubrickian, because you're absolutely right, they did explain a lot and went to great lengths to explain a lot. Whereas with 2001, you just watch it the first five times, like what just happened. Yeah. And apparently Kerry Grant had that same reaction as well. That was Rock Hudson. Rock Hudson, that's right. Yeah. The original screening that Roger Ebert was at in La. Rock Hudson just left and said, can somebody tell me what the hell that was about? Yeah, and it wasn't even over yet. Well, the reason it has science fact and not science fiction is because Kubrick and arthur C. Clarke. Who it wasn't actually a book that was made into a movie. It was a book made after a movie. And they collaborated on both. And they went to Carl Sagan, of course, of Cosmos, and said he said, you're going to make billions and billions of dollars. That was pretty good. Was it? Yeah. It's not a lot like them. They went to Carl Sagan and said, hey, we want to portray these extraterrestrials. Maybe the star child. They turned Dave into the star child. Are they humanoids? What are they going to look like? And Sagan was like, they were very unlikely to be humanoid. So Kubrick did the smart thing and was just like, well, we just won't show them at all. Instead of making a fool of myself like signs and making some dumb looking aliens, oh, man. Let me just not show the aliens. Very smart move. Yeah. Getting back to the story of 2001, although I think the village is underrated, I can stomach that one. You like the $006, right? Everybody like the $0.06. Sure. I guess that was it for him. I loved Unbreakable. Unbreakable. Yeah, that was one where I think it was maybe even better the second time. Yeah. I still like that movie. But he also made that lady in the Water movie, and the one with Marky mark with people jumping off four brothers? No, Three Kings. Is it the one in the elevator? No, he just produced oh, I know what you're talking about. The one where people like jumping off of buildings and stuff inexplicably yeah, I didn't see that either. I couldn't get through ten minutes of that movie. So 2001, back to good movies, had a three part structure, but not a conventional three act structure that you might be used to in movies, which is why it confounded people like Rock Hudson, the first they call the movements the first movement was the dawn of man sequence with the apes with a monolith. And he has that great part where he throws his little bone tool up in the air. Right. And then it morphs into well, not morphs, but it maybe is a dissolve into the spinning and outer space. It's called the match cut. Yeah, match cut and of the rotation of what we now know was a nuclear warhead, because I read that little article, 20 Things You Didn't Know About 2001. I didn't know those are nuclear warheads, necessarily. In outer space. They made it a little more vague. Initially, it was going to be more explicit, and they were going to explode it in outer space. Right. But he said, no, it's a little too close to the ending of Strangelove. Strangelove. Yeah. So let's not do that. Yeah. Probably a good choice. Yeah. But as a result, some people have taken it to mean that match cut was supposed to show how far humans have come from using a bone to murder somebody, to satellites in space. But if you know that the satellite is actually loaded down with nuclear warheads, that match cut demonstrates how little humans have changed from using a bone to murder somebody to using satellites to murder somebody. The motif is still the same, and it's murder. Yeah. He's going for some deep things. Oh, yeah. A lot of metaphor happening. Yeah. Supposedly in every single shot. Because he started out as a still photographer. Right. Yeah. Supposedly every frame of a Kubrick movie, there is nothing that isn't unintentional in place there by him. He did a lot of his own set decorating. Yeah. Like the pencil holder on the desk in the office of the guy at The Shining Hotel was where it's supposed to be. Right. And if it has a picture of a goat head inscribed on it, that means something. Right. It's not accidental. Yeah. Although we'll say room 237, which I think may have been the point, is a little bit like, These people are crazy. Not like, oh, man, I just see what they're saying and all this. Right. I was just thinking, These people are nuts. Right. It was just kind of enjoyable to hear their interpretations of it. Well, and I think it was a comment on obsession and fandom. More so than the Shining, for sure. But I thought some of their ideas were interesting. Totally. I said room two two seven, didn't I? Like, one conspiracy theorist. It's like, Mary, wasn't room two two Seven like a sitcom? Yeah. It was just called two two seven. Okay. Got. You remember with Jackie, she'd be like, Mary. Oh, okay. That's what my impression was. What did you think I was doing? Well, I wasn't sure what you meant. Being a weirdo. Yeah. Okay. The second movement was, of course, the how sequence. The computer. The how was it? The how 9000. Yeah. Really creepy. And Howell ended up being a lot of people's favorite character, even though it was just a voice. The supercomputer on the Discovery ship, remember? He's like, what are you doing, Dave? It's so creepy. I had the Mad magazine spoof of 2001 when I was a kid. It was great. Yeah. And then the third movement is when Dave moves on to the next stage of human development with these extraterrestrials that you only hear. And basically, it's when it comes full circle. Third movement. And the third movement is the one that has almost well, it's really just the second movement that has dialogue. Yeah. Some of the alternate titles for 2001. Journey beyond the stars. Terrible universe. Not bad. Yeah. Okay. Tunnel to the Stars. Not so great. Planet Fall. That sounds bad. Sounds like a James Bond movie. And then how the Solar System was won as a play on how the west was won. Yeah. Which, like, movie geeks would find that appealing, but everybody else would say that you ruined everything. Yeah. And Kubrick, this is the last thing I have. He was so obsessive with protecting his material that he allegedly I don't think he allegedly I think he did have all the sets and props and miniatures destroyed after he shot it so they would never be reused, which is a common thing at the time. Yeah. We're doing a space movie. Go get that space ring from Stanley set. Yeah. Let's reuse it for Planet Fall. He also destroyed all of the footage that didn't make it into the original theatrical release. Destroyed it's. Gone. Yeah. So they wouldn't, one day after his death, recut it, which they invariably probably would have done. Yeah. He's a smart man. Yeah. We should just do a podcast on Kubrick. I'm down for that challenge. A-B-A dude. One of my heroes. Yeah. Cinematically. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about movies, if you like this one, you probably also love our exploitation episode. Exploitation movie episode? Fun one. What else have we talked about? Movies in Cannonball Run that has a lot to do with the movie. Yeah. Or James Bonda episode. Yeah. We've had a few of these and people always respond to these. You guys should have a spin off. Yeah. Do an all movie podcast. Sure. Maybe one day. Maybe. Remember, if you're looking for any of these, press Control f or Apple f in your web browser and search that way on our podcast archive page. You can also search for this article on how stuff works by typing movies in and seeing what comes up. And since I said how stuff works, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Mike Dupont. Really clear something up for us on scientific method. Okay. Hey, guys, it was great. Well, actually, he doesn't say it was great. I think I just made that up. Hey, guys. Your scientific method podcast has a consistent misuse of what a scientific law is in relation to the working of the scientific method. It appears that you believe that a law, e. G. Newton's Law of Gravity, is then held in higher esteem than theory. That eventually a theory matures into a law. I think I probably did think that. Because of politics, right? Yeah. A bill becomes a law, right? Exactly. He says, when in fact, theory is considerably more robust than a law. A law is a mathematical model that describes observed behavior. Does not answer the why. Right. Theory does answer why something happens. Did we not say that? I thought we did. I knew that. I remember finding that out from the research. I just can't believe it didn't come out of my mouth. He claims we did not. And I feel like I'm learning this, so I definitely did not. Okay, go ahead. But you may have. For example, Newton's Law of Gravitational Attraction describes the action of two bodies that can be used for pretty much everything. It is perfect for describing what happens, but it cannot tell you why the two items are attracted or drilled down to the underlying mechanism. Yeah. Law is, like, much more succinct. It just is what it is. Nor is the law even universal and could not be used to explain the parahelian procession of Mercury's orbit burn. In comparison, Einstein theory of general relativity was eventually used to solve the Mercury issue. Oh, yeah. The Mercury issue and the standard model. Along with the recent discovery, the Higgs Boson my CERN can answer the why do these two masses attracted to each other? A question. I think what you mean is, why are these two masses attracted to one another? Mike, it's pretty teleological theory is considerably more developed in richer than a scientific law which is more of a tool that is applicable to a wide range of applications. Keep up the good work. That is Mike Dupont. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for that. Of the Valley Forge. Duponts I think so. Have you seen Fox Catcher? Oh, no. I've heard it's good. Is it good? No. Oh, really? I don't think so. No. I've heard it's kind of slow. It's beyond slow. Really? Oh, yeah. I can understand why the Academy loved it. Sure. A lot of people I'm sure do like it. I was not a fan of Fox. I think people generally seeing, like, a turn by an actor like Steve Curl doing something really different, they're knocked out by that. No. I still can't believe you didn't like Birdman. No. Spoiler alert for people who have not seen Birdman, the following conversation is full of spoilers. Yes. What didn't you like about it? So I thought Michael Keane was good. Okay. Who plays his daughter Emily Blunt. Is that who that is? Emma Stone. Emma Stone. Excellent. Okay. Ed Dorton even. Pretty good. Okay. So the acting was fine. Who is naomi Watson. Yeah, she did great. Okay. So, yes, the acting was fine. Sure. The acting was fine. I thought the photography was amazing. Yep. The whole seemingly one take thing kind of knocked you out. Probably. I didn't even pick up on that. But, yes, it did. For me, the juxtaposition of the story, which was pretty boring and realistic in everyday life, even though it was about a Broadway production, it was still about the everyday life of it. Sure. Against the surrealism that's threaded and embedded throughout the whole movie. I didn't like that. Okay. It was like, choose one or the other. Man got you. It irked me. And then just that one part with the critic where Michael Keaton tells off the critic. I thought Michael Keaton did a wonderful job. But just the whole point that it was in there of, like, the director using Michael Keaton's character to tell off all the critics he's ever wanted to tell off in his movie. I just thought it was pretentious. And I thought it was kind of clumsy in that sense, too. And it was enough that it painted it. Yeah. And then the ending I did not like the ending at all. At all. That will ruin a good movie, because it completely went contrary to all the other stuff that he went out of his way to point out was fake or fraudulent or not real, and then all of a sudden, it is. What? Yeah. No. Choose one or the other. The director refused to make very important decisions, and I think that that ruined the movie. That is a very well thought out criticism, I think. Thank you very much. Sure. Man. That was the end of listener mail even, wasn't it? Yeah, because now I'm not like, Josh is weird. He didn't like Birdman. Now I'm like Josh. Didn't like Birdman. He's a good reason. Thank you. I like, justifying my opinion. Don't we all? So if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I, or Jerry, who I apparently just spoiled Birdman for, you can contact us via Twitter at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheanow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
bcafc93e-361e-11ea-822e-1f89bdf5c0ec | Short Stuff: Turning Down the Radio When You're Lost | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-turning-down-the-radio-when-youre-lost | It’s a typical human reaction: When you’re driving and you realize that you’re lost, you turn down the radio. On its face it makes no sense – or does it? (It does.) | It’s a typical human reaction: When you’re driving and you realize that you’re lost, you turn down the radio. On its face it makes no sense – or does it? (It does.) | Wed, 15 Apr 2020 17:05:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=17, tm_min=5, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=106, tm_isdst=0) | 13426170 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, get this. The Stuff You Should Know book that's coming out this fall. The Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. It has a cover now. It's been born, it's arrived, and we're showing it off on all of our social channels. You can go over to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all those jams, and check out our new cover down. So go check it out. It's free to check out. So go. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. This is Short Stuff. I'm Josh. Jerry's over there. There's Chuck. Let's go. Car Radios killers. I know. So I have to say, this article was pretty great. It's a how stuff works article, and it's, why did we turn down the radio when we're lost? And it was like it's got that kind of classic how stuff works sheen where it's like, well, here's the simple answer, but let me find all this other stuff that has to do with this that makes it that much more interesting, you know? Yeah. It's also kind of funny to look back to the 1930s and realize that their cellphone was the car radio and they were just as worried that it was going to kill people driving. Yes. Right. So there's this question every time we're worried about some new technologies. Is it the same thing as when people before us worried about technology that proved to be totally safe? Or will we eventually hit some technology that we're like, oh, actually, no, this one doesn't qualify. It's actually way worse than everything else. And will it be radios again? Maybe they'll have another shot at being dangerous. Who knows that's, right? Well, in the early 30s, they were so worried about it, some states find people who put cars in their radios. Yeah. And it wasn't until about eight years after 1939 years that they actually did some real studies. The Princeton Radio Research project. They said. You know what? It's not a big deal to listen to a radio in your car if anyone cares what we think. Doesn't that sound like our current times where it's like, this is dangerous, this is dangerous. We should come up with some laws to protect ourselves against this. And then finally we're like, oh, let's actually study it and find out. Yeah, a little bit. And then now it's actually fine. So the radios were deemed safe, right? They were deemed to not play a role in car accidents specifically. But the question is this so at some point, the Society of Automotive Engineers basically said, hey, we've got this figured out. As long as you're not distracted for more than 15 seconds while you're driving, you're going to be just fine. Which is crazy. That's just totally untrue. Right? Of course, anyone knows that these days that 15 seconds is like a death sentence, basically, in a car. But did they sign off on radios under that 15 2nd rule? I don't know. I think they have now whittled that down to 2 seconds because they realized that driving three football fields without paying attention is actually quite dangerous no matter what song you're listening to. Right, exactly. So I guess a car drives at 55 miles an hour, drives about a football field every 5 seconds. So yeah, 15 seconds. You can get into a lot of trouble even at 55 miles an hour. Yeah, I mean 2 seconds, that seems about right. Because even though you shouldn't be distracted at all, there are things going on that you can't help but be distracted by sometimes. Did you ever take any of those, like, insurancereductiondules no classes? You didn't do that? I went to that never for DUI or anything like that. But you could get like a discount on your insurance if you were like a teenage driver and you want to take one of these safe driving classes. But inevitably the instructor would just start shelling out like stories about people doing stupid stuff while they're driving. And one that always stuck with me was somebody eating cereal while they're driving. And for years I thought that was the most bonkers thing and then I finally saw it with my own two eyes. Somebody else on the road eating cereal while driving down the highway during a morning commute. And it is as bonkers as you would think. It wasn't any less bonkers seeing it, I guess because there's a liquid involved and two hands that makes it different than eating something else. Well, I can dry pretty well with my knees. I don't know if I would eat clam chowder. Can you really? I can kind of but then I'm also like I can freak myself out and be like this is really dangerous. Well, in my car now has one of those sort of driving assistance where you don't have to hold the steering wheel and that is you don't even need it's. Super freaky and makes me feel a little bit like unsafe. Right, yeah, I have that too. Where it's like you start to drift a little bit and then the car just goes no and pushes you back into your lane. That one. It's a little creepy. It feels like your car is possessed. Yeah, basically. Or it's like a little bossy for my taste. You don't have to use that stuff. You can turn that stuff off. I don't know if you can and the one I have but maybe here's the thing distracted driving is an actual thing. But Radios got signed off on now they realize that if you are driving down the road just listening to the radio not like fiddling with it or missing finding the right track on your phone or connecting your phone via Bluetooth to your media center or whatever. Your car but if you're just listening to music it actually helps you focus more. So not only is the radio not in and of itself or listening to music not in and of itself distracting. It actually helps you focus and probably drive better. So bearing all that in mind, Chuck, doesn't it make sense that is the most bizarre thing you could possibly do when you're lost and you realize you're lost or you're really trying to concentrate on driving, that you would turn the radio down? It doesn't make any sense. If you think about it on its face. What it does make is a great teaser for part two right after that. Man, you know me so well. Now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck stuff you should know. All right. All right. So if we're talking, what we're really talking about is multitasking, right? And it's pretty interesting how the human brain works. We've talked about the brain ad nauseam on the show, but just as a refresher, you've got the Cerebrum. If someone described as cerebral, that means they have pretty tight higher cognitive functioning going on. Talking about emotion, talking about language. Sure. What's next? What about the Cerebellum? That's right. That controls muscle movement, balance, stuff like that. And then you get the dumb old brain stem, which just like if you want to breathe and blink your eyes and stuff like that and get messages between the spinal cord and the other two parts of the brain, then your brain stem is going to step up. Right. So all these parts of the brain are kind of working in conjunction to help you do things like drive or walk around or chew gum or whatever. All of them are going to play a role either by themselves or in conjunction, more likely in conjunction with the others. And the way that you do go through life, and not just you, Chuck, or you, dear Listener, but everybody. Every human goes through life taking in all of the information available to us through our senses, our five basic senses, right. Which is touch, hearing, smell, vision, taste. And then the 6th one are morphic field sense. That's right. Seeing dead people. That's right, exactly. Or knowing when somebody's staring at the back of your head. Right. So when you get all of this information, your brain is processing it. It's encoding everything. And it's basically while it's encoding it because it's getting so much different stuff. And I know we've talked about this plenty of times before in past episodes, but I just still to this day find it fascinating. But the brain is basically saying, this is important. This isn't important. This I can throw away, this I need to put more focus on. And apparently the brain is capable of carrying on at least two tasks virtually simultaneously, but one is considered more important than the other. So you got your primary task in your secondary task that's right. And switching back and forth between these, your brain is really good at it. It's called attention switching, but it is actually switching. And it does take time, it doesn't take long, but it can add up. And if you think that people like to brag about their multitasking abilities, you're not really multitasking, though you think you are, but what you're really doing is just doing a lot of things more poorly than you would be doing, right, exactly. Which is surprising, because multitask, because they're such like type A go getters to begin with, that you would think if you explain to them, like, hey, you're actually doing way worse at each of these different things than you would be if you just did one at a time and complete each task, that they would take up that mantle. But I still suspect that they wouldn't. Yes. I mean, anything over two is a problem for the brain, such that it's not like the brain is like, all right, I'll do all three of these at once, but I'm going to struggle. Your brain literally says, no, sorry, that third thing is in line now behind these other two things, and they're actually in line as well. Or the brain might even just toss that third one out, maybe. Yeah, there's got to be a primary one, there's got to be a secondary one, and maybe if it's in a good mood, your brain will take on the third one. But when it switches between these things, because that's the thing, if you have two things that you're doing and you can't do them actually in parallel, what that means then is that your brain has to switch between them right. As they kind of compete for your brain's resources with one another. And when it does that, all sorts of terrible things happen, because it's not an instantaneous switch. There's a very slight delay. And in that slight delay, you can lose attention, lose concentration. Our response time is eaten up. There's a whole bunch of things that kind of go south, where if we were just focusing on one thing at that moment, we would be doing much better at it. And we're doing two things instead and we're doing both things more poorly. That's right. Because if you're multitasking, your error rate increases by as much as 50%. And like we said, you're not speeding up anyway. If you're multitasking, it's doubling the amount of time it would take to do each of those things, if you were just doing those things right. So you think you're saving time and you're not. No, you just said it, Chuck. You're doubling the amount of time it actually takes. Multitasking doesn't take less time, it doubles the amount of time. Which is mind boggling, ironically enough. Yeah. And you probably don't even realize this if you think you're a good multitasker, the small errors you make, and it could be dumb little things, like you have to go back and retype a line of an email that you would have typed correctly the first time I had you been only doing that or zoning out on someone and saying, I'm sorry, will you repeat that? Because I was doing something else. Literally, your brain is not able to. Right, exactly. So it makes sense then, that if you're driving along and you suddenly realize you don't know the way, or maybe you're coming up on the street that you need to turn on and this is not a familiar area to you, you really need to concentrate. You would turn down the radio to remove a distraction from your brain so that your brain can focus more clearly on finding this turn or taking in this other sensory information or making these decisions that it needs to make to get you where you're going, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. That's right. I'm not sure the science behind it, but I'm sure some people are a little more sensorily stimulated than others by different senses. And I'm one of those that sound can really get to me. I've got to turn that radio down if I'm lost or I'll go crazy or the worst thing in planet Earth to me is having two music playing at once. Yeah, that's terrible. Like, if you have your volume on on your computer and you have a tab that's playing music and you open another tab and it starts playing, it's just utter chaos. Can't do it? No. I'm with you, Chuck. You got anything else about turning down the radio when you're lost? No. Turn it down. People do one thing at a time. You'll get there quicker, and it'll be better. There you go. So that means, since Chuck summarized everything so beautifully, that 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, you." | |
d665f48a-3b0d-11eb-aa42-7bac29588acb | The Texas City Disaster of 1947 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-texas-city-disaster-of-1947 | In 1947 the port town of Texas City, Texas became the site of the largest industrial disaster in American history. An enormous explosion blew ships out of the water, created a tidal wave that flooded the town, and killed hundreds of people instantly. | In 1947 the port town of Texas City, Texas became the site of the largest industrial disaster in American history. An enormous explosion blew ships out of the water, created a tidal wave that flooded the town, and killed hundreds of people instantly. | Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=77, tm_isdst=0) | 38994420 | 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.com SYSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code S YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 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 Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. I was about to say natural disaster edition, but unnatural disaster edition. Industrial disaster is what they call these. Yeah. Human caused. In fact, from what I saw, what we're going to talk about today, the main thing we're talking about today is the largest industrial disaster in the United States history. Still? Oh, still, yes. Almost 75 years on. Man. Sad. This is a big one. Yeah, everything about this was really big, but in basically all the wrong ways. Right. We're going to talk today about a disaster called the Texas City explosion. And sadly, you might say, which one? Because there's been multiple massive explosions in Texas City. One of the reasons why is because Texas City has made a name for itself as one of the premier petrochemical ports in the United States and indeed, possibly the world. I think up until World War II, it was like the fourth largest port in Texas. But I think since World War II, it's grown even more. And I know for a little while there, BP had a refinery that was its most profitable oil refinery in the world, which is really saying something. I mean, that's a big deal. BP is an enormous company with multiple refineries for the biggest one, the most profitable one to be in Texas City. It kind of put Texas City on the map in some circles. Yeah. So Texas City is above the Gulf of Mexico, and like you said, it's a port town founded in the late 1800s by some Minnesota hunters. And they said, you know what? I think we can set up shop here. I think we can dig up a canal, set up a rail line we got some really good deep water and we could be a good shipping port. I want to know how they like what conversation led to that what hunting trip ends up in. You basically building a port town in a city that's about as far away from your home as you can get in the same country. Yeah, I mean there were some real go getters, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. They couldn't just relax and kill animals. Right. God. So that's what happened to Texas City. I mean, that's how it was kind of founded and it was like think refineries, think warehouses and chemical plants. World War II comes around and the military of course, says, well, we'll be sort of controlling this area for a while because it's a pretty valuable port for us and we're going to ship munitions in and out of here. World War II comes and goes. And then after the war, about a year and a half after the war, it is run by civilians again. And let's just say that it was a little more of a relaxed scene than it was when the military was running the show. Yeah, the military ran it like a tight ship, basically. Yeah. There's just a big difference between when the military is running a port and when a ports run by just a whole bunch of different private companies, you know what I'm saying? Minnesota Hunters. Exactly. So that's not to say it was just some loosey goosey place or anything like that, but just comparatively speaking, one of the other things that Texas City had going against it on the morning of April 16, 1947 is that there weren't really a lot of standards and regulations for handling chemicals and then we didn't have an enormous grasp on just how chemicals worked at that time. And so all of these things kind of came together. This kind of slightly lacks oversight and just kind of lack much more relaxed attitude toward cargo and then a lack of awareness about just what kind of dangers different cargo pose. Just kind of set things up to take a bad turn. Yeah. So on the morning of April 16, there were three ships docked in the port. There was most notably the SS Grand Camp, which was a military ship at one point, but I think we gave it to France as like, hey, sorry, Europe is kind of destroyed. Why don't you take the ship and just use it for whatever you want to do? And it was converted to a cargo ship, which it was on the day of April 16, and it was beside the SS High Flyer and that was beside the third one named after somebody. What was that one? The Robert Keane or the William Keen. Oh, wait a minute. Which one was it? Well, it was the Wilson b. Keen. Even better. Right. The Billy keen, as they called it. Yeah. And I believe all three of those were Liberty ships, right? Yeah, they were World War II ships. And I think the SS High Flyer was being fixed at the time but was still loaded down with stuff, as was the Grand Camp. And we'll sort of detail what was in the cargo because it's all very key. Yeah, it's really important. So for five days leading up to April 16, steve Doors, I think that's how you say it, but basically dockhands, I don't know why you wouldn't just say dock hands, but Steve adores man, I hope I'm saying that correctly, Chuck. They had loaded up the Grand Camp with 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and these were in 100 pound paper sacks akin to the kind of sacks that you would buy like Portland cement in these days. Right? Yeah. There are some other cargo cycle wine, peanuts, there was some machinery, there was some cotton, there were 16 cases of ammunition, I think, like for small arms ammunition, but for the most part it was a lot of ammonium nitrate and the same went for the SSI Flyer too, which as you said was in the next birth. It was loaded with 1000 tons of ammonium nitrate and then also, very crucially, 2000 tons of sulfur. And all these were also in the same 100 pound paper bags. So at the time, like I was saying, people didn't realize it was a big deal that there was that much ammonium nitrate just sitting around in this port at that time. Yeah, it's a crystallike solid, it's white. A lot of times it's used for nitrogen, for agricultural fertilizer, but if you combine it with fuel oils it can be very explosive and actually used for that for like mining and construction and stuff like that. But it's not like if you tap the side of the bag it's going to explode. It's pretty safe as long as it's all on the up and up and it's being stored properly. But if it starts to absorb moisture then it's sort of like Portland cement again. It's just going to harden to a block. Right. And then if that thing isn't a solid block, it's going to be just a little bit more volatile and a little bit more dangerous if ignited. Yeah, it's not even considered flammable as far as I know. And certainly in 1947 it wasn't considered flammable because if you walked up to some of this ammonium nitrate, these pellets, and just held a lighter to them, they wouldn't catch fire. That's not really what they do. What they do is they oxidize things. They basically create free radicals like we talked about in the free radical episode, which sets off like a chain reaction. And because they oxidize, they concentrate and condense and produce basically oxygen where it wasn't otherwise present. When that is combined with the fire, it makes a big time fire. So that's bad enough. Right? Like if you set them off it'll combust or it'll help something else combust more efficiently and at a higher temperature. But the big problem with ammonium nitrate is there is a point where it can reach a high enough heat that it itself decays and degrades. And when that happens, it splits into two gases nitrous oxide and water vapor, which you're like well, that's great. You just get super duper high off of one and the other one just makes you a little moist. Maybe so. Maybe so in small enough amounts. But when this happens in a large enough amount, especially when the Simonium nitrate is in one big melted block, the chain reaction can happen much more efficiently. And when those gases are produced, when the thing decays and separates, they expand really quickly and that produces an explosion. And the forces, the energy that's released from an explosion of ammonium nitrate decaying and converting into nitrous oxide and water vapor is monumental like compared to atomic bomb blast. Basically, if you have enough of it, say 2300 tons and a thousand tons and a couple of ships to sitting in port. Alright. That's a great place for cliffhanger, I think. I think so too. All right, we'll be right back after this. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? 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Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right, so this stuff, the cargo arrived by train to Texas City and it was probably already heating up a little bit on this train and maybe already getting to the point where it was a little, I don't know about unstable, but volatile at least. And it gets transferred to the ship, it continues to sort of heat up and the crew and everything like you said there wasn't a lot of awareness about kind of anything like this at the time. So to them, it was just another cargo hold. They might have said, like, be careful with the stuff, guys, or maybe not even that, but they definitely didn't know. Like, heat bad for this stuff. Yes. They said, you owe me $2 from lunch yesterday. That's what they said when they were loading this up. So around 08:00 a.m. In the morning, these workers there started noticing that there was smoke and vapors coming out of the ship. So there was some kind of a fire going on. No one knew how it started or what happened. There are some people anecdotally disabled cigarette could have been that wasn't in the official report, which also wouldn't be surprising. Well, what I thought I saw later on, Chuck, that the fact that these things were in those paper sacks, that if they were heating up, they were just going to continue to heat up, being packed tightly in the hold of this unventilated ship, they were just going to get warmer and warmer. And it's possible that the ammonium nitrate caused the paper sack to combust, catch fire, spread to other paper sacks, and then you had a positive feedback loop where it just kept getting the fire kept getting bigger and bigger and crucially, very important, hotter and hotter. Right. So the captain sees this happening. There are people kind of pouring in and looking around at what's going on. The captain says batting down these hatches, pull these tarps over them and start pumping steam in there, which apparently was a method at the time to put out a fire on a ship when you didn't want to ruin the cargo, as opposed to just blasting it with a fire hose, which would cause all this stuff to just brick up like Portland cement. He starts pumping steam in there, and that just started heating. Everyone knows steam is going to heat stuff up. So that just started and the moisture made a bad situation a lot worse really quickly. Yeah, I get the impression that had the captain's name was Captain Charles de Guilleibon. He made the decision to just go ahead and let the cargo be ruined and have the fire put out with fire hoses. This all might never have happened. I understand where he was coming from. He didn't want to ruin the cargo if he didn't have to, because steaming out a fire aboard a ship was an accepted firefighting technique. It works, and it could conceivably save a lot of the cargo. So it's not like he just made this ridiculous, stupid mistake. It's just in hindsight, it was probably the decision that led to this catastrophe. Yeah. I think more than anything, it's like you said, it was the time when there was not much regulation and sort of in the dawning of the chemical age, people just didn't know. Right. And plus, also at the time, Texas City had a volunteer fire department, which I would guess wouldn't have quite as much jurisdiction. It could be told by a captain like, no, just go away, I'm going to handle this myself. Rather than being like, no, we're going to put the fire out on your ship. Yeah, it's a good point. So the steam is making things worse. It pumped into the holds and everything's heating up, everything's getting moist. And like we said, moisture is no good for this stuff. And it did, it started to convert to these solid masses and there's going to be gas releasing and it's building up all this pressure because they had battened down the hatches and covered them with tarps and it so much so that it blew these hatch covers off at about 830 in the morning. That's crazy. Just that alone would have been spectacular. And I'm sure it was. But when those hatches blew off, all the smoke that had been kind of stuck in the hole inside the ship started billowing out. And the thing apparently about ammonium nitrate burning is it produces really kind of mesmerizing colored smoke from one of the witnesses. It was apparently salmon, orange and purple. Oh wow. And so the smoke coming out of it started to attract people like onlookers who were like, what's going on? I want to go see this giant weird fire that's going on down at the port. And something like 300 people, including entire families, kids from the local school came over. All sorts of people just kind of stopped what they were doing and came to watch this weird fire at the port. And apparently KGBC out of Galveston, which is just 10 miles down the coast out in the Gulf of Mexico, they were warning people to stay away, but apparently that just alerted more people that there was something going on who went down to go check it out themselves. Yeah, so they knew that there was a big problem at this point they did call the firefighters in and the tugboat to maybe try and get the thing out of there. And at this point, like you said, the heat, which is so great that even a fire hose isn't going to do much, it's kind of just vaporizing when it hits it. Yeah. That's crazy because of the massive amounts of heat. And then this whole thing started at eight, at 830 is when the hatches blue. And then at 912 the thing exploded. And we're going to kind of list through a pretty horrifying list of impacts from distances. Like a seismograph in Denver, Colorado picked up this explosion. Yes. And this is again in the southernmost part of Texas, right? Yeah. Like they felt it in Louisiana, like 3000 foot fire bombs and cargo flying up in the air. So yeah, the enormous amount of energy that I was talking about that was released by this 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate in retrospect, I think it's been I saw it compared to a 2.7 kiloton blast, which would put this blast of this ship blowing up at somewhere on the order of about one fifth of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, which just completely leveled that city. This is about a fifth of that size, so it was still a really substantial, enormous blast. One of the first effects it had is that it blew this Liberty ship, this huge World War II era cargo ship, a couple of thousand feet into the air in multiple pieces to just shower out downward as hot metal shrapnel onto the surrounding city. That's not accounting for the shrapnel that immediately blew outward as those gases expand, expanded right into all of those onlookers. And the people who are fighting the fire around the port. Yeah, they had a couple of two ton anchors. One of those went about a mile and a half away in the air. Like we said, you could feel it in Louisiana. There was a monsanto and a Union carbide, two different chemical plants kind of right beside it. They were just flattened, basically just not even there anymore. Yes, I saw that one of the warehouses, warehouse zero at the port, which is, I think, the one that was closest to the ship. This historian from Houston, I think, said that it just disappeared, like it was just gone, like it wasn't there any longer. The word disintegrate works in a lot of the instances when you're describing what happened to a lot of the structures and people who were around this blast. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the obvious thing. There were hundreds of onlookers. There were people that worked there. They were all 28 members of the fire department. They were all killed basically instantly. Anyone within that zone was killed instantly. Some people, like you said, just not even able to recover enough body parts to identify humans at that point. Yeah, that proved to be a real problem. First of all, the fact that the entire fire department apparently there was one survivor from the fire department, but he was out of town at the time. That's why he survived. The whole fire department and all of their equipment was immediately wiped out. One of the problems was with an explosion like this in a place like this, is that it ruptures lines and pipes, and all of those petrochemicals that are being refined suddenly catch fire. So now you have these out of control fires in the buildings and structures that are left standing, and you no longer have a fire department or any fire equipment to put it out for a little while. So the immediate impact outside of the blast was also the fires that were lit just right after this, too. Well, I mean, you've got the metal shrapnel, but then you've also remember there were peanuts and twine and cotton and all this stuff. So these are like fireballs being launched basically starting fires all over the place. It wasn't just in the immediate area. And like you said, because the fire department was then out of commission, that's real trouble. Yeah. So it took a little while for more aid to show up, but apparently this explosion was so bad and the catastrophe was so great, the Army, Navy, coast Guard, Marines, texas National Guard, and then firefighters from surrounding cities all came out to help. And this wasn't just, like, putting this chemical fire out, but also trying to rescue people from rubble. There's really a lot that we could sit here and say, but if you have a computer in front of you, just look up pictures from the Texas City explosion of it. It's just unreal. What happened to enormous steel buildings just turned into, like, twisted metal, and this is, like, the middle of a work day. So there were people trapped all over the place in this debris. So there was a huge rescue operation that had to start, but it was delayed because most of the people who were tasked with that kind of thing had all been killed in the initial blast. Yeah. So remember earlier we said that there were three ships there. This one blows up, and obviously it's a full on, like, 911 scene at this point with just how chaotic it is. People are not noticing that right next door. The SSI flyer also, remember, was loaded with this stuff and also with sulfur, which makes it become unstable, and this thing had been unlodged. I mean, I'm surprised. It's just the integrity of these ships is the only reason that those weren't just blown to bits, too. It was kind of right next to it, and it was still intact, at least. And it was blown from its moorings, though, and drifted over and kind of attached itself to the Wilson B. King, which was again, in the slip next to it. And I think there were some crew members aboard in there that I guess we're just protected by that fixed deal, right? Yeah, from what I understand, and they were kind of still doing their thing for a little while, and they were finally because the High Flyer caught fire as well, they were finally forced out by the smoke because this is some noxious smoke. This isn't just like, wood burning smoke. This is some really bad chemical smoke that can mess you up. It's crazy that these sailors stayed aboard for an hour, but they're finally forced off a ship. But they tell people, like, hey, this is on fire. Have you seen the other problems we have over here? And the fire department just got basically vaporized. So the fire was allowed to continue on the high fire for hours and hours. Like, that blast happened at 09:12 a.m.. And it wasn't until the afternoon that somebody else rediscovered the fire aboard the High Flyer and started to kind of raise the alarm about this still. This is such a chaotic scene that there wasn't anything immediately done about it. And it wasn't until 11:00 p.m. That they're finally like, oh, this is a bad jam, because not only do we have 1000 tons of ammonium nitrate aboard the High Flyer, there's a sulfur you mentioned, Chuck, and like you said, it makes it even more unstable in that you know how ammonium nitrate, oxidizes things. Sulfur is like food to that stuff. It oxidizes sulfur. It's just like piling on this oxidizing fuel to make the blast even more energetic. So it would be a really big problem if the High fire blew up. So they brought in some tugboats and a fireboat, I think, from Galveston, and started to try to take it out of the birth, to tug it out to sea to let it burn out or blow up or whatever it was going to do. But I guess it was stuck so fast that they couldn't get it out. Yeah, I guess this thing was not, I guess, just sort of wedged in there from that first explosion. And I think they worked on it for a couple of hours. They started at about 11:00 p.m., and then it looks like by 01:00 A.m., they had stopped that process. And at one point, this is now on April 17, early next morning, the High Flyer exploded as well. And this was even more violent. It's not a saving grace at all because everything was already leveled. But the only reason it didn't cause more death and more destruction, sadly, is because everything was already destroyed and most people were already dead. Yeah. And plus, also they knew enough by this time that they needed to clear the area that there wasn't anything they could do. So everybody who was working in the rescue operation was told to leave. So I don't know if there were any more deaths from the High Flyer blowing up, but the problem was that any fires that might have been put out were relieved, and other structures that may have been spared from the initial blast were now leveled or caught fire or both. So it was a big problem that the High fire blew up as well. I think it sucked the Wilson King, too. It did. It sunk it. And I can only imagine, too, also, if you survived that first one, to have another blast like that, even when you are away from and you knew was coming, we just do something to the nerves that would be really difficult to recover from. Yeah, for sure. You want to take a break? Yeah, we'll take a little break and we'll talk about sort of the results of the devastation and a couple of other incidents 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. 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Okay, so, Chuck, one thing that we didn't say was that the initial explosion by the Grand Camp created, like, a 15 foot tidal wave that washed inland, and people died almost in creative ways in this disaster. And one of those ways was those petrochemicals. I think there was a Molasses refinery that started to get mixed in that kept the petrochemicals burning in the water when it mixed with them. When this tidal wave blew out, when it blew in, I'm sorry, it was on fire. So it actually caught people on fire? It caught people on fire on the way back out to sea. And people who survived the initial blast were actually swept out and drowned from this, too. There were people who died in airplanes that had come around to kind of circle the area that were blown out of the sky. There. Were people who died in buildings that collapsed. There are people who died from shrapnel falling out of the sky and killing them even though they were miles away. There was so much death and destruction that it's really difficult to get across. What happened to this poor little port city that hadn't done anything to anybody that just suddenly blew up. Yeah. In the end, the official death toll was close to 600. 581 people, 113 of which were just vaporized. No trace was ever found. Of 113 people, casualties up to 5000, the numbers kind of vary, but anywhere from 3500 to 5000. And Texas City was not a very big place. It was about 16,000 strong. So this was just devastating to the city and to the region. It took about a week to put out all these fires, and I think a full month plus to recover whatever bodies they could recover at that point. Yeah. The final body wasn't found until mid May. There were people who were never, like you said, accounted for. The converse of that was true, too. There were parts of people that were never identified. And one of the accounts that I read was, like I was saying, was written by, I think, a University of Houston historian named Cheryl Lowersdorf Ross in the journal Houston History. But she recounts somebody mentioning a woman who was trying to identify her husband who is lost in the disaster, and she had to sort through hands. They had a collection of hands that this woman was trying to figure out which one belonged to her husband. And that's just nuts to hear. But if you can even begin to put yourself into that woman's shoes yes. The reality of that yes. Of being in that room, of looking at different hands, and then also not just the horror of that, of, like, having to look through body parts that may or may not be your husband's, but then the self doubt, like, is that my husband's hand? I don't remember what it looked like. Just your mind messing with you on top of the horrific experience that you're already undergoing. But she was one of many, because something like 61 people, I believe, were interred without being identified. But their remains were kind of assembled and put together in a memorial service that was attended by something like thousands of people, I believe so. Chuck, if there was 16,000 people and that many people were hurt or killed by this blast, you can imagine how quickly this little town was overwhelmed with all these casualties. And so they were getting people, like, every which way, trucking them over to Galveston, like, getting them wherever they could, whatever hospital they could find. But very quickly, the high school gym was taken over to serve as a field hospital. And then shortly after that, the morgue. And one of the stories that stuck out to me was the boy scouts were pressed into service to basically help out however they could. And these poor little teenage and preteen scouts are like working in this makeshift morgue in their high school gym. Imagine the impression that had on them the rest of their life. Jeez. I know. Isn't that crazy? Like every aspect of this story is just nuts. That's very sad. Yeah. And of course the financial loss was huge. About $100 million in property loss, 500 million in lost petroleum products, and that's about 700 million in 3.5 billion in today dollars. I think there is sort of buried beneath the berms there is a Memorial Park where 63 unidentified victims are buried. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Yes. And there's that anchor that we talked about. I don't know if it was the one that actually blew the mile and a half away, but at least one of the anchors is a monument at the park along with a scarred propeller from the high flyer at the entrance to the port there at Texas City. Yeah. So that funeral procession that they had that attracted, I think, something like 5000 mourners was a real community effort. There were something like 50 plus funeral homes from 28 different cities that all participated. And each of these 63 unidentified people were there remains, I should say, were put in their own individual caskets and buried in the Memorial Park, which is still there. That park is still there with the anchor and everything. But it's such an enormous weird catastrophe and just such a devastating thing, especially looking back 70 years to read about. But when you do read about it, if you can just kind of put yourself in mind of what that was like trying to recover from that, it's astounding that Texas City did recover, a lot of people moved and just said, not only do I think the city is never going to come back from this, I don't know if I can come back from this. But the city actually did come back and they did build back, from what I understand, even bigger than before, which is how that BP refinery that ended up blowing up, that became the most profitable in BP's entire company because the city built back even better than before. That's great. It is great. Not great that it exploded again in 2005, obviously, but great that they had to stick to it and come back as a city. So obviously following something like this, there's going to be a lot more regulation going on. The US is going to step up federally and say, hey, wait a minute, we really need to take a look at how we're handling these chemicals, how we're storing these things, how we're shipping these things. And a lot of changes were made here and around the world. But it's not to say that that completely prevented this from happening again because in Beirut just last year, in August of 2020, there was another big cargo of ammonium nitrate that had been sitting in a warehouse for seven years. It's no one exactly sure why it ignited this time, but there was a dock worker that said that there were fireworks stored nearby, and they did find thousands of kilograms of fireworks recovered from a warehouse at that port. And this explosion was a crater about 460ft wide, and it was about as big as the Texas city blast. I saw both. I saw that it was about as big, and I saw that it was about half the size, but even at half yeah, go look at video of that. What's astounding about the Beirut blast is there happens to be people who are filming when it happened because there was a fire. I remember when it happened. Yeah. So you've seen that white cloud, that's that water vapor expanding. Right. And you can't see it, but there's nitrous oxide gas in there as well. So imagine twice that size. That would probably be about the size of that first Texas city blast in 47. Yeah, I remember seeing it on the news, and I don't remember if they mentioned Texas city, but yeah, this is stuff that was just stored down there for like, seven years, soaking up that warm, kind of moist Mediterranean breeze. Not the way you should handle and store the stuff. No, the story behind it's kind of interesting. It was started in Georgia, not our Georgia, but the republic of Georgia en route to Mozambique. And apparently the owners were like, we're not making enough money on this trip, so we're going to divert over to beirut and pick up some more freight. And the crew said, no, we're not going to do it. It's going to make the weight dangerous. So they bought port, fees started racking up, and the owners apparently just decided to abandon the crew, the ship, and the cargo. The cargo, once it was impounded, should have been sold off, but it wasn't. Instead, it just, like you said, sat there, stored incorrectly for six years until something caused it to blow up. The idea that it was just negligence that led to that catastrophe is even worse. I think that's something that's missing from the Texas city disaster. There wasn't really any negligent act, maybe a mistake or a bad choice, but no one was particularly negligent about it. So I think that it kind of makes the beirut last even worse. That people were supposed to be doing stuff that they didn't do, and a lot of people died as a result. Yeah, I think the BP refinery in 2005, they had to pay out about $50 million for that one after they did a BT, a little safety audit. And in that safety audit, they found it. And this was before the blast, actually. They did a safety audit, and they found that a lot of people that worked at this plant, it says, came to work with, quote, an exceptional degree of fear of catastrophic incidents. That's a little bit of an ocean nightmare. Everything that I've read about that was the direct result of BP cutting safety in favor of higher profit margins. That's what happened. That's what allowed this plant to deteriorate. And the machinery just didn't work. But they traced this explosion. This is an oil refinery explosion. It had nothing to do with ammonium nitrate, but I think whatever chemical they put in gas to boost the octane level, they turned a machine on that does that. And somehow, like, all these components to the gasoline started vaporizing out into the air. It started shooting out of this tower because the pressure was overloaded and there was so much gas vapor in the air that somebody had a pickup truck running nearby, and it got sucked up into the air intake and the engine started revving. And that's actually what ignited the whole thing. All of this gas vapor, this pickup truck sucking in gas molecules that were just vaporized in the air around it crazy in Texas City again. It's crazy. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about the Texas City disaster, you can go look that up. I would strongly recommend reading Cheryl Lord's Dorf Ross is changing lives in a Heartbeat journal article. And also big shout out to FireEngineering.com. They had a good one. And then the local 1259, the Texas City Firefighters Union, has a really comprehensive overview of the Texas City disaster, too. So maybe check those out for even more details. Totally. Since I said that it's time for listener mail. Yeah, well, I'm going to call it when Ryan called it while I'm dumb, but I'm over it. Hey, guys. Long time. First time. I thought I'd tell you. You had me duped for a long time. When I first started listening to the show a few years ago, and probably for a year after that first episode, I honestly thought there was a list of key words that Josh referred to toward the end of the episode whenever he says, well, since I said blank, it's time for listener mail. This is very cute. For an embarrassingly long time, I really thought that the blank word was from a predetermined master list and that you had revealed that list of words to the audience in an early episode. Wow. I guess, like the magic word in Pewee's Playhouse. Yes. Is that what it was? Yeah. This guy was supposed to have really loved Kiwi's Playhouse. Started listening to increasingly older episodes in hopes that I would hear that list or catch a trend towards Josh's transition with that statement at the end of every episode is just so smooth. And there you go. Thanks, man. It wasn't until one episode when Josh's word was so mundane, so common, it's probably the or if or something along those lines, that I finally realized there is no list. I had been fooled. This random just fell from his eyes, and he was free. Finally. Well, since you said scales, those random words are just that random. I actually felt a bit disappointed when I realized this, but it actually took some of the mystery out of the show. But I'm over it now. Whether or not it's good to admit I had been fooled by this for a long time, it's up for debate, but I've been meaning to tell you about this for a while. I hope you think of me every time Josh transitions to listener mail from now on. I totally will. Yeah. Take care and keep doing what you're doing, because it's a fantastic show. And since I said show what? That's great. That is from Ryan Peschel. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for getting in our heads like that. Apparently, we got in your heads, too, so it's only fair, don't you think, Chuck? Yeah, and just right then, I didn't think we had a listener mail. And then look what pops up. Ryan Peschel saves the day again. And only Ryan knows what I'm talking about. It just ruined his life again. He's back in the game. If you want to get in touch with us and try to get in our heads like Ryan did, so we have to think of you every time we say something about listening to mail or what have you, you can write to us. Send us an email to 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 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." | |
How the Enlightenment Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-enlightenment-works | The Enlightenment stands as the moment the West withdrew from superstition and found its faith in reason. Did it shift too far? Learn about this massive shift in thinking which we are still sorting through and coming to understand today. | The Enlightenment stands as the moment the West withdrew from superstition and found its faith in reason. Did it shift too far? Learn about this massive shift in thinking which we are still sorting through and coming to understand today. | Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:51:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=16, tm_min=51, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=322, tm_isdst=0) | 38306038 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry Are. So this is stuff you should know. Ones. Exactly. The three of us? Yeah. No one else? No, we're the enlightened ones. I am going to go ahead and preface this with what I just said off the air. This is a very tough subject to distill in a 30 to 45 minutes podcast because volumes of books can be written on the Age of Enlightenment and have been. And have been. So this is tough. This is going to be a very bird's eye view. Yeah. There's a dude named Jonathan Israel who just came out with, I think, this third volume of a three volume set on the Enlightenment, and he wrote literally several thousand pages of it, and it's considered an obscure text. Yeah. He probably doesn't even think that he covered it in full. No, but he doesn't. Although he's fourth volume coming soon. Right. I think he does have another one coming, so maybe it was a second. But the idea that he doesn't think that it's done, that it's not finished, is actually a pretty standard view of the enlightenment. Like, during research for this, I realized that there are tons of intellectual arguments going on right now. Like the bill maher thing. Bill Maher and Islam. Yeah. He's been accused of being, like, just a complete racist Xenophobic dude because of his recent statements on Islam. Did you see him? And Ben Affleck? Did you see them get into it? Yeah. Okay. That argument is an enlightenment argument. The enlightenment was so massive that the ripple effects are still being felt on a daily basis because it was such an enormous change in the way humans think that we're still trying to sit there and analyze what the heck happened. And that is one manifestation of it. Yeah, sure. What Bill Maher is saying is Islam is a religion or whatever, and therefore it's antithetical to progress and culture and, like, real thought and rationalism. And Ben Affleck is saying, like, you can't say that about a culture. Each culture is its own thing. So what we're seeing there is the idea of moral absolutism arguing with moral relativism. And that is, like, textbook enlightenment argument. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Sure. Like, researching this article, seriously, I tied together probably ten different things that I didn't realize were connected. I love it when stuff like that happens. It was the start of and the Age of Enlightenment started and ended, but it was the birth of just a new kind of thought and a new value system. Philosophical, scientific, cultural, intellectual, basically saying reason over this previous long held belief that just strict religious dogma is all you need to worry about. Right. Don't question anything. Don't try to think about science and nature and things like that, other than just, this is God's creation and what does it mean in terms of religion. Exactly. So, of course it's still going on. But it wasn't just that. It was definitely enlightenment. If you're an enlightenment fan, you would say enlightenment was the domination of reason over religion or faith. It was a value system, basically. But there was another aspect of the enlightenment, the domination of the will of the people over the monarchy. Economic. There was economic change, huge economic changes, thanks to Adam Smith. There were a lot of huge monumental changes in the way people thought. So much so that modern historians who are trying to unpack the enlightenment, still one of the schools of thought is that you can't just call it the enlightenment. Yeah. It happened in too many different places under different circumstances. And then again, the different aspects of it, the fact that one part of it dealt with governmental change, one part of it dealt with religious change, another part dealt with economic change, that it's been kind of distilled into separate compartments now. Yeah. I mean, separate compartments somewhere divergent and contradictory. It occurred nearly simultaneously in the 18th century in France, great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, american colonies all over the place. I like to say it's the period of time where the world started waking up and pulled their heads from their rear ends. Right. Basically. Well, the question now, I mean, if you're a religious type, you're probably happy about the fruits of the enlightenment. Like, everybody points of the industrial revolution is proof positive the enlightenment was great, or the American experiment proof positive the enlightenment was great. But you probably don't like the fact that the world completely turned its back on religion, or not completely, but largely did. If you're a pro enlightenment type, you're probably saying, this is for the best. Like, we were backwards. We emerged from the dark ages thanks to the enlightenment. And this is the argument that's still going on today. Like, yes, the enlightenment changed everything, but did it go too far? Right, so we'll get into all that. But conger who wrote this article, I think did a very good job of taking the whole thing back further than the 18th century out of the French salons and set the stage for what created the basis for this change in thinking. Yeah, I think Kristen did a great job of distilling a complex topic down to, like, an eight page article. But she does take it back to there were a couple of things that sort of laid the groundwork. Well, a lot of things, but a couple of them are Mr. Isaac Newton and the famous story of the apple falling on his head, which makes a great story. He told a lot of people that I don't know how factually exactly true that is, but it makes for a great story. But either way you want to look at it, isaac Newton looked at the space at some point between that apple and the ground and said, there's something going on in that empty space. Right. That should be explained because that apple doesn't follow up. Something is keeping us all rooted here on the ground. And I want to look into that. Although if you were a fan of David Humes, you would say, well, actually, it could conceivably fall up because we've never proven it won't follow up. Yeah. And Hume was one of the proponents. Well, not proponents, but he was active in the Age of Enlightenment. Yeah. Another thing that really laid the groundwork was the 30 years of war from 1618 to 1648, which pretty much paved the way for Protestant Reformation. And the Roman Catholic Church took a lot of the teeth away from the Roman Catholic Church. Hugely first time. Yeah, there was a huge change. So what you just described, Chuck, is the foundation for the intellectual branch of the Enlightenment thinking usurping the power from theological thinking. And then with the 30 Year War, political power was taken away from the Church because for the first time now, the precedent has been set that you as a citizen, your allegiance is not split between church and state. Your allegiance is first and foremost to the state. And we see that still today. Like if somebody kills their parents or whatever because it's the 7th sign and Demi Moore is running around and it turns out that they were brother and sister, so you kill them because it's the will of God. The state says, I don't care if it's the will of God. You can't kill your parents. The state's law is more powerful and more important than God's law. That's straight out of the 30 Years War. That changed everything. Have you ever seen the seven sign? And I saw that, like, when it came out. I don't remember anything about it. I just remember one of the characters was this kid with down syndrome and he murdered his parents because he found out that they were brother and sister and he was super religious and they were going to execute him. Yeah. When they execute I think he was like the last martyr. Okay, man, I'll have to check that out again. Yeah, tell me more. Man, she just keeps getting better looking, doesn't she? How do you do that? Yes. Like you look at blame it on Rio. Yeah. She's kind of doughy and not tubby, but just round. And then she got all chiseled and remained chiseled. That was Michael Caine, wasn't it? Great movie. Yeah, but I mean, she was a kid back then. Everyone was deli back then when they were kid. Blame It On Rio. It was a really good movie. So Conor points out even further back about the Dark Ages sort of laying the groundwork, which the Dark Ages were dark for many reasons, but one of the big ones was that the Roman Catholic Church basically ruled everything. Latin was the language, the center of life and academia were monasteries and abbey's. You aren't encouraged to get educated outside of theological realms. Right? It was not encouraged. I want to say you have to be careful using the term Dark Ages because apparently it is a disparaging label that people on the pro Enlightenment side of the argument, the humanists, they say these are the Dark Ages. Back when the Church controlled everything, when everybody was just an ignoramus. Once the Enlightenment came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages. Technically, once the Renaissance came along, we emerged from the Dark Ages. So if you're an historian, you call it the Middle Ages. But even the Middle Ages are kind of sad because it just says these ages kind of existed between this important age and this important Age. We just call this the Middle Ages? But it's better than the Dark Ages. I like Dark Ages. But that's an argument or a label, a disparaging label that humanists use. Yeah, unfairly, because there were scientists working and laying the groundwork for future science in the Dark Ages. And Congreg even mentions them in this article. Like Thomas Aquinas came up with scholasticism. Yeah. And scholasticism is basically the idea that you can understand God even more and be even more pure and divine yourself by studying nature. Yeah. Roger Bacon was another monk who was a proponent of that. And I think that allowed them and I don't think that's the reason they did it, but that allowed them to pursue these scientific avenues because it was still tied to God. Another big change was, like I said before, in the not so Dark Ages, perhaps Latin was the language and they didn't have something called the printing press until Johann Gutenberg came along in 1438 and says, you know what? Everyone should be able to read. Start printing stuff in your native tongue. And that led directly to people starting to educate themselves. It was the democratization of education right there. Exactly. And all of this didn't happen out of the blue like Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas and a guy named Leonardo Bruni. They didn't necessarily come up with their ideas on their own. There was this really seminal thing that happened back in the mid 13th century where somebody, I don't know who did somebody translated Aristotle, I believe his works, into Latin. And all of a sudden, the Greek rational thinkers of antiquity, their ideas were suddenly available to the west for the first time. And it just so happened that some people started paying attention to these things. Leonardo Brunei read Petrarch and revived the idea of humanism, which is a huge sea change, because humanism says humans are pretty awesome. And the fruit of our labors, the fruit of our intellect, the fruit of everything that we do comes from human ability, not God. We're not just vessels for God's brilliance to be shown through. If you create something, you come up with a work of art because God did that. You did that. Let's figure out how you did it. Right. That's humanism. And this is what the Renaissance started to revive, and it was a huge change. Like, maybe we should start paying attention to ourselves a little more. Exactly. Let's explore the human condition. Yeah. Aristotle was not a heretic because he tied his geocentric universe ideas to God as well. He thought the universe was composed of ten separate crystal spheres, and beyond the 10th sphere, there was heaven and God. Copernicus pretty much said, no, that's not true. The universe is infinite. And he was pretty alone in that thinking early on, he faced a lot of criticism from every religion. Protestant and Catholics, they thought it was a dangerous way of thinking because he didn't make room for God in the cosmos. And it definitely was a dangerous way of thinking to the Church. Like the Protestant Reformation was going on. You had the 30 Years War coming down the pike. You had Copernicus, thanks to this revival of interest in astronomy yeah. In Galilee or Galilee. Yeah. Starting to look at the universe around us and finding even, like, symbolic stuff, like, who was it? Kepler. He was an assistant to Taikobrahi. And Kepler figured out that the planets revolve around the sun in an ellipse. Well, the Church, the Holy Roman Church, said that the circle was a symbol of perfection. So, of course, everything revolved around the Earth in a circle. Not only did things not revolve around the Earth, it revolves around the sun. And they didn't even do that in a circle. They did an ellipse. So the Church is just losing its mind because all these people are coming forward saying, everything that you're saying over here is starting to prove to smell like BS. And the Church is losing its power left and right, both politically and intellectually. It's losing its authority. Yeah. Galileo even recanted because he was accused of heresy for his theory that the Earth rotates on its axis. So he said, I'll take it all back. I didn't mean that. Please don't kill me. He's like, but just make sure my manuscripts survive. So we were talking about Bacon. He is the creator of the scientific method, and he says, you know what? We should use experiments to actually try and explain things. And so it's 1620. I think it's high time we have a method for doing so. So that was Francis Bacon. Yes. I wonder if he was related to Roger Bacon. I don't know. They're separated by a few centuries, but they could have been FAM. Sure. I think so. Did you ever take philosophy in college? No. I think I might have. I didn't get much out of it. If I did, I don't remember. I took one class. We studied descartes a lot. I've grown to be a little more interested in it, but I like the more existential crisis philosophy, like Nick Bostrom stuff. I don't know what that is. Just basically how the world's going to end. Okay. This stuff is, I think, like, descartes is interesting, but it doesn't light my fire. Yes, it was all right. I think I made an a in that class, actually, because it interested me at the time, but I never took a follow up class. I just took the intro. It clearly didn't mean that much to me, but I get it. Yeah. And what Descartes was saying is, our experience is not what you thought. Mind and matter are two different things, and the human experience is a subjective experience. And the mind what the mind produces is different than what is reality. And really kind of that changed things tremendously. Too so you got all these people contributing to this. We haven't even reached the 18th century yet. Like, the groundwork is definitely being laid, and it's still being laid as far as the government goes. John Locke was one of the people who contributed to the idea of the social contract. The social contract. There was Hobbies, Locke, and later on, Russo and others contributed to this idea that humans are born with natural rights. You're born free. I'm born free. Even Jerry is born free. Look at her. And to form a society, you give up some of these natural rights. For example, one thing that you give up is your right to kill in retribution. Any society typically demands a state monopoly on violence, which means that if somebody kills your family member, you don't go kill that person. You go to the state and say, that guy killed my family member, try and convict them and kill them on my behalf because there's a state monopoly on violence. So that's a natural right that you give up, I think, appropriately so, and for the better, but as part of the social contract. And so the idea that humans had these rights and that society in turn had rights because humans gave them rights, that was a big basis of enlightenment thinking that would be added to later on. Too yeah, and Lock also was one of the first champions of what would kind of become nurture over nature. His idea of the tabula rasa, that when humans are born, their minds are a clean slate, and they are shaped by experience in education and not some preordained thing that you're born with. And this French intellect gobbled that stuff up. His name was Francois Marie Arout, and he went by a name you might know, voltaire. And he really loved this stuff and went back to France with all these ideals and said. We got to get on this. And we can't go out in the streets right now and talk about this stuff. But we can meet in private. In homes. Like a tupperware party. And we'll call them salons. And we'll talk about these radical ideas and this new way of thinking and the privacy of homes for those that are willing to host it. Yes. And we'll talk more about Voltaire and what he did right after that. So Chuck Voltaire has been lit up. He was in England from 1726 to 1729, living in exile because he was already critical of the French monarchy. While he was there, he ran into the ideas of Lock, of apparently descartes as well. He basically got turned onto rationalism and he was primed and ready for it. Like, this guy was just waiting for these ideas to pour into him. And when they did, he became a lightning rod for what we think of as the Enlightenment. Like, Voltaire was the main dude, to start, from what I understand. Yeah. And as we mentioned, the salons, they had to do this in private because Louie the 14th. Is that right? Yeah. Getting better at that. He was pretty hard on. He didn't like that kind of talk. It threatened him for good reason. Yeah. I mean, the reason why is the power was taken from the church and placed more in the monarchy, but in very short order, people said, we're not really that fond of the monarchy either. We think we should rule ourselves or at least elect people to rule ourselves. The divine right of kings thing seems kind of hinky, now that we think about it. So the monarchies were threatened as well by the Enlightenment? Oh, yeah. The monarchy liked the dumb masses that stayed under their thumb, and any kind of, like, radical thought or original thought was super dangerous. Sounds familiar. Exactly. It is. Interesting how you talked about I think there are periods of time where things like the Age of Enlightenment keep popping up. Like the 1960s in the United States. And I think, like you said, we're in one right now. I think we're in one probably more than even the 60s right now. Yeah. And I think there are periods where that lulls, like maybe the 1980s, 70s. Remember disco? Yeah. Like a dumbing down of things. Yes. Just people not caring or whatever. Yes. It's weird and cyclical. I read this article called Things Fall Apart how Social Media Leads to a Less Stable World. It was by a guy named Curtis Howland Houghland, and it's on knowledge at Wharton, like the Wharton Business School website. And it was basically saying I thought it was condemning social media. And this guy was just basically stating matter of fact that social media erodes the state and that now we have ways to connect with other people in ways that are more important to us than, say, our allegiance to the state. So you may feel more connected to somebody over Hello Kitty and your fondness for Hello Kitty more than you would identify yourself as American. Right. And with social media, you're able to connect with other people who feel the same way. And so you form on social media, basically bodies that supersede the state in your opinion, no boundaries. Exactly. And as this happens, more and more, the states, what's called sovereignty, erodes more and more, and it becomes a less and less stable world. The guy's point was that, yes, while it's very unstable and things are much more dangerous during periods like this, it's basically just a period of upheaval and change, and then eventually things stabilize again. But what this guy was saying, using this as an example, is that we are in right now possibly on the cusp of a period of tremendous fundamental change in the world. I see that every day. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting time to be alive. Yeah. A little scary to me. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like the guy said, it's more dangerous than your average time because change frequently comes out of spasms of violence or upheaval, just where nobody is in charge because there's a power struggle going on or our normal structures are being eroded. It's interesting. It's super interesting. So back to the salons. We're back to the Age of Enlightenment. The traditional age of enlightenment. The members were known. There was a group of people known as the Philosophy. We've mentioned a few of them. Russo, Diderot, Voltaire how do you pronounce that? Is it it's not Montague, is it Montasky? Montasky. They're kind of skeptics and critics of not everything but the establishment of government or the way government was at the time, especially the church. Hated the church. Yeah, like Voltaire especially hated the church and the very fact that it even existed. And a lot of the enlightened ones were Deus and Daisy, basically. I like the way Congo put it in a big picture way, they believe in a clock maker, God, which means maybe God created everything and set things in motion, but then was like, all right, that's it. I'm out. I'm not getting my fingers and all the pies of everyone. And you have free will, basically, after you're born, which, again, was pretty dangerous to the religious establishment. Yeah. So you've got the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in the west losing tons of power and political and intellectually, you've got the monarchy now being assaulted by the French salons who are planting the seeds of democracy. Like Monescu, for example, wrote in 1748, the spirit of the Laws. And he basically proposed the idea of a separation of powers. He's like the first guy to do that. He's the same lawyer who is in the salon scene. And all of a sudden, it's like, separation of power? What are you talking about? Now you've got a monarch, and what the monarch says is right. And as a result of this kind of thinking, the seeds of democracy are planted. And then a hostility toward religion of almost any kind that you still see today, like in the form of Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, formerly Christopher Hitchens. All of this started coming out of the French salon. Yeah. All right. After this message, we're going to talk a little bit about how the Age of Enlightenment manifested itself in different parts of the world. So we've mainly been in Europe this whole time. In France, there was an emphasis on the arts. In England, they had a more emphasis on science and economics. You mentioned Adam Smith at the beginning. Scottish man in 1776 wrote his wealth of nations which basically said the government should not interfere with matters of finance and economics. There should be the invisible hand guiding all these principles. Yeah, I read this article by this guy who was explaining that change in thought like before that it was that whole social contract thing like Russo saying this is an interplay between citizens and citizens and citizens and their government. And the government's role is to protect the rights of people. What Hume said is the government is legitimate. Not Hume, but Smith. The government's legitimate insofar as it steps out of people's affairs and lets free trade take place. Which that might sound familiar if you subscribe to Republican or conservative or libertarian ideology. Right. Like the whole laser fair attitude of government is what legitimizes government and the government that medals in someone's affairs is an illegitimate government as far as classical economic thought goes. Yeah, and we talked about that and our stuff, you should know, guide to the Economy. Yeah, we got an email. Someone bought that the other day. Yeah, they thought it was 17 hours long or something. And then also in Scotland was David Hume who's, like, my favorite philosopher of all time. Because he's like he's the only one he studied. No, he's the only one who's ever really spoken to me of the Enlightenment philosophers. And Hume was this meat and potatoes dude who basically said, Show me the proof. Yeah, he was a skeptic. He was an empiricist. He said, you basically can't believe anything that you can't see with your own eyes. My belief in his philosophy has been eroded with the idea that consciousness is a subjective experience. Just totally subjective, basically. But I like his idea and it was like the cause and effect. Right. I think he used Billiards as an example where you hit a ball like you're playing eight ball and you hit like, the eight ball with the cue ball, you can predict where that's going to go. Yeah, like where the eight ball is going to go based on how you hit it with the cue ball. But Hume's point is you can't say for certain that that's what's going to happen. Right. You're basing that strictly on previous experience rather than proof that this is what will happen. So we can't prove that hitting that Q ball will make this eight ball go in a certain direction ahead of time. And so therefore we've come up with this thing called cause and effect which basically serves as a stop gap between what we think will happen and the phenomenon we've already observed. Like, in other words, you can't say for certain the sun is going to come up tomorrow just because it's already come up so many days before. And the reason why is because we don't have empirical proof, and I like him for that. So you don't think the sun will come up tomorrow necessarily? It's not the point that I think it won't come up tomorrow. What humor is saying is we can't prove that it will. You can't prove that it will just based on previous experience. Right. Well, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were on board that train to a certain degree. Yeah. And we mentioned earlier that most of the establishment was pretty threatened by most of these ideas and the people in power, but not everybody. Some people wanted to get on the Enlightenment train because I think it was progressive and maybe made them seem open to ideas and modern, perhaps. Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great was one of those who had a lot of dealings with the philosophy. And Frederick the Great of Prussia even had Voltaire over and said, you know, why don't you come and live here? Yeah. And he did. Yeah, he said for free. And he said, for free. He said, okay, I'm just trying to think of Prussian money, but I have no idea. The prowlers the approval way better. It was also happening in Germany, all over the world with Emmanuel Kante. He was one of the first champions of freedom of the press, and his motto is one that I love dare to know. And again, he was just challenging people. Go out there and learn about something and don't just accept what these religious leaders are telling you you have to accept. Yeah, and actually, he came up with this idea called the categorical imperative. Basically, Kant gave the world the idea that there is such a thing as moral absolutes right. And I guess he didn't give the world that, because the Judeo Christian ethic and most religious ethics say that there is such a thing as right or wrong. And today you have that argument of, is there such a thing as moral absolutism, or is moral or cultural relativism a thing? Right. That's the argument. That's one of the arguments that's playing out right now in the intellectual world. Yeah. I just think that's fascinating, too. It totally is. So what does this all lead to? Eventually, it's going to lead to war, because any time there is well, not any time, but a lot of times when there's an uprising of radical thought, people are going to want to take action. And it happened in the United States by way of the American Revolution and in France by way of the French Revolution, and they had different results, to say the least. They were both experimentations in this new idea of democracy. Yeah, pretty much. And, yeah, the American one worked out pretty well. Some would. Say the French one, not so much, because apparently Robespierre, who was the head of the Jacobin Party that took power during the French Revolution, Robespierre was a follower of Russo. I remember Russo contributed to the social contract by saying the people will something and then it's up to the people in charge to carry out that will. Right. And so Rose Pierre took that to mean that the people stormed the Best Deal and overthrew the monarchy. And so it was his job as the head of the Jacobin Party, which is now in power, to kill everybody who wasn't down with the revolution. And so thousands and thousands of French people lost their lives at the guillotine as a result during this reign of terror. So some people would say America founded itself based on democratic principles, and let's not pay attention to some of these darker spots over here and just pay attention to the democratic experiment. And it worked out great. And then the French one, there was a revolution. They tried to install democratic ideals and thousands of people had their heads chopped off. It didn't work quite as well. Well, and some people say that effectively killed the Age of Enlightenment as we know it. The French Revolution, because the chaos and violence interrupted was in certain circles blamed on the Enlightenment and proof that we can't self govern. And these are radical ideas, and that's why we got stomped on. Have you ever heard the theory that the French Revolution was due to moldy bread? No. There is one theory that people got a hold of bad bread, so it was er goat poisoning, and basically we're tripping on acid on July 14, 1789, when they decided to storm the Best Deal. That was one of the explanations for the sale of witchcraft trials. Yeah. Crazy. I hadn't heard that. Yeah. So they were like, it's go time, let's get this party started. But like I said, some people say that ended the Age of Enlightenment as we know it. Romanticism was soon ushered in and was way more appealing to the common folk than this weird radical thoughts that were going on before. Well, Romanticism was the first time people questioned the idea on a large scale that maybe the rationalism and the humanism of the Enlightenment went too far in the other direction. Like, sure, maybe we were way too religious and the religious organizations have way too much power, but we swung way over here and just rationalism had this idea, too, and it became dogmatic in and of its own right. And so we still never really figured out how to fine tune it enough. And that's what we're still figuring out right now. A lot of people say the Enlightenment, the idea that the course of humanity is always towards civilization and rational thought, and that any culture that's not there is inferior to a culture that does think rationally. Right. So that means that colonialism and imperialism was supported by enlightenment thought, which is a huge like the enlightenment is not supposed to be about that suppose to be about good things and freedom and all that. But it also supported colonialism. Right. That was a huge people are arguing about that right now too. Yeah, let's go conquer these people and make them modern and bring them into today's world. Exactly. There's another article I want to recommend. It's called the trouble with the enlightenment. It's by a guy named Ollie Cussing from Prospect magazine. Awesome article about this. He basically reviews a couple of books, one by Jonathan Israel, who I mentioned earlier where he basically says, forget the philosophy. You got to look at Baruch Spinoza who is a Dutch philosopher from, I think the 17th century. He was the one who came up with the enlightenment ideas. And had we followed his enlightenment ideas, there wouldn't have been any governments now or there wouldn't be any religion whatsoever. He came up with the real revolutionary enlightenment. And what we got and what we think of as the enlightenment was a watered down, moderate version that was changed. Sure, there was tons of change, but it was still palatable to the elite that the people could still be governed easily even in these new democratic experiments and stuff like that. There's a lot of people who take issue with his book, but it's pretty interesting to discuss it. What's it called? Democratic enlightenment. I think he's the one who wrote that several thousand page trilogy. Oh, that guy. And then there's another guy in the story named Anthony Pageant. He believes that the enlightenment project is still going on and basically that as long as there's religion in the world, the enlightenment won't be fulfilled entirely. Right. Which is again, it's like this idea that rationalism has become dogmatic. And if you're not just strictly rational, if you hold any kind of what could be considered irrational or superstitious belief right. You're acting irrationally. You're not thinking correctly, and therefore you have to be converted. Right. Which is just as dogmatic. Sure. Yeah. Lots going on right now. Huge time of change. And also go read the dark age myth in atheist reviews godsphilosophers by Tim O'Neill on Strangenosions.com. O'Neill. Tim O'Neill. And I think that's about it. That is it for me. If you want to learn more about the enlightenment, go check out those three articles. Or check out and check out how the enlightenment worked by typing that in the search bar. How stuff works. And now it's time for listening. I'm going to call this mad cow theory from Seattle. Hey guys, just listen to your podcast on fatal familial insomnia. In it you mentioned the late 18th century cases in Venice and then wondered about the unrelated cases and what they were eating. This made me finally sit down and write my first email. For years I've had a theory about prion disease and mad cow. In specific years ago, I was watching a program on Egyptian mummies. They talked about how mummification may have started out with the pharaoh, but the practice eventually made it down to call it budget mummification. They talked about how in the late 18th and 19th century, crypts of these early mummies, they would be ground up and sold as fertilizer, specifically in England. Sometime later, when I learned about prions and how nearly indestructible they were, I wondered, could ground up mummies have been used to fertilize a field? Then a cow comes along and eats grass that has been contaminated with prions, leading to mad cow disease. A human eats the mad cow's brain, gets kokesvelt. Jacobs so I've always wondered, could never figure out if you could prove it or disprove it, if CFJ was a real mummy curse of desecrated Egyptian corpses. That is Darren Gray in Seattle. And man, I just like that kind of speaking of radical thought, I had not heard that one. It's Darren's own gray ism nice going, Darren. Yeah. If you have anything to say about that, anybody else we would like to hear from you. Can you prove or disprove that Critzfield Yacovs disease is a mummy's curse? You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffynow. You can send us an email which seems appropriate to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com, and join us at our home on the webstepyshow.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 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." | ||
6f1cfea9-5af3-47dc-a630-aeaf00a69a2b | The 4-minute Mile: Greatest Sports Story? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-4-minute-mile-greatest-sports-story | Nobody thought the 4-minute mile was humanly possible, until it was. The story of how it happened is remarkable. So sit back and take a listen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Nobody thought the 4-minute mile was humanly possible, until it was. The story of how it happened is remarkable. So sit back and take a listen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 09 Jun 2022 14:18:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=14, tm_min=18, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=160, tm_isdst=0) | 47840537 | 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. And there's Roger Banister. We're all hanging out, out running around, being crazy and this is Stuff You Should Know. Good intro. It was not my best. Let me ask you this, Chuck. Do you miss the intros of your where like, would relate some maybe current news story to what we were talking about? There would be like an intro that I presented. Do you miss that or have we evolved past that? I mean, I thought those were great for sure. And occasionally when you do them again, it's nice. But also just don't mind the Banter version as well. I think they're both great. Okay, well, maybe I'll pepper it in a little more than I have been. That's fine. Okay. Alright. I love it because I like the banter too, but I just want to make sure I'm not like slacking off on my end that I'm supposed to be holding up. No, I mean, that certainly keeps me quiet longer. Which is good or bad, depending on which one of us you prefer. Why can't you just prefer both? I like to think so. Like who's an Ernie fan and who's a Burt fan? Everybody's a Burton Ernie fan, you know? Yeah. Okay. You like to free the Charlie's Angels equal. Yes. But Cheryl Ladd was far and away the best. You saw that. She was on Good Morning, America Three in our little virtual green room on Zoom. And when you're doing that, everyone and you're on live TV, you're watching the feed of the television show, so you kind of know what's going on. And they did a teaser to go into commercial which showed this very pretty lady with blonde hair kind of from a distance, sitting on the couch. And I went in my mind, is that Cheryl Lad? And sure enough, they said, and coming up, Cheryl Lad, she followed us. We opened for Cheryl Lad. Finally. I know, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And I know what I'm talking about. I watch a lot of Charlie's Angels. Cheryl Ed is definitely the best one. Okay, so I've got an intro for this one. Oh, are you ready? We had the banter and the intro perfect. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. We're talking about the four minute mile today. Let's begin. I got this idea because until I quit watching it because it's pretty terrible. I was watching that show Winning Time on HBO about the Lakers dynasty. Oh, yeah. Did it get bad? Yeah, I think it kind of stinks, but John C. Reilly is really good in it. But he told a story about Roger Bannister and the fact that previous to Roger Banister, no one had ever thought that the Four Minute Mile was an achievable. Like the human body just couldn't do it until he did it. And then it started happening on the kind of semi reg and in the show it worked really well. It was a good story and I thought, you know, I don't know much about Roger Banner, Roger Banister or his story. So we had Dave Ruse cook up this article and I found it super cool and kind of inspiring and uplifting. Yeah, it is. It's pretty neat. Ruse did a really good job with this, too, like the suspense. And I've got chills a couple of times reading. I did too. He asked us to shout out to a guy who wrote a book called The Perfect Mile, Neil Bascombe, because he used it as one of his sources. In it, I guess he thought it was so great that he wanted to shout out Neil Baskum. But one of the things that you got to have to do when you're talking about the four minute mile and why people thought it was impossible is to kind of start at the beginning because the mile hasn't always existed. So the four minute mile hasn't always existed. The mile has been around much longer than the idea of the four minute mile. In fact, it was the ancient Greeks who kind of kicked the whole thing off by coming up with a measurement called a stade. And a stade was the distance across a field in an Olympic stadium, I guess the Olympic Stadium. It was about 200 meters, right? And so if you were running around a modern track, like a track and field track, you would go halfway and stop. And you'd shout stop. That's what I do when I run. Yeah, I go about halfway around the track. I'm finished Yellow Stade. And everyone's like, what's up with this creep? But the Greeks were into their running events and the 200 meters, the half lap, as we know at the stade, was the big showcase event. And then they had two stadas, that was 400, and then they had even longer ones all the way up to about 4800 meters. And then if you want to know where the name mile comes from, what is going on with me? I guess you're getting old, little foggy. Oh, no. The Romans, they ran, but that wasn't like their premier event. But the Romans did like to march. And when they did march, they mark their distance every 1000 strides. And in Latin it was known as a mile PACIF M-I-L-L-E with a stride being two steps, about 2ft five inches. So at that time, every melee pass us was 4833 ft. Still not quite where we are today, right? And that's considered the first mile. And it became like a regular marker that Romans used. The other thing Romans were famous for was building roads everywhere they went. And they marked these miles, these somewhat shorter miles than what we consider a mile today along these roads. And what's crazy is that these Roman roads existed in, say, the UK for centuries and centuries. I mean, like tens of centuries. So that by the 16th centuries, wealthy people in the UK used to have their servants race one another from 1 mile marker to another mile marker. So first you've got the mile thanks to the Romans. Well, you have a history of foot racing, thanks to the Greeks. A mile, thanks to the Romans, and then the mile run, thanks to the Brits in the 16th and 17th century. Right. And then it took to get to where we are today, lengthwise, because British Parliament said a mile is eight furlongs and a furlong is 660ft or 1760 yards, or the very familiar 5280ft. But we should note that as far as a mile long race, we still don't do that mile long race in the Olympics, we do the 1500 meters, which is almost that it's 15 16th of a mile. Yeah. So close. It's just so maddening. It's like I keep going a little further. Annoying, actually. The same thing happens at track meets in high school and college. Starting in the eighties, they started building tracks to uniform 400 meters. And you can't really divide a mile by 400 meters cleanly. So you've got four times around. The track is about as close as you can come to a mile. I think it's 9 meters shy. Just meters, yeah, exactly like the finish line is not moveable. Come on, let's get it together, everybody. But they don't. They do have special mile races for college and high school, but it's not like a regular event. It's usually a 400 meters. 800 meters. 1200 meters, 1600 meters, 16,000 meters, something like that. Yeah. 160,000,000 meters race. All right, so we're going to go back in time again to the 19th century when remember our episode on pubs and taverns? They got into running and sporting stuff aside from, like, darts, and they had tracks sometimes built out behind them, and they would organize these mile long races and people could bet on them. And the runners were called pedestrians. So initially the sport of running was called pedestrianism, which is hysterical. It doesn't exactly roll up the time. No. And then someone said, hey, we've got all these cricket fields, we've got all these soccer or football fields to them, and a circle around one of these things is about a quarter of a mile, if we plan it right. And a quarter mile track is what we're looking for. So they started putting these tracks around sporting fields and all of a sudden you've got a really easy way to race a mile and get to another person. Right, or the clock. Or both. Yeah, you could run against the clock and in person at the same time. It's been done. I do it all the time, so because, by the way, pedestrianism reminds me of like a clinical term for a kink, like walking around in public with no pants on, like pork unit would be pedestrianism. Yeah. So because the publicans figured out, like, hey, we can make money off of this, it started attracting more and more people and it became more and more popular. And there was like this whole jam in the 19th century where pedestrians were called miles because people were nuts for the mile race. And they were pretty quickly in the beginning of the 19th century, like pedestrian stars, mile racer stars. Probably highest among them was a guy named Captain Robert Barclay. The reason that he was such a star is because he was the first guy to break the five minute mark, which at the time was considered beyond the limits of human endurance. Sure. And pretty great. Five minute mile is not bad in those conditions, especially when you look at the meals that this guy would eat. Barclay his training regimen included, quote, a breakfast dinner of beef steak or mutton chops underdone with stale bread and old beer. I don't know why it's got to be stale and old. Whenever I think of eating for training, I think that five K on the office. Michael Scott, who's trying to carb load so fettuccine Alfredo right before the race. That was a good one. Barclay had kind of a weird regimen, but it worked for them. And also, you have to consider, Chuck, like these people were not running in on clouds or anything, or Nike. They were running in, like, probably the most uncomfortable shoe anyone living today would have ever encountered. And this guy was still running a five minute mile. Yeah. Who knows what the tracks behind the pubs were made of, but legitimate racing tracks were made of tiny rocks, oftentimes or cinders, I was surprised to see, which is a tiny rock. I thought it was like old wood. Burned wood. No, I think it's sort of like crushed lava rock. Okay, I got you. That doesn't sound very comfortable at all. No, not at all. I remember when I was a kid, and I still love it. One of my favorite war movies growing up, because it was a big HBO special, was Gallipoli, and that had a sort of a sub story about Mel Gibson was one of the young stars. And I can't remember the other guy's name, this other Australian, they were like track foes and then eventually friends. And I remember just seeing the shoes that they were running on and the tracks that they were running on when I was like ten and eleven years old, just thinking like, what is going on back then? Nothing of pain, that's what was going on. Foot pain. Was it a good movie? I've never seen it. Yeah, fantastic. That's the first time I've ever heard it pronounced out loud, too. Oh, really? Yeah. Good stuff. So the 19th century was a big deal for running, basically. People were super into it. There's a lot of betting going on. There were professional runners who made a career out of it. And like we said, Captain Robert Barclay was the first guy to break the five minute mile. That was the beginning of the 19th century. Toward the end of the 19th century, they were getting closer and closer to breaking the four minute mile. Just in that century, with those terrible shoes, they had gone from five minutes to really close to four minutes. Yeah. And it was really cool. Like you said, the professionals that were making prize money and people are gambling on it, but there was a certain academic class of athletes that sort of looked down upon them and they were known as like, the gentleman amateurs. And they went to Cambridge and they went to Oxford and they were educated and excelled academically and they excelled athletically and they didn't feel like you had to give up the one to do the other. And it was sort of a pride in doing all those things really well. And we mentioned this because, as we'll see, Bannister was one of these gentlemen amateurs, but one of the earlier ones was a guy named Walter George. And he was one of the first big dogs that set a record that lasted about 30 years. A mile record? Yeah. So he was an amateur, meaning he didn't run for money. He considered that kind of lowly, being a gentleman amateur. But he raced against the top rated pro at the time, a guy named William Cummings. And in this meet called the Mile of the Century, they raced in front of a crowd of like, 20,000 people. That's amazing. It is, because also, this is at the Lily Bridge sporting grounds in London, and there weren't stadiums or bleachers. You were in a crowd of 20,000 people at ground level watching a race. Now you're watching the head of the person in front of you, basically, yeah. So 20,000 people turned out for this Mile of the Century, and Walter George won with a time of, I think, four minutes, 12 seconds. And this is an 1886, again, with terrible shoes. I wonder if they were just the people in the front, like 10ft were just passing word back and they were like, they're both running fast and then they're both running fast. And they would just keep saying that until someone won. Until at the end, it was like the boat hurry smashed, right. The panic ensued. Good stuff. Yeah, it is good stuff. But there's something to be said about that four minute twelve second time. First of all, it was the amateur Walter George who got it. Second of all, that's really close to a four minute mile and we're talking 1886 here, right? So all of a sudden, people are like, wait a minute, maybe it's not impossible, maybe it is impossible, but we're close enough that there's runners, there's elite runners around the world. And this is a time where running was still really popular, not just in Europe, but in the United States as well, who were saying, I'm going to dedicate my career to chasing that four minute mile. That's kind of what happened starting in the early 20th century. Alright, I think that's a great place to break. Okay, talk about a few of these people as that time ticks down toward four minutes. It's very exciting stuff. Write it for this. At Progressive, you can get 24/7 protection even if you break the spacetime continuum. We did it. We time traveled to yesterday. Wait. Progressive covers is 24/7? But we just created an eight day week and it's 24/7 coverage. Not 24, eight. We got to go back. Are you joking right now? I'm calling them. Hi, I have a question about time travel. Progressive offers more than a great price when you bundle home and auto. We offer round the clock protection, which literally means anytime coverage from Progressive cash to policy terms, but not available in all states or situations. All right, so Walter George has set the record at the time, which is what? Ford twelve. Yes. And 30 years later, almost 30 years later, a man named American, actually named Norman Tabor in 1915, shaved off two tenths of a second. So now Norman Tabor owns a world record. Yeah. And then for about 40 years, it started just going down little by little. There was a finished runner named Pablo Nurmi, who owned the record for a little while, I think brought it down to 410, made the sport kind of even more popular. A Frenchman named Jewels. How would you say that? Led, meghew Ledumague went single digits for the first time at 409.2 and 31. New Zealander named Jack Lovelock brought it down to four 7.6 and 33. I think an American named Glenn Cunningham brought it down to four oh 6.8. That was Glenn Cunningham, the Kansas powerhouse. And this is a cool story because he as a child had his legs burned in a kerosene accident that actually killed his brother, was told he might never walk again. And apparently it hurt less to run than it did to walk. So I don't know if Force Gump got this from there, but apparently as a child, everywhere he went, he was running. Exactly. And he was told that he would never walk again. And he ends up growing up to set the world record for the fastest mile at 406.8. Yeah, for a while at least. That's an amazing story. And also we need to say, like, Jack Lovelock, Glenn Cunningham, Parvo Nurmi, these people are world famous. Like, if you went to America and you said Jack Lovelock, most people would know what you're talking about because track was really popular in the United States for a while. And I went online to look to see what happened and no one knows everybody's. Like it's kind of tough to watch. It's just one person. It's not a team. People had hypotheses, but none of them were like, this is what happened. I suspect it was the rise of football. And people are like, yeah, football, and I like baseball too, and just kind of got edged out by the popularity of other sports. That's my guess. I feel like Olympic track is still very big. Definitely. Like, I feel like in America, at least in the summer Olympics, like, the Michael Johnson's and the Flow Joe's, they make a lot of the biggest headlines. I always loved I was never good at track and I never tried to do it, but I always really loved it growing up because my dad was a collegiate track star oh, really? In a small school, union university in Tennessee. But he still owns some records from union as a hurdler and it was sort of his passion. So growing up, he would watch the track in the Olympics and really get into it. And I was always desperately trying to seek a way to connect with them. So I would watch track and it still sort of is a special thing for me for the Olympics. I love watching track. Yeah, I can imagine. It sucks me up every time too. But then after the Olympics, I forget all about it until the next Olympics. And there's plenty of races that are like, run all around the world, around the country, like year round, basically, and they don't get televised. Yeah, that's the thing. It's a big olympic sport here, but no one talks about like, the Hawaiian program or whatever. Right. But this is at a time when the world is into track. And one of the things that happened that really kind of captured the imagination of everybody was when two Swedish runners became like the world's best runners and they started breaking one another's world record for the mile, getting closer and closer each time to a four minute mile. And there was this really famous meet between the two of them, gander Hog and Arnie Anderson, and it was in 1945 at Malmo in Sweden. So it's the two best runners in the world who everybody knows in the world, both of them are Swedish and this race is being held in Sweden. So it's like a big deal race. And both of these guys are like, flip flopped world record holders for the mile. That's right. And both of them got basically cheated out of Olympic fame because of world War II. The games were canceled in 40 and 44 when they would have been at the peak of their athletic ability. But I believe to end up, like you said, they flip flopped. And it ended up at the Malmo event. I think Hog one and set the new record at 401.4. How close is he? Close. I saw that it was estimated that he was four stride short of a four minute mile. Yeah. And I think this really hits home on just how hard it was to do and it's still super hard. But how hard it was back then that the premier athletes in the world could get close, but not quite get there. Yeah, you didn't get any healthier. You didn't get in any better shape. You couldn't run any better than Arnie Anderson and Goondar Hog and they just couldn't do it. It must have driven them crazy. Some people looked at it differently. There are two different ways to look at it. Some people said, These guys are 1.4 seconds off of a four minute mile. Right. Somebody's going to get there. We're just too close. And we've been edging closer and closer over the last century or so. Somebody's going to get there. Other people said, look, if Hogg and Anderson can do it, nobody can do it. It's beyond the limits of the capabilities of the human body. Yeah. There was a guy in particular, a track coach, sort of a legend, apparently named Brutus Hamilton, who he was one of the ones saying, like, It can't happen. And he coached at Cal Berkeley and did a lot of he wasn't just sort of like, I just don't think it's going to happen. He did a lot of research on the limits. The physiological limits of the human body. And published a list of what he called the ultimates of human effort. Where he took a lot of these track and field sports and basically said. No one will ever be able to throw a javelin further than this or a shot put further than that or go over a high bar until. By the way. Look for a future episode on Dick Fosbury. That's totally coming. And he said the mile. He just said, there's no way it's ever going to happen. The human body, there's just a physical barrier there that won't allow it. Right. And I read an La Times article from the 90s that pointed out that every single one of those limits have been broken at least once. Yeah. It's sort of the hubris of being in your own time and space and thinking that it'll never get any better. Yeah. That's a lot of hubris, though, to publish your hubris. Sure. Yeah. So poor Brutus Hamilton, I guess he had good intentions because he was saying, like, don't even try. Everybody just give up. Which makes him a terrible coach, really, but I'm not sure what his motivation was. But there were people out there who are like, no, Brutus Hamilton is wrong. And one of those people was our hero of this story, Roger Bannister, who was a British dude who I believe was 24 when he ended up breaking the record. Yeah. I think if we were a PBS documentary, we would say, and it would be right before the commercial, is what Hamilton did not count on was the power of the human spirit, the spirit of Roger Bannister, because that's really true, as you'll see. Let's go ahead and talk about Bannister by all accounts, a great runner. He was an Olympic caliber runner, but he was, like we said, one of those gentleman runners. He was very stubbornly, apparently a gentleman amateur, and many times for much of his career, refused to take on a coach. He would have his own methods of training. He would go to school. He studied medicine at Oxford. And he didn't, like, give it all up to just train full time and hire a coach to train him full time in order to improve his times. No, this guy was training to be a doctor and an Olympic runner at the same time in the same life, in the same years, in his early 20s. Exactly. So he was rather motivated, you could say. And he started out hom, kind of I think he had a time of, like, 452. And his first race at Oxford, his first mile race, he was a freshman. He still came in second, so that was respectable. But he's like, this is not nearly good enough. Within a few months, he shaved 20 seconds off of his time. Yeah. And he also learned that he really liked this track stuff because he had been a cross country runner in high school or grammar school. And when he got to college, he tried track. And in track, you can just run past a whole bunch of people when you kick it into 6th gear. And he was like, I like doing that a lot. I'm going to start really focusing on this track thing. And that's what he did. He basically set all of his spare time toward training to be a track star in between times when he was studying and practicing to become a doctor. All right. I think that's a great time for a break. Yeah. Listen to me. I'm Arny Anderson. Yeah, sure. I'd run a fast mile. That's great. That's the second Yashur appearance in the past few weeks, too. What's going on? The Swedes are in the zeitgeist. I guess so. All right, we're going to pick up with Roger Bannister and his sites set on Helsinki right after this. All right, Chuck. So we're talking about Roger Banister, and he said, I really like this track stuff. And when he started to become a track star at Oxford, people started saying, hey, there's some Olympics coming up. I think they were the ones in Los Angeles right, in 1948. Okay. Was that 48? Yeah. And people said, you should run for that. You should try the mile race. I think you do really well. Maybe the 1500, who knows? And he was levelheaded enough not to get swept up in that because he knew he just wasn't ready. So he decided he would set his sights on the 1952 games in Helsinki and train for those instead rather than trying to rush things and enter the 1948 Olympics, which he probably could have, but he just didn't have enough faith in his abilities. To win gold. So he put it off for four years. That's the kind of, like, mental discipline this guy had. And that would be Helsinki, Sweden. Finland. Do you get that reference? No, I wish I did hang out there then. I always feel so foolish when things like this happen. I don't think I'm going to talk for the rest of the episode. No, you played it perfectly, though. You answered just like in the movie. All right, Uncle Buck. No, it was in Die Hard. It was when that Jackass newscaster they have like the terrorist expert needs to talk about something like the Helsinki Protocol or the Helsinki something. And he just puts in and goes, and that's Helsinki, Sweden. And the guy's like, no, Finland. Well, you did perfect too, buddy. I feel like talking again. So I sounded like a real Jackass newsbaster. You did, but that's what you are going for. All right, so where are we? He says yes on Helsinki, which is 52. And again, shuns the coaching and starts. Kind of sponsoring or not sponsoring, but planning out these races all over the world. He raced in New Zealand. He raced in America. He was lining himself against the best runners in the world. Right. He ran a very high profile race in Philadelphia called the Benjamin Franklin Mile appropriately and became sort of a big star in America at this point. Such that there was a headline or I don't know it was a headline, but something in the newspaper was quoted no manager, no trainer, no Matsura, no friends. He's nuts or he's good. That's pretty great. Very 1950s. Yeah, it is. Especially with that voice of yours, man. It just wasn't they also said that he was worthy heir to Jack Lovelock. Which just goes to show you how much of a star Jack Lovelock was because he'd raced like, 1520 years earlier. Yeah. Where was he? He was at 408 by this point, by the way. Okay. So he's got it down to 408 and he's like, okay, I think I'm ready for the Olympics. And he goes there and he runs in the 1500 and he places fourth so he doesn't meddle. And this is completely out of step with the plans that he had. I just suddenly started talking like William Shatner. For some reason. It was a big disappointment for him and England because this was post World War II england got beat up pretty badly as far as the shape of the cities and especially London. And they needed some big athletic victories. And I think they only got one goal that year. They ended up kind of toward the top middle of the pack with eleven medals total. But it was certainly kind of looked at as a national disappointment as far as the Olympics go. Yeah. And Banister was very disappointed in himself, too. I think he'd really felt the spirit of England on his shoulders. So he felt like. He failed his whole country. And like I said, this was totally out of step with his plans, which were he was going to get the gold in Helsinki 52 and then retire from running and focus on medicine. And that's just what he was going to do with his life, and it didn't pan out like that. So rather than just being like, man, this sucks. I'm not even going to be a doctor anymore. I'm just going to go, I don't know, just be a shiftless drifter. How about that? He didn't do that. He redoubled his efforts and said, okay, maybe I can't get Olympic gold. I have my shot, didn't make it. I'm going to focus my sites instead on breaking the four minute mile. That's what I Roger Banister, I'm going to do. And he set about doing it. Yes. And he had a little trick up his sleeve and that he was no ordinary runner in his studies as a med student, he had a research scholarship while at Oxford to study the physiological effects of running. So this is amazing. All of a sudden, he's doing these deep dive experiments on the very thing he's trying to achieve, which is, what can the human body take athletically? He had a paper called The Carbon on a scientific level, he had a paper called the Carbon Dioxide Stimulus to Breathing and Severe Exercise, probably helpful. And another one called The Effects on the Respiration and Performance during Exercise of Adding Oxygen to the inspired Air. So he's getting a scientific physiological understanding of what needs to happen, which was, I think, for sure, I mean, he had the heart, but this is definitely a leg up on his competitors. Yeah, definitely. And he had the help of a kindred spirit named North Mcworth, who would go on to found, with his twin brother, the Guinness Book of World Records. And Norris Mcworth was also into running, he was into data and analysis. And so he very eagerly helped Roger Bannister with these scientific studies, including being a guinea pig himself. And one of the studies that they conducted together was to put Mcworth on a treadmill, like a 1940s treadmill, by the way, or 1950s treadmill, I guess, and just make him run flat out as fast as he possibly can for as long as he could. And I guess he made it to, like, the six minute mark before he blacked out and fell and was shot like an arrow out of a cannon, which wouldn't be very effective, but it wasn't this case. It was a Mcworth arrow out of a treadmill cannon. And luckily, they had a bunch of blankets and pillows and stuff, like, against the wall behind the treadmill to catch him, because I guess Banister had conducted this experiment on himself many times and knew what to expect. So he's like, okay, six minute mark. If I can just whittle down my time, I can run flat out for four minutes and I won't collapse. Those are the things here the time running up against the time and then collapsing at some point. That's what's going to happen if I run far enough. So from these studies, he started to devise his strategy at breaking the four minute mile. And it's extremely clever. Yeah, it made perfect sense. He was like, I'm so close, and several of us are so close. If we can just stave off that collapse for a few seconds, then we're there. And one of his big jams was conservation of energy. And when you look at a Michael Johnson run or a fellow Joe or anybody in their prime, it always just astounded me how compact and efficient their stride was. If you look at me run, I look like a sick chicken. There's no form, there's no efficiency. I'm like, Limbs are running all over the place. And when you look at these elite athletes, their strides are perfect machines of efficiency. Basically no wasted energy. Right. And that was one thing that banister zeroed in on. You're just moving forward. That's everything. Every movement of your muscle was to propel you forward. The other thing is, he was trying to figure out how to expand his cardiopulmonary limits to take in more oxygen. When he inhaled a breath, he could probably breathe through both nostrils. I'm guessing he didn't have a deviated septum to lower his resting heart rate, which is a telltale sign of either somebody with a heart condition or an elite athlete. It's weird that both of those have lower resting heart rates. So he worked on this stuff, he figured it out, but he also realized that he needed help. He needed, basically, teammates. And so he went against his own type and met up with the two Chris's, chris Chatter and Chris Brasher. And he used these guys. We didn't use them. I think they were fully aware and willing participants. Yeah, they're on his training team. Right, okay. That's a better way to put it. He used them as pacers, so they helped him keep his pace. And after three laps around the track, they would unleash the bannister. Yeah, that was the strategy. Dirty. Yes. I think it's really interesting to the idea of having these pacers because it is a solitary sport, but clearly you are better when you have either racing against someone or in this case, have a pacer that's sort of reminding you how fast you should be running at this point in the race, because it's not a sprint. There's a technique there, and there's a game plan in every case. I believe generally, you got to save some for that final burst. Otherwise, your toast. That's why you see these great moments where someone comes from, like, five or six back at the end, because they have saved more than the other people have in front of them. Yeah. And that was the role of the two Chris's. To keep him from expending too much energy too early. And they were really good at running a specific pace. And because he had two different pacers, each one could run at a specific pace without exerting themselves beyond their own limits. Because the first Chris would run the first two laps, the second Chris would run the third lap, and then the fourth lap, banister ran by himself, just away from the pack. And this was their strategy. This is what they trained for. And apparently he didn't run for, like, eight months before the race that he ran on May 6, 1954, at Oxford. And he chose this race very wisely and deliberately. He didn't race other people specifically. Right. He trained. Yeah. Right. He was training, but he didn't participate in any actual race. Yeah. And he chose the place, the site, the day, everything, very carefully, didn't he? Yeah. So he chose the Saber track, which was the Iffley Road track at Oxford. And again, this was the cinder track. And on the morning of May 6, 1954, it had rained. And so a cinder track is going to be soggy, which would indicate, like, slower times. And in his memoir, he sort of was like, everything I'll just read it. I had reached my peak physically and psychologically. There would never be another day like it. This was my first race for eight months, and all of a sudden, I've been storing nervous energy. If I tried and failed, I should be dejected, and my chances would be less on any later attempt. So what he was basically saying was, it's now or never today. Yeah. And what the problem was, is the weather wasn't cooperating. So whether it worked out or not, this was his day. So he went out there, of course, to try it, and it just turns out that this terrible weather, the wet track, the gale force winds, everything just kind of died down by race time. And he was like, okay, everything is starting to fall into place. This is, in fact, going to be the day that I break that four minute mile. And apparently he got ready and set. And if this were a movie, you'd be like, I can't believe they did that. But apparently in real life, there was a false start. All this build up, roger Banister is about to pop from nervous energy, and there's a false start. They have to start over again. So he has to reset his mind back at the starting line, and then finally it starts. And I think Chris Brasher was the one who ran, who paced him for the first two laps, right? That's right. So he's setting pace. Banister is yelling at him to go faster. But that's basically Bannister being a little overhyped in the moment. And thank goodness he had his pacers there, because Brasher's job was to stay in the moment and know what the pace should be and not, like, deviate from that. So he didn't go faster. He stayed that pace that he knew he should stay on and ignored him, basically. And they were at the half mile mark at 1.58. So they're halfway there, they are on pace to do it, and then Chris Chattaway takes over. Yeah. And so Chadaway and Bannister are running for the third lap, the three quarter of a mile mark where they finish, and they're at three minutes, .7 seconds. Three minutes and 710 of a second, and they're a little bit over. That's a little bit nerve wracking. And then at the end of that three quarter mile mark, at the end of the third lap, chadaway just melts away and Bannister takes off. And Bannister had figured out how to accelerate, how to move himself after being exerting himself for three minutes. This was a really fast three laps around the race and he figured out how to find a different gear and he put it into that gear and he took off at a sprint for the fourth lap and he ended up crossing the finish line at what? Chuck? Well, this is the coolest part. And the way Dave puts it is really very dramatic and awesome. The announcer at the event, I think it was his buddy Norris Mcwortter. Right, yeah. Which is so cool. Just like the movie moment. His best buddies there and he said the result of event number six, the 1 mile winner, OG Banister of Exeter and Merton Colleges, in a time which will be a new English record, a new track record, a new British Empire Commonwealth record, a European record, a world record and three. And apparently, as soon as he said three, everyone went nuts and you couldn't even hear the rest of the time announced. Yes. So Bannister ended up running that day, a three minute 59 and fourth second mile, the first human being in history, as far as we know, to have run a mile in less than four minutes. Amazing. He did this impossible thing. People were like, It's not possible, and Bannister did it. And what's really remarkable and weird and kind of circles back to John C Reilly is, within six weeks, Bannister's four minute mile, the thing that no human had ever done and they've been trying to do for centuries now, in six weeks, Banister's record was broken. Yes, it was. I think it was John Landy of Australia. Australia. He beat his time by 1 second. And then in 54, there was a showdown between the two of them, which was a big one. You've got Britain against Australia at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. And the race was called the Miracle Mile. Landy is ahead on the final turn and apparently glances over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was. And Bannister booped him on the nose and passed them. He had flare like that. Yeah, he did. They both finished under four minutes, which was amazing. I'm sure that was the first time they were ever two runners in the same race. But Banister won 358 to 359 six. And since then, over the years, there have been more than 1500 athletes to do it. 13 high schoolers. And it is not old hat, though every time it happens to any athlete, it is a very big deal. Still yeah. To put it in perspective, the number of people who have climbed Mount Everest, which was long considered another impossible feat for human, is about 6000. Only 1500 have ever broken a four minute mile. So it is rather significant when somebody does it. Still like you said, for sure, dave makes a point. Obviously, the tracks now, the shoes, the training, the advanced medicine and training and everything they do now is a big deal. But there was clearly something to that psychological barrier and that they started to fall like domino's, these four minute miles. Right after he did it, he proved to everyone it can be done. And so everyone else said, well, if this medical student can do it, this gentleman athlete can do it, then I can do it. Yeah. So, yeah, you can make the case that it's like the chance of it being impossible was broken. It was now possible and you knew it was possible, so you didn't have that chance of impossibility hanging over your head when you walked up to the starting line anymore, because Roger Bannister cleared that away. And what's neat is he went on to live a very long life. I think he lived for 64 more years. He died just in 2018, actually, and he got to just soak up all the accolades for that whole time. And he did retire from running. He went on to, I guess, become a doctor, and then later he became the dean of the medical school at either Oxford or Cambridge, I cannot remember. And if you are from Oxford or Cambridge, don't be mad at me for not knowing which one's which. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine what it was like for the rest of his life? Every party, every place, every dinner he ever attended, he sticks out his hand, it's like saying, I'm Chuck Yeager. It doesn't matter what happened since then. Everyone was like, wow. Yeah. He says, I'm Roger Banister. I ran the mile in three. And everybody in the crowd just starts cheering at every party. You can never get it out. It's like Dick Fosbury. People say I'm Dick Fosbury. You know what I invented. I don't know. You know about this dick fosbury? He got an injury with me, but I'm not in on we'll do an episode on it. He invented the Fosbury flop, which is going over the high jump bar backwards. No one had ever done that before. I can't wait to talk about this guy. Yeah, because that was a crazy, weird way to do it. And plus, his name is Dick Fosbury, right? I mean, that's enough to do at least a short stuff on. Yes, absolutely. Look at you, Shade. What? Did I do a short stuff? Well, no, I'm saying just for your name being Dick Fosbury, even if you didn't do anything remarkable at all, we could just talk 15 minutes about a name like dickage. I got you. What's the current record, by the way? The current record is held by hashem El Gerough of Morocco, and it is three minutes 43 and three 10th of a second. And that's a 23 year old record. Yeah, that was 99. That's pretty amazing. Sefan Hassan of the Netherlands holds the women's record, which is for twelve. So the four minute mile apparently has not been broken by a woman yet. Not yet. It will, though. Yeah, definitely. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I love this episode. Me too. It was a good one. Good pick. Good idea. Thank you, John C. Reilly, for this one. Since I just thank John C. Reilly, obviously it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a little love for our TV show. Did you see this one? Yeah, it was very sweet. Hey, guys, I want to write this email because my wife recently subscribed to Discovery Plus and after a few days I realized I finally had the opportunity to watch your TV show. Nice. I have to admit that for the first 15 seconds, very 1st 15 seconds, brains Gone Wild had me hooked. And that was the name of well, long story, but as it aired, that was the name of our first TV episode. Right? The pilot aired last, didn't it? Yeah, in standard fashion. Weird thing, I believe that the show was ahead of its time and I'm sad that only one season was produced. However, I am grateful that The Stuff You Snow podcast lives on, recently caught up to the 2018 episodes. Oh, wow. So Chris isn't going to hear this for a few years. I'm excited to hear you two cover recent topics as they unfolded. I love you all and I thank you for keeping me happy, educated and grounded through the years and look forward to the great content to come with the biggest hugs one can muster. And that is from Chris L. So I did write Chris L back and say this is going to be on the Stairmiel, so maybe he'll start sandwiching or something. Very nice. Hugs. Back to you, Chris. L we appreciate that big time. If you want to send us accolades for our TV show or anything else, we'll accept those anytime. You can wrap them up in an email spanking on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuffy to 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." | |
What's the deal with blood types? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-blood-types | Blood types have one of the more interesting backstories in medical history. But as much as we've figured out about them and how they work, we still don't know much about why we even have different blood types. Listen in for a truly fascinating look at yo | Blood types have one of the more interesting backstories in medical history. But as much as we've figured out about them and how they work, we still don't know much about why we even have different blood types. Listen in for a truly fascinating look at yo | Thu, 09 Apr 2015 15:14:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=15, tm_min=14, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=99, tm_isdst=0) | 57944274 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's in a certain kind of mood today. She's making jokes. Jokes and stuff. Talking. Yeah, she made a joke that would have been great for the show. And I was like, well, look at you. And then she's like, oh, I didn't say you could use that joke, though. Yeah, it's hers, man. She's got her spinning bow tie the other day. I'm going to say the joke. Jerry said that her blood type was A positive, which she thought was the most optimistic of blood types. Doesn't even make sense. Sure it does. She's a positive person. Oh, I see. I think of A positive as, like, A plus. So, like, you were the yeah, the star student of the blood type. Okay, that makes sense, though. That's not a bad joke, Jerry. Now that I understand. It's the first joke she's given us in seven years. Way to go, Jerry. That's going to be a trivia question years down the road. Just knock it up. What was Jerry's one joke? How are you, sir? I'm doing good. Do you know your blood type? I'm feeling a positive myself. I'm feeling A negative. Wow. This joke just keeps on giving. I don't even know my blood type. I don't know mine either. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's great. And I've never had to I mean, I've given blood OVV, but I've never received blood. Do you get the records? No. Don't they test your blood type? I guess, but I don't ever I don't know. It should be on your donor card, I think. You know what I do have and this is so silly I have some dog tags that I made when I was in high school because I thought it was cool to wear dog tags in shop. Because you make it? No, I didn't make it myself. I had them made. Oh, hey, Richie Rich. I was like, I'm going to get dog tag. That's neat, though. And I don't know. I went through a little phase, I guess. A dog tag phase. And is your blood type on them? It is, and I actually know where they are, so I could go find that. I can wait. All right. I'll be back. Just give me a couple of hours. Well, I legitimately have no idea what my blood type is. Yeah. Because I didn't go through a dog tag face, and it's not on my birth certificate. I went and looked not there. Oh, really? Interesting. Was your real name your real name? I think so. I'm pretty sure I wasn't an abducted baby. I've always had this fear that I look at my birth certificate and find out I'm like, three years older or something than I thought I was. That's a strange fear, which would explain a lot. Really? Yeah, it's fine. Okay. If you are what I'm 44 now. Yeah, you are. Happy birthday. Thank you. If I was 47, you and Julius Caesar just celebrated a birthday that would be bad. Yeah. Was it his birthday or he just died? That was his death day. Yeah. That was the opposite of his birthday. Yeah. Although some people have died on their birthday. Some famous people. Oh, really? Yes. I don't remember who, though, but at least one famous person. Sure. Was it Edison or Alexander Graham Bell? Somebody like that. But did they die because of their birthday? Thomas Jefferson, maybe? Yeah. No, it wasn't anything like that. As far as I know, they didn't like parties. Keep their last breath blowing out their candles. Yeah, that'd be pretty neat. So, blood types. Yeah. Did you know much about this? No, did not. I didn't either. I just suspected it was fascinating. I had a vague awareness of it because remember the ten scientists who were their own guinea pigs? Carl Landsteiner makes an appearance in that. LAN Steiner. Yeah. Which I think means, well, Steiner stoner. Nice. Good for him. He was quite a doctor, though, for a Landstoner. He was fearless. Yeah. Well, not really fearless. He was fearless about needles. He didn't mind withdrawing blood from himself. Sure. But the reason we bring up Carl Einstein is because he's the guy who finally discovered blood types way back in like the 1500s. Right. 1900. Yeah, exactly. He got the Nobel for it in 1930. Yes. It's pretty recent stuff here. Yeah. But I thought the history you did the research on this, which thanks, man. Hats off to you. I appreciate it. I thought the history of it was super interesting. So yeah, Carl Lansteiner was the first guy and we'll talk about him a little more in depth than what he did, but he was the first guy to identify the Abo blood types. But prior to him, people were aware that there was some weirdness with blood and that you couldn't just mix the stuff willynilly and expect good results. Because for a very long time, humans, thanks to horrible things like vivisection, knew that our blood was very vital. It was a vital life force. Yeah. And back in the day, I think we've talked about bleeding and barbers before, but they were real big on taking blood out of people. And at some point, I guess some doctors must have taken some drugs and thought, I wonder what would happen if we put blood into a person. Right. Well, I mean, if you think about it, if you're like, this is a vital life force. If you have somebody who is dying from bleeding out like a hemorrhage. Exactly. Which happened a lot, like during childbirth, for example. Sure. Then you would think, maybe if I took some healthy blood and put it into a dying person who's bleeding to death, they'll come back. Yeah. And of course, they had all sorts of like crazy notions back then. So they thought it could, like, bleeding someone out. They thought putting blood back in someone could cure weird things like insanity, which, of course, we know now has nothing to do with that kind of thing. Right. So they said, let's try this. Let's see what we can do. They didn't start with human blood, oddly enough, they went right to the animal blood, and it was not good when they started taking blood from animals like cows, calves and injecting it into human patients. Yeah. There was a French doctor that put calf's blood into a madman. Yes. Jean Baptist Denise. Was that the doctor or the doctor? Okay. And the madman started to sweat and vomit and urinate the color of chimney soot, and I guess the doctor said, yes, he's a madman. And then he gave him another transfusion after that. Yeah. And then the guy died. And actually, Denise was charged with murder for that. Oh, really? He was forced to quit medicine. Oh, man. It was very scandalous. Even though he was experimenting on a madman, which at the time was pretty much fair game for anything. Sure. I think the horrific accounts of the whole thing really kind of captured the national imagination. And as a result, the Decree of Chalet was issued by the French monarchy that basically said, oh, no more transfusions. And for a while, basically 150 years, it was banned in France. And the effect that it had kind of extended over the continent. It was basically de facto banned throughout Europe because these horrible experiments by Denis and others that had these terrible results, it was like, you guys, this is mad science, and you can't do that anymore because it's really bad news. Well, France also banned ketchup. When? Like, three years ago. Banned ketchup? But is ketchup around still? No, they didn't ban the spelling of ketchup. They banned the condiment in school cafeterias. And I think a lot of people were put it on, like, French cuisine. Like, they don't want ketchup on their cuisine, but it had to do with the sugar. Yeah, the sugar intake. But they said it's okay for French fries, which they just call fries over there. Exactly. Fritz I think so. They banned ketchup, and then a long time ago, they banned blood transfusions. That's right. Thank you, France. The decree of Shelley. That's right. And it stayed that way for a long time. I mean, there were doctors here and there in the 19th century that experimented around a little bit. Of course. Yeah. Well, the decree of Shelley was 1668, and it really was prohibitive until the mid 19th century. The early 19th century. Well, and that's when a guy named physician in Britain named James Blundell was tired of seeing his patients died during childbirth bleeding out, like you were talking about. Yeah. He's one of the heroes of the story. He is. And he said, you know what? There's got to be a better way. Let me try and put blood that's not an animal into someone. Yeah. The thing that Blendell figured out was that the great error that the early French doctors were doing was using the blood of a brute, as he put it. That doesn't mean a jerk, that means an animal. Right. The guy's like, just let me watch my rugby. Mixing, like the blood of one species with another, blendelle decided it was just a really bad move, and that's what caused these horrible reactions. So really good start. Right. So human blood, he decided should work. It would possibly work. And he faced an immediate problem, which was, you have no means of getting blood out of somebody and into somebody else at this point. Blood cell. What are you going to do? So we invented a contraption for it, like the first blood transfusion contraption was invented by James Blendell for this very reason. Yes. And he got some dogs and he practiced on them. And I have a bad feeling that some of those dogs probably died. I would guess so along the way. But he eventually got to a guy that was bleeding to death, and I guess the guy was like, doctor, I'm bleeding a lot, and could you take some of that blood and put it back into me? I think that might be a good idea. Right. Because I'm told it's important. Like chimney. You're in, Vidar? Yeah. Let's just go for this. Sure. And he did. Then the guy died. Well, yeah, but it was two days, which wasn't too bad. So I guess he didn't see vomit or charcoal, soot, urine. Right. And the guy did say he was feeling less faint, so it did revive him for two days. That's a great prognosis, I think. Less faint. But because he didn't see all those awful reactions immediately, he was sort of onto something. Even though the guy died, he was encouraged by the results. Right. Yeah. So he went on to perform, I believe, ten more blood transfusions and the results is the author of one of the articles we use for research, carl Zimmer, who wrote a great article in Mosaic about blood types, as he put it. The results were dismal. Four out of the ten survived. That's not too bad. I'm kind of like if this guy is just shooting in the dark and mixing human blood together, he got a 40%, right? Yeah, he's doing okay. Yeah, I agree. But what he proved is that you can take human blood and transfer it from one human to another, but there's still something we don't know. It should be 100% success rate. What's the problem here? And he never lived to see the answer to it. But it was Karl Landsteiner who figured it out before then, because Glendale's success rate was still pretty low, and he was working in the 18th, 20, something like that. In the mid 19th century, there was a weird little sidetrack that took place. Is this the milk thing? Yeah. In North America, in Canada and the United States, doctors decided that milk would be a better substitute for transfusions than blood. Yeah. Were they mixing milk into the blood or were they just injecting milk directly into the bloodstream? Here is some sheep's milk. Goat. It looks or smells or tastes nothing like human blood, but let's give it a shot. Their thinking was that the fats in the milk would be converted into white blood cells and then into red blood cells in the bloodstream. Not even close. They tried with cow, they tried with goat and then eventually they tried with human milk and they were doing like massive doses of the stuff, like 12oz a beer bottles worth of goat milk injected directly into the human bloodstream. And the results were really bad. One patient suddenly experienced nastagamus, which is uncontrollable, like eye movements and vertigo and spasms, like immediately upon injecting. And they're giving more injections. Some of them were like, okay, this is going to work, maybe this is too much. Right. So people are slipping into comas and dying and finally everyone was like, this is wrong, this is not good, let's stop doing this. And they started using saline. Yeah. You know who also used injected milk? Who? Michael Jackson. That was a totally different kind of milk, but right. What was the name of that stuff? Propy. We never get it right, but I think it is Proposal Falls. I think he just got it right, man. So sad. And as a little side note, one of the patients was given milk and then to support that injection, they were injected with morphine and then whiskey. So they're just basically putting anything they wanted to into the bloodstreams of people back then. That's crazy. So the point is this, Chuck, there was a little sidetrack and the reason there was a sidetrack is because still, even after Blundell's experiments were successful, in some cases, blood transfusion still had a really bad name. Yeah, they started to kind of figure it out a little bit though and at least what the problem was when they started to mix blood from different people together in test tubes and they saw clumping, they saw red blood cells sticking together and said, you know what? The reason why this is happening is because these are all from sick people. Right. That was their explanation at first. Like, we got a bunch of sick blood, we're mixing it with sick blood, so that's why it's doing all these funky things. And it wasn't until the Landstoner came around and said, you know what, maybe I should try to mix the blood of healthy people together and see what happens. Yeah, that's a landmark idea. Yes. Because they knew that blood clumped, that's one of the reasons they went to milk. But they just thought it was because while you're sick already. There's nothing that can be done about that. But yeah. When LAN Steiner came along and thought that it was groundbreaking. And he did it with his own blood and with the blood of some of his lab assistants. And he just started taking blood samples and then just randomly mixing together people's blood to see if it clumped. And when it didn't clump, he started mapping these patterns and ultimately came up with what's now known as the Abo blood typing group. Although initially he came up with type A, type B and type C. Yeah. And then later on, we found out about AB. Right. And C was changed to O. Yeah, but it was pretty crazy that he could even he separated his plasma from his red blood cells. It's nuts that he was even able to do that back then. I didn't know things were that advanced. He just injects the morphine and whiskey into your blood, and it just kind of falls to the side. Plasma, by the way, you hear that word a lot. You may not know what it is. It's just mostly water. It's the liquid portion of your blood. It's the taxicab, basically, that carries everything around. It carries the red blood cells? Among other things. Yeah. Hormones, waste, nutrients, all sorts of stuff. So this is, like a really big advancement in medical science. Yeah, but what did he say? He had a great quote. This is my favorite, like, in this landmark discovery. And he's kind of like, well, you might just want to look at this. He goes, It might be mentioned that the reported observations may assist in the explanation of various consequences of therapeutic blood transfusions. It's possible, morons, that this is what's been killing people all the time. There's blood types. I don't know his personality, though, so I don't know how to read. That sounds a little smarty. I took it as he was being very humble. Oh, that's how I took it. That's because you're a positive. That's right. But what this did was save millions and millions and millions. Yeah. It opened the door for everything to come when it comes to blood typing. And after this break, we are going to get a little bit into what these blood types are and what they mean. All right, we're back, and we are talking about blood types and what this means, and it's really pretty simple. It is. It's elegant. I love it. On your red blood cells, you can have lots of things, but you can have sugars and proteins. And those sugars and proteins can be expressed as antigens. And antigens are something that your immune system says, hey, you got a foreign invader coming. You might want to do something about it. Right. It's something that your body can take as a foreign invader, even if it's not a foreign invader or even if it's not harmful. But it's something that's found on the surface of your red blood cells. Like, pollen is an antigen we talked about that in the Allergy podcast. Right. So a blood type at its core is just a description of what kind of antigen is found on the surface of your red blood cells. Right. Which is just the sugar or protein. Right. Depending. So if you have a type blood, you have the A antigen present on your cells. If you have B type blood, you have the B antigen. If you have Otype blood, you have neither A nor B. And then if you have AB, you have both A and B antigens present on the surface of your blood. That's right. Sounds pretty simple. There's no real issues here, except that blood types are also associated with the type of antibody your blood produces. Your body produces, right? That's right. And that's a protein that your immune system uses to attack foreign invader or what it thinks is a foreign invader. Sure. So if you have type A blood, your body produces B antibodies, which means that when your body comes in contact with type B antigens, which would be found on type B blood cells. Right? That's right. Your body goes crazy and launches an immune response and attacks those antigens. Yes. And the other way around, in that case, with A and B, they don't like each other. No, they don't. So not only do they have opposing antigens, they have opposing antibodies. So if you mix A and B blood together, bad, bad things are going to happen. Yes. And you know what? You can also be allergic to your own blood, which is not good. When we talked about mistaken identity, that is something called hemolytic anemia and immune hemolytic anemia. It sounds immediately like I thought, well, you're dead if you've got that. Because your blood's allergic to itself. Yeah, apparently people live with it, are able to almost everyone does. It's really rare to lead to death these days. So crazy. I did look it up, though, and the first symptom it listed was feeling Grumpy, which I thought was like, well, perhaps we all have it. Eore has immune hemolytic anemia. So like we said, A and B do not like each other at all. I think you said they're like the Hatfields and the McCoys, the blood types. Yeah. They're in complete opposition to one another. That's right. Type O, though, is different. So type O, everybody. It does. It doesn't have any antigens on the blood cell surface. So as far as blood transfusions go, you could take type O and give it to type B people, type A people and type O people, and even type AB people. Which makes type O the universal donor. Right. O negative, specifically. But that sounds all great. And it is. But because it doesn't have antigens, it produces antibodies against A and B antigens. Yeah. I'm sorry. Antibodies against A and B antigens. That's what you said. Okay. Which means it can only accept O transfusions. Yes. Which is sad because they're the universal donor. They can give, but they can only get from other OS because they have antibodies against everything but O's, right? AB is the opposite of O. They're actually the universal recipient. Right. They have the A and B antigen on the surface of the red blood cells. But like you said, they are the universal recipients. So that's great. They don't have any antibodies at all. Right. So they can take strange. They can take A, they can take B, they can take O, but they have the antigens A and B. So AB or O can't take AB blood. Yeah. To recap. I'm sure I have AB blood. I'm positive of it. You think? Yeah, to recap. There's a handy little chart here which we do not have. No, but it's from the American Red Cross website, I think everyone that works at the Red Cross probably has just printed out like in their wallet, I'm sure. So everyone who's listening to this in the Red Cross, share it with somebody. Group O, though, can donate red blood cells to anybody. Group A can donate red blood cells to A's and ABS. Group B can donate red blood cells to BS and AB s. And group A, B can donate to other ABS but can receive it from all others take. Pretty neat. So there you go. That's the type Abo blood type. And it was a sweeping discovery. And that's it, right. No more about blood types? No. This is the end. Beautiful friend. It is not the end now because it turns out the Abo blood typing or blood groups are really one of many 22 were up to by now. Yeah. Remember earlier I was talking about positive or negative? Well, that too, but I was talking about the dog tags. Yeah, I was talking about that too. Sugars. What else? Proteins. Boom. Sugars. Yes. Sugars and proteins are the two different antigens that you can have on your red blood cells. We said that the Abo grouping are the sugars. So that leaves the proteins. And that's where you get into the RH. If you've ever heard your blood is negative or positive, it was named after the Rhesus monkey, spelled R-H-E-S-U-S which they were obviously the test subjects. It basically just says if you are positive for that protein or negative for that protein yeah, it's another antigen and either you have it or you don't. Boom. So you can be A negative O positive. So that would mean that you are in the Otype blood group. So you have osugar antigens on oh, no. You don't have A or B on your blood cell surface. But if you're positive, you would have neither A or B on your surface, but you would have the Rhesus antigen on there. Right. And just like the Abo types, the RH types don't mix either. As a matter of fact, there's a really terrible condition called mother fetus incompatibility, which means the mother is RH negative and the baby is RH positive. Yeah. So as the baby's developing, its blood cells that carry the RH antigen are taken as foreign invaders by the mother's blood. So the fetus is attacked by the mother's immune system. Not a good position for a fetus now to begin, but this is also very treatable these days. Yeah, I got the impression yes, I looked into it. It used to be a really scary thing, obviously, but now they know how to treat it. And I think on your firstborn, it's not really a big deal at all. Oh, yeah. And the reason why? Because the blood is not mixing. Right, right. Well, no, that first exposure. Your body is like, what the heck is this? It gets caught off guard. Second one, it's kind of like fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'm going to get you. And it goes after the fetus. And then it just gets this immune response gets more and more heightened with each pregnancy. I'm almost positive that's the case. I ran across it during research for this, and if I'm not mistaken, that's what happens. Okay, well, I know that 85% roughly, of the population is RH positive. So you have much more likelihood to be RH positive than negative. Okay. In life, I would have guessed negative would be more common. Why? I don't know. I just guessed that you need to improve your outlook, my friend. So the RH blood groups, the Abo blood groups, there are two of, I think, 22 at least total blood groups that have been identified. There are other ones, like Diego Kid, Kell, Duffy blood groups, and all of them are descriptors of antigens that can be found on the surface of a person's red blood cells. So your blood type can go far beyond A positive or A negative. It can be like A negative Duffy positive Kel to the third power. Really? Who knows? Yeah, why not? But it's just basically the presence or the absence of these different antigens and these combinations can form. The thing is, we now know in Lansdiner figured it out early on, but didn't discover the actual mechanism. But we know that each one is controlled by a different gene or a mutation on a specific gene. And like I said, Lansteiner kind of figured it out early on that it was heritable, that blood types are heritable. And as a result, blood typing was used in early paternity tests, like, almost from the outset of LAN Steiner's research. Sure. The other thing that they found out was that you can also be it sounds a little gross, a secret or non secretor, which means that if you're a secreter, your antigens can be secreted into other fluids like saliva or mucus in your body to ward off other infections. Like, usually it's the surface of the skin. Yeah. So I think 80% are secreters in the United States. And that's just another subclassification, even. Yeah. And the Fuzzable growth to rule people out quickly. Like whether you're a secret or non secret. Lily's a secret. We got a secret here. He's secreting all over the place. So, like you said, the landstoner determined that you could test paternity. And because of that in the 1990s, that led to the discovery of that Abo gene. And basically, if you can have that A antigen be expressed, or if something is a little Tweaked, you can have that B antigen expressed. Right. Or if they're both Tweaked, you can have both A-B-I think in that case, you inherit the A mutation from one parent and the G mutation from another parent. Yeah. Did you say? G b? There's another blood type, the AG. I just came up with it. And then if it's completely shut off, then that is where you get your O blood type. Right. But we have to point out that the Abo blood type isn't like the A is the presence of an engine, b is the presence of an engine and O is the presence of nothing. Right. It's not the case. Again, Carl Zimmer in that Mosaic article, put it like if the A antigen is like a two story home in one form or fashion, and the B antigen is like a different type of two story home, the O is like the single story ranch that the second storeys are built on top of. Mid century modern. Yeah. I love it's. My preference in housing. I like those too. I wonder what blood type the double wide trailer is. I don't know. It's a single story, so technically it'd be O as well. They're secretaries for sure. So, Chuck, you said that RH positive is the most common for the RH blood type, right? That's right. What's the most common for Abo types? Well, you've got O is the most o positive is the most common. Then you've got A, then you've got B. Then you've got a B as the least common. And across ethnic groups, it's pretty interesting. Hispanic folks have higher number of O's, asian folks have a higher number of bees. And there's reasons for this which we'll get into later, that are pretty interesting. I think it's called a teaser, we should say. We've kind of touched on what happens when you mix blood. You remember the chimneys, that urine. But on the molecular level, on the cellular level, what's going on when you mix blood types is that the antigens present in one blood type that doesn't mix with another one attracts the antibodies. Yeah. Because it thinks it's some foreign invader. Yeah. You're coming into a house that has antibodies that are primed against the antigens on your blood. Right, right. And those antibodies surround the antigens and just kind of collect and clump around the red blood cells. That's a glutination. Yeah. That just sounded gross to. Me. It does. It's a gross word. I think it figured out medical terms that have g's in them and glug? Yeah. It just sounds kind of gross because what happens after a glutamation is it coagulates, and that sounds gross, too. Yeah. And that thicken blood is tough to pump through your body. It's pretty simple, really. You get blood clots everywhere, and you have trouble breathing, your lungs fill with blood, and you drown in it. And again, if you're injected with cow milk, your eyes go crazy and you spasm and slip into a coma and die. But if not, you're just going to drown in your own internal bleeding in your lungs. But what's going on is the result of a massive immune response launched by your body because of the presence of what it takes as a foreign invader. If you take the blood of somebody with the same blood type as yours, even though it comes from another person entirely, your blood is used to the antigen present on that blood type because that's the one that produces itself, and it just thinks it's more of the same blood that it produced in your body. That's right. So this is all super interesting, I guess. After this break, we're going to talk a little bit about why we have blood types and where they came from to begin with. All right, before the break, my friend, we were talking about where blood types come from. It's true. That was the title of the segment. Well, I don't even know what that accent was or who that was supposed to be. It was the one group that you can make fun of now, which is this nonexistent one. You just made the indefinable group. I was thinking about that the other day. Is there anybody, like Germans? You can make fun of Germans still, right? You can make fun of white men. Oh, yeah. They're asking for it for millennia. Totally. Yeah. There's nothing you can say to a white man that is truly offensive. It's true. Yeah, I guess it is sad, man. This just took a really surprising experience. I remember my sociology teacher in college taught us that. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Because he was putting up bad words about different races and ethnic groups and sexes, and he's like, you might notice something. There's no word that you can call a white man. That is truly, truly offensive, and there really isn't. I mean, a DBAG, I guess, but that's not offensive. You're just either that or you're not. Yeah. It's the truth or it's not. All right, so let's get back to blood types. Where did it come from? I know who it is. It's Valkyritocamus. No, he was from an unknown country. Right. Yeah. Mykonos yeah. There you go. All right, so primate species, my friend, we found out that primate species had blood that you could mix with human blood. Wasn't a cow, it wasn't a sheep, but primates because they're closer relatives than cows and sheeps dogs. Well, that was the assumption, but still, scientists were kind of scratching their heads. They're like, Wait a minute, what are we to make of this? Because it suggests two things. It suggests that either blood types are so old that they predate human and chimps and gorillas divergence. So we share some sort of common ancestor that have blood types itself, or that blood types evolved independently in different species because it's, like, such a great idea. Right, right. Either way, they still said, what are these things for? Yes. And some people for a long time said that O was the original, the OG blood type. Yeah. Which makes sense because it's the simplest one. Yeah. And they thought that our original ancestors in Africa had type zero. Other people thought a B might have been the original because it evolved into a B and O, which that sort of makes sense, too, in one lens. Right. They're broken down into its constituents. Yeah. But neither one of them, it turns out, are probably true. Right. Well, we honestly don't know. First of all, not all of the primates genes have been surveyed, so we can't really say. But they've looked into a lot of them. Right, they have. And the results are still just kind of baffling. Like, gorillas just have type B. I think chimps have type A and O, but that's it. Right. We don't quite know what to make of it. We do know that it's not just primates that have blood types. Cats and dogs both do. Yeah. And I never thought about it that you can have your cat or dog if you want to feel really good about yourself, but really piss off your animals. You can take them in and have them give blood. There's animal like dog and cat blood banks. Yeah. There's one right here in Decatur. Consult your vet. Yeah. Consult your vet. Piss off your cat. Take them in to give blood and explain to them what a great thing they're doing. Right. Just wear, like, leather falcon regloves while you're doing it. It is a great thing to do, but yeah. It just never occurred to me. Of course, that's what you need to do as a responsible pet owner. Right. I guess maybe start with donating your human blood first, and then once you got that down pat, bring your dog into the mix. Well, you have to go to a special dog and cat blood bank yeah. Until you're vet. And I think if I looked at A, all mine are too old, which is sad. I think you can't be over seven. Oh, is that right? Well, at least did the one indicator maybe there's different we're looking for spry blood. I guess so, yeah. It's very sad for me, my guys. So here's a neat thing, though, Josh. Blood types aren't even set in stone necessarily. They can change. Isn't this mind blowing. It is. And I found this really neat. Well, a couple of neat things. One is not only can it change, we'll go and explain how it can change naturally. Well, our old friend Epigenetics. Yeah. What was that episode we did? Can my grandfather's diet shorten my life. One of our best. Yes, it was. And no one has any ideas about Epigenetics because of the title? Yes, but if you are looking for an Epigenetics episode, go listen to that one. But basically because of changes in the way genes are expressed, if you're say a mutation on your gene is shut down Epigenetically, then all of a sudden, over time, because red blood cells have about a four month lifespan and blood is constantly regenerating itself, you will turn into an O blood type person within your lifetime. You may not even notice until you get a blood transfusion, then you're going to notice. But I imagine that our good friends at the Red Cross test blood type, that kind of thing, with each donation. Yeah. And just leave it to presumption. I don't think we even pointed out to test this. They still use a similar method of mixing blood and seeing if it clumps. The same thing that the Landstoner did way back in the day. So I found another couple of cool things, though. This is from two years ago and I couldn't get anything more recent. I think it is still under review. But they think now that they can actually not synthetically, but just not naturally change your blood type to owe. This would be great because if you could change blood type and this is in the body, this is in the blood bag, change it from AB to O. Then that means all of a sudden you have a more valuable blood because it's more universally accepted. And what they've done is of course, it was the University of Copenhagen. Professor Ein. Rick Clausen. They're always doing the best work. It seems like that was great stuff. So they studied 2500 different types of fungi and bacteria and found they were looking for proteins that could help. And they found two that could help. One was called Elizabeth Kingia meningo spectator septicum. Nice. My guess is that Professor Eineric either has a daughter or wife named Elizabeth. Yeah. Who's like, I got a bacteria named after me, he's in big trouble. And then the other one is Bacteriodesis fragileus. And basically those two yielded enzymes that remove those amb antigens. Yeah. They just sheared those sugars off. They go in crazy. And made it the otype. Yeah. So I don't know where that's at now, but that was just from two years ago. And then this case of this girl that Doctor say is a one in 6 billion event at nine years old, she got a liver transplant. And everyone knows when you get an organ transplant, getting it to take is a big deal. Not having it rejected. And what they do is they give you medication, usually for life to make sure it stays not rejected. What they found with her was that when she got her new liver, the drugs actually made her sick, the ones to keep her from rejecting it. And what they found when they tested her blood was that her body was changing its blood type and completely changed its blood type to where she didn't need those drugs anymore. It changed from O negative to O positive. Right. Yeah. And she completely went off those drugs. And I think she's, like, 20 years old now. And the doctors, I don't think they have any explanation for it other than, I guess this can happen. Yeah. Her body is, like, the kind of local tough that fights with pool cues or something like that. It's like, all right, this is what I got to do. I got to do what I got to do. Keep this liver. So that's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was super awesome. One in 6 billion. It's pretty nice to have that quantified for you. Yeah, I bet she feels like a lucky lady. So, Chuck, we've kind of laid out by now that blood types are confounding science still. Yeah. But there are some guesses, some assumptions about why we have them, although that is still the question that plagues blood researchers. Why do we have blood types? Well, you'd think it was because they're fighting off bloodborne invaders. That's why we have them. But that doesn't explain why we have different ones. Right, exactly. And then what confounds that even further is the fact that apparently some blood types actually increase your susceptibility to some bloodborne invaders. Yeah. So some blood types help certain fight certain diseases and not others. And like you said, then there are others that make you more susceptible. Yeah. And not only in the case of, like, where not having this an antigen makes me more susceptible because the A antigen fights off, say, I think malaria. Yes, malaria more. It's not even the case of that. In some cases, having an antigen proves to be food for certain kind of germs and bacteria that cause illness. Yeah. It actually binds easier. Yeah, it binds. Or they eat, like, the sugar of the protein, and they just go attack your body. It's like food. Like your blood type is food to certain kinds of diseases that make you terribly sick. Right. So from an evolutionary standpoint, those things should not exist. Yeah. The only thing to me that makes sense is when you included this word in here, which is variation. And that, to me, makes sense because variation is generally pretty good for a population. Right. Because it covers more bases. And in this case, that may be why they have found kevin Kane, this guy at University of Toronto, did a lot of investigating on this and found that, like you said, it was type O. Protects against malaria better. Type A makes you more susceptible to smallpox. Type B, you're more likely to be infected by E coli. So you should know what your blood type is and what you're more likely to get and not get. Yeah, I think and again, remember we said that some antigens serve as binding sites for certain kinds of bacteria. Same thing with the norovirus, which has nothing to do with your blood. That doesn't seem to make any sense at first. At first. Until you find out that not only does your body express your blood type antigens on the surface of your red blood cells, it also expresses them on the surface of the cells that line your gut. Right. And norovirus has a lot to do with your gut. So specifically, I think if you type O, you have basically what amounts to a landing pad for norovirus to bind to, and you are really going to be hating it compared to everybody else on the cruise ship that has type AB. Or if you're type O, you might get a rupture to kill his tendon or an ulcer a little more easily. Isn't that weird? Yeah, they've linked a lot of susceptibility to illnesses, two different blood types. So infections, cancers, memory loss, heart disease. Get this. Type A blood types are most susceptible to stress, which makes a lot of sense because the type A personality is like, I don't think those are linked, go, go, let's get things done kind of thing. Yeah, type A, but that's not what we don't know. All this ignorance, though, led to a discovery well, it didn't lead to but it's exemplified by the discovery in 1952 and Bombay patients that didn't have a B oh blood type at all confounding. It's called the Bombay Phenotype and it was discovered in the basically, it's really rare. Again, Carl Zoomer comes in to say, if O is that single story ranch and A is two storey and B is a two storey house, then this Bombay pinot type is an empty, vacant lot. These are the guys that have nothing there. As far as AB goes in India, you're about 10,000 chance of having this blood type and one in 4 million in the world. But the thing that's confounding about is these people don't appear to be any more or less fit or healthy than people in the Abo blood group. Yeah, it's just if you need that blood, you're in bad shape. Yeah. You have to get Bombay, because I think blood has a shelf life of about 42 days. So. I mean, imagine places like India and Bombay especially. They probably have a lot more of this on hand, but if you're traveling in the United States, maybe you might have a bit of a time if you're bleeding out. I would guess so. It was also a general hospital subplot. Was it really? I was just poking around and it was like, leave it to soap opera to make that the rarest blood type a subplot as paternity subplot. It was how they proved that paternity for one of the oh, somebody had the bombay phenotype. Yeah. They're like, it is you because you have the bombay phenotype and your secretar, say, the fuzz. Gross so we've talked about how the blood types are. They make you more or less susceptible to the disease, right? Yeah. They think that that's one of the reasons why different blood types appear in different ethnic groups differently. They think that it's evidence that in the not too distant evolutionary past, certain parasites or bacteria, germs or viruses that have some sort of preference for a certain blood type passed through an area and largely wiped out the people with that blood type and left the other blood type standing. Yeah, we were talking earlier about in china and actually in Russia and india too, they have a lot more blood type b, and that is because the bubonic plague and malaria outbreaks that swept through those countries not too long ago and basically wiped out a lot of the o's and a's. So you've got a lot more BS. Yeah. This hasn't been proven right in science. Things aren't proven that there's more and more and more evidence that backs it up. Seems to be a correlation. Yeah, there is. And it's not just China, russia and india. Africa has a lot of type of people which is less susceptible to malaria and africa has a lot of malaria. So it does make a lot of sense that's what happened, even if the reason we have blood types isn't because it provides a defense against bloodborne illnesses or whatever, it's a function, for sure, of blood types. If you want to not get teleological here well, who does teleologist? We'll finish up here with two examples of well, one example of hokum, one example that may or may not be hokum, but it's probably hocomb at the very least. It's fun. The blood type diet. There was a naturopath named Peter de damo diatomo diodamo diodamo, actually, funny enough, I was like, how do you pronounce that? I found an old regis and Kathy lee. I don't know if I would trust that. Well, he was standing next to him and he seemed to agree with it. Usually, though, when it's a de apostrophe, it's just dadamo and not diamo. He didn't correct regis. Well, who does? Kathy Lee. Oh, this is precaley ripper. Yeah, it was regis and Kathy lee. Oh, well, she was drunk. All right. This is a naturopath, what my wife calls a hokey pokey doctor. And he published a very famous and popular book called eat right for number four, your type. Eat right for your type. 7 million copies to date. 60 languages it's been translated into. And he postulated that our blood types came along over the years as we evolved and that we should eat according to when our blood type what was going on when our blood type first came about. Right. Evolutionarily speaking. Exactly. So I think he decided that the type O blood type came about during Huntergatherer era. Yeah. You're saying he decided it's very key here. Yeah. I don't know what it was based on other than his guesses. Sure. And then he said type A was the dawn of agriculture. Type B was from the Himalayan highlands 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. And then he said type AB is a modern blending of type A and type B. It's pretty convenient. So if you, for example, or type A, your blood type came about during the Huntergatherer days, and your diet should consist mostly of, like, raw vegetarian foods. No, that's during the dawn of agriculture, huntergatherer would be meat eaters. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So that would be type O would be the meat eaters. Right. So type A would be dawn of agriculture. So you would eat vegetables, crops should he says legumes. Yeah. Type O, meat rich. Right. No, grains. And dairy. Type B. Lots of dairy. Also called the death diet. All right. And to avoid foods that aren't suited to your blood type. And he did this. He said it will reduce infections and you'll lose weight, and you can fight cancer. And I can sell books. A lot of books. Pretty much was the reason. And they've done testing over the years. The Red Cross of Belgium did a lot of people have, and they've all said this is not true. No. The Red Cross of Belgium did a survey of a thousand studies and found no direct evidence supporting the health effects of the Abo blood type diet. And quote but that's not to say that these diets aren't good for you. For example, that type A diet, it's basically vegetarianism. So of course you're going to lose weight, you're going to lower your body mass index, whatever. You're going on a vegetarian diet. Right. But none of these have to do with blood type. No. Like, if you are a type O, go on the type A diet, and you will see those same benefits, same effects. So don't go on the type B diet. So basically, it seems like this guy just took some pretty good diet, except for the type B diet is yeah, eat a bunch of fats and dairy. Although fats have gotten a bad rap. Yeah, I mean, not all fats are bad, of course. We know that. But supposedly you don't want to eat justice. Type B diet is not the one to go with. No. So that was hokum. Allegedly. At the risk of respecting our friends in Asia, I'm not going to call this complete hokum because they believe it pretty actually, it's going to say, like, we believe astrology. A lot of people here just have astrology is like a fun thing to read. They really take it seriously in Japan, apparently. Yeah. So I don't know what you would compare it to over here? I don't even know that it has an analog astrology, I guess. But the distinction is that, like, over there, more people definitely take it as fact. Yes. I'm saying they take it way more seriously, but it's being born with something that determines your personality type. Got you. So, back in 1927 to Kg. Fudakawa, who is a professor at Tokyo Women's Teacher's School, he decided that blood types and this is based on his observations, blood types and personality types were related somehow. And he started to do some studies and he decided, I've got this figured out. I've got them mapped. I have type A, type B, type AB, and type A personality types map. And it actually caught on in the east big time and still is today. And the Japanese actually have a word for type of harassment. Say, basically getting passed over for a job or not getting into a certain school based on your blood type. Yeah. Buddha Hara. Yeah. Is that right? Sure. Is it good pronounce it I think it's pronunciation. Yeah. I can't even pronounce that right. Wow. But it's blood type harassment. Yeah. We'll go over these because it's interesting. If you're blood type A, you are going to be kind and compassionate and put others before yourself. You are calm on the outside, but you have a lot of inner turmoil. But you're a good listener and you're going to have a lot of friends, and you get along with others well. But it's typically at the expense of your own sense of balance and happiness. You're just giving a little too much. You're not speaking up for yourself necessarily in order to keep the peace. That's right. That's type A. Yeah. Type B is the George Clooney of blood types. It is smug. No, he's not smug. What? I don't think he's smug. What? It's like? It's defined and characteristic. I don't think you smug at all. Oh, my God. Really? Yes. I'm about to faint. No, I don't find them smug at all. I think if you agree with someone, then you probably don't find them smuggled. I agree with them in a lot of ways. I think it's a really cool thing to do is spend your money to hire satellites to track warlords in Africa. It's about as cool a thing as you can do with your riches as anybody. Right. I still think he's smug. I don't think he's smug. I don't think he can help it. Maybe we have different definitions of smug. If you mean handsome and winning and charming, then yes, he's smug. And being 10% aware that you're handsome and charming and winning at any given moment down to the molecular level. That's my definition of smug. Awareness of your good looks yes. Overconfident self awareness is smugness. I'm on Team Clooney. I'm not opposed to George clooney. I just can't imagine not thinking he smug. Well, imagine it, baby. I don't even know you right now. Well, that's because I'm a personality type B. Blood type B, like my buddy George. That means I'm outgoing and friendly. I'm a people person, and I don't do that at the expense of my own feelings. It just comes naturally to me, right? Yes, George. Whereas, like, a type A would like, you're a people person, but you really expend a lot of energy being a people person. Type B. It's just like you said, it just comes naturally. You're very adjustable. You're good at the job if you have to deal with people. I don't think we've said that type A blood people don't like to have jobs where they deal with other people. Right. It gives examples of programmers, accountants, writers, librarians, or good jobs for type A in type B, like, Mr. Clooney is not suitable for marriage because they're flirty and playful and smug. Yeah. So say Korean women. That's right. You added the smug thing, by the way, at the end. Yes, of course I did. That was pretty smug. Type A B. Though. They are freedom loving, they are strong and rational. They don't worry about the little things. They can look at life challenges with emotion removed and say, this is what I need to do to get past this. So they're psychopaths? Not necessarily. They seem to not have issues with the relationships and they're quite popular. They seem to be the winningest personality group. All right, I'm going to go with psychopath for that. I mean, I see what you're saying, but yeah, I don't think so. And then finally we have personality O. Blood type O. You're responsible and practical and rule conscious. You're a great leader and very determined to achieve your goals. You're physically strong, so you might be a good athlete. Yeah. And they're most happy with other type OS or type ABS. And that are the personality blood types. I've never heard of that. That's all we know about blood type. I thought that was pretty neat. I never heard that. That was a big thing. Yeah, you mean told me about that. I was like, we're blood type. She's like, oh, you know about Japanese blood types, right? Blood type, personality type. And you're like, what? Yeah. She's like, you know, like, George Clooney smug. You're like, we're meant to be together. We just hold hands and watch monuments. Manner. Oh, my God. All right, Chuck, if people want to know more about blood types, I would steer clear of how stuff works, because it has one of the densest, most incomprehensible articles I've ever read in my life on the site about blood. How's that blue plug? It really needs rewriting. Yeah, this thing you put together was great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And a lot of it was based on a Mosaic article by Carl Zimmer about blood types. I strongly recommend you go read. And since I said Carl Zimmer, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this truck drive and chemist guys, I was a truck driver from five to eight and listening to your show back then. I left Trucking to go to college and I was taking chemistry. We had to do a research paper on a compound, and so I always want to know about diesel. So I looked into Diesel. We should do one on diesel. He says, it sounds pretty interesting. Let's see. I learned some really interesting thing about Rudolf Diesel's invention and about the man himself. The original diesel compound was actually made from peanuts. He invented the engine for small plants. Was it George Washington Carver? No, it was Rudolf Diesel. He invented the engine for small plants that could power not biological plants. Like a power plant. Yes. A diesel plant. Yeah. You could power a warehouse to compete with the big industrial warehouses during the Industrial Revolution. So he was a man of the people. Cool. But here's the conspiracy theory part. Rudolf Diesel found out his diesel engine is going to be powering Germany's newest warships, called unta sea boots under sea boats. Yeah. What are you going to say about that? Not that. And he was really angry that they would use his invention for war. So he told a German naval representative that if they were going to use his diesel for war, he would take his designs to England so they would have it, too, and could counter Germany, and that Germany might as well not use it. And they shot him on the spot, basically. He's not a smart thing to announce. No. He pushed all his chips in and lost. He told off the government boarded a ferry to England in the evening to arrive in the morning. He left a word to wake him, since he had an appointment with the naval office in Britain. And when the ferry docked the next morning, he was gone. Eight days later, his body was found floating in the English Channel. And this all happened a few short years before World War One. Wow. I can't believe that, like, government agents would fascinate somebody when they threatened to take a very important thing to another country. Yeah. So that sounds like a good podcast. He says, you have a man fighting for the common man, man that didn't like his invention being used for war. An engine we still use today and could be using more in the future. And that is from Russ Fortney. Russ, my friend, I think you just did a little mini podcast. Very nice. Thanks a lot for that, man. I love history. Me, too. Love history. Never knew about Rudolph Diesel. No idea. I didn't even know somebody's last name. I didn't. It was a thing. Yeah, me too. Like Jimmy Gasoline, right? Or is that Elizabeth bacteria? Yes, Elizabeth bacteria. Jimmy Gas going to tell us something that we don't know about that will blow our tops because it's so cool. Like Russ, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffysheanow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, join us on the web at our luxurioushomestuffystnow.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 to 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." | ||
8048429f-2826-4806-8128-ae5900f35ca7 | Operation Northwoods: The False Flag Op That Never Was | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/operation-northwoods-the-false-flag-op-that-never | There is presumably some very dark, very depressing stuff in the annals of America’s secret history. But perhaps the darkest classified document to see the light of day was the memo that called for faked attacks on the US to justify invading Cuba.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | There is presumably some very dark, very depressing stuff in the annals of America’s secret history. But perhaps the darkest classified document to see the light of day was the memo that called for faked attacks on the US to justify invading Cuba.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 15 Mar 2022 14:49:34 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=14, tm_min=49, tm_sec=34, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=74, tm_isdst=0) | 44942003 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And the stuff you should know. Deal with it. Yeah. Up your nose, et cetera. Rubber hose. Yeah, I just suddenly, you know, I stopped saying that quote, mid quote, and I suddenly felt like an old dinosaur. Chuck and that probably nobody knew what I was talking about. And I'm tired of feeling old. Chuck, are you feeling old? I feel young. I'm glad to answer your question, yes. Okay. So, hey, before we get started, this is going to be a really good episode, and I want to enhance it by saying I finally saw I got to see my niece's movie that I've been talking non stop about, no Exit. How was it? It's amazing. It's such a great I would call it a popcorn thriller. Okay. It's not like, high art. It's not trying to be high art, but it's like, really well done. The script doesn't have a bunch of holes in it. They've trimmed off all the fat. It moves along really nicely, and once it gets going, it keeps getting going again and like, these lurches forward and it doesn't go off the rails, but it's just like, oh, my God, I can't believe this is going on right now. And then to be able to see my niece, Mila act as, like, the kid in this do this stuff, it's amazing. First of all, I've done everything I can to remove any subjectivity as a proud uncle and actually watch her acting and, like, the performance she gets, and it is great. It's amazing. She does an amazing job. She has to do a bunch of different stuff. She gets tortured and harassed and beat up on and everything. It's actually a really graphic movie in a lot of ways, but, like, delightfully if you ask me. And she did a great job. And I thought the whole cast did a really good job, too. It seems great. It is good. Including Havana. Rose blue, by the way. But yes, it is a great movie. And I recommend anybody who watches our movies to watch the movie. And it's on Hulu right now, streaming. It's called no Exit. Awesome. Can't wait to watch it. I've been traveling. I went on the road for a bit, once again seeing more Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt Sweeney Super Wolves shows. Matt Sweeney. Is that the girlfriend guy? What? The guy who had that hit in the 90s called Girlfriend? No, he's local. That was a great album. I can't think of his name. No, matt Sweeney is a genuine stuff he should know listener and super smart, awesome guy. And we're kind of pals now, so he's always kind enough to hang out and he always sends me really good ideas for the show. But that's not my 9th Bonnie Prince Billy show in the past, like, year and a half. I'm going to where he goes. That's really cool. He didn't come to Atlanta, so I'm hitting the road. And along with our good friend Joey Sierra, he came on this one. Oh, yeah, that's right. I saw that post on Instagram. That's awesome to see Joey. He's looking good. Yeah, he says hello. And if you want to see pictures of this and of my travels and Travails, you can follow me. Check the podcaster on Instagram. I'm sorry. You had Travails? What did I say? Travails. Did I not say Travis? You said travels and travales. No, travails good. It was only good times. I'm sure I've told you before, but I always love rubbing it in. Did I ever tell you that I saw Bonnie Prince Billy doing karaoke at a friend Toby's wedding years back? I don't know that you told me that. Do you know what song it was? It was some, like, sweet old country song. He did duet with, I think maybe his wife. Oh, my God. I mean, he's my favorite vocals. He's to me the best singer, literally, in music history. And a cool dude. I can tell you because I've been in the same room with them plenty of times. Me too. I was 4ft from them the other night. That's really cool. Anyway. Shout out to Sweeney. Shout out to no exit. And now let's talk about a time when the US government was not above planning false flag operations that were crazy and ludicrous and planning potentially to assassinate the leaders of other countries hundreds of years ago. Oh, actually, no, this was way back in the 1960s. Yeah, planning. That's the operative word here. Planning doesn't mean that any false flag operation was ever carried out, at least by the United States government. There have been plenty of false flag operations carried out, most recently apparently, by Russia, who was trying to accuse Ukraine of doing, like sabotage and bombing across the border as a pretext for invasion. And that's generally the point of a false flag operation, which we should probably define it. But it's basically where you dress up as somebody from the country that you want to invade, have them, or you assault your own border crossing, your own military installation, your own railroad, and then you publicize to the world how that country attacked you, and now you're going to have to go in and invade for your own welfare and the welfare of your own country. That's a false flag operation. That's right. Staging any kind of a fake operation. It originally came about the term false flag. From pirates would fly a flag of a friendly country to lure ships closer than they would attack them. But since then, and Russia is big on it, japan has done this, germany has done this. But the Soviets and Russia, like you said, they're still gangbusters for this kind of thing. Yes. I also think it's just a PSA. If you are currently feeling sympathetic or absorbing information that makes you see things through Putin's view. You're probably being manipulated online. Just FYI, you may want to look a little deeper into that and pull your head out of that particular rabbit hole. All right, so let's go back in time and talk about Operation North Woods. But to talk about Operation Northwoods, we have to first talk about who did this one for us, by the way, who put this together? This was Olivia joint. Livia gershon. Great work. We need to talk about Kuba. And what the threat that that country started to pose or the seeming threat that country started to pose to the United States in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Yeah. Because Castro came to power, and in doing so, he established the first Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere in America's backyard, as it would later be put. And this does not settle well with the Americans, because at the time, I guess, our military brass, our intelligence community, basically everybody in charge with security for America of the ilk that we should be invading other countries that are Communist and toppling those regimes and fighting Communism wherever it pops up. No country is too small. No country is too large. We need to invade them and fight them and remove those Communists and probably install, like, a democratic government from that point on, which is kind of ironic. That's right. By the way, that was Matthew sweet. That's what I said. What did you say? Oh, Matt matt Sweeney. Matt Sweeney. But it came to me when you were talking about Cuba, matthew Sweet, because that's a great record. Yeah. I can't remember the song, how it goes, but I know it was a good song. I don't think I ever heard the record. I had a cool video, too. Yeah, let me sing it. Yeah. Remember that? That's it. Yeah. Okay. And then the chorus is, you need to get back in the oh, yeah. It's a pretty good song. It sounds good. As I remember, just by the Super Bowl record, it's better. All right, so good. Set up on Cuba. If you want to go back I don't even know how much we need to go over it, but if you want to go back and listen to our, I think, pretty great episode from November 10, 2020, called the Bay of Pigs Disaster. This was sort of one of the first things that happened in the 1960s when Eisenhower approved this boondoggle of an operation known as the Bay of Pigs invasion that just went just about as wrong as it could go on every level. Yeah. And so we were setting up fake invasions of Cuba, supporting exiles, invasions of Cuba. RFK and JFK were obsessed with Cuba, and in particular, removing Castro from power. Cuba was a big deal for a number of reasons, we should say. And one of the leading reasons that Cuba was a problem for the United States is because they were worried Castro was going to serve as an inspiration for other countries in Latin America. Especially the economically depressed ones. Where they're like. Yeah. All this capitalism running around where Americans own most of our national operations and exports. And we're getting very little in return. Communism might seem pretty appealing to them. So Castro might serve as an inspiration. And if there's like, that domino effect like they were worried about in Southeast Asia, that happens in Latin America. Thanks to Cuba, all of a sudden, American businesses are going to be out a lot of money. Americans are going to be out a lot of the bananas that they've come to love, thanks to Edward Bernays. Yeah. And we would also lose access to things like the Panama Canal and other things we need. So it wasn't just like an ideological problem. It was a practical problem, too. But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that a Communist Cuba posed to the United States is that it was now an ally with the USSR. America's War. An enemy the other polar power of the Cold War would now have a country that would be willing to let them set up nuclear missile bases 100 miles from Florida. That was truly the big problem with Cuba and Castro. That's right. And because of that kind of from the very beginning, the US. Very quietly started thinking about, like, hey, should we assassinate this guy? Should we depose this guy? And there were all kinds of crazy, like poison cigars, like Mafia hitman. That kind of stuff was being talked about behind closed doors, including Florida Senator George Smithers. Great name. He proposed assassinating Castro, was a good buddy of Kennedys and brought it up during the 1916 presidential campaign, which included the plan included a false flag attack at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. And he claims that Kennedy basically was like, put something down on paper and I'll take a look, if you believe this. He wasn't initially adverse or averse excuse me, to the idea of taking care of the problem, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. That's how obsessed he was with removing Castro. The problem was this after the Bay of Pigs, that was what, 1961, I believe. Yes, it was April 1961. One of the huge problems with, aside from America having an enormous amount of egg on its face for being outed, for supporting a failed coup of Castro, was that Kennedy had been led to believe by his military and intelligence advisors that there was going to be an uprising. That, like these exiles showing up, having making a couple of wins against the Castro regime, was going to awaken the Cuban people who would want to go back to the way things were before the Communists came along and took over the country, and there would be an uprising that toppled Castro. That was the thing. They weren't necessarily trying to take over the country. They're trying to incite a revolution. Yeah. And that did not happen. It was supposed to work. Yeah. Even though Kennedy had been told up and down by these advisers, he was a brand new president at the time, and he had been told up and down by these advisors that was going to happen, and it didn't happen. It never materialized. And so he lost full faith in any military or intelligence advisor around him at the time from that point on. So he found he needed to surround himself with new people to take on this Castro Cuba problem. And the point man, he put on the whole thing. He basically said, I want you to be in charge of getting rid of Castro and figuring out how to do it without sending in military people was his brother Bobby. That's right. Like you said, Kennedy still had that new President smell. Bobby still had that new Attorney General smell. You were very patient, waiting for your chance to use that, and I think it paid off in Asia. Okay, good. I tried to get in there, but Bobby was Attorney General, like I said. And that isn't Attorney General or Attorney's General. Or would it be Attorney's General? They usually don't get involved in stuff like this. But he was his brother, and so he trusted him. And he ended up overseeing something called Operation Mongoose, which was kind of this crazy idea that they could disrupt life in Cuba, such with sabotage, with disorder, with espionage, and it would all be just in the name of stirring things up with the Cubans themselves. Again, not like putting in Americans dressed as Cubans and stuff like that. They thought they could get this done. The CIA was going to be involved. The State Department was going to be involved. The Defense Department, what we had at the time, the US. Information Agency. And basically, they were going to get together and get this done. And it was going to be headed up by a general from the Air Force named Edward Landsdale, who was, interestingly, a former ad exec and a CIA operative. And he was sort of in charge along with Kennedy, of getting this thing planned. And this is Operation Mongoose again. Yeah. So Operation Mongoose is the operation that like all the wacky stuff that you have ever heard about getting rid of Castro. Like a poisoned skin suit for him to scuba dive in or exploding cigars, all that is Operation Mongoose. And like you're saying, the point was to give the poison cigar. I don't think it was an exploding cigar. That's like a novelty item, right? Well, that was the level they were at. Somebody brought up joy buzzer ones. Right. They were like, exploding cigar won't kill them. They're like, yeah, but it'll humiliate them. Right. And we'll finish them off with the joy bud. So all of that fell under Operation Mongoose, and like you said, they're trying to basically make life for the average Cuban so weird and disjointed and uncomfortable without anybody realizing the Americans were actually behind all these seemingly unrelated things, that they would just get rid of Castro themselves. And that was the reason why they weren't just like, well, we can't just go in and kill Castro is because, again, they were friends of the Soviets. And there was a chance that JFK believed if they did invade Cuba, they would set off World War III. That was a very real fear. Sure. On the other hand, there was also this ticking clock going at all moments among some people, some advisors to the White House, some security advisors. It was like deafening, the sound of this clock ticking, that the longer we waited, the more chance there was going to be that the Cubans were going to say, hey, so Vids, come build a missile base here. They hadn't yet, but it was on the table and everybody knew it. So the Americans needed to do something about Castro, and fast. So the idea that the Americans could come up with these plots to get the Cubans to overthrow Castro themselves, that takes a lot of time. It might not pay off. And then looming in the background, getting ever closer, are the Soviet missile bases arriving in Cuba any day now. They just knew it. All right, that's a great suspenseful lead up to our first break. We're going to come back and find out what happened with Operation Mongoose right after this. All right, so you set the stage very well. My friend. General Landsdale is running the show. It was a pretty impossible situation to try and do this with the Cuban people without any real power, basically. Like, he didn't have any real teeth in this. No, he was overseeing a bunch of different agencies. And in February of 62, he basically put forward a plan that was supposed to get Castro out of office by October, even though he said that was pretty optimistic. And some of these ideas were pretty crazy. One of them was there's this thing called star shells, which is kind of how you light up the night sky during war time. Yeah, with Spot, for instance, I think yeah, it's like you shoot it, as it were, mortar around. But it's not mortar around. It just lights things up for the night vision goggles or back then, I guess. Well, I don't know if they had them back then, but it's like that one scene at night, that night battle in Apocalypse Now. Yeah, exactly. So one of the ideas was for a submarine, a US. Submarine, to fire these star shells off the coast and convince the Cubans that the second coming of Jesus was happening and that Jesus was against Castro. Yeah. They were going to shoot it off on All Saints Day. And it was based on the premise that Cubans were deeply Catholic and that they would see this as a sign. And these are just ideas. Again, they never did this. All of these are just ideas, but they were ideas that were literally put forth in writing by the US. Government to the President. So, okay, so the clock is ticking on Landsdale, and I read that basically every week he would go to the Oval Office and ask to be taken off of this assignment. Oh, really? Yeah. He was apparently a golden child, like you said. He was an ad exec in the CIA operative. He basically shaped the geopolitical map of Southeast Asia by himself. In the kennedys were like, hey, you seem pretty great at this. Let's see what you can do at Cuba. And he just ran into a brick wall in Cuba, in no small part because, like you were saying, the Kennedys didn't give him any teeth, any authority, so he had to beg for everything from everybody from this multiagency task force that he was in charge of. It was a terrible, terrible thing. And then again, that clock is ticking. So in addition to coming up with ways to get the Cubans to topple Castro, lansdale also was trying to figure out how to justify over action, an actual military invasion. Right. And so he asked the Joint Chiefs, who were one of the agencies that were part of the task force he oversaw, for some info on that. What would it take, do you think, for the United States to be able to justifiably invade Cuba and remove Castro as its leader? Problem solved. And again, how can I scare the President bad enough, kind of. Yeah, right, exactly. I think he was also trying to figure out what we could do to make that happen. You know what I'm saying? Like, could we also push Cuba into a corner to make them do something that would be like, oh, well, our hands are tied. We have to invade? But the reason that it would scare Kennedy, too, is, like, he was against military action. You just got to keep that in mind. After the Bay of Pigs. He said, no, we're not invading Cuba. So now Landscape is trying to figure out basically how to change the President's mind. And I guess, like you were saying, if it meant through scaring him, whatever it took, he just wanted out of this stupid assignment where he's trying to figure out how to trick the Cubans into overthrowing Castro. Right. So this is what this briefing was all about in February of 1962 from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to basically put it forth that this cannot be ignored. The quote was, the Communist regime in Cuba is incompatible with the minimum security requirements of the Western Hemisphere. That sentence says it all. It is incompatible having him in power with the safety of the Western Hemisphere. So we got to get rid of them. They said that we can't count on, like, you see what happened with the Bay of Pigs. There is no insurgents happening in Cuba that we can count on, basically, at this point. And we need to intervene directly. And I don't think Russia will even be super mad at this point yet. Yeah, that was the thing, because they said that Cuba is not part of the Warsaw Pact, which is kind of like the Soviet Union's version of NATO. And since they weren't a member of that, the Soviet Union had no obligations to back them up if they were invaded by America, and the fact that they didn't have any military bases there, but they also didn't have any reason to back up Cuba. So it was possible that if they invaded Cuba to topple Castro, the Soviets would not be drawn into it. Maybe JFK was wrong about it. Sparking World War Three. They didn't know that for a fact. But that was their assessment of it. Right? Yeah. So on February 2, brigadier General William H. Craig. He was the Joint Chief of Staff's rep for Operation Mongoose. He submitted this memo to Lansdale that said it was called Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass and Disrupt Cuba. And this is where some of these really kind of wacky ideas start coming forth, some not quite so wacky. Like the Mercury Mission was about to happen with John Glenn later that month. And they were like, hey, if anything goes wrong with this thing, we could basically manufacture proof that Cuba was behind it. And that would give us a reason. Yeah, that was one of the more reasonable things in it, really was. There was Operation Free Ride. The idea that they were going to drop one way tickets to, like, Mexico City over Havana, just leave. That's amazing. I guess that was one if Castro had no one to rule, then maybe he would just leave himself. Castro would just shut down the airports or something. Yeah, that was not very well thought out. It wouldn't have worked. No. There was also Operation Good Times, too, which was they were going to produce a fake photo. And this is at a time when it was hard to do that, at least make a convincing one of Castro, presumably naked, hanging out with beautiful women and a bunch of food at a time when the Cubans were having a lot of trouble putting food on their own plates. And this picture is going to have Castro surrounded by food and women, and they were going to caption it. My ration is different. And they thought that would be it for cash. So, yeah, these are the ideas that they're coming up with. But when they kind of turn there, I think when they said, like, wow, these are the ideas we're coming up with, this stuff is not going to work. There's no counter revolutionary insurgency to spark in Cuba. What are we going to do? We need to figure out how to get our army in there. Right. Get army in there. And then that kind of set the table. All of us set the table for Operation Northwoods, which was put forward by Army General. It's so funny. I'm glad that Livia mentioned Doctor Strangelove, which had not come out yet because some of the names in this are very, like, you can kind of tell that Kubrick and the writer were very much influenced by real stuff that was going on, for sure. Some of the ridiculous names from Doctor Strangelove. And then later on, when we get to what was actually in Northwood, you can only hear it as if it was read from Georgie Scott. General Buck Turgenson. Like, you can hear him saying these things, but Army General Lyman Limnitzer was this guy's name, and he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1960. Very hawkish, to say the least. Right wing guy who I mean, this guy, he wanted to attack everybody at all times. He wanted a preemptive nuclear war launched against the Soviet Union at one point. That was a proposal that he took to Kennedy. He proposed that in writing. He said, here's a plan for a surprise attack against the USSR. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. He's that kind of guy. He was one of those ones that I mentioned earlier. Fight communism everywhere. It pops up. Anytime it pops up, just invade and take over. That was, like, his plan. This guy is running the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy didn't like him there. Right. The head no, he was Eisenhower appointee. Kennedy didn't like him, and he didn't like Kennedy, especially after the Bay of Pigs. He was one of the people that Kennedy did not trust. And then he thought Kennedy was reprehensible for not ordering an air strike to back up the Bay of Pigs. Exile, invaders. Right. So there was no love lost. But Lansdale was, it sounds like, kind of appropriately, the guy to come up with Operation Northwoods, which was, as far as we have in documentary evidence, the only false flag operation the United States ever came up with. Okay. Is that true? Documented evidence? I don't think there's ever been evidence of anything like this. I mean, there's a historian who wrote about it later, a journalist who said it was probably the most corrupt document the United States government has ever come up with. Right. Which is really saying something. I'm not Pollyanna here. I don't think the US Government has clean hands and is just looking out for the good of everybody at all times. I think it's done some deeply shady stuff. But I also personally think that Operation Northwoods may have been, as far as planning goes, the pinnacle of that shade. Right. Yeah. I like March. At least I believe it, too. March 5, the Joint Chiefs, Lansdale issued a request to them to provide a, quote, brief but precise description of pretext, which they would consider would provide justification for US. Military intervention in Cuba was passed along on March 13. Limits. Surpasses it to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. And this is something that McNamara, years later, was kind of like I don't know. Was that a thing? I don't really remember that. Yeah, he said I'm really sure that was true. He was a scumbag himself, too. Yeah. I recommend the great, great documentary by Errol Morris. When he talks to Robert McNamara. Baseball. Yeah. For 90 minutes straight or however long it is. It's crazy what he got him to say and to see. And he tried to get him to see in. McNamara does not compete to it was really fascinating stuff. It really was. I didn't realize that was error. Morris. I should have guessed, though. Yeah. The master is so good. Yeah. I love the Midnight Cowboy. What? I wanted to sniff you off the case. You sure did. So this memo was called Justification for US. Military Intervention in Cuba. That was the official title signed by Limnitzer and the Joint Chiefs. And this was basically here. What do you think of this plan? You might think it's wacky and we've never done anything quite like this officially, but here it is. President Kennedy, right? Kennedy said, Let me see that. Yeah, not bad. No, that was perfect. So he looked it over, said, no, thank you very much. I appreciate you going to all this trouble, but I reject this out of hand. We're not going to create some sort of mayhem, blame it on the Cubans, and then use it as a pretext survey. We're just not doing that. And right when that happened, right when he realized that this is not going to be implemented limits tried to get all documentation of this destroyed. He wasn't successful, as we'll see, obviously, because we're talking about it now. He's like, torch this. Oh, God. I signed that thing. Yeah. I thought we were all going to do this. And in fact, in the Operation Northwoods memo he talks about how he anticipates that other agencies that were all part of Operation Mongoose task force would be submitting similar proposals, which are basically ideas for how to make it look like Cuba attacked the United States so that we can invade Cuba. And it turned out he was the only one who put his name on a document that he then handed into the President. That was that. It's sort of like the scene in like an army movie where they asked for volunteers and everyone but one person takes a step back and then one guy's left standing there. Have you ever seen there's a video of some dogs that did that to another dog. There's three dogs. I think they're all little poodles and one of them, Peter pooped on the staircase. And the mom is making the video, is asking them like, who did this? And right when she says, who did this? The other two. Look at the third one. And then she said, who did it? And they take a step back, and the ones that standing there still it's one of the most amazing dog videos I've ever seen. I saw the nature video the other day that was a deer, how they had, like, fake deer and things in the woods. There was a real deer that had mounted one of these fake deer. Have you seen that? I've seen pictures on the Internet. So it has mounted this deer and it's kind of going at it. And the fake deer is sort of from the neck up, it's pieced together. That whole section falls off. This deer jumps off of the back of that thing. And I wish there was, like, a human narration going on because it's kind of circling the thing, looking at it like, what? Was I just doing this thing too? Right. So we figured out it was fake. I killed you. I'm sorry. It's good stuff to hear. Yes. Should we take a break before I can get into the absurdity of Operation Northwoods? Yes. All right, we'll take our second break and we'll talk about some of these crazy wacky ideas right after this. Chuck, I think we're calling these crazy wacky ideas, and they are crazy wacky ideas. Like, you shouldn't do stuff like false flag operations and in vague countries based on them. But they're also, I think, only crazy wacky because they were in the 60s, they were directed at Cuba, which makes it seem even wackier in hindsight now, today. And then lastly, they weren't implemented. Had they been implemented, there would be in no way, shape, or form crazy or wacky. They be abhorrent. But we're kind of laughing about this stuff now. But it's really not funny. No, that's what I'm trying to do. Stop laughing. Yeah, sorry. I'm in a good mood. That's good. I'm glad to hear it. All right, so let's talk about some of these false flag operations again, signed by General Lyman Limnitzer. That's right. We already talked about sort of attacking Guantanamo. There are things called over the fence attacks, which were uniformed Cubans basically riding near the bases, throwing fire bombs inside the base, setting aircraft on fire, kind of giving the illusion that Guantanamo is under direct attack. And these would probably be exiled Cubans who were sent from Florida down to Guantanamo to pose as Cuban nationals under Castro who were attacking, but they would be paid. And then remember that movie Wag the Dog? Oh, sure. They would probably be whacked afterward. Yeah. That's the thing, though. And this is if you read the fine print, aside from one of them, these are all basically elaborate ruzz where no one actually dies. Yes, that's very important. I know a lot of people believe I was going to say suspect. I think believe is a much more correct word. That September 11 was a false flag attack. Yeah, some people think that. I mean, I get that. I get believing that and why you would believe that. But if you look at Operation North Woods, they go out of their way to basically stage death. People don't actually die. They weren't part of the plan, killing people and then let alone the idea of killing thousands of Americans, just the fact that that many people died. I don't believe that anyone has ever held power in America that is capable or willing to kill that many Americans all at once. I just don't believe it. I don't think the world works that way. I think the world can be a very dark place. I don't think it's that dark. At least there's like that depth of betrayal from the American government to the American people. I just don't believe it. I agree. I thought we probably should at least mention 2001 as a false flag operation. That's right. There it is. Another one from this era was the remember the main incident, which was basically let's just blow up one of our ships in Guantanamo Bay or another vessel near Cuba. They proposed sinking ships and all kinds of crazy plans like that. The one that really speaks to me as far as George C. Scott reading it from Doctor Strangelove is this direct quote, we could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida, real or simulated. It could be dummies. Or we could actually really do this with real humans. That was the one that I was like, okay, that actually does overtly say we could kill some people. The other ones, the ones that I'm like, okay, they're really going out of their way to make sure nobody is actually hurt. Are ones like there was one where they were going to send like a charter plane, like actually like a commercial airline or from the US. Probably from Florida on route to somewhere carrying American tourists off to vacation like Jamaica, Venezuela, Guatemala, all the vacation hotspots, right? And they were going to release actually two planes at once, identical planes, except one of them was going to be a drone remote controlled plane. And then they were going to reroute the one with the actual people in it and then send the drone along over Cuban airspace and blow it up and then blame it on the Cubans. Yeah. So if you'll notice in that plan there's like all those people are safe. They're all fine. Like they're all they're safe. This is all a decoy. That's what this operation was. They wouldn't say or they weren't saying like, yeah, we'll just blow up a plane full of tourists. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Yeah, but I mean, some of the stuff to me could serve as setting the stage where things getting out of hand and leading to real bloodshed. Like they had ideas for a simulated Cuban backed assault on the Dominican Republic or something using fake aircraft painted up to look like Cuban aircraft. All of a sudden, something like that gets out of hand and real lives are being lost when it's misinterpreted. Yes, and I mean, that's a really good point. And also the whole basis of this is like, so we can invade Cuba, and when we invade Cuba, there's going to be a lot of loss of life and bloodshed from that invasion, too. So even if we went out of our way to make sure the people who were in the false flag operation didn't actually get hurt, somebody is eventually going to die because of this false flag, this ideas that this guy came up with. Yeah, good point. Another idea was a fake attack on a plane, like a US. Air Force plane in international waters. So basically, that would be a pilot who was flying under an alias. They would broadcast over the radio that they had been jumped by Migs, which was, I guess, the Soviet fighter jets. I saw Top Gun. I know this stuff. Sure. And it would fly, I guess, under the radar at a low altitude and land safely and then stored. The paint would be repainted, given a new tail number, and then a submarine would drop plane parts into the water where it's supposedly happened so they could pull those things out of the ocean, show the world again. Totally fake. Totally fake. There were other ones where they're like, well, maybe we could injure Cuban exiles in Miami, like assault them and blame it on the Cubans, et cetera, et cetera. Basically anything you could think of that could give America a reason to say, look, this Castro regime is unpredictable, unstable, and they're now attacking us. We're going to have to invade. That was the point of Operation Northwood's ideas, but it had a bit of a stroke of genius that was kind of hidden in there a little bit that I thought was kind of well put. It was using a number of these different things, making them seem through a separation in time and space, making them seem like unrelated events, also staging other events, too, that didn't necessarily have anything to do with anything, to kind of like give cover and camouflage the actual events and the goals, and that if you put it all together, the US. Can be like, look at how crazy this cash flow regime is. We're going to have to invade. As far as Unhinged documents go, I thought that was a little bit of sanity shining in it. Yeah, I mean, I think they should have dropped those one way plane tickets. That was my favorite idea. We know that Kennedy didn't accept his proposal. The Cuban Missile Crisis unfolds in October 62, and Operation Mongoose was sort of fully laid to rest and lansdale for his efforts. He was replaced by a man named Sterling Cutrell. He wasn't like an insider for the Kennedy clan, and so he was a little more cautious about everything. They were still, I think the Joint Chiefs had the idea, like, they didn't put this idea to bed completely. They put Operation Mongoose Mongoose down, but they still didn't put to bed the idea that, hey, maybe we should still provoke Cuba and see if we can set them up to invade 63. Yeah. All the way through 1963, the Hawks were just trying to figure out how to get it done, and it obviously didn't happen. What somebody pointed out in one of the articles that were the sources for Olivia's article was like, Castro still there. He outlived all these guys. Oh, man. I think it was in, like, the 90s or the early 2000s when the article was written. They're like. He's still there. He's still giving seven hour speeches, and all these people are long dead. That's the case. Like, America and Cuba just entered its own, like, kind of mini Caribbean Cold War with tons of sanctions against Cuba and limits on travel. I think the average American would just not really understand why. They just know that Castro was a Communist, and that was all you needed to know to place sanctions on Cuba. And we even further would have no idea whatsoever that Operation Northwood ever happened, was ever proposed if it wasn't for Oliver Stones movie JFK. Isn't that a neat little bizarre footnote? Yeah, it really is, because like you said, limits are trying to get this thing completely destroyed. Not even like, hey, can we bury this? Let's destroy it. There was an investigative reporter named James Banford who wrote a lot about this. They called it the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government, and if not for Oliver Stone, sort of. That JFK movie is so popular for Americans after that, calling for the release and opening of records we may never have known. So, hey, Holly Stone. Yeah, he got an act of Congress passed through his movie. That's how popular that movie was when it came out. It'd be like passing the Hobbit Act or something. Back in 2007, to never make another Hobbit movie would be that act or another eight hour Beatles documentary. How about that? Ouch. Well, since Chuck said ouch, everybody, that's it for Operation Northwoods, which means it's time for listener mail. I mean, just hostility toward the Beatles at the end. You didn't see that coming, huh? Outright hostility. I get the Peter Jackson link, but all right, I'm going to call this from a night shift nurse doing great work. Hey, guys. My husband recently introduced me to your podcast about two years into the backlog and loving. It started with your most recent Pod and Work backwards, but my husband scrolls through and picks one at random, Russian roulette style, which seems insane to me. I've been trying to figure out if our listening style says anything about our personalities. I would say I'm a little more methodical and he's more spontaneous. In life. So maybe there's something to that. Yeah. So, Lindsey 1000%, I mean, your husband is flying by the seat of his pants, it sounds like. Yeah, fast and loose. He's like, yeah, let's hear what they have to say about stupid grass. Yeah, you know what? We had to say a lot. We did. That was a long episode and we've talked about this before. There is no wrong way to listen to any show, including stuff you should know. Right? We personally sort of endorse the sandwiching idea, which is if you're new to the show, listen to the most recent release because that way sometimes they're timely, but at least you're in the know about current jokes and things we're referencing. And if we have live shows going on, like people miss out on kind of information release and then the sandwich. So you listen to the most recent and then you pick one from the backback catalog. The deep web. Not the deep web. So we've endorsed that. But there's no wrong way to listen. You can be one of those two times as fast play. Our voice is two times as fast. Weirdos. I think that's wrong. That's the one too, but the one that's wrong just hit download. I'm just teasing. No, it's right. However you listen is great. It's weird, I think, to listen to us as if we were the chipmunks, but yeah, I think it's funny, though, too. If that's your jam, then go for it. I think it's funny, though, too. It's going to be like four times when they get to that part. I love it. Or maybe we should do this John Wayne. No, but sped up at two times. It sounds like myself, right? It wasn't John Wayne. Wasn't it? It was great, Chuck. He just brought a smile to my face. Good. All right, let me finish this up. Anyway, I'm a night shift nurse. I listen to podcasts, especially on my way home from work to decompress for my shift. Thank you for keeping me company on my drive, keeping me awake after working these long hours. Find your voice is soothing, yet engaging. I really admire that you can do that and admit when you were wrong as well, which is such a hard thing to do in these polarizing times. That is from Lindsay Johnson. M-S-N-R-N. Nice. Thank you. Lindsay doing God's work out there. We appreciate you and we appreciate your husband also for introducing you to us. I don't know what he's doing, but hey, man, whatever he's doing is fine with me. Agreed. If you want to be like Lindsay and get in touch with us, we would love that. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts, myheartradio 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/2017-01-31-sysk-elastic-final.mp3 | Elastics: Where God and Science Smooch | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/elastics-where-god-and-science-smooch | You could be forgiven for thinking the story behind elastics was boring. You’d still be wrong, though. The story of what’s holding up your underwear is a global drama, replete with war, industrial espionage, colonialism, destitute inventors – everything! | You could be forgiven for thinking the story behind elastics was boring. You’d still be wrong, though. The story of what’s holding up your underwear is a global drama, replete with war, industrial espionage, colonialism, destitute inventors – everything! | Tue, 31 Jan 2017 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=31, tm_isdst=0) | 49463887 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. This is stuff you should know. The annual sick edition. You aren't well, my friend. No, and it really stinks, too, Chuck, because I like to think that I take pretty good care of myself. So to be able to be felled not once but twice in just a few months by some stupid bug, it's irritating to me. I know you get mad every time you get sick, though, just so you know. I do. I hadn't noticed that, actually. My wife is the same way. Well, it's not fun, I know, but she gets, like, kind of yeah, you both get a little angry, like, Why did this happen to me? I get more pitiful. Like, Somebody help me. Oh, I've got that going on, too. So does that mean people have the next eight episodes to look forward to this? No, man. No way. This is it. This is it right here. I think actually yesterday might have been the worst day. Oh, well, good. Yeah. I mean, today was a close second, but we'll find out. I got to be a pro, man. I got to get well. The show must go on. So today, chuck charles. We're talking elastic. Yeah. Did you know much about this? No. I thought, this is actually super interesting. And it also contained two what we like to call dinner party factoids that people can bust out. We need a jingle that says that so we can play it when it comes up. Yes. I mean, there's lots of cool stuff in here. And please don't correct us on factoid, because that's so 2009 and eleven, maybe. Exactly. But, yeah, two really cool facts in here that I think people can just keep in their hip pocket. Okay. Are you good? So until we get a jingle made, I'll bet Noel will make one for us, but until we do, maybe you want to practice one. Jeez. What's a good dinner party jingle? It should be, like, wine glasses and plates and forks and things clinking. Right. And then maybe like this orwellian voice going dinner party factor. Yeah. Here we are, eight years in, still evolving. Yeah. So work in progress. Okay, so we're talking elastic. Chuck, I didn't know that much about it either in this article written by one William Harris. Good one. Yeah, it is. It makes a pretty good point that it's just one of those things specifically, say, like, a rubber band, you just kind of think it's always been around, and you just think, like, elastic waistbands have been around for eons. It's basically the second thing discovered after fire, is what I've always thought until today. Since Adam first popped Eaves bra strap. Right. It's been around. Yeah. You'd think? That's actually not the case at all. It's elastic itself. An elastic, we should say, is basically any rubber natural or synthetic thread woven with another kind of fabric. Usually like, say, cotton or nylon or whatever that produces a stretchy fabric that's elastic. Right? Yeah. I think a lot of people don't even realize. If they took their underwear waistband don't do this because then you've ruined it. But maybe if you have an old pair, if you just kind of cut it, you would see these little elastic threads. It's all it is. Yeah, sure. Little rubber bands. Or you could go to, like, a thrift store or something, buy a pair, and then cut those. If you're buying a thrift store underwear, then I don't know. I wouldn't recommend that. I don't think they even sell it, actually, they do. Really? Yes. Used underwear? Yes. Wow. So 10% skid free. That's got to be one of the more difficult tasks. It's like getting those things just prepared for resale. Yeah, I don't want to be unprepared for resale duty today. Anyway, when you do, if you cut it open, if you look very closely have you ever done this? Have you ever seen, like, an elastic waistband come loose? Sure. If you look really closely, you can be like lingling to the little threads that are sticking out. Because some just hang limp and loose. That's cotton. Nobody cares about that. But the ones that are just kind of still sticking out a little bit. And you can thrum that's the rubber or natural or synthetic rubber that gives that elastic its stretchiness. And again, this is a fairly recent invention, especially if you're talking about waistbands for underpants. Yeah. And especially if you're talking about elastic. That really kind of worked. There were two sort of dives into making elastic in one quite a long time ago, and then one more recently that obviously worked much better. And basically the reason it worked much more recently. Is better techniques to making rubber. And then better techniques changing that rubber into something that you could actually use. Like in a waste band. Right, exactly. But we've known about rubber for a very long time since well, I should say those of us in the west have known about it for a very long time. Those indigenous peoples of the amazon have known about it even longer. But I interrupted. You were talking about waste bands. Oh, okay. Yeah. With underwear waste bands in particular, right? Yes. Apparently, humans have felt shame for thousands of years. Because the oldest pair of underwear, identifiable underwear, are 7000 years old. And you bought them at goodwill, right? Last week, yeah. So this underwear originally well, even before that, I should say there was something called breach cloth, and that was just basically strips of leather that just kind of hung down and covered junk, maybe kept the nats out, that kind of thing. Right. Or kept them in. Yeah, if that was your thing. Sure. I'd probably catch some. And those are even older than the first underwear which would be considered a loin cloth. Yeah, of course. Which is basically and there are loing clothes that are at least 5000 years or 7000 years old, and they are basically a linen diaper that is folded in a certain way, worn by grown ups, including, very famously, most recently, Gandhi used to wear a loincloth everywhere. It was called a daughter, but it's a loincloth no matter what you call it. That's right. So those stuck around for quite a while in the west, and it wasn't until basically the Middle Ages that someone said, we can do better than this. Yeah. And they brought around these things that were much longer than a loincloth. Most of them kind of for my research, these Brays, B-R-A-I-E-S went below the knee, even. Yeah. They were like a cross between a loincloth and jams. Yeah. Sort of. It says here that they were lace to the waist and legs, but there may be lace under the waist, but they're also generally kind of rolled over many times at the waist. Right. I think to probably tighten it up a bit. Yeah. And everyone said, Great, this will work. Yeah. For a while. I'm happy with this. And then it went a different way and we should do an entire episode just on corsets. I know there's a good article on the site on it, but after Bray's, what's called the union suit was invented. Dinner Party Fact. Okay. There you go. That was good. I never knew I thought it was called a union suit because it had something somewhere along the line to do with unions. But no, in fact, the word union suit, now we know them as long johns. Even though long johns are generally two piece. The one piece union suit is called that because it is one piece. It is the union of the top and the bottom undergarment. Yup, that's right. It's a one piece Long John with a flap in the bottom. They usually button all the way up front from the groin up to the neck. Do you have any of these? I'm wearing a couple of pairs right now. Obviously, you just can't see them because they're under my clothes. Do you really have some? No, I have Long John's. I've got these one called Silkies that work really well. Yeah, but I don't have a union suit. No, do you? No, I don't anymore. My brother still Scott squares by the union suit. I think he has the classic red. And then, of course, they famously have, like you said, it's either called an access hatch. I've also seen them called a drop seat or a fireman's flap. Yeah, I saw that, too. I can see that. Yeah. Where you can unbutton your because generally you're wearing this out in the cold, so you don't want to strip down to the naked if you want to go peepee or poopoo. Right. So you just open the old access hatch. And there you have it. Yeah. Now, that, to me, makes sense. In the 19th century, when the union suit was invented. Today, though, it's like I guess Scott just likes to add a little panic to it when he has to tinkle, like having to get that flap open. I think he's just a classicist. Not classicist. Who is? Someone who's into the classic things. Classicist. Okay, that sounds like he doesn't like poor people. That's a classic. Okay. That extra makes a big difference. Okay. He's a class assistant. Yeah. Okay. So you should tell him this. Here's another little sub dinner party factoid. Union suits were originally invented for women, from what I understand, all right? And they were invented in response to the corset craze, because apparently corsets were so out of hand, it was basically like, remember our footbinding episode? Oh, yeah. So that's basically what women in Europe and the United States, in the Western countries were doing with corsets. They were engaging in what was amounted to footbinding, but with their waist. Right. They were literally deforming themselves using corsets, and there was a Reformation movement against the corset and against that look. And what it spawned, ultimately, was the union suit, which were so great that men were like, these are ours now. Right? Yeah. We should do one. Of course, I assume that they did this because men were like, no more of an hourglass. Yeah. And I think that's where the Reformation came out of. Like, just shut up, man. Right. We're disfigured now, thanks to you, you idiots. Well, I hate to pack another dinner party fact right next to the other one, but that's kind of where we are. So my second factoid that you should bring up next time you're among friends or next time you see an injured friend, perhaps, is if they're using an Ace bandage, ask them what it stands for, and they'll say, what do you mean? But it, in fact, is an acronym, correct? Yes, it is. And what does it stand for? All Cotton elastic Ace. All cotton elastic Bandage. I never knew that until today. And it's been around since 1918, apparently, that the three M company introduced it. Amazing. Okay. You've got an Ace bandage, which is essentially an elastic waistband used to keep Shaq's elbow in place, right? Shaquille O'Neill. Yeah. All right. What do you think this is? What's crazy is this is 1918 that three M introduced the Ace, and it took until the 40s before somebody thought, why don't we just, like, attach underpants a loincloth to that? And it's weird. Pull it up, snap it in place, and be like, oh, baby mobile. I guess. Because the only thing I can think of is because they were tying them, and they just figured, well, that works pretty well for now. Yeah, I agree. That's what William Harris says. He says it was basically a sort of fashion inertia that everything was fine. Like, you could use buttons or ties or something like that and keep it in place, so who cares? Yeah, but it's just so much easier to pull up your underpants, snap them in place, and go, oh, baby, that's right. But regardless of what you're talking about here, these fabrics, including elastic, are made with a loom. And if you've ever seen a loom at work or at work yeah, it's amazing to watch them at work. You're like, what the hell is this loom doing here? Well, not at your job, but I know what to mean. Sure. I was just being a wise acre. If you ever seen a loom doing its thing, it's pretty impressive. It's really not that complicated, either. Basically, all it's doing is allowing these lengthwise threads to be interlaced with width. Wise threads. The warp and the west. Yes. Which is not a bad band name, by the way. No, it's not. Especially, like proto folk. Yeah, that's exactly what it would be. There would be at least three guys wearing vests in that band for sure. That may have been woven with alum. Yeah, right. And maybe a pocket watches with the chains. Totally. Yeah. But that's all a looming does. It allows this interlacing to take place, and that's what's happening with elastic. It just takes the place of the yarn. Well, part of the yarn. Half of the yarn or portion of the yarn. Well, yes, because in the case of a waste band, you're obviously introducing other fabrics as well, like cotton, probably, or something else. Yeah. And that's the case with any elastic. Elastic is, again, it's a type of fiber woven together with some sort of rubber. And to create this new stretchy, resilient fabric that's elastic. You want to take a nose blow break? I'm talking here. Thank you, Charles. Sure. All right, we're back. You good? Yeah, I should say. Also, like, I keep hammering home what the definition of elastic is. Now we're talking about elastic waistbands, and that's what you think of typically. But again, any fabric with fiber of one type and rubber woven together is elastic, and that has tons and tons of uses. Sure. Like, bungee cords are elastic. Right. Everything else that's like that is, like, elastic. Well, in your socks, a lot of times, I mean, there's elastic, and we'll get to spandex later. But that stuff is in many garments that you wear today. You may not realize that you have the stuff in your clothing. Right. Everything from the neck of your shirt, perhaps, to maybe the tongue of your shoes. Sometimes fancy shoes will have elastic in them. Those jeans that you wear the Thanksgiving dinner, they have an elastic waist. I know what jeans you're talking about. I don't wear those. They're pleated jeans, which is just weird looking. I just wear button flies. Oh, yeah. So you just go pop. Yep. Pop a couple out and you're all set. That's right. You can stuff a lot of extra bits in there. All right, should we get in the way back machine a bit and go back to the 18th and I guess the 19th and 18th century, huh? Yeah. All right. We're pirates. Oh, man, I'm glad you brought that up. I read this really interesting article. I found it, I think, on long form, but it's from the National Endowment for the Humanities, like, magazine website, and this guy wrote an article about how just thoroughly we misunderstand pirates. Really? How our conception of pirates took place basically in one decade between 17, I think, 26 and 36. And everything we think of as pirates is crammed into that ten years. Everything before and after is totally different from our conception of pirates and that they were actually very frequently they were just sailors who would go attack, like, a vessel in the Indian Ocean for one big hall and then flee to the colonies and buy a bunch of pigs and set up a farm and live as an upstanding citizens. From that point on, some of them were like lieutenant governors. It was a really interesting article that I recommend. Tremendously. Obviously. Did we not cover that in our pirates episode 18 years ago? No, we wouldn't have known that. This is a brand new article. I'm sure we just totally fell for everything. Right. And apparently that's not our fault. But this guy's article and idea is pretty new. It's just one of these things that historically, everyone kind of bought in on. Interesting. Send me that way. You got it. All right, so we're talking pirates here. Not just pirates, but sailors, explorers, basically anyone who got on a ship in the 17 and 18 hundreds and went exploring. Yeah. And what they did was they would go off and find things that they didn't have in their home country, say, oh, my God, what is this? Let me bring it back. Remember a cinnamon episode? Yes, absolutely. That's a great example. But one of the things they found in Central and South America was what the French called kaocchuk. Nice. And it's an Indian term meaning weeping wood. And it's basically what they're talking about. Is it an actual rubber tree. Yes. Havia. Brazil and ISIS the rubber tree, which literally oozes, milky latex. Yeah, naturally. Yeah. And the earliest sailors that encountered the indigenous natives of the Amazon were like, what's that stuff you're putting out on your outerwear and it's keeping the rain out, or, what's that weird flexible bottle you're using? And they explained it to him, and those guys said, awesome. You know who will love this? My fellow Europeans. So they took it back with them, and then they said, and what are those awesome drugs that you give us in liquid form every night after dinner? They said, oh, yeah, we'll take some of that home, too. Yes. Can we get it to go back of that stuff so, yeah, they were already using the stuff because they found out when it was dried out. Basically, you could use it for a lot of things. Like you said, bottles, shoes. It's just like this flexible rubbery material. Yeah, right. So everything is hunky dory. This is a brand new thing. Europe is starting to go crazy for it. But what they figured out pretty quickly was that you couldn't do a lot with it. Right. We'll find out later. Rubber has an unusual natural chemistry, and it just so happens that in the normal range of temperatures outside of the tropics, it can tend to fall apart pretty easily. It has a narrow range of temperatures that allow its usefulness. Right. So once you take it up to above the equator to say, like, Europe or the United States or whatever, and they did. They thought it was great. They thought it was terrific. People went crazy for it. Joseph Priestley actually came up with a dinner party factoid that I'm sure you'd love to share. Which one? Oh, you didn't? This wasn't one of them? No, I blew mine on the two. Joseph Priestley, who was very famous chemist jason Priestley's triple great uncle, will say he made that same joke in the Anesthesia episode. I'll bet we did, because yeah, that's where he popped up. That's right. Thanks for that. Oh, and the nitrous oxide one, too. So he got his hands on some of this because everybody's like, he's the only chemist alive right now. Give it to him. And he's like, you know what? This is amazing. I'm writing a pencil, and then I'm rubbing this latex kahnik and it's rubbing out the pencil marks. And that gave rise to the term rubber. Oh, that's how the name came around. Yes, from rubbing from rubbing out pencil marks. Erasing rubber. Interesting, because, remember, the British love to change everything with an error on the end. Like soccer is actually shortened association football. Like soccer became soccer. Right. There you go. Rubber. That's pretty interesting. I don't know how I skirted past that one. I love that one. So it became a big deal, and everyone that had a little money to invest thought, hey, we can make a lot of dough with this stuff. We can transform that into something useful, like, let's say in a garment. But like you said, they had this problem that it was a very narrow range of temperatures where they could find it useful. So a couple of dudes started working on it. We've talked about Mr. Charles Goodyear before. What do we talk about him in? I don't know, but I mean, definitely the Goodyear Blimps episode, but it seems like did we not do one in Vulcanization? I don't remember. I was looking up rubber or something, because some of the stuff in the extra source that I sent you was kind of like, we talked about this before. Yeah, we haven't done this entire episode. Have we? No, definitely not. Okay, if so, then I really am just totally out of my mind. So Goodyear was one, he was working in the US. And then another guy named Thomas Hancock, an English inventor, partnered with a dude named Charles Macintosh and they started making raincoats, basically. Yeah. The macintosh. The classic. McIntosh. Yeah. And so Thomas Hancock was already pretty well situated to he was already working on it. Right. Yeah. But Charles Goodyear had that breakthrough first. And it was actually a really big deal that he had this breakthrough because in the early 1830s, charles Goodyear basically became obsessed with cracking the rubber coat. He just knew it could be used to be made into something useful. Right. Yeah. And he became so personally committed to it, all of his investors went away. He went into debtors prison so regularly he referred to it as his hotel. Six of his twelve children didn't make it to adulthood. They were just that poor. Oh man. They had to sell their dinnerware. So he made plates for him out of rubber. It was really rough. So the idea that he had this breakthrough was just enormously rewarding for him. Right. Unfortunately, as he was shopping this stuff around, this Vulcanization process, or the vulcanized rubber, some of it fell into the hands of Thomas Hancock. And he reverse engineered it. Yeah. And what he basically discovered was if you slow cooked latex with sulfur, it could basically transform rubber into a very durable material that was hardy under all kinds of temperature ranges. It would always snap back. Well, not always and forever. Which we'll get to later too. As you know, that waste ban will sometimes leave you disappointed eventually. It's why you end up buying new underwear. Well, one of a couple of reasons. You buy new one or take it to the thrift store. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that is what Vulcanization is. And Hancock and Macintosh, what they were doing, they didn't crack that code first, but they developed something called the masticator. Basically they had been making elastic threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber. But there was just so much waste. They developed this machine called a Masticator and it would basically chew up this rubber and meld it together and make it into a big single sheet of material, which was really helpful. But they still had that temperature problem until Goodyear hit it. Right. And again they reverse engineered Goodyear's process, went and filed a patent on Volcanization. Yeah. Did they rip him off like fully? Yeah. Wow. Fully. And apparently it was one of those ones like the phone, where Goodyear went to go file a patent and found out that someone else had that Hancock had just a few weeks earlier. So he took him to court. In order to settle, Hancock offered Good year 50% of the patent to drop the lawsuit. And Goodyear said no. And he lost the case. And he died broke. Oh, man. But he was able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were able to live the good life thanks to him, but he got ripped off for sure. And one other thing about Charles Goodyear, the Goodyear Rubber Tire and Rubber Company, he had nothing to do with it. They named it after him in honor of him. Oh, wow. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. You don't watch the TV show Shark Tank, do you? I do not. I think I've asked you that before. You know the whole concept, right, is these people pitch their businesses to them. Yeah. Well, surrounded by sharks swimming. No, they pitch them to the sharks, and they either invest or they don't. Everyone kind of knows the show but you, I guess. But I'm always at home just yelling at these people when they'll offer up, like, 20% of their company, and then they'll get offered an investment from a shark and say, but they want, like, 40%. And some of these people, like, turn around and walk away, which, on one hand, I kind of respect that they don't want to give away that much of their company. But I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own 60% of a $20 million company than 80% of a $3 million company? Sometimes I think pride gets in the way with these people. Sure, yeah. And they don't think about just how big these people can make their company. Yeah. I don't know who's that company, though, that turned down a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook and just kept at it. And now it's MySpace. No, I can't. It's one of the big social media brands that you know of that now is just worth gobs more money. Really? Yeah. I mean, there is no recipe like, sometimes it is better to hold on to more of your own company, because if it gets big, then you own that much more of it. But I'm always kind of like, man, take the money now and run, as Steve Miller suggested. Did you know Steve Miller is a Scientologist? Is he really? Yeah. Boy, he went off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Why? Did they not vote for nominating, no, no. He got inducted and basically trashed them on his way in and out the door. Why? You'll just have to read it's kind of too long to get into, but they were none too happy. I think he came across as just a really crabby old guy. Oh, he didn't have, like, a point or anything? No, he had points, but you'll just have to check it out. I will. We're already getting sidetracked here. Oh, we've been sidetracked, baby. So regardless of who came up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear, once Vulcanization was introduced to the world, all of a sudden, all of these dreams of what you could do with a flexible, durable material that can withstand tremendous pressure and force and heat and cold, too, which was a big one. All of a sudden, the whole world just opened up. And what was interesting, Chuck, was because it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution. Brazil, which was the rubber tree capital at the time, went from just being like this kind of old world colony to basically being one of the most important countries on the planet, like, virtually within a year or so. Yeah. And that was true, Jeez, for a long time, until about the mid to late about 1876, when these British businessmen said, I'm going to sneak these rubber tree seeds out, take them back to England, and we're going to see if these things grow in Southeast Asia, where we have a lot of British colonies. And it turns out it did. And just about 35 years later, the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. British are thieves in this one, so they kind of totally ripped that off. Yeah. And Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world, which is way better for the Brits and the Americans, because we're friends with the Brits, because that meant that these were British colonies, which meant that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered. Yes. There were no trade deals. You didn't have to wine and dine a prince or a king or anything like that. You could just be like, we need more rubber, please. Yeah. Which is, I think, how they would order it, probably. So everything's going hunky dory, at least as far as the British and Americans are concerned. The rubber supply is being fulfilled, thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and it came at no too soon a time, too, because the automobile was introduced around this time, the mass produced automobile, we should say, and those needed four good tires made of rubber. Yeah. And then World War II really increased the need for rubber, I think. Here it says that in total, the Pentagon said that they needed \u00a332 of rubber for every single ground troop in one way or another. Right. That's amazing. Yeah. And that's why it was such a big deal that the Japanese invaded the Pacific, because the Pacific Theater featured those countries that were the rubber producing capital of the world that had been under British control. And now, all of a sudden, our rubber supply was either cut off or in danger. So the United States, led by FDR, said, hey, four biggest rubber companies, we're going to get together and we need to come up with a synthetic rubber tooth suite. Right, let's get on it. We're all going to split the patent evenly and let's get to work. And in 18 months, they had come up with a synthetic rubber. Amazing. Yes. And we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute. But jumping back to the mid eighteen hundred s, the. Story of the rubber band is pretty interesting. These two chaps, Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft great name, TBD actually invented the rubber band. The modern what we know is the rubber band, because they started slicing these they had a rubber tube and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube, and they were like, Here you go. It's called a rubber band. You can put it around your asparagus. Yeah. And everyone is super psyched except people who hate asparagus. That was a good one, man. And today, they still kind of do it in the same way, rubber band wise, they create this they mix this latex together with all these chemicals. It depends on what kind of rubber band you're making. And they get this raw rubber compound into a long hollow tube, slip it over a round pipe called the mandrel, expose that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it, it cures it, and then they slice that up into rubber bands. Yep. Pretty neat. It is pretty neat. You want to take a break and then talk some more about how it's made? Yeah. Right after this. All right. So we've been talking about rubber in its most natural form, and how they transform that into usable rubber is pretty remarkable. But immediately after World War II, like we were talking about, this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest invention of all time. Well, maybe not of all time. It's up there, though. Yeah. But when it comes to stretchy things, for sure. Yeah. And apparently the World War II research and development produced not just one, but three different types of easily manufactured synthetic rubbers. Yeah. One was a butydiene rubber, another was a styrene butaddyne rubber. That was the one that the government went with for World War II, and it was actually ripped off from the Germans, which they had come up with something similar previously. And then there's an ethylene propylene monomer, and all three of those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers. Yeah. And they found that this stuff worked really well, just as good as natural rubber. Had all that flex resistance, it didn't deteriorate. Eventually it would. Again, I keep teasing like, we're going to get to that, which we will. But they found it was really well suited to replace rubber. Well, in most applications, like an industrial application, like a tire or a fan bell or something like that, but it didn't have that resilience that natural rubber has. So there was an issue still, there was a kink that needed to be worked out. Well, yeah. As far as using it in textiles, for sure. Exactly. And they actually overcame it in 1959 by day. I mean, Dupont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work trying to crack this code, the final code of synthetic rubber, how to make it flexible and resilient. Right, that's right. And they started by using a polyurethane. Well, we'll talk about polymers in a little bit, but basically they took a polymer, a urethane based polymer, and watered it down and forced it through a plate with tiny little holes in it. And what came on the outside were these tiny little threads. And those tiny little threads were a magical creation known as spandex, the trade name of which originally is Lycra. Yeah, it's amazing. In spandex, they found, had a lot of great applications, namely, it could accept dyes. So it wasn't just the sort of dull white color. You could make it any color you wanted to, and you could wash it. It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and it remained really stable when it was washed and dried at normal moderate temperatures. So, hey, you can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in the washer, die at whatever color you want, and you're good to go. And most importantly, Chuck, it would snap back. It would retain its original shape that's right. After being stretched. So, yeah, spandex changed everything. I didn't realize it was from the didn't either. And William Harris makes a pretty good point. He says that spandex might be considered the modern elastic. It's basically the base of anything stretchy that you use today. Yeah. And it said here we said it's in all kinds of stuff. They said it's in about 80% of all clothing bought by Americans. So even if you don't think spandex is in something, it may have a little spandex in there. It's an 80% of all clothing bought by Americans, 100% of all spandex pants bought by Americans. Think about that stat for a little while. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Including Jeggings, he points out. He calls them pajama jeans, but I've always called him Jeggings. Oh, is that the same thing? I believe so, yeah. Interesting. I hope so. Emily, when we put him on her daughter, she calls him jazzy pants. Oh, yeah. That's a good one, too. But that's, I think, usually due to the pattern more than the snap back. Got you. Yeah. So we can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if you want, but ultimately we're going to end up on the chemistry part, you realize. Yes. And because I don't understand chemistry at all take it away. We'll get you for this, Chuck. I'll throw in some words here and there. So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know both of us crammed on this. So forgive us all you chemists out there. If we get something wrong, let us know. But from what we understand, it's magic. Yeah. There you go. The end. So rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, is a polymer. Yes. Right. And it's a specific kind of polymer called an elastomer. It's an elastic polymer. It has stretchiness and resilience. It's flexible. Right. And any kind of polymer is basically, if you look at the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these long repeating chains of the same unit over and over again. The units are called monomers. Depending on what the monomer is, that leads to different kinds of polymers. And with elastomers in particular. If you look at some polymers, the structure is bulky and big and compact, and it's rigid and heavy and not flexible at all. Still, other kind of polymers, say, like a plastic or a resin, are crystalline and structure, and they fit so well together. They're also rigid and not very flexible either. Then you have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer. And because of their molecular structure, they are super flexible, super stretchy, and they snap back into place. Yeah. And normally they liken it to this article, like a coiled like a big mass of snakes. But they have this really neat quality, these elastomers. When you apply force to it, the molecules actually straighten out in the direction that you're pulling it. And that's sort of the snapback you're talking about. But as soon as you release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement. Right. When you pull it, when you apply force, they line up basically like the snakes, head to tail in one single long line. It's a scary snake. Yeah. And then when you release it, it goes back into its original form of that coiled mass. Right. Perfect. Okay. One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural or synthetic, is flexible, a flexible polymer is because it's glass transition temperature is actually pretty low. Yeah, this is where I kind of just got foggy. So it's as simple as this, Chuck. A glass transition temperature, it's not a melting point. A melting point is where the substance actually just turns into a liquid state. A disordered liquid state. Yeah. The glass transition temperature doesn't affect the molecular makeup of the substance. Instead, it basically applies this property flexibility or rigidity. It's as simple as that. Right. Okay. And so anything that has a low glass transition temperature relative to what we have as normal temperatures outside in the world or in our homes or whatever, is going to be flexible and floppy. Anything with a high glass transition temperature is going to be rigid and hard and not flexible. So just suffice to say, anything rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature. So it's flexible under normal temperatures. But even if you took a piece of rubber, natural rubber, and you applied the temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius or negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit, it would crystallize it's below the glass transition temperature. So it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize and ultimately would break apart. And that was part of the problem with those early prevulcanized rubbers. They would fall apart because the glass transition temperature is not like an exact moment where the thing converts from flexible to rigid. It's the median of a large thermal window where it starts to get crystalline and rigid and then it's completely crystalline and rigid on the other end. So, of course you would think if you get down to, say, 20 deg, like it would in Boston or New York in the 19th century, and you're walking around with rubber sold shoes, they're going to crystallize and break off. Right. That's what's going on. It all has to do with the glass transition temperature. Okay. So during vulcanization, they heat that up with sulfur, and that makes those polymer chains linked together with sulfur atoms, I guess. That's almost like a glue. Yeah. It's like a molecular glue, from what I understand. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So even when you apply intense heat or extreme cold, it will maintain its molecular shape. Yeah. But here's the thing. I've been talking about why your elastic band doesn't last forever and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles. This elastic eventually will lose that snap back due to oxidization oxidation. I like oxidization natural rubber. This oxygen, and in particular ozone, is going to start breaking those bonds within just days. So it happens pretty quickly. And that's why we heat and treat rubber like we do. But even still, over time, that ozone, and combine that with light UV radiation, it's another culprit. That's what's going to cause that to eventually break down over time. That would make sense, because with vulcanization, what you're doing is adding sulfur to the polymer. Right? Yeah. And it would make sense then that either UV radiation or something else could break those bonds between the sulfur and the other ingredients, and then they would be replaced by oxygen. So oxidation would take place. Right. Yeah. So it's pretty much ozone UV radiation. And then cold actually does make a difference. It's not going to hold up quite as well on cold weather. Like, if you take a pair of underwear out in, like, negative 20 deg in Minnesota and you start really stretching it out a lot, it's going to lose its elasticity really fast. Oh, yeah. Anybody from Minnesota can tell you that. Yes. They may have to buy more underwear than Hawaii. I have no idea. They all wear union suits up there. That's true. So you want to finish with Pat Benatar? Oh, man, let's bring her out. Okay. She can do an acoustic set, man. How great would that be? So we did a little digging, and we were trying to figure out who basically started the 80s spandex rocker trend. She was the first thing that came to my mind. Oh, really? Yeah, I just didn't know exactly how. I would have guessed it went back beyond Pat Benatar, and then I found out that Pat Benatar has been a musician for much longer than I realized. Right. But apparently the whole thing happened on Halloween of 1977. Awesome. And by this time, Pat Benatar was already, like a pretty regular fixture on the New York City club circuit. And so she dressed up as a character from Catwomen of the Moon. Have you seen that movie? No. I haven't either, but apparently Cat Woman on the Moon is a cult classic Sci-Fi movie. Okay. And I guess they wear a lot of spandex. So she dressed up in some Spandex get up and decided to play a show that night at Catcherizing Star, which is basically her house club. Have you ever been there? No. I haven't either. Is it still around? I don't know, is it? I think I know of it from like Comedy Central in the think that was the name of a show, but I think it was from that club. Was it filmed there? Yeah, I think so. Could be wrong. But anyway, she was used to playing shows there, but she played the show in this get up, the Spandex get up, and noticed that the crowd was like, into it a lot more than usual. And then they said, wow, what's she wearing? Pretty much. It was about as simple as that. She was like, okay, let me try this. I want to do a little experiment and I'm going to do this again, but not on Halloween. I'm going to dress up again and do the same show. And she didn't got another response, like, way better than usual response. She's like, that's it, I'm doing Spandex from now on. Wow. And that was that. 1977, Pat Benatar starts the 80 spandex rocker trend. I would count that is the fourth dinner party factoid. Yeah, I would say so too. And if you want a fifth catch, a Rising Star is a chain of comedy clubs and was also a TV series in Canada. You got anything else? No, that's it for Elastic, everybody. If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar. How stuff works.com and who knows what amazing things will come up. That's right. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener, mate. Yeah. I'm going to call this short but kind of funny. Hey, guys, quick and trivial email from a fan in Pittsburgh. I, too appreciated in your episode on Body Snatching live episode on grave robbing. I, too appreciated. How cool charlie Chaplin's body robbers partner's name was Gancho. Ganev. And I tell you, we did that joke a few times and you and I never ceased to not crack up at the word scancho. Ganesh, it's still happening. Being Jewish. I thought a little Hebrew Yiddish languages were involved. And Genev, in fact, does mean thief. Oh, really? And then he stretches it a bit. Then he says Guncho for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook, like dance moves. And he said Charlie Chaplin was a dancer. He said, so maybe that's a stretch on the second part, but it seems as though Ganchogenev was born to steal Charlie Chaplin's body. Wow. I'll give you props on the Ganev part at least. And that is from BD Wahlberg. And he said, P s. You might remember me from Pittsburgh at your live show. I asked a question in the Q and A about how you find new ways to rip on the post office. And I still remember I gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience, and that was BD. He still have Chuck's Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen. Nice, man. Well, thanks a lot, BD. We appreciate it. It would have been even more ironic had he been referencing the D b. Cooper episode. Oh, did you hear about the new info? I did, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. So for anyone that hasn't seen, they found some actual new science that seems to indicate they found these four elements in the tie that DB. Cooper wore. And apparently these elements are very specific to work being done by the Boeing Company. So it gives a lot of credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee, and even more specifically, because it was on his tie, if he were working the actual machines that were manufacturing this thing, he would have been wearing, like, coverage or something, not a tie. So it indicates that if he worked for Boeing, he would have been, like, an engineer or a manager who would have been wearing a tie on the floor while he was out there. I think this is, like, the biggest lead they've ever had. I think so, too. Pretty amazing. Yeah. You know who's excited about it? Secret Boy. If you want to know what we're talking about, we did a DB. Cooper episode and this popped in. That's right. It's a live episode that we hope will be available to you soon. What else? Oh, and actually wow. Boy, this is exciting. We just got literally an email reply from BD, because I said we were going to be reading this, and I think this bear's mentioning. What a day maker. Guys, if you use a pronoun for me, I go by they and them rather than he or she. I know who you're talking about because I am a nonbinary listener. What up? What up, BD. Thank you. It's good to hear from you. And I'd love to surprise my BFF Carlyle with a great big audio high five. Well, I think that just happened. Wow. All right. This is like real timecorrection back and forth with BD. Let's just see what happens. Email Obama real quick. We'll sit here. Let's see what happens next. We're just going to take this for going to take this ride. All right, well, thank you, BD. Yeah. Thanks a lot, BD. Good to hear from you. All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark. You can also hit me up at the official S YSK podcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at charleswchuckbryant and at Stuffyouw. You can send us both an email to stuffpodcast@houseworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you want anymore 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." | |
2aa5b228-3b0f-11eb-a672-33b6a1c42d67 | Behold, National Parks! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/behold-national-parks | The National Park system is one of America's great achievements. We'll take you on a journey, from sea to shining sea, in today's episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The National Park system is one of America's great achievements. We'll take you on a journey, from sea to shining sea, in today's episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 08 Mar 2022 13:15:25 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=13, tm_min=15, tm_sec=25, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=67, tm_isdst=0) | 52176845 | 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 SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. So the trio put together makes this stuff. You should know that's. Right. And there are people working near my house, so if you hear my dogs today or construction sounds, I'm sorry. Well, you know what, Chuck? If we do hear that, we will assume that they are the Olympia marmot making some noise. Or maybe a gray wolf in Yellowstone after all these years. We're just going to pretend, okay? Okay. Yeah. Gray wolves living upstairs, reintroduced into your house. Into my home successfully. Yeah, sure. They've definitely got the local wildlife on guard. Yeah, we needed a new apex predator because Emily was getting tired of it. I'll bet. Well, she's a busy business person. I can imagine she doesn't have time to be an apex predator around the house, too. That's right. So, Chuck, we are talking today about national parks, and it's really appropriate that we're talking about them today. Although it would have been even more appropriate if we had been talking about them two days ago. Right, but let's just skip that little part. As a matter of fact, we may even edit it out. I don't want to be a downer this early in the episode. You know? I agree. What was two days ago? Two days ago is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Yellowstone as a national park, not just the first national park in America, the first national park in the entire world. Wow. Isn't that cool? That is cool. And the date didn't strike me when I was looking over that stuff. Thanks for the reminder. March 1. And the reason why I point out that it was the first one in the world is because there's this writer named Wallace Stegner who is known as the Dean of Western Writers, but he said this. He said that national parks are the best idea we've ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely Democratic. They reflect us at our best rather than our worst, which is his quote has been kind of picked up. You'll often see, like, articles about the national park system as America's best idea. Can burn stole it. Yeah, he did. Well, his hair told him, too. It's not entirely his fault his old hair cut, which he lost and now looks weird without. And he said, shut up. I'm going to call it something else again. Stay in line. Yeah. Don't make me make you set another fire, Ken. I'll grow over your face. So it's frequently called America's best idea, not just because it was a good idea and it was America's idea, but because it was very quickly picked up, as we'll see by countries around the world. And now it's a thing, it's a genuine thing to take land and set it aside and say, nobody can come do anything with this land. You can't cut the trees down. You can't hunt the poor beavers off of it. You've can't steal the fish. You can't do anything except come and enjoy it. And please use the garbage cans when you do come and enjoy it. And that's the point. That's what national parks are all about. That's right. And thank goodness, because this is the United States, a great country in many ways, but if we had not done this, there would assuredly be a W Hotel sitting in the middle of Sequoia National Forest or on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Close. The Hilton Garden Inn at the Rim of the Grand Canyon. Right. Or quizically a Holiday Inn Express that's nowhere near an airport. You said Quizzically. I thought you were about to say a Quizno. So I was like, yeah, that too. I'd be okay with the quiznos. So I know that you're not much of an outdoorsman, but you do like to look at it. I like to be outdoors. I'm just not like I sit outside. I know about extracting what I can from nature for my own personal gain on the room in the Grand Canyons that are pretty nice to you, I bet. I met more like my own prana, my own energy to recharging the old batteries kind of thing. I get it. I just don't spend as much time outdoors as you. Right. I've done quite a bit of traveling through national parks in my life, and especially one summer, post college, my best friend and I took a big two month jaunt around the country, visiting places like Bryce Canyon and Zion and Arches and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and White Sands and just as far and wide as we could go. Basically never hit the Pacific Northwest, but we traveled many a mile. And one of the great things about national parks is that you can camp wherever you want to. They do have their designated campgrounds and things like that, where it's pretty competitive to get spots. But the great thing is you can just hike in or drive around and find a place to camp. It's called dispersed camping. And unless there's some specific rule prohibiting that, which there may be, as long as you follow the rules, like no fireworks, no firearms, and sometimes no fires, period, definitely don't shoot at a pile of fireworks with your firearm. They really frown up. Don't do that. But it's great. And it's kind of like one of the great things about national parks is you can explore and find your own place if you don't like to. Sort of do because they can get very touristy if you like to go off the beaten path, quite literally. Exactly. Dispersed camping, of course, there's some bureaucratic term for that. Well, let's talk history. A yeah, let's. Because we covered some of this in our Fantastic Job Mirror episode which is fantastic and worth listening to if you haven't heard it. But even before John Muir came along in about the 1850 so this is super old timing. Yosemite seems to have been and this is taking out Louis and Clark's stuff. They apparently passed just north of Yosemite and missed it. But they had all sorts of reports and discoveries and all that stuff. We did an episode on that too, also fantastic. That kind of got the country jazz back east about what was out west. But apparently, if you're talking about national parks, the real inspiration for them was when a group called the Mariposa Battalion stumbled into the Yosemite Valley in 1851. That's right. And Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. And that's where they were. The job of the Mariposa Battalion there's really no other way to say it was to disperse and ransack Native American villages and kill them if they wanted to and just basically lay waste to whatever they saw and say, this is now ours. And they were doing this. And then they stopped one day and went, holy cow, look at where we are. Look at this impossibly tall waterfall. Look at these granite cliffs. Look at these 3000 year old giant sequoia trees. Can we at least appreciate this for a moment? And they did. And there was a doctor, a young doctor named Lafayette Bonel in the battalion and said, you know what? This place is so amazing, maybe we should take a break from ransacking Native American villages and we should name it yes. And they really wanted to punctuate their misunderstanding of Native Americans and the various Native American cultures they encountered. So they said, well, let's name it what? Apparently this tribe that we're in the midst of removing from this land is called the Yosemite. And it turns out that tribe was not at all called the Yosemite. They were the Awanishi. And the Awaniti called that place that they ended up calling Yosemite Aawani, meaning gaping mouth like place. Yosemite means something totally different, doesn't it? It means they are killers. It makes me wonder if, like, as they were approaching, they were just going, Yosemite. Yosemite. And they were like, oh, well, that must be who they are. When in fact, they were just calling out like, you guys are killers coming for us. Exactly. That's how to read. That right. That's how I took it. Yes. Oh, boy. So that's where the name Yosemite came from and it's definitely worth saying we could actually do an entire episode just on how national parks were part and parcel with Indian reservations in the early 19th century, mid late 19th century. They were both developed at about the same time and they were both kind of developed on the same premise that this is now white settler's land and you needed to move and you should move over here because now we want this beautiful land for ourselves to enjoy, so you just can't get around it. It's just part of the history of national parks. Fortunately. It's really come a long way and in some cases full circle to where now there's a much greater effort among the park service to be like, hey, you know how you used to live here? Well, we're actually having a lot of trouble managing this land. Could you come and advise us on this and hopefully get a job doing that kind of thing? So there's definitely a much greater turning towards whereas before it was not just a turning away from, it was turning out. It makes me wonder if there has ever been a push to rename Yosemite Aawani National Park or even Auanichi, maybe Auani, since that's what they called it. That sounds awesome. Hawaani National Park. I imagine it would meet the usual resistance when anytime something like that comes up these days. Well, yeah, it's going to run smack dab into the argument of what about your submitted sam? What are you going to do with him? Right. Let's call him a Wendy sam I guess so. Beautiful park, though. Word got around that there's this beautiful place that people can visit and people started taking people, their guides started, people that want to go see it. They would wagon train them up on horseback and get them out there and then smack dab in the middle of the Civil War. And there are a bunch of people along the way that really like John Muir, certainly one of them, and Teddy Roosevelt, who will cover kind of briefly again, but there are a lot of people along the way. He did some kind of remarkable, made some remarkable moves that led to ultimately the creation of national parks. And one of them was a senator in California named I don't know if it's pronounced Cones or Connes. It's Conness. And he introduced a bill that said, hey, Yosemite is great. Why don't we set aside about a little more than 60 sq mi of this valley for public use? And they said that's a great idea. So it became the first. Well, I don't know about the first, but it was a state park signed enshrined by Abraham Lincoln, not a national park at this point. But the deal was you can never sell off part of it to private interests. Yeah, there's a lot of argument pushback on the idea that Yosemite was the first everybody knows Yellowstone was actually the first, but some people say, no, it wasn't Yosemite or Yellowstone. It was actually Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas was the first land set aside by the federal government for protection all the way back in 1832. The difference is it wasn't actually designated as a national park until 1921. So that's why hot springs get short shrift. Yeah, short shrift. I just wanted to add a little pedantry to this whole gym. So Yellowstone all right, at this point, Yosemite is still state park. Yellowstone, I was about to say Yellowstone comes along as if someone built it. In fact, September 19, 1870, there was an expedition traveling through Montana in what is now Yellowstone National Park. And they were like, hey, guys, how can we divide up this land? Like, we can make a ton of money off logging and mining and tourism. And there was one person that stood up. He was an attorney named Cornelius Hedges and said, gentlemen, I have a different idea. How about we do what they did in Yosemite and we make this a state park or set aside this land for public use and somehow did not get murdered in his sleep. And it would have become a state park, probably, had it not been for the fact that Yosemite borders what is now three different states at the time, three different territories, wyoming and Montana and Idaho. So who steps in at this point? The Feds. Specifically a president. Right? Yeah. Ulysses S. Grant. He signed the Yellowstone Park Protection Act. A little on the nose and not even an acronym, but it works. And this is where the first national park was established. He said that the headwaters of the Yellowstone River is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy or sale and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasure and ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. And so that was March 1, 1872, when he signed that into law and Yellowstone became America and the world's first national park on record. I think that's a good first stopping point. A. I agree. All right, so we're going to go figure out what pleasure and ground meant to Grant, and we'll be right back right after this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. So what's your vote? Pleasure and Ground. That lake of whiskey and the big Rock Candy Mountain song. That's what I think is pleasuring ground. What a great song. It's a great song. I love it. The bulldogs all have rubber teeth. So Yellowstone is now the first national park in the United States. And kind of from the beginning, it's funny, like when you look at sort of the loggerheads that environmentalists and certain political parties in this country and then certain political idealists in this country all kind of running up against one another. It was doing that from the beginning as far as privatization, federalization preserving land or not mining and logging and things like that. They've always been arguing about this stuff. Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, we're like entering a time of deep American prosperity right at the precipice of the Gilded Age, where there was this idea that however you could make money, go make money and make as much as you can because there are such things as rags to rich's stories all over the place. People would buy books about rags to riches stories. When you couple like that whole impulse that was just kind of socially acceptable with the idea that there was actually nobody in charge of the national parks at this time. There's no coherent federal agency charged with overseeing the national parks. Yeah. All of a sudden you had tons of hucksters showing up and guides who were locals are like, well, I guess I'm going to go be a guy to Yellowstone now and charging whatever they wanted. And it started to get like I guess there was a lesson with Niagara Falls where by the middle of the 19th century, niagara Falls was a straight up tourist trap. And this is very important too, being naturally ruined also by a bunch of energy companies that were using it for hydroelectric power too, without any regulation whatsoever. And Niagara Falls had to be rescued from the brink of destruction and put under federal control and regulated at least state control, I'm not sure, but it served as like a cautionary tale for places like Yellowstone, happily, I guess, in a weird way. Yeah. So at the time, ultimately, as we'll learn, all of this ended up under the purview of the Department of Interior, but not at this point. The government did try the privatization route at first and said, all right, there's a firm called the Yellowstone, or they name themselves this the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company and they're going to get the contract. They're going to run this place. They can manage the tourist spots. They can harvest and hunt as they see fit. And like you said, everyone was really worried that it was going to get out of control. And another gentleman steps in at this point, a General Philip Sheridan, who is a Civil War general for the Union Army. And he was fighting in the Indian Wars on the Great Plains, but love Yellowstone and said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send the army in and I'm going to dispatch them and they're going to take over management. And they did so from 1886 to 1916. Not bad. They were basically in charge of protecting the park from illegal loggers, miners, poachers, and that's actually, I read why the Park Service, their official ranger uniforms bear a resemblance to old timing cavalry uniforms, including the campaign hat, because it's an homage or a nod to the cavalry units that protected the parks initially. Did you see where they got that sickly colored green? No, I didn't. It's really distinct. I mean, I just call it national Forest Service green. It's distinct. You know what it might be. They might have surveyed every single shade of green in every national park in America and then blended it all together, and that's what came out. Well, what's funny is I've done all this camping all my life, and I've always seen those Forest Service trucks and then the park rangers and things everywhere. And when you see them, and as we'll see later, they also look after things like national monuments now, so you can be, like, in the middle of downtown Atlanta near the King Center, and you can see, like, a park ranger and green park truck riding around. Are you lost, sir? Is there a convention nearby? Is this cosplay? Yeah. It's not cosplay. It's one of our great park rangers. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were going to stand up for them in front of everybody on the pocket. I love green, but that's one shade of green that I still can't wrap my head around because it's all the shades of green, I guess. So. Hey, can I say one thing that popped up to me while we were researching this stuff? The whole idea of that tension that push and pull between setting aside land for the good of everybody at the expense of private interests who are trying to extract it for their own individual gain, mostly, that's a huge it's still ongoing today, and it has been ever since we first started setting aside land. And it happens elsewhere in other parts of the world, too. And it occurred to me, Chuck, that the people who give capitalism a bad name, capitalism isn't inherently evil, but the people who make it seem evil are, like, the most full throated worshipful capitalists of all. The ones who use capitalism as an excuse to just take as much as you can. Like the same people who would, like, kill the golden goose to sell it to a restaurant to serve for dinner. They're just that short sighted. And it occurred to me that capitalism and stewardship are not necessarily mutually exclusive, that they can go totally hand in hand. It's just we've been listening to the wrong branch of capitalists all these years. The people who are like, no, you take and take and take. You maximize profits at any cost. That's the point of capitalism. That's not inherently the point of capitalism. Like, you can say, no, there's limits to this. We need to save this stuff for the future. There are different ways to use these things for the good of all people, not just the people who can afford to take and build minds or logging operations. And if we can get to a point where we're not listening to those people anymore and we say, to hell with those people, we're going to go in this different way, kind of a stewardship version of capitalism, I think we could continue on indefinitely like that and make money for longer. It's a long view. It's a macro view. Exactly. And, ladies and gentlemen, that was a genuine Josh Clarke soapbox moment. We need a jingle for that. And did we ever get our stupid colon jingle? Or have we been just saying, like, insert colon jingle and speed last time? No, because I don't know when we listen to our quality assurance. Listens, I mean, it might come after that. I haven't been hearing them. I've never noticed it either. All right, Jerry, you're on notice. Yeah. All right. So now we get to the part and we're going to breeze through this a little quicker because I would just encourage you to go back to June 3, 2021, and listen to John Murray, sound outdoor enthusiast, because we covered it in depth there. But Mueller moved to California in 1868, about four years after Yosemite was a state park. He loved it and immediately began lobbying Congress to make it a national park, which it did, but it didn't include a lot of what is now Yosemite National Park, including the Mariposa Grove. And Yosemite Valley was still the state park. And he very famously went on a little buddy buddy camping trip with Teddy Roosevelt where Roosevelt was able to ditch his entourage and just the two of them camped in the woods for a weekend. And they came out and Roosevelt was like, I'm not sure what happened in there, you guys, but this guy works the magic on me. Alistair Crowley showed up. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to make it a national park. And so it was. I remember in the John Mirror episode, you kind of debunking that he managed to give the slip to Secret Service agents. Did I? There was something about it. There was something in there. I don't remember. We'll have to go back and listen. All right, so either way, he came out of the woods. That's the curse of 1500 episodes. That's right. And he came out and was basically national park and national monument crazy from that point on. Yeah. I think by the time his presidency was over, he had designated this is 18. I saw 17 different national monuments alone, which makes him second, actually, what they call it the National Park Service calls a national monument a national park. Any of those things are called units. So the most unit designating president of all time is Clinton. He did 19. And then Carter's third after Teddy Roosevelt was 15, I knew I was going to get to 19. It depends on the definition of what designate is. I wanted 20. I was one short. That guy. That guy. All right, so now Yosemite is a full national park. By 1916, there were 14 national parks in the low 20s for national monuments, and they were being managed. It was still kind of loosey goosey. There was the US. Forest Service. There were soldiers, including interestingly buffalo soldiers. Another great episode. Yeah. Man, this thing peppered with them. It's really kind of all over. And then civilian appointees, like, people would get jobs and get appointments to kind of work and manage national parks. Yeah. So in 1916, Congress was like, we got to clean this up a little bit. Who among us is going to come up with a term of art like dispersed camping? Nobody in charge of it right now. We need a bureaucratic service that's going to come up with that in the future. And they passed. And Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Organic Act of 1916, which basically said, hey, we've got a lot of great stuff that we're starting to preserve, and we need to make sure that there's an agency tasked with preserving it for future generations, and we're going to call that the National Park Service. And with that, the MPs was born. Yes. He said, who among you knows what all shades of green look like together? And they showed him, and he went, yeah. He's like, Just go with it. He said, well, no one else is going to paint their car that color, so we might as well use it, right? So should we talk a little bit about the Grand Canyon? Yeah, why not? Have you ever been? Yes. The Grand Canyon is amazing, especially the North Rim. It's incredibly beautiful. Although I haven't been in the canyon. And by the way, Chuck, we also did the Mystery of the Grand Canyon newlyweds, too. Yeah, I think at the time, I probably mention that I hiked halfway down, but did not have, like, camping or rafting reservations or anything, so we didn't go all the way down. There's a nice place about halfway down. We can just kind of hang out and then the hike back out up is really tough, by the way. It's not for the faint of heart. I was younger and fitter back then, and I was fine. And I also worked a TV commercial one time where they put probably 40 motor homes on the rim of the Grand Canyon for us to stay in. Oh, neat. Which was really interesting. How close to the room we were 50ft away. You go out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. If that's your jam, you go that way. It was a Michael Bay job. He got whatever he wanted. We couldn't waste time fearing people from the closest hotel, which was not close. So you may not have known it at the time, but those RVs parked along the rim of the Grand Canyon was actually Michael Bay's secret homage to Ralph Henry Cameron, the terrible senator and possibly worst American ever to live, who didn't involve murdering anybody. I can't tell any Michael Bay stories because I just don't want to do that in this publicly forum. But I will say this PA had six people to a motorhome. Michael Bay himself had three motor homes. Wow. All connected. They were all in a little triangle, and there was speculation about what each was for. And I'll just tell you later what we came up with. Okay, I can't wait. All right, but you mentioned sort of one of the villains in this great story, ralph Henry Cameron, who was in a senator in Arizona, and he owned a lot of land, including parts of the rim of the Grand Canyon and parts of the Bright Angel Trail, which is the trail that goes down. And he was making a lot of money and stood to make a lot more, and he was like, you can't do this. I'm charging people a buck a piece to go down that trail, which is about 1675 in today's dollars. And I've built a little that kind of halfway point I was talking about. He built a little oasis there. He did have hotels near the rim in the canyon. And they said, I'm sorry, but this is ours now. I guess it was an eminent domain play, right? Yeah. And they said, It belongs to us. Right. And by us, we mean the American people. Yeah, there's a distinction. It's not like Teddy Rose, this is my personal opinion, and I'm going to be charging the tolls here now. Yeah, exactly right. So Cameron was totally defiant, and it's not like he was just like some two bit toll operator charging a buck to everybody trying to get down in the canyon. He had hotels, I think he said. He was also involved in mining. He was exploiting this as much as he could, and he continued to do it even after Congress said, no, this is now a national park. He said, Nuts to your national park. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's a national park now. You need to stop all this operation. He said nuts to the Supreme Court. And then finally the La Times took an interest in him right before the 1926 election, his reelection bid for the Senate. And they, I guess, released a series of, like, ten articles that were really unflattering, but apparently all true. They just did some serious investigating. And this guy was like he was as big as a bad man. He was a kickback guy. He's like, hey, I'm a senator. Give me some money, and I'll get you whatever you want. That was the kind of representative he was. And so they outed him, and the good people of Arizona rose to the occasion and voted him out. Of office. Yeah. He was spreading rumors. He was telling lies. He had a family member appointed as the post office director for, I guess, whatever the post office is out there, and they were intercepting mail and opening mail, and they had to do things like encoded and in secret in the area just to get their messages through. Not a good dude. And like you said, it came back to bite them, and he lost. So that's why history probably doesn't remember him so much. Hurray democracy. That's right. So after he lost and after he went away, the Grand Canyon was an unfettered national park from that point on. That's right. Full of tourists, stopped tour buses. Yeah. And that park also, Chuck, is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Poor Rhode Island. Why is it always gets thrown in there? Well, it's a tiny state. It's a good reference point. It is not. I mean, when you stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon, it looks like you could fit a few Rhode Islands in that sliver, but it's pretty amazing. It's genuinely one of the most literally breathtaking things you'll ever see is when you first sort of walk out there and lay your eyes on it. Like, you can hear about it, see pictures of it, you can see drone footage of it, but until you're standing there, it's truly just breathtaking and all inspiring. And in that sense, Chuck, it's a really good example of what meets the criteria for a national park, because one of the things the National Park Service started doing when it was created was identifying what makes a national park and national park. Everybody wants some little beautiful slice of their neighborhood or their area, like, turned into a national park. It's preserved from that point on. It's amazing and beautiful when that happens, but that doesn't mean that it really kind of is a true national park. And one of the things that they've said, like, this would make an area national park would be something that is so unique and so significant, there may not be anything like it in the world. Whether it has to do with grandeur scope size. I know that there's some kinds of national parks that are set aside because they're, like, the only place that a kind of fossil can be discovered. Yeah. There's something called the Gate fossil beds in national park, I think, in Nebraska. And there are these two mounds that, for some reason, just escape glacial erosion. And so there's this perfect, undisturbed timeline of evolution on that corner of Earth. You just can't find that anywhere else on the planet. And so they're like this clearly qualifies as a national park. Yeah. And it's good to point out I know you found that cool stuff on Geodiversity, which is it basically means land forms and landscapes of an area. And if you go to Arches National Park or Devil's Tower National Monument or like you were talking about the fossil beds monument in Nebraska or cave systems, things like that. This is what geodiversity is. And it's a little less sexy as far as protection goes because it's not a cute little animal, and sometimes it's not as dramatic like as arches. Sometimes it is like a fossil bed, which may not be the most amazing thing to look at, but protecting these sites are super important to not only just preserve it, but to learn from it. Because once that's gone, it's gone. Yeah. And one of the things I ran across, this really cool quote from 1917, MPs worker said that geology is the anatomy of scenery. I think it's a really amazing way to put it. And what they're basically saying is it needs to be protected as much, if not more, as biodiversity does within these parks. From human activity, from exploitation, but also from climate change and other processes that we're going to see are becoming more and more of a challenge for national parks. But just the scenery alone in a national park is worth preserving because there's things like if you go to see Old Faithful, chuck and I've seen Old Faithful, we have something to talk about. There's a shared experience, even though we might have gone 50 years apart, we could probably based on your age. But that's a huge thing. Not everything has that. Or like they inspire awe. When's the last time you were moved to awe around Atlanta? You weren't. It just doesn't happen. These are unique landscapes, and the reason that they are unique is because of the geology. And so geodiversity, like biodiversity, needs to be protected as well as a concept. It makes sense. Yeah. And protection means sometimes you'll go to a national park years later where you're like, oh, I used to be able to go closer to this thing, and I can't do that anymore. You think about someone like, oh, I want to carve my name in this tree or on this rock, and you don't think about like, I've never done stuff like that. But people do that stuff. You don't think about tens of thousands or millions of people doing that over the years. And so they've had to kind of figuratively rope off a lot of this stuff as these arches become more fragile and things like that. So your access is going to be a little more limited than it once was, but it's all in the name of protection. Yeah, it's good stuff. So the westward stuff, like Yosemite's, El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley, and that amazing waterfall, which apparently, according to Backpacker magazine, you can see what are called mumbos from the waterfall. Miss at Yosemite. Did you know that? I've never seen one. I mean, I've spent a lot of time there. It sounds amazing. It sounds super cool. It's a rainbow that you see at night under a moon. Yeah, I can't imagine what that is like, right? Full moon, right? I would think so. At the very least. It would be even better in a full moon. But again, you're not going to see a mumbo around Atlanta or around Houston or Cleveland. The reason that these parks exist and the reason that they deserve protection is because they are unique and they do things to us that we haven't yet figured out how to put our finger on. We just know that they remove us somehow. And I read a quote, Chuck, from activist and writer named Terry Tempest Williams, and I think it puts it really well. She said that national parks are breathing spaces in a society increasingly holding its breath. I love that. I do, too. You're also not going to see a river on fire from pollution and garbage international park. It's all inspiring. Yeah. You're not going to see a Sicilian man dressed as a Native American turning and crying toward a camera in a national park. Got to go to Cleveland for that first thing, right? All right, well, maybe we should take a break. Should we take a break? Yeah, look, it sounds like a good point to stop. All right. We'll talk about what's going on out west and the very little going on here in the east when we get back. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. All right, so things are really cruising up through the 1920s out west. Zion and Bryce Canyon. You got glacier. You got yellowstone. You got yosemite. They're going hog wild on national parkland and back east. At that point, the only national park was Acadia National Park in Maine. And so Congress in the mid 1920 says, you know what? We should probably get rolling here in the Midwest and on the East Coast and designate some of this land, too, because it may not be quite as grand, but it's still pretty great. And national parks like in the Appalachian region, shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Mammoth Caves, things like that were designated, but they're like, but listen, we spent a lot of money out west, and we're not going to pony up to pay for all this land. So another gentleman steps forward at this point, john D. Rockefeller Jr. And said, hey, I've got a ton of oil money from my dad, and what better way to spend those illgotten gains than to help buy back a lot of this land? So he donated a ton. He donated $5 million to buy land for the Great Smoky Mountains. He got his charitable foundations involved to help raise more money for grand titan national parks and shenandoah. And pretty soon, he had covered a lot of this new land, like the financing behind it yeah. In today's dollars, just for a stand of sugar pines outside of Yosemite and the land for the smoky mountains national park, he ponyed up almost $100 million of his own money in today's dollars. That's amazing. Yeah, it really is. So, I mean, hats off to John D. Rockefeller and also hats off junior. Thank you. And hats off to FDR. Too, who around this time became president. And he saw in the new deal, the depression era new deal, where part of the purpose of which was to help alleviate the worst effects of the depression on Americans was to put people to work using federal funds, which to me is just one of the best things you could possibly spend federal funds on, is to help out of work Americans during particularly hard times. Totally. That's what the civilian conservation corps was about. Like, they would hire out of work men, in particular, aged 18 to 25, and put them to work. And one of the ways that they were put to work, one of the big ways they were put to work was basically establishing new national parks. Yes. Hundreds of thousands of these people were employed, and I think from 1933 to 1942, about 2 million enrollees worked at close to 200 of these camps in 94 national parks and monuments, and there's a couple of them, great Smoky mountains national park in North Carolina, Tennessee, and big bend in Texas were basically entirely created from work by CCC labor. Yes. And one of the things that they were also tasked with was creating visitor centers as part of the smoky mountains park and I guess Shenandoah too, or big band, I should say, but there weren't nearly enough visitor centers when the post war boom hit after world war II. And there were a bunch of Americans who suddenly were flushed with a lot more money, who spent it on cars and started hitting the road and saying, let's see these national parks for ourselves. Yes. And of course, that put a stress on the parks. So they launched mission 66, which was basically by 1966, which is the 50th anniversary of the NPS. We want to have a lot more of this under control because of the influx of people now who can afford to buy cars that are coming in. And one of those big things was visitor centers. Public services. When you go to these visitors centers, they have these great interactive exhibits and audio visual programming and stuff like that. That's as far as a lot of people go. They kind of drive around, and they'll go to these visitor centers, and they'll leave. Again, I recommend you sort of get a little more adventurous if you're able to, and kind of peel off from the pack. But that's just the way I like to do things. I'm not yucking. Anyone's yum. Sure. But by 1960 there was a pretty big concern about at least from conservationists, about the fact that, hey, the wolves have disappeared. Some of this land is too busy right now. And so in 1963 they got a committee together chaired by exactly the right person if you're a friend of the environment environmental scientist named A. Starker Leopold who drew up a report called Wildlife Problems in National Parks Forever to be known as the Leopold Report. Notice there's no colon in that title too. This is the pre colon era. He had no use for that. He was too busy trying to save the planet. Yes. So this Leopold report basically said, hey everybody, we are losing biodiversity. And everybody said, what's that? And they said, just give it a few years and everybody will know what that means. But our parks are in big trouble. We're losing a lot of animals. A lot of it we're doing ourselves, a lot of it is from human activity and encroachment and we need to start protecting the animals in the park. And so that became kind of like a guiding principle of the National Park Service. So much so that they formed the Biological Resources Division, which is in charge of wildlife management and all of the parks, which is really something because I don't think we've said yet, but the national parks in America comprise something like 84 million acres. Yeah. So the Biological Resources Division is in charge of 84 million acres of wildlife to make sure that everybody is okay in that. From Yogi Bear to the dancing bear at the visitor center at Yellowstone. That's right. And you mentioned the Olympic marmot. That is one of two animals that lives exclusively inside the bounds of a national park. The Olympic marmot. An Olympic national park. And the Shenandoah Salamander, you can guess where that one is. But it's an interesting the Leapole report. It was a pretty bold statement to basically say that. I think the quote is a national park should represent a vignette of primitive America. So Leopold's idea was like this needs to be like we found it and we need to preserve it or maybe even return it to that state where we have so far screwed up. Obviously just with people visiting, you're never going to get to that point. But it's a good lofty goal. I think it is. And again. One of the things they found out over the years is like. You know. There's this idea that Native Americans were just living on this untouched. Pristine land and all you had to do was remove the Native Americans and it would remain that way and they found out that. Oh no. Actually the Native Americans were actively managing these landscapes and now we have to go figure out how to do that from them. So that really set everybody back. But that's become part of the National Park Service mission as well. Yeah. And I think you can look no further than the reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone gray wolves. In 1995, they were hunted to extinction in the you're like, oh, why do you need wolves? Aren't they just going to threaten people? We talked about biodiversity before. It's really important to trickle down impact. It's called the Trophic cascade. And all of a sudden wolves are back. So the elk are like, oh, we can't just stay in one place and over graze, we got to get on the move. Right. And now they're not over grazing, so there's less erosion on the river banks, there are healthier grasslands. They're not overgrazing willow trees. So the beavers are like, hey, I can come back because I love those willow trees, I love to build dams. If you listen to our episode on beavers, you know that they are keystone species. So when the beavers are back, that means fish are back and mammals are back and birds are back. And this is all because they reintroduce the grey wolf. Yeah, which is pretty neat. I love this stuff like that, except I always feel bad for the prey animals that are like they go from being like, easygoing to scared all the time, but it helps everything else that they are. It's tough. Nature is tough. Yeah. So that Leopold report came out in 63 and unfortunately, it didn't solve all of the problems permanently. I don't know if it solves any problems, but it basically said, here's a bunch of problems and we need to wrap our heads around them and get them solved. Mainly figuring out how to protect the biodiversity and later on, the geodiversity in these national parks. But the stuff that it tasked the National Park Service with taking on has just gotten increasingly more difficult. More people visit the parks and whenever there's more humans, there's more trash, there's more wildlife encounters, there's more cars causing traffic jams, there's more need for reservations, and there's just much more problems, more visitors. You have it's like the national parks can be a victim of their own success sometimes. And then there's also other challenges too, that have nothing to do with the amount of people coming. Like, again, climate change is starting to pose a real problem. I saw somewhere that Glacier National Park may just be a name in 30 years that there's not going to be any glaciers left. And so one of the things the National Park Service, one of the services it provides, is being able to study these generally pristine preserved landscapes and see what's happening in the rest of the world, in nature, in our own backyard, in America. Yeah, absolutely. And they struggle because of underfunding and understaffing. And next time you hear someone in your family say, what a waste of money to throw this money toward national parks, like, just let them be. Go over there and tap them on the shoulder and say, it's a great investment. Actually, sir or ma'am. Yeah. Here's a little stat for you. In 2013, there were 273,000,000 visitors to National Park Service areas, and they spent about $14.6 billion in the communities near these places, to the tune of about 200,000 local jobs and a total of $26.5 billion back to the economy of the United States. If you do the math, the federal budget for the NPS is about 2.7 billion. So every dollar that is invested comes back tenfold in economic activity. And that, my friend, is a great return. Yeah, it definitely supports the idea of preserving land away from logging, mining, hunting interests. It's irrefutable right there. I love it. I love it, too. So we were talking about challenges. Though. Before that wonderful little economic stat. Though. And one of the challenges that the parks are facing is this. Like. A growing perception that doesn't seem to be rooted in reality. Statistically speaking at least. That national parks are actually. Like. Really dangerous places to be. And that they seem to be a place where you're likelier to die than. Say. Elsewhere in America. Which I don't think is true. Right? Yeah. There's a great article called National Park Murders. Hundreds Killed Missing. No one is talking from Emily Cantonar. This story kind of came about after the Gabby Potito story, of course. Her body, sadly, was discovered in Grand Titan National Park in 2019. The NPS chief said that there's basically 312 deaths per year in national parks, one for every 1 million visitors. So that's a pretty low number. Drowning is the leading cause of death. And there's vehicle accidents, falls, poisonings, wildlife encounters, natural causes, suicide, and then there are murders and sexual assaults in national park. They are pretty rare. But anytime someone gets murdered in a national park, it makes the news. And so it's sort of a pretty big story. It should not make you not want to visit them, but they're big open areas, and you can trust almost everyone when you go there. But anytime someone gets murdered, someone says it's the perfect place to do that, you're out in the middle of nowhere. You can get rid of a body so easily out there. Right. I think also because it's so rare, that's why it makes the news. And weirdly, it seems to amplify it, because I was looking up the stat I'm like is one death per million. Is that low? And it's super low. I was looking at Atlanta's murder statistics. So that's one death. You just said also drownings, poisonings, animal encounters. In Atlanta murders alone, there's 60 per million murders in a year. This is one death per million in a year in the national park entire national park system. So, yes, it is very lopsided and unfair to say the national parks are a dangerous place and that there's actually, like, a disproportionately high number of deaths and homicides. There's just patently untrue. Right. But you should be careful anytime you should camp with a buddy, if you can, and just be careful anytime you're camping, even it's not in the national park. Yeah, for sure. If you're looking at it is interesting because there is one stat that North Cascades National Park in Washington has 65 times higher death rate than any of the other parks. But they don't know why. I've kind of tried to find out and it seems like no one can really tell. It's the Atlanta of the National Park System, I guess. 65.2 deaths for every million people. No, that is definitely high and odd. So yeah, I guess just steer clear that one. No, but this is such a good idea and I think we should close on the fact that the world followed our lead. Right? Yeah. So I think we were saying that early on like, that yellowstone was the first in the world, but in very short order, the Australian said, hey, we're working on the same kind of thing, too. And they established one called the Royal National Park all the way back in 1879, I think. Yeah, not bad. Canada came along right after that. I think New Zealand followed suit after that. Then Europe got on board and then Africa got on board, and now there are more than 4000 national parks all over the world. Yeah, it was just a good idea. And I'd actually like to close with this, Chuck, because one of the huge challenges that are facing national parks is that the most popular national parks are super popular. I think like the 20 or maybe five or some crazy low number of national parks made up like 50% of visitor rates in 2021. It's really lopsided. So the National Park System is trying to be like, hey, don't forget this, it's national park. And here's another one over here you should check out. And I was reading about that and the Sierra Club has a proposal. It's make more national parks. You make a new national park and you advertise that there's a new national park. It's going to take away some of those people who would have otherwise gone to Yellowstone. And so more national parks is just a good idea all across the board. But it will also alleviate one of the big pressing problems, which is over attendance at certain parks. I love it. More national parks, everybody. Okay. That's what I say. Well, since Chuck said, that's what I say, of course that means it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this a repeated tangent. It happens every now and then. Hey guys, listen to the episode on the Cha chilly bus kidnapping. And Josh tells Chuck a story and a tangent about seeing Robert Colette on TV would make Elvis so Maddie Shoot appliances immediately remembered an older stuff you should know computer addiction. Josh told Chuck the same tangent about seeing Robert delay on TV, and I was listening to that episode when I moved my life from a small town in Arkansas to Louisiana. And that tangent in Chuck doing an Elvis impression made me laugh so hard that I literally had soda coming out of my nose. Ouch. I feel bad that I didn't do the Elvis impression this time, too. That's okay. You've done it before. Of course I have. Man. Thinking about this repeated tangent, put into perspective that I've been a listener since I was in college seven years ago, through three job changes, six moves. Thank you for all the good times and all the good information, but my girlfriend and everyone else I share tidbits with probably wouldn't call it good information. Blue to them. So connor C in Chicago. You might want to rethink the people you're hanging out with. He almost did it. Chuck went right up to the edge, kind of right up to the canyon rim. You take it from there? I did. Well, if you want to be like Connor and get us to tell you to rethink your life, you should email us, like Connor. You can wrap it up, send it in an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You 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 leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
904426ba-5461-11e8-91bb-4f674388a893 | SYSK Selects: How Munchausen Syndrome Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-munchausen-syndrome-works | Why would someone fake an illness? Here's an even better question: Why would someone repeatedly make themselves sick? Join Josh and Chuck as they separate the facts from fiction and give you the scoop on Munchausen syndrome. | Why would someone fake an illness? Here's an even better question: Why would someone repeatedly make themselves sick? Join Josh and Chuck as they separate the facts from fiction and give you the scoop on Munchausen syndrome. | Sat, 05 Jan 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=5, tm_isdst=0) | 38245032 | audio/mpeg | "Howdy everybody? It's February. No, it's not. It's modern times, but this is a throwback to February when Josh and I released our episode on Monkhouse and Syndrome. It's very fascinating when here everyone really interesting condition and very sad as well. But you should be delighted to learn all about Monkhouse and Syndrome today. So I hope you enjoy it. It's a pretty interesting one and that's why I picked it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, it's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know the podcast if you didn't know. How's it going? It's going great. Your nails are still shiny. I got my first manicure last week and I went for the clear coat and I didn't know undercoat. No, it's an overcoat. Yeah. I didn't know this about Chuck, but he bites his nails, so he has very shiny, well trimmed, half nail, stubs little bleedy cuticles. It's like you have some sort of, like, keratin deficiency or something. Let's go with that. But it's very shiny. Or like the keratin you do have is radioactive. Yes. Or I could fake, like I have a keratin deficiency. Speaking of faking, Chuck, that's just amazing that you said that word, because we're going to talk about a syndrome wherein people, perfectly healthy people at least, who start out healthy, fake their own illness. Bear with me. Yeah. Okay. Have you seen the movie the 6th Sense? Yes. Have you seen the television show The OC? No. You've never seen the OC? No. I used to be hooked on that show. Really? Oh, yeah. Is that why you got rid of TV? Yeah, it's ruining my life. Right. I can't remember the girl's name in The OC, but she plays the girl in the 6th sense who dies and who shows up to Haley Joel Osmond's character. Is it Misha Barton? Like the lead girl? Yeah. Really? She was the little girl in that she was she had a vomit and remember, she was, like, hanging outside of his tent, scaring the tar out of him. Out of me, too. Well, yeah, but she turned out to be okay. She's a little upset that her mom was feeding her pine salt. Right, right. And she eventually dies. She videotaped herself. I hope everyone's seen the 6th cents. If you haven't. I'm actually not really spoiling it there's. Spoil it way worse than this. But she videotapes her mother poisoning her soup with pine salt, and her mom is outed for having what's called munchausen's by proxy. And that's a derivative of what's called Munchausen syndrome. Right? Munchausen. That's another way to put it. Yeah. They also call it FII. Have you heard of that? Factitious? Close. Fabricated or induced illness? Where's the other FII? FII induced illness. Yeah. My brain didn't function correctly, but yeah, you were going to say facetious disorder, which is what it is. Factitious. Oh, is it factitious? Yeah, I feel like a dummy now. I was like, yeah, it is. Pretty facetious. I remember when I came across the word facetious. I used it in my everyday vocabulary or tried to, but I was reading it in books here or there and never put the two together. So finally I'm like, what is that word? And I sounded it out and fastidious. I was like, oh, that's fastidious. Oh, yeah. No, fastidious. Is that what you're thinking? No. Okay. It's like facet, like the facet of a diamond IOUs. And this is fastidious. I've been reading this wrong. No, this is factitious. Factitious. I'm a dummy. Jerry's in there shaking her head. Should we keep this in? Yes, I think so. Okay. All right, let's do this. Okay, so this is a monkhouse, or as you say, monkhouse syndrome is a really mysterious disorder. People imagine it's extremely rare, but we have no idea how prevalent it is, because one of the hallmark characteristics of Munchausen syndrome is that it's dishonesty. Right? Like, you don't want to admit you have it. That's the whole point. No, to define it. It's where somebody who is not ill either fakes an illness or makes themselves intentionally ill in order to be able to go seek medical care and or sympathy and empathy from friends, neighbors, relatives for having an illness inflicted upon them. Like Fight Club. Remember the children, Ed Norton and Helena Bonham Carter visit support groups for illnesses to get attention and feel a part of a club, I guess. Right? Exactly. And that's actually there's a new thing called monk housing by internet. Yeah, that's a big one. And that's like a new deal where you go online to online support groups and feign being sick just to feel like you're fitting in, I guess. Right. And it is sad, but as we'll figure out, munchausen by Internet is actually kind of provides somewhat less harmful sucker to people who need that. Right. So you're still feeding this pathological illness. It's not mental illness, but mentally, it's just as dangerous. Physically, it's not right, because you're getting what you want, what you crave what you need, which is that attention and that sympathy, but you're not having to inject gasoline to get it, and you're not going to the doctors, and you're not running up insurance premiums that shouldn't be there, and all that bad stuff that happens with the real monk housing. Well, let's talk about the history of this. Well, 1951, I think, was when it was first described by Richard Asher in The Lancet. Right. That's when it first got its name. Okay. I read somewhere that there's, like, biblical accounts of people basically doing harm to themselves to get attention. Well, I don't want to say it makes sense, but it makes sense that it goes back that long, because what better way, if you're very lonely, than to get people to feel sorry for you than to jump in a wheelchair all of a sudden or something. Right? A prehistoric wheelchair. Exactly. Or at least so he named it in The Lancet, and he named it after, of course, Baron von Monkhousen, who was the 18th century German military man who apparently went off to fight the Russians, turks. The Turks, and came back with all these fanciful stories that people thought were largely probably made up to get attention. Right. And there's this Munchausen appreciation society who actually liked the guy and like the tales, and they've been able to pin three tales to the actual Baron Munchausen. Oh, really? But there's whole books of what he supposedly these tales he supposedly told, and then Terry Gilliam got a hold of them. Well, yeah, of course, we'll be remiss without saying that former Monty Python alum made that great movie. Did you see it? Yeah. The adventures of Baron Monkey. It was good. It seemed good. I think it was, uma, Thurman's first role, if I'm not mistaken. Was she in it? Yeah. That's very neat. Very young. Uma, from the adventures of baron munchausen to super mom, my super ex girlfriend. Yeah. What was the one where she's a mom, though it came out even more recently. I don't know. She's been in a bit of a tail spin lately. We like, uma, though, uma, and Oprah. That's a classic bit. We should probably get back to the serious timber. Yes. We should point out that it is not hypochondria, because hypochondriacs actually believe that they're sick. And people with monk housing disorder, they know they're not sick. They're trying to pretend that they're sick. Right. I don't know if you call it a disorder. There's another state of mind that someone can be in called malingering, and that's where you pretend to be sick, either for financial gain or to get out of work. Like maybe from Arrested Development when she had that alter ego who is wheelchair bound and raised a bunch of contributions for her. I think everyone's malingered at one point or another if it's to get out of work. Right. I guess even just sending an email like, yeah, that's malingering. Yeah. In fact, the next time I do that, I'm going to just put in the subject line malingering and see if anyone even notices what that means. That's way worse than or it sounds way worse than playing hookie. Malingering. Right. Sounds like you're defrauding somebody. So why would someone do this? Well, there's a lot of reasons. The underlying part of the disorder is that it's psychological, they believe. Right, right. It's part of a personality disorder. And there's a number of risk factors that people who have Munchausen syndrome tend to exhibit. Like, they either lost a parent while they were young or they were abandoned by a parent. Another big one they may have had some sort of prolonged childhood illness, is one somer want to be doctors and nurses. Yes. They maybe couldn't get a job in the medical profession or never wanted to try hard enough because it's kind of hard to do that. Sure. It's easier to just hurt yourself, fake it before you make it, and then you've got sexual, physical, emotional abuse. This provides some sort of outlet, I guess. Really the easiest way to understand it is these people who need attention, who need to be taken care of, who just need more than they're willing to ask for overtly have found an easy street between where they are and where they need to be as far as attention goes. Well, it's interesting you say that, because they do point out passive aggressive personality. And a lot of people, if you could just teach them, like, if you need more support and love, then you should be able to ask for that. But this is like the ultimate and passive aggressive, I think, right, exactly, exactly. So when you're addressing one child syndrome, you would usually treat it like you would depression or anxiety. Right. And just kind of approach it from that route. Sure. And I imagine probably as well as using cognitive behavioral therapy, where it's like, no, no, don't do that anymore. Don't eat that salt. Snap the rubber band on your wrist. Exactly. Remind yourself wrist if you're lucky. What else are we talking about, Chuck? Oh, some more defining characteristics. Usually people who have Munchausen syndrome are young or middle aged, although there is a record of a guy who is pretty much a Munchausen patient his whole life. He became famous. Oh, yeah, we're going to get tim. Right? Is that the cherry? And then, so what do they do? I mean, how do you feign illness? Well, this is where it gets really interesting, because it goes anywhere from just lying. But it's not just a lie. It's usually very specific. Like, they say that any symptom that can't be proven medically is what they'll usually use. And they always say it's very specific, like textbook symptom that they clearly read from a book. So they said, hey, if I say that I'm this, this and this, then I can get this attention. But the problem is if these doctors use these same physician desk references, so they go, look up this and this, and they go, oh, well, it's probably this. Right. So I'm going to treat it with Nitroglycerin. The problem is, if you're faking these three symptoms and the Nitroglycerin doesn't have any effect, that you raise some red flags for your physician or nurse. Right, absolutely. That's a big problem with Munchausen syndrome, is that eventually people are going to start to get suspicious. Right. And you're lying too. So it's not like you can just hide behind your conviction. You're hiding behind a lie, which I think is much more stressful. Well, they'll go even further. I mean, that's just the basic lies told. People will also physically inflict harm upon themselves. Everything from, well, this isn't really harm on yourself, but like heating up your thermometer. Right. Tampering with stuff like Henry and E t. Yeah. He clearly had Munchausen. He's trying to get out of school, though, so he was really malingering okay. To stay with et. Yeah. But that is something that they will do. Injecting yourself with toxins, tainting your urine samples, which you can use anything for that. I mean, even like a little salt in your urine will change things. Blood. If you put a little blood in your urine or your stool taking medications you shouldn't be taking yeah. Or just poisoning yourself in any way, shape or form. But apparently injecting is fairly common. And then you said also when you were talking about fainting illness and choosing specific symptoms, they may also take a different route and choose very broad symptoms like chest pain or nausea or something like that. It could be anything. Yeah. That'll just tie a doctor up for hours if not days, which is what they want is more and more attention. Right. It's like, oh, you're going to have to come in tomorrow too. They're probably like sweet. Right. And one of the reasons that tying a doctor up is just great is because within those hours, this doctor is going to get more and more baffled and order more and more tests. Right. And if the doctor is paying attention, he or she would notice that the Munchausen patient is more than happy to do this next test. Like, sure, stick that there, or maybe even suggest it. Like, shouldn't you do this test and stick that there? Those are two characteristics or two symptoms of Munchausen syndrome is that you are very willing, if not eager to undergo any and every test that they want to do. Why is most people are probably like, do you have to do that? Are you sure? Is there another thing to do? Right. And then extensive knowledge about tests and procedures and symptoms and the inner workings of a hospital. Those two things should be big red flags if you are a physician and you suspect you're having kind of trouble dealing with somebody's symptoms, but not because you're dumb, because you're trying everything. Well, yeah. And inconsistency is one thing to look for in your medical history. If they say, well, you're in here for high blood pressure. You were in here last year for low blood pressure. Right. So that's a little weird. Yeah. Because I think I would imagine if you're getting what you need, and especially if it's like a standard kind of pathological behavior where it builds up and up. Like, remember we talked about Kleptomania? Like the urge just builds up and builds up until it becomes irresistible. And afterwards there's this catharsis and then the guilt or whatever. I didn't see it anywhere. But if Munchausen syndrome is like that, one would imagine that you kind of lose touch with your previous lies, I would imagine. And you're not looking at it as a big picture thing like this for the rest of my life. It's very like, let's do it now and get this done and get this over with. And maybe if they actually sat down and saw their medical history sheet, they'd say, right, need to take this in a different direction. I read an account of a guy who feigned bereavement. It was called fictitious bereavement. And he showed up at the hospital and was committed for four weeks because he was grieving over the car accident death of his wife seven weeks earlier and the heart attack death of his mother three weeks earlier. And then he was interviewed. He was giving a family history, and three of his 14 siblings had died young from things like throat cancer, some other accident, another thing. And they started asking this guy more and more questions, and he wouldn't produce, like, a photo of his wife, and he wouldn't let anybody talk to his family. Right. And they started to get kind of suspicious. Finally contacted, found out who his family was, contacted his mother, who was alive. His eleven siblings were all doing well. He didn't have 14, and three hadn't died. And he was never married. And when they confronted him with this stuff, he just continued to lie and lie and lie. There's a pathological lying aspect to Munchausen, which is called pseudological fantastica. Well, you brought up an important point, not letting family be involved. That's a big tell, too. If you say, you know, you should probably bring your husband in. No, no, no, we don't need to involve him. Right. Or he's dead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You don't want to talk to him. He's dead. It's not funny at all. So that's Munchausen syndrome. There's a high risk of suicide with Munchausen. Probably accidental suicide. I mean, people that go too far by accident, or they just come to the end of the rope. I hadn't thought about that. I heard coming to the end of the rope is terrible. I would mean it like that 30% to 70% is what I saw. But I don't know, maybe it would be accidental suicide. Interesting. I don't even know if there's such a thing, but there's also all sorts of other myriad problems that arise from Munchausen syndrome. Right. Like real illness. Like, if you're a Munchausen sufferer happily, you can eventually make yourself genuinely ill from injecting toxins and stuff. I read another account of a guy who suffered a number of amputations, medical amputations. He was missing, like, pieces of his fingers. He would have body parts removed, his toes. He forced the doctors to do it. He would cut himself. He kept a little knife and a little bag of liquid feces on him at all times because his thing was to cut and then smear poop on the cut to make sure it got infected, let it faster, go seek medical attention. It was far too late and have his limbs amputated. Have his extremities amputated. Wow. But apparently the cut and smear, he's not the only one doing that. The cut and smear. That's what I've dubbed it. I was about to say if it has a name. No, I just made up that. Okay, well, that's what I'd call it. Cut and smear. Well, clearly one of the biggest problems, too, is not just the harm you're doing yourself, but you're tying up doctor's time. You're spending money. If not your money, maybe it's Medicare or whatever insurance carrier you have. It's very wasteful, and it's taking up time. Doctors have to treat real patients when you need to be treated by a mental health professional, is what you need. And a lot of these guys, too, when you're talking about tying up physicians time, they'll go at times when there's different staff, lesser staff. So, like, weekend nights, holidays, that kind of thing. So when they tie up because there'll be different people who haven't met them before and are familiar with them. So when they're tying up people's time, they're really tying up their time. No good. So that's traditional monk housing, which is bad, but it gets worse. Monk housing by proxy. Right. 20 years after the guy Richard Asher richard Asher coined the term one child syndrome, another guy named Roy Meadows coined the term Munchausen syndrome by proxy. And that one is not as readily recognized as real as Munchausen syndrome. Oh, really? Yeah. Did you run into that? Recognizes what do you mean? Yeah. Scientifically proven. I think the way that I'm seeing it is it's viewed by some as more like remember the Satanic worshiper hysteria of the 80s? It kind of falls into line with that. Although this is much more established than that is like, the AMA recognizes it. The American Psychological Association recognizes it. Right. But it's a lot more easily misconstrued than one child's syndrome is because there's another person who's being harmed. Yeah. And because they're usually children. Right. Well, yeah, this is the deal. It's usually children, but not always. It's basically you're a caregiver to somebody, and you are maybe poisoning them. You maybe are smothering them so they develop breathing problems. There's all sorts of awful, abusive things that you can do to bring your child in. And that's when you talk about getting sympathy, is when you run into a hospital with your baby saying, my baby is sick. My baby is sick. Or even worse, a dead baby. Yeah. And that happens, sadly, all the time. Well, the first two cases that the guy Meadows, doctor Roy Meadows described, one of them was a dead kid, little 14 month old Charles, whose mom had been feeding him salt and kept bringing him back to the hospital, and doctors had no idea what was going on, and eventually he died. The other one was a little girl, right? Yeah. Her name was Kay, and she was six. And she was admitted twelve times for a urinary tract infection, treated with all kinds of antibiotics and none of them ever worked. And that's obviously the doctors were like, something's going on here, or at least Roy Meadow was. Well, he wrote a study about both of these cases, called it Munchausen by Proxy and just basically changed everything. He took this fairly obscure disease and turned it into this huge, almost hysterical entity. One of the problems is if you are suspected of this, at least in the States, and I think the UK is big on it too, but if you're suspected of this, all a physician has to do is say, called Family and Children's Services or whatever you call it, county or State, and say, I think I have a 1000 case here. A social worker comes, takes your kid, and then you go through the hoops to prove that you don't have it. Right. The burden of proof is on the parent who's been accused. Yeah. This is a tricky one. Very. We'll talk about this doctor. Well, we could talk about them right now. Southall. Yeah. Doctor David Southall in England, very controversial guy who conducted some hidden video experiments, surveillance in the 90s in hospitals. So what he would do was he would videotape these parents inflicting harm on their kids for cases that they suspected it was mughousing. Right? And in the end, he got 33 of these 39 suspected abusers were prosecuted, 23 were diagnosed with FII. And you think, well, that's awesome, but it's also like you're videotaping someone doing harm to a kid. It was very controversial. And this guy has been removed and put back on the list, the GMC General Medical Council, which means you can practice medicine in England. He's been on and off of this thing for years. And I think just this year he was finally reinstated again. Right. They finally said we're not going to go after this guy anymore. Yeah, but tell about the big documentary. Well, he accused these parents publicly of killing their two sons based on a TV documentary he saw on them. Yeah, well, the woman was already convicted of killing the sons. Right. And then he was watching the documentary and said, you know, I think the husband Steven was the guy. And then that was that. A huge inquisition was long. This guy's life was turned up upside down and there were a lot of accusations like that. I get the feeling from this guy that he was one of those if you look for it, you're going to find it kind of guys. Right. Think about the prevalence in one hospital that he was able to document 39 total that he was spying on, 33 were prosecuted. He was able to document 33 cases of Munchausen by proxy. That means the prevalence is like probably more than half of the global population suffers from Munchausen by proxy. In that case, if that's the case, you know what I mean? Well, I thought these were special cases he was surveilling. Now I don't know. I don't think it was just random. Okay, well, that would definitely change the ratio, but still thanks for that. But still, I don't even know what I meant by that. There are people also out there who question if Munchausen by proxy does exist. Oh, really? Yeah. Apparently there's a lot of accusations that fly at parents of autistic kids. There's a sub term that's been coined called asperger's by proxy. Really? Yeah. And there's a lot of autistic parents who are like, oh, yeah? Is that what you're thinking? Oh, so not saying my kid is sick, like ill with physically ill, but my child has asperger's. Yeah. And the physicians are like, no, your kid doesn't. It's you. You're doing this too. You're developmentally delaying your kid for attention or whatever. Right. Again, if it does exist, clearly the kid needs protection from the parent. This is the parent almost every time is doing it. I think 98% of the time it's the mom. But you're also running the risk of taking a kid away from perfectly normal parents. Right. And apparently the other big bonus contention is the people who make this diagnosis almost every time is a pediatrician. Right. Not a psychiatrist or psychologist. All a pediatrician has to do is pick up the phone and say, I think I got a Munch housing case here. Get over here. Get this kid. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's important. You said 98% of the time is by the mother, and that's what is going on. Most times, the cases are all sort of the same, and there's a woman who's generally responsible for the stay at home parenting. Maybe the husband is not very involved in giving them enough attention. And one way to stop that in its tracks is to make your baby sick. Yeah, that's what happened with this one lady, Mary Beth. Timing between 72 and 85. All nine of her children died, and she was very distraught and got lots and lots of sympathy, was arrested in 86, and it turns out that she had smothered her children with a pillow. And then they asked the husband, and he said, quote, you have to trust your wife. She has her things to do, and as long as she gets them done, you don't ask questions. So that's kind of the typical case of this uninvolved husband. Clearly. Uninvolved husband. That's beyond uninvalled. That's like apathetic. Yeah, exactly. Almost. That's allegedly apathetic. Allegedly. And she was convicted for real in 87 incentives to 20 years. And that's one of the saddest cases I've ever heard. There's another one. Juanita Hoit. You know. Sid sudden infant death syndrome still is a medical mystery. But there was a time when they thought that it ran in families and they were hot on the trail of explaining SIDS as like a genetic disorder. And it was based on a woman named Juanita Hoyt. Who had six children. Died between 1965 and 1971. And her primary physician wrote a study that kind of made a name for himself as a career as an expert on SIDS based on this woman's experience. And in the guess, a local prosecutor heard about this story and was suspicious and started digging around, and it turned out that this lady had killed her kids, all six of them. That's awful. But not only had killed her kids, had also derailed the investigation of SIDS. Yeah, exactly. Also raised a lot of questions of what does account for SIDS? Is there such a thing as SIDS? Is it all cases of mothers killing their children? Right. There's a lot of questions about what percentage of mysterious infant deaths are related to foul play. Well, and that's just a prime example of all the ramifications that monk housing has not just on your child, but, like, diverting the path of medical research. Yeah. Not only that, though, Chuck, again, we keep coming back to imagine being a parent who lost your kid. You have no idea how. Right. And now other people are accusing you of killing your kid. Right. Okay. So, Chuck, if the idea that Munchausen by proxy does exist, as I said, is endorsed by the AMA and the APA, what are some of the symptoms of it by proxy? Yeah, one of the things is that the symptoms don't match the test results. One thing is, sometimes a caregiver is actually a nurse or works in the health care industry. They could be siblings. The child might have died under weird circumstances, kind of the same as the adult thing. There's mysterious, unexplained symptoms that aren't going away, not bizarre medical history. All these things are red flags. And there's also it's prevalent in health care workers. Remember, with Munchausen syndrome, you wanted to be a health care worker. In Munchausen by proxy, you may be a health care worker. Yes. Oh, you did? Yes. Okay. Well, you said, you know, like, the Angels of Death, that's a type of munchausen by proxy. Oh, really? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. People who, like, kill the elderly. There's a doctor, I think the United Kingdom's most prolific serial killer was a physician who just dispatched his patients. He was, like, treating them, but really killing them. Yeah. And he killed a lot of people. Well, speaking of a lot of things we can't close without talking about, William, how do you pronounce that? Michael Hoy. Yeah. He is in the Guinness Book of World Records, actually, because he had 400 operations in 100 different hospitals to the tune of $4 million. Because it's Britain. It's all subsidized healthcare. Right. So that's a lot of dough going to this one guy. And he didn't have any of these things. He was a monkhouser. Can I say that? I think you can. It's not funny because he eventually died. Well, actually, he just died in. A retirement home. So it doesn't really say that he might have died for many of his treatments. Yeah. I wonder though, was he a monkouser? Cut and smear. Cut and smear. Monkhouse 400 operations. He was cutting and smearing something. I've got one for you. So remember we talked about one chauvin by Internet? Yeah. So there was like the first description came in the 90s. Obviously you can't have 1000 by Internet before the Internet was around. You'd be very far ahead of your time. But very quickly, right off the bat, there was a huge what was first term by The New York Times as a hoax. There was a little 19 year old, spunky, very positive 19 year old named Casey Swenson who lived in Kansas, and she kept The New York Times referred to in 2001 as a web log right. Of her battle with leukemia, which she lost in May 2001. And she had this huge following of people who really genuinely cared and were supportive of her and were pulling for her and let her know. And then in May 2001, they went to the web log and found news that Casey had died. And I don't know who exactly got suspicious, but people started looking at Casey's mother, who actually turned out to be Casey. There was no Casey Ever. Wow. This woman just created this whole fictitious character that had leukemia and who died and received like, cards and presents and flowers and condolences for a kid that never existed. If I was going to fake something on the Internet, I would fake that I'm awesome. What do you think we're doing right now exactly? I would be like the Walter Mini style. I would just make up these awesome stories about myself. But, I mean, this is a real mental disorder. I'm not making life that same. Well, you guys should just choose to be awesome instead of sick. Yeah. No, I'm not saying that. No, I don't think that. I sincerely hope no one took it like that. No, you'd be surprised with these emails. And then lastly, I ran across a case of a double munchausen case, munchausen and Munchausen by proxy in the same mother daughter duo. The mother used to inject her daughter with her daughter's knowledge with bacteria and have been doing it for so long. The daughter had both kidneys removed and was on full dialysis. So she was in on it too? Basically, yeah. The mother had Munchausen by proxy and she just had and the daughter was both a Munchausen by proxy victim and a munch munchausen. Yes. Well, before you send an email about the X Files and Eminem sorry, Mama. Yeah, all three of them here do your M and M. I'm sorry, Mama, that's all I do. Eminem had a lyric that said, going through public housing systems, victim of Munchausen syndrome. My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't. And it was on The X Files. They investigated Munchausen by proxy. Yes. I don't remember that one, do you? No, I don't remember that either. I was always into the real plotline arc of the whole series. Was okay with the Smoking man and all that. Yeah. And the molder sister. I liked how they mixed it up, though. But I liked the just stand alone. Like there's a shape shifter in the forest. Right. Or Ponce de Leon's men are still living in Florida because they discover the fountain, they turn in a little invisible. Weirdos. I didn't watch the show at the time, but the standalone ones were like, scoobydoos, hint, hint. But I didn't watch that show when it was on for real at all. And then when it went into reruns, Monday through Friday, I watched it the whole series in a year. Good. Yeah. Those two those movies were pretty good, too. Yeah. That's it for this episode on The X Files. If you want to learn more about it, type X Files. Munchausen. Type Munchausen. Do you want to spell it for me? Yeah, it's M-U-N-C-H-A-U-S-U-S-E-N. Do it again. M-U-N-C-H-A-U-S-E. Nausen. Yes. And I should have done a Bella, the first one. Oh. Because I missed it. Okay, you can type that into the search bar@housetofworks.com to learn more about this mysterious and extremely fascinating disease. And until then, let's do some listener mail. Josh, this is maybe a weird listener mail to put at the end of this one. Are we doing it on this one? This is a very special listener mail. Okay. And everyone should listen to this one because it's pretty cool. Are we going to put a drum rolling at all? I think we should at some point. Okay. Doug lives in North, Idaho. Doug and I were writing back and forth last week about fishing, trout fishing. Okay. Remember how it started? But it started okay. And I fish for trout here and there in North Georgia. It's sort of fun. I'm not, like, the hugest fisherman, and Doug is an avid, I think, fly fisherman. Okay. So we were just kind of chitchatting, and he said that he and his girlfriend Keena, he got her hooked on the show. And he said, I know you'll never read this, and Keena's just making fun of me right now. Right? I said, you tell Keena to shut it. That's not very nice. And he wrote back and said, she's laughing that we're emailing. And he said, Shut it, and this is the best thing ever. And he said, but, guys, her birthday is February 2, and I got a plan that I want to hatch. So right now, as you people are listening, I don't know about right this second, but over the next day on February 2, at some point, doug is in his car. He's with Keena right now. How's it going and she's probably going, what's going on here? This is weird. She's laughing nervously. She's laughing. Maybe, like, trying the door handle to see if it's locked. But Doug is actually the one who is nervous because Doug has something very important to say, and that is Keena. He would like you to be his wife. He's asking you to marry him right now. We sort of are. But we're not marrying you. It's actually Doug. And this is a first for us. This is a marriage proposal right here on the show somewhere in Idaho. Tina should hopefully have a ring on her finger at this point, don't you think? What do we do with the answer is no. Yes. I guess we'll hear from Doug. Yeah. We won't break it to people, though. I think we should go ahead on the premise that she says yes. All right, so what else can we say? I can't believe we just said that. Yeah. Doug the trout fisherman is marrying Keena, and congratulations. Mazeltov again. Right? Yeah. Where do we go from here? I don't know. It's like we should probably just fade out with us wondering. I guess so. Send us an email, right? Yeah. Stuffpodcasthowstuffs.com. Holy cow. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House of Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 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/2017-10-12-sysk-buildering-final.mp3 | How Buildering Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-buildering-works | Up until recently we had no idea buildering was a word. Or that people scaling buildings has been a thing since the turn of the 20th Century. Learn along with us, and don't try it at home. | Up until recently we had no idea buildering was a word. Or that people scaling buildings has been a thing since the turn of the 20th Century. Learn along with us, and don't try it at home. | Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:06:36 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=15, tm_min=6, tm_sec=36, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=285, tm_isdst=0) | 44705822 | audio/mpeg | "Attention, celebrity listeners. Hope that got your attention. Hey, everyone, this is Chuck, and as some of you have heard, I have announced that I have a new solo podcast coming out in November called Movie Crush the Show, where I interview your favorite people about their favorite movie. And that's a long and short of it. It's really cool. I've had a bunch of guests in the studio and just had a nice chat about movie fandom in general and what their favorite movie is and why, and I need more guests. So if you are a stealthy celebrity listener, if you're an actor or a writer or producer director, if you're a musician, if you are a book author, I've had all kinds of people in the studio, and that's kind of the point, is to hear from neat folks of all walks of life. If you are out there and you want to be on Movie Crush, I would love to have you. If you're in Atlanta or going through Atlanta with a movie project, that's great. If not, we have partner studios in La. And New York, and we can work it out. If you live in a flyover state, even, let's say so, hit me up. Just send me an email to moviecrush@howstoughworks.com and put in the subject line movie Crush guest. And I'll know it's you, and I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun, trust me. And here's two recording podcasts together. Thanks. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland. And this is stuff you should know. I'm trying out some new stuff. The two least extreme guys covering yet another extreme sports topic. I'm extreme in my easy going. Extremely easy going, extremely laid back. Yeah. I always feel weird when we do base jumping and parkour. I just feel wholly unqualified. It's a great way to start out a show, right? Sure. Don't listen to a word that we say. But no, these things always have, like, the coolest backstories, and there's always, like, a handful of people who just take it to the next level, and there's always, like, underground, like, upstarts. It's like, all of those things. So I find these pretty interesting. I wouldn't want to just focus on these entirely. I think we'd both be dissatisfied with our work, but excest with Josh and Chuck. Yeah, actually, yeah, see, no, I'm disregarding it, but I like them still. Yeah. I think the history for sure of this is super interesting. Yeah. And if you aren't familiar, we didn't misspell the title of this episode. Buildings, actually a combination of buildings, like you walk into, maybe eat lunch in, possibly do some work, go on to Facebook and take it to work. Sure, yeah. You can do those in some buildings. Get chased out of the basement via ghost. There's a lot of things that can happen with a building everybody knows what a building is. Then there's also something called bouldering, which is climbing huge, enormous rocks. Basically, it's like rock climbing, but it's like rather than a mountain or a cliff face or something like that, it's an actual boulder, like a huge, giant boulder. And I think it's harder than rock climber. It can be, depending on the boulder, I'm sure. But if you put those two things together, you get this new term, this relatively new term called building, and it is basically climbing those buildings that we mentioned before. Yeah, I didn't know this was a term, either. Honestly, I didn't. Because when I saw it, I went, huh? Did you? Yeah. Outline. And then it sucks you into the article, and you said, I've got to learn more about this. Well, yeah, and then when I clicked on it, I said, oh, these are just those wackos who climb tall towers illegally. Right. Mostly illegally. You got all that right. It's illegal almost across the board. The buildings they usually climb are tall, especially the ones that get pressed. And every single person who does this is a wacko. Yeah. And we'll go over this, but a lot of times we'll get arrested and stuff. The same as the tightrope walker, that wacky French guy. What was his name? Yeah, the guy who walked between the World Trade Center towers. Man On Wire I think we've gone over this. Man on Wire. Great documentary. Very bad movie. Was it? Dude, I just don't know what they did to Ron John's eyes. Ron John. What's his name? Not Ron John. The surf. Donsh. Don. John. Don John. Yes. Remember he made a movie about a guy who was addicted to Internet porn but started dating Scarlett Johansson. What? Yeah, don John. Don Juan, wasn't it? No, I think it was John. Okay. You're thinking of Don Juan DeMarco, which was a great movie, but you're talking about JGL. I didn't know. You're talking about a character that's like the guy's not called any of those things. No, but he wrote that movie that was like his movie, his baby. That was pretty good. They said, what do you want to do? You can do anything you want. And he's like, Well, I have this one idea. I want to make out with Scarlett Johans. I liked him in Third Rock from the sun. I never saw that. It was a surprisingly good sitcom, actually, and it was pretty well written and well acted. Stellar cast. Well, yeah. Anything with what's his face in it, I'm super into. Yeah, everybody loves what's his face. I know who you're talking about. Sure. What's his face. I'm blanking on everything. You know, we should tell people we're recording in the morning. That's why my brain is so foggy. I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah, it's going to make a substantial difference. It's going to really drag this one down, I think. We haven't done that in a long time. No, for good reason. It's John Lithgow that you're thinking? That's right. But I'm also drunk, so hopefully it'll from the night before. From last I thought you stunk. Think like gin. So yeah, no, I didn't actually drink a thing last night. Oh, wow. Hey, wait a minute. For the record, I did not either. Oh, good. We're both tutling last night. So yes, bad movie. The only good thing about the man on Wire movie was some of the shots of the actual walk itself. Most of that looked really astounding, but man, it was so bad. Well, you know, I think that there's an over reliance on special effects these days to really move a movie along rather than good old fashioned plot and writing and dialogue. They're just like, oh, no, we're going to have these great shots or these great effects or this thing's going to blow up. Yeah, I mean, that's long been a problem. I mean, it's like what action movies are made of, right? But it seems to have crept its way into movies all over the spectrum. Yeah, that sounds like what you're talking about. And he broke the third wall and did a lot of talking to the audience in this ridiculous frog accent. Did he really? Yeah, man, it was all just weird. A lot of weird choices. And I think it's also a case of a documentary that's so good. Just stop there. Yeah. You don't need to see it played out fictionally. Yeah, I mean, that's like one of the pinnacles of documentary filmmaking. Alright, well, we killed some time. Yeah, that was great. Chef, where did you go? The guy you're talking about? I can't believe neither one of us can remember the actual man's name. He walked on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. That's not buildering. No, there's a guy named Shipwreck Kelly who used to go up on the top of, like, a construction site and like stack chairs and sit on top of them. That's absolutely insane. Not building is strictly climbing up scaling a building on the outside to preferably get to the top. Right. And there's all different ways you can do it. Like, you can do it free climbing, which is absolutely, totally and completely insane. Yes. And also I want to go on record here about this as well. Do not do this. Do not. I don't care if you're one of the people we're talking about. I'm begging with you to stop doing what you're doing. It's one of the most dangerous things a person can do. You're climbing a building. And a lot of buildings are not made to be climbed. Some of them are like, yeah, I mean, that's an obvious building to climb. Others are like, how are you doing this? Especially if you're free climbing. But there's a lot of other implements people can use that will go over as well. But that is building. It's not like philippe Petite who walked on a wire. Right. That's why I had to look up the name I'm glad you did. To stop people from screaming in their car. So we talk about the history. Yeah. Because this was, to me, the most interesting thing about all of this is when I think of building or climbing buildings, I think, well, this has been going on for probably 30, 40 years max, maybe about the time that Mountain Dew really turned extreme. That's right. Not true at all. And I was genuinely shocked to know that people have been climbing buildings in an extreme sports way. They just didn't call it that then, since there have been tall buildings. Right. Like in 1900 is when this started, which is about the time people started building, like, genuinely tall buildings. Yeah. It's crazy. There's a guy called the father of modern urban climbing, Joffrey Winthrop Young, and he wrote a book, small book called a guide book, if you will, called The Roof Climbers Guide to Trinity, about Trinity College buildings in Cambridge, England. And basically, it was like, here's how you do it, mates. Here's what you should climb on campus, and here's the best way to go about it. Yeah. And, like, there were even little diagrams that was, like, that would show you which way to climb. He would reference, like, this one window sill, or there's a ledge next to this one drain pipe, or the actual drain pipe will work. He really kind of spelled out how you could make your way up to each building. And it was kind of like this cool underground thing to do on Trinity College's campus. That's right. It's hard to believe to me that this is going on in 1900. Yeah. I mean, college students have always been college students, so don't you think? No, that's true. So Joffrey Winthrop Young, his name really is kind of fun to say, isn't it? Yes. He published this as kind of like a little underground smash. From what I understand, the dean of the college were not happy about this one. I suppress it. Right. But then, almost 40 years later, another pamphlet or mini book came out, and it was written Susan Amy Lee, by someone named Ripplesnace. It turned out to be Noel Simmington. Yes. Another great name. And he published something called The Night Climbers of Cambridge, another university in Cambridge, and basically did the same thing. You could even call it a follow up. And he actually, I think, coined that term night climbing, which is still used around that town today to denote climbing up Billings at night. The whole reason you do it at night is because you don't want to get caught. Yeah. It's crazy that Cambridge was the birth of modern extreme climbing. Yeah. And here in the United States, however, when it really started happening was when we started building skyscrapers, that is to say, the first 2030 years of the 20th century. It's weird. It seems like there's been a lot of spiderman and human flies, and I think they maybe should just be a little more original rather than just say, I'm the new spiderman. Right. And for God's sake, they should stop wearing spiderman outfits when they do this, because that just looks kind of silly. Sure. And while we're on it, they should stop making Spider Man movies over and over again. The new one is so good, though. Is it? I haven't seen it. Yeah. And I'm totally against the whole thing where it's like, and there's a new guy, but this new one really kind of captured the comic book thing. Okay, I'll give it a shot. Yeah, I was pretty taken with it. Okay. So, yeah, we start building skyscrapers here in the US. And almost out of the gate, people are like, I want to climb that. And some people did. And like you're saying, there was one guy who's the Human Fly, the original Human Fly, I think. And supposedly he got that nickname from Grover Cleveland, the president at the time. But this guy's name was Harry H. Gardner, and he was quite a character, actually. Yeah. Did you look up pictures of this dude? It's crazy. I mean, I don't know what I expected. Maybe that he would just look a little different from his peers of the day. Right. But he literally looks like he walked out of an accounting office in New York City and started climbing buildings. Yeah, that's basically what he did. And he got really good at it, too. Yeah. He got the slick back hair and the glasses, and there's one great picture of him. He would usually wear this kind of look, like a weird white jumpsuit with his outfit as the Human fly. Right. But there's that one great picture, I don't know if you saw it, where he's hanging off of a building ledge in a full three piece suit, like dopping his cap. I did see that. Pretty neat. Yeah. He had a little bit of panache, you could say. Yes. Okay. No, there is something more unsettling, but something very unsettling is old timey athletic wear. Yeah. And the other thing I thought of that's even more unsettling is old timey wheelchairs. Like the wicker ones. They look neither comfortable nor safe. No. And they're clearly haunted by their past occupants. Yeah, for sure. The haunted wheelchair. That's a good short story. I think so, too. Man. So, Gardner, one of his first big moves was he climbed Detroit News's twelve storey Ad building in 1916. And as you'll see with most of these folks, they call it night climbing. But aside from the early days, they kind of said, you know what? That's kind of for the birds. Day climbing is where it's at. Because we kind of want people to see us. Yeah. Because at the time, people didn't have a lot to do. It's a big thing like you could sit around and read and that's great. But people were looking for stuff to do during the day, too. So yeah, you could see daredevils doing crazy stuff in the cities around this time. And one of them was that climb of the Detroit News building. Did you say it was twelve stories? Yeah, twelve stories. And he hit it right at noon when people could leave their offices at lunch, leave their martinis on the table. And Detroit News actually covered it. And all the newspapers were always knocked out by these feats of daring dew. And they said they dared not cheer. Men stood and stared with bulging eyes. Women hugged their babies to their breasts and held their breath. Yeah, that's a lot. It reads easier than it speaks, that line. Yes, you're right. This is like a huge deal in Detroit. And so Gardner was like, well, let's do it again. It was pretty easy this time. I lived. Let me press my luck another time. Let me cheat death again. So we scheduled another one just a couple of days later. But apparently the crowds that turned out were so massive and throwing the area and just disrupted everything around there that they're like, we can't do this. You can't climb. So they canceled it. Yeah. It's kind of a bummer. It is a bummer. But he would not be deterred. He would go on to climb many buildings, including the 16 story Empire Building in Birmingham, Alabama, which I didn't know Birmingham had buildings that tall. I know. This is like back in the time when any city had a shot at being a great American city. All you have to do is get a little investment, maybe have some cattle or timber or something and then build some skyscrapers. That's right. And Birmingham is one of the great American cities, by the way. And then in Vancouver, and it seems like a lot of this has happened over the years in Vancouver, the Cove, the 17 story world building there. He climbed as well. Yes. So he's, like, traveling North America. Climbing these buildings is like a public spectacle. The president calls him the human fly. He's feeling pretty great. And then all of a sudden he just drops out of public view. He didn't say drops off the side of a building? No, he didn't. No one knows what happened to him. They don't know how he died, where he went or anything like that. But supposedly the best guess is that he was murdered in Paris at the Eiffel Tower because there was an unidentified body that apparently matched his description that was found beaten to death at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Holy cow. In, I think, 1936 or something like that. Yeah. I imagine a lot of people didn't get beaten to death in Paris either back then. No, they were taking a break after the rain of terror. They're like, that really got out of hand. Let's all just be peaceful for a while. Shall we take a break? Yeah. All right. Take a break. We'll go. Chalk up and scale Jerry's desk over there. Hey, Chuck. So we're back. Yes. And all this has reminded me of going over the Niagara Falls in a Barrel episode. Oh, that's right. That was another one. I feel like we should do an episode on Daredevils in general. You know, we did that two parter on evil. Can Evil. Yeah, we did one on Daredevils. Did we? On Daredevils? I know. We did stuntman in Cannonball Run. I think we did. Daredevils. I think this closes the book. Oh, I was going to say, I think we need to redo some of this stuff. All right. But do you remember the one guy who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel and lived and then died, I think slipping on an orange peel, like years later? Yeah. In a Three Stooges episode. That's like the greatest worst thing I've ever heard. Pretty good. So who else? Gardner leads the way. Apparently he was known for saying like 100 something men have tried to do what I do and died trying. Which is a lie, probably. There's probably some people who did died emulating him or imitating him. But there were other successful ones, too. Successful human flies. Early spiderman, if you will. Yeah. Going back again to the 1920s, this is a little out of order sequentially, but a dude named Henry Rowland broke his hip, fell only about 35ft in Iowa climbing the Davis County Courthouse. And this was kind of took him out of commission for a while, but he would not be deterred as well. That's kind of the rolling narrative here with these dudes. You can't keep them down. No. Eight years later, he returned climb that same courthouse in only twelve minutes. Which is pretty impressive. Yeah. This and then put his hat on the head of the blind justice statue. I know. That's the thing. This is a time when not wearing a hat was so scandalous that human flies would wear a hat out of doors while they were climbing. I just love that. And then those are dude that died too, right? Yeah. I think there are a lot of guys that died. But this one was, I think, fairly well known and died. HF young died in 1923. He fell off the Hotel Martinique, which was a nine story drop for him, which will do it. That will kill you for sure. Although I was on Mosaic Science magazine site and they had I think it was called how to Survive a Fall or something like that. And it was basically about like on your way down what to do. Yeah. Oh, my God. But not just like what to do. It wasn't just an instructional thing. It was also like a look at the study of falling and how we fall, which is kind of an understudied thing, but there are some people who are really, like, taking a hard look at it, and I don't remember the exact gist of it, but they do kind of tell you exactly the best way to improve your chances from a huge fall. And you don't know that now. No, I forgot. So I'm dead meat if I fall. That's probably the one key takeaway. Well, I think the key takeaway is everybody should go read this article. Okay. It's from Mosaic Science magazine. And it's called, I think, how to Survive a Fall. Jeez. Yeah. It's a good one, though. It's a good read. So HF young dies. Very sad. And then a couple of more folks died the next year, and then that's when cities started to say, all right, we're not calling it buildering yet because we're not in a time machine, but these crazy dudes need to knock it off. Yeah. They're like, this is wildly irresponsible for us to allow this and not only allow it, but assemble the citizens at lunchtime to come watch this thing. Yeah, for sure. So they did. They started to outlaw, and it kind of fell to the wayside. And some of these early guys, like you said, building is not a term yet, so they're called urban climbers, or at least they are now. But there's actually a pretty big distinction between urban climbing and building, although they can very frequently overlap, and some people do both. But urban climbing is like that would include climbing up a ladder on a construction crane on the top of a skyscraper. Some people do. I can't see those videos. I know. It's just too much. Or it could be like climbing up a bridge or something. But you're using other things besides just the face of the building, which is that's kind of like one of the requisites of building is you're not using any of the ladders or anything that's intended to be climbed. You're using the building, the facade of the building itself. Although sometimes that can imitate a ladder, as you'll see here in a minute. But you're right. Nothing extra. Right. So we jump from, I guess, the 1930s or so, like you said, it tailed off for a long time for good reason. And then finally, in the 1970s and 80s, things started to pick back up again, mainly in the late 1970s with a man named George Willig. He was a toy maker, so he had a sense of whimsy, I imagine, for the ideal toy company. And he took a PTO day, literally, right. And said, well, he didn't tell anyone, but he took a PTO day a little personal time to go climb the World Trade Center. Yes. I love this guy a lot, actually. Yeah, he did it in three and a half hours, and he actually had a rig. He was not a free climber, because that would just be insane and probably not possible with the World trade center, which was mostly glass, but he figured out a way to fit a device over the window washers scaffold, and then it fit. And if you see pictures of this guy doing so between the World Trade Center, it had these grooves between the windows, and he probably rigged something of his own making. Yeah. He made it himself. Yeah. That would fit between the channel between those windows. Right. And apparently after he figured that out, it wasn't too tough. Well, it was like I think it was still tough, but this implement that he designed was pretty ingenious. Well, he climbed with relative ease. Right. Yeah. Better than free climbing or something like that. For sure. He was using implements, but the thing, when he pressed down on it, it would slide into the slats that the window washing machine was supposed to go up and down on, like you were saying. And when he pressed down on it, it would lock into the sides, and when he lifted up on it, it would unlock. So he could just kind of like shimmy up like that. Right. And he had the foresight to bring a little hammer with him because he was like, you know what? I'll bet that thing is not perfect. All the way up. Yes. And he brought a little hammer with him and needed it many times to hammer it out about the shape that he needed it to be. But he made this climb, and a couple of cops, one of them was a specialist in suicides, were lowered down on an actual window washing conveyance and said they were given the task of talking this guy down. And apparently at some point they were like, oh, you mean to do this? You're just climbing the World Trade Center, that's all you're doing? I would have just walked up and jumped off, dummy. Right, exactly. This seems a little hard for that. But they left him alone until he got to the top and then, of course, they arrested him right when he got to the top. But he made it to the top for sure. Yeah. And originally, apparently, the city was going to find him a big old fat and this is in 1977, a quarter of a million bucks, which it's a lot of money today, but certainly a lot of money back then. Right. But Mayor Beam, I guess, was charmed and taken with the attention it brought me to New York City yeah. And said, I'm going to find you a penny per floor. So he paid a fine of one dollars and $0.10. Right. And I think there is probably a lot of public pressure to leave this guy alone because he became a celebrity overnight when he did this. Big time. I mean, he was big time all of a sudden, and he's just this thoughtful, toy making guy who just decided he wanted to do this and made his own implements and all of a sudden. Now he's unlike Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and all the late night talk shows, he got work as a stuntman on a bunch of shows, including the $6 Million Man. Just that one climb made him famous still to this day. Absolutely. I think he's one of the for sure, one of the dudes that people look back on is, like, very revered in the sport. Yeah, I agree. You don't hear people doing stuff like this anymore, do you? Am I just not hearing about it? Yeah, you're not hearing about it. It happens. Well, because we'll get to him. That Allen Robert guy, right? He's still climbing his little buns off. Okay. His little tight climbing buns. Stupid, sexy Flanders classic 1981. There's a dude, and he still climbs as well, I believe, a California man named Dan Goodwin. And he was silly enough to put on a spiderman costume, which I guess it feels cool at the time, but it just never looks good. No. Especially after you've seen the movies and, like, the really cool outfits that they put the spiderman in. The walmart version. Right. When you're just like a kid at Halloween, where you can clearly see what kind of sneakers you're wearing. Not so cool underneath the red spats that are supposed to cover them but don't. Yeah, like, if he had the real Hollywood suit, it would might look kind of awesome, but no such luck for Dan Goodwin. Plus, also, if you're going to go to this kind of trouble and do something this publicly, like take an extra month and design and manufacture your own costume agreed. Get a little cape in there or something. Sure. Although that might get in the way. Well, it has to be a very lightweight, thin, small cape, half size, maybe. I would be a nude builderer. Could you imagine? Now I can I'll sit with you for a while? So Dan Goodwin dressed up as Spidey, and he climbed the Sears Tower in Chicago, which is now the Willis Tower at the time. The Sears Tower. It's still the Sears Tower. Yeah, I agree. And then would go on to climb the John Hancock Tower, also in Chicago. And then he said, that's beans, I'm going to go climb the sea in Tower in Toronto, because I think it's over 1800ft tall. And at the time, it was the world's tallest structure, which made him the top dog for a bit. And he climbed that CN Tower twice in the same day. What? Yeah. Why? Because it was there, I guess. I don't know. Maybe somebody's like that wasn't that big of a deal. He's like, oh, yeah, I'll do it again. I'll see you in a couple of hours, jerk. And then Goodwin was then followed by the man we were just talking about, a French man, or a Frenchman named Alan Robert, or is it Elaine? I never know how to pronounce that when the I is. Stuck in there. I don't know. Okay. Yeah, that sounds nice. This is in the mid ninety s. And he is a bit of a stand alone. Not a standalone, but a stand apart, at least. Because while he occasionally will use some equipment, what he really likes to do is get out there, get some chalk on his hands, and tackle a building. Yeah. This guy is, in my opinion, the greatest builder who's ever lived. At the very least, the riskiest. Or at the very least, the most well known, too. I ran across another guy named Mustang Wanted. I don't think that's his actual name. That's what he goes by. Mustang Wanted. He named himself after an ad on Craigslist. Right, exactly. And he does, from what I can tell, free climbing building. And he's younger and just kind of not well known. I'm sure he's quite well known in the building circles, serving climbing circles, but yeah. Elaine Robert, right? Yeah. Allen Robert. What am I doing? He's sponsored. He's that well known. You want to tell him? By who? I think you should tell him. Well, what's the name of the company? I know. It's a hair replacement company. It's like a nouvegill, nor Jill. Nor Jill or norgill one of them. We're having a lot of trouble with the words that circle in the sky's universe. Yeah, that's because this morning but God bless him, he has some hair loss going on, so he got the sponsorship that made sense for his life. Good for him, right? Good for that guy. And he also wore Spiderman outfit, so just stop, dudes, with the Spider Man. He doesn't always he would from time to time. I think it might be like a tradition now, maybe an inside joke. I don't know. Or maybe they really are like, this is going to make it feel so much cooler when I builder this building. Should we take another break? I think so. All right, we're going to go get in our Spiderman costumes and finish the show that way. So we talked about how these guys can get kind of famous, actually, and some of them use their platforms for good. Like La Robert. He'll go both ways. Right? He's taken tens of thousands of dollars to climb a building to promote, like, a Spiderman movie or something like that. Really? That's why he was dressed as Spiderman. Did he really do that? Oh, man. But on the other hand, he's well known to unfurl banners at the top that promote the climate change. Okay. Stuff like that. Right. Well, that's cool. Yeah. Like, there was one website called 100 Months.org that he was promoting, I think back in the late 90s that basically posited that we had, like, 100 months before the Earth was irreversibly changed by climate change. I don't think that has panned out as successful, that website and changing the world's mind yet. Other people have done the same, though. Either promotional stuff or banners. Sometimes, like you said, for good, sometimes for dough, because a builder's got to eat after all. Sure. You got to be able to get to the places. If you're traveling the world, you need airplane money. Yeah. And sometimes, like you said, was it Willig that went on to do some stuntman work? Yeah, he did. Yeah. That's a good way to get work. Sebastian Fuca was the guy in Casino Royale. I just want to apologize to the entire country of France for this episode. You don't listen. Oh, you're right. That's fine. We're good, then he was the one in Casino Royale who doubled up James Bond, and I think he did all the parkour and the building in that stunt scene. Yeah, he did. It's pretty neat. Yeah. That was a thrilling scene, for sure. Yeah. And we have to talk about the scene in Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. Thrilling, as well, apparently. It was for real. It was, dude. And it really was Tom Cruise during that stunt. It was. I watched the full scene again today. I watched the behind the scenes of the making of that scene. This is when he went out of the window of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the world's tallest tower at 2717ft. And think what you want about Tom Cruise. I'm still sort of in and out with that guy. But that scene is one of the most thrilling scenes in action movie history to me. And the idea that it was real yeah. I mean, of course, he was fully cabled and tethered, and it was as safe as you can imagine something being. And then they go in and erase all that stuff in postproduction. But he's still up there doing this stuff, right. Running down the side of the building, launching himself off the side and swinging around. And it's amazing. Really great action movie scene. It is. A lot of those movies were pretty good. The mission impossible ones turned out okay. Yeah. I think all of them are good, except for the I guess it was two, the John Woo one. That's what everybody says. What was wrong with that? I don't even know if I saw it or not. I don't know. I don't know. It just wasn't that good. I can't remember if it was like because besides good action and stuff, you still have to have a good story for Mission Impossible. Sure. And good impossible mission stuff. Right. And they didn't have that. I think I remember just not having a very good plot in good Mission Impossible type stuff. Got you. It didn't feel Mission Impossible like to me. I got you. But once Bradburg got back on the director, those were good. Yeah. In my opinion. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. Like, you need to have plot, you need to have a story. You have good dialogue. Yeah. So if you're going to do this, you should be prepared to be arrested. Right. But don't do it. No, that's great point, Chuck. Don't do this because if you were going to, you'd be arrested. Like, apparently Elaine Robert has been arrested, like, a hundred times or something like that. Yes. And he's become so infamous, he never announces publicly what he's going to do. He just shows up at the building, apparently in the morning, and just starts climbing and people take notes. Right. He also apparently is so famous that he was seen hanging around inside, maybe on a tour or something, of the Shard in London. And the building's owners got freaked out and they went to court and got a restraining order against them to keep them away from their building forever. They're like, I know why you're here. You're on a scout. You're casing the place. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a liability for property owners, although some have paid people and invited them to do so to give them press. Sure. So it's a weird sort of mix of illegality and like, hey, come do this thing. Yeah. And I mean, for the most part, though, if the billing owner doesn't want you there, it's because they're covering their bottoms. If you fall off, and even worse, if you fall off and you fall on to some other people, that's a big problem for them. I never thought about that. Yeah. I mean, it's not just you whose life is in jeopardy in that respect, but you're also draining public resources because the cops have to keep everybody back a safe distance. It's a selfish sport, for sure. It really is selfish, dangerous sport. But there's a lot of stuff you can get in trouble for, the least of which is probably criminal trespassing. Right? Yeah. And the cops don't really know what to do with you. And apparently in Chicago, they tried to blast Spider Dan what was his last name? Dan Goodwin. Dan Goodwin off of the building with fire hose. That's what he says. I saw elsewhere that they tried to get him off of the building using various means. He's the one who said that it was with a fire hose. We're talking about the Chicago police, so it's entirely possible. Yeah. He also claimed that Fire Commissioner William Blair threatened to kill him if he did this again. Really? And both of these are claims from Dan Goodwin, who, by the way, there was an article in Wired magazine about him and Elaine Robert, and it was to put their inspirations in life. And Elaine Roberts were Zoro and Robin Hood. So he's clearly grounded in reality. Sure. And then good ones are. Bruce Lee. Makes sense. Carlos Castaneda, Steve Jobs. You ready for the last one? John Lennon. Famous extreme sportsman. Wow. Yeah. John Lennon. You could parkour like a gorilla. Yeah. Remember that song? All we're saying is give buildering a Chance, which was wildly irresponsible, too. Or Imagine. There's no buildering. It's easy if you try. Right. We do this all day. One of the things well, this is good because it's actually getting the image of you naked buildering out of my head. So maybe keep it up. Now naked John Lennon is building in your head. Man, that really threw me off. Because you can picture him naked. Because I naked. I forgot where I was going. Yeah, I can picture his flank and Rump just picture instead of Yoko Ono him clinging to the side of the building. And now I know Aaron Cooper will be sending us something. Yeah, for sure. I know what I was going to say. Dan Goodwin, he said he was inspired by the Las Vegas MGM Grand fire in the early 80s, maybe 1980s, which I think we should do an episode on hotel fires too. It sounds weird and gruesome and it is, but there's actually like a lot of crazy history involved in there. Yeah, there was one in Atlanta in the early days. Yeah, I can't remember what the name of it was back then, but they revamped that hotel. You can go to it now. Oh, wow. It's right down there by where the Hawks play. Philips yes, but I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. But yeah, we should do a hotel fires one. Okay. Very dark idea. So apparently Goodwin saw the hotel fire and some people were trapped in that. The fire department had no way to get to them and he was already a climber. I just don't think he was a builder. And he apparently went up to the fire chief or the person in charge of fighting this fire. He's like, let me climb up there and put some cables in place and you guys can go get these people out. And the guy was like, I'm going to have you arrested if you don't leave right now. Yeah, I mean, his heart was in the right place, but fire chiefs kind of want to just do their thing and not have citizens offered to put themselves in danger on top of that, especially if they're just as spiderman in an ill fitting child's costume at the same time. Hey, chief. Yeah. I got a great idea. But supposedly he went and started climbing the outside of buildings to kind of prove that this could be done and that it should be done and that people could be saved, that you could use this kind of thing as a way to assist fire departments during fires, which so far I don't think anyone has ever taken them up on it. No. They don't have builders on the payroll. No. So one final thing I want to mention is that there's this one building, new York Times building in 2008 that La robert climbed and the cop that was interviewed by the New York Times was silly enough to say, well, look at this thing. You don't even have to be a professional. Like the building looks like a ladder. Right. And someone read that. And then apparently later on that same day, someone who wasn't even an experienced builder from Brooklyn went out and climbed the thing successfully. Yeah, pretty interesting. And there have been unsuccessful claims. There's one guy who was climbing a building in Houston and fell, like 30 stories in 2003, and he was reported by an eyewitness as purposefully jumping. But I don't know. Apparently the builder and community doesn't necessarily buy that. They said no. Thank you. Yeah. Ryan john Hartley was his name. It's very sad. It is sad. And it also goes to show just how dangerous this is. Dangerous? Don't do it. Even if you got the best Tom Cruise suction cups you can get your hands on and you got nice some ropes and some friends who are really trustworthy, just don't do it. Okay. Agreed. Well, since I said just don't do it, that's your cue to go look this article up on howstep works.com. And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm going to call this. I forgot to get a listener mail, so I'm going to read the first one on the latest email. It's like Russian roulette with listener mail. Yeah, this one's okay. Not bad. Subject line sleepy while reading. Dear Josh and Chuck, thanks for all the hard work and humor you put into stuff you should know. Podcast has been a constant companion to me for the last seven years. Taught me about Agent Orange while painting landscapes, jim Henson while working out at the gym, and bioluminescence while riding the bus in China. Well, he's got an exciting life. There's one thing I really do need to know, though. Why do I always doze off while I'm reading? I like to learn. I enjoy reading. But over the past few years, I struggled to stay conscious when I read. I was hoping you could shed some light on this, as you are both avid readers. That is Harrison Gibbs. And he has a PS. I've been enjoying Internet roundup and don't be dumb on Amazon Prime. My sympathy is to Chuck, as I know the struggle of beard dandruff is real and we referenced it. Tea, sal, shampoo and beard oil has helped me. That's Harrison Gibbs. I don't know the answer, but that is a for sure thing. Like, if you want to fall asleep at night, put your phone down or your ereader and read a good old fashioned book. Yeah, it's like a paper volume. Yeah, it might just do it. There's science behind it. Sure. We'll look it up. We don't forget to. Yeah. If we don't fall asleep while we're looking it up. Thanks, Harrison. I appreciate that. If you want to get in touch with us like he did, you can tweet to us at Joshua Clark or S YSK podcast. You can hit up Facebook at charleswuckbryant. Or if you should know right. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffychildnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Hey everybody. 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Can you test a nuclear weapon without a fallout? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-you-test-a-nuclear-weapon-without-a-fallout | Over the course of human existence, thousands of nuclear weapons have been exploded on Earth and in space. With all of those tests, one can't help but wonder how much fallout has been produced. Learn the tricks of the nuke-testing trade in this episode. | Over the course of human existence, thousands of nuclear weapons have been exploded on Earth and in space. With all of those tests, one can't help but wonder how much fallout has been produced. Learn the tricks of the nuke-testing trade in this episode. | Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:57:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=16, tm_min=57, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=248, tm_isdst=0) | 28667502 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stephanie Chanel. Like it or not. Like it or not. People are, like, tuning out now. Oh, man, I downloaded the wrong one. I thought this was radio. I thought this was WTF with Mark mirror. What does that stand for? What the heck with an F. What the heck? I probably shouldn't even say that. We'll find out. Yes, I guess so. If we get censored or get an angry email. That's right. How are you doing, man? Good. I'm glad I'm well, sir. This is going to be a good one, if you ask me. This goes in with our nuclear suite, which is pretty extensive by now. Yeah, we've done quite a few steel bomb. Yeah. Who won the Cold War? Who won the Cold War? Mutual assure destruction. M-A-D. What else have we done? Now, this one seems like there was one other one. Star wars had some nuke stuff to it. Yeah, we've done some other stuff. Yeah. So this is part of the nuclear suite as it works. It's a very sweet nuclear suite. And we're talking today about whether or not it's possible to detonate, to test to its full extent. Apparently. I looked it up, the Term, I think Julie Leighton made it up. Made what term up full extent. Oh, really? Testing a nuclear bomb to its full extent, which means not apparently. You can simulate a nuclear bomb by putting a bunch of TNT together and going, Kaboom. But there's no radiation. But it's really not quite the same as testing a nuclear weapon by really blowing up the nuclear core, which we used to do a lot. A lot. And most recently, there's been a lot of nuclear tests. Chuck, a total of 2053 nuclear weapons have been exploded on planet Earth, which is a big qualifier. It's crazy. But there was only eight countries that did that. Yes. Russia. The US had 1032. North Korea, Russia 715 France 210 yes, they did a lot. The UK and China are tied at 45 apiece. India and Pakistan each had two and then North Korea had two as well. The most recent one to join the fray in 2006 and 2009. I wonder if the UK and China are kind of like one of us. One more just to do it. I could see China doing it over. The UK wouldn't do that. You never know. Okay, well, they did it before. Yeah, but those are different dates. But of course, the USA leads the pack in detonating nuclear weapons on planet Earth. Yeah, man, by far. Desert, out in the ocean, underground and air. I sent Josh a video earlier that Jonathan Strickland of text stuff sent me today by chance. I was like, Dude, really? Yeah. How crazy is it that you sent this and he didn't respond? He's a busy man. There's a video on the YouTube of these five army or Navy guys standing underneath. This is one of the aerial detonations of a nuclear bomb. I think they're Air Force. Where the Air Force? And they just stood there and watched. Basically, they stood at ground zero under the hypothetic. It is crazy. You can see it and hear it happen. And they're just, like, laughing and carrying on and talking about how awesome it was. Well, there's five of them. Four were volunteers. The only one who wasn't a volunteer was the photographer. They forced him to do it. But, yeah, like, you see this light go off and there's no sound, but they kind of flinch. And then one guy wearing, like, old timey 1940 sunglasses, like, looks up, and then you can hear the sound. Pretty crazy. But that was again mentioned number two of Radio Lab. That was Robert Crowwitch's blog. Crow witch wonders. He's one of the hosts of Radio Lab, of course. And that was pretty awesome. Yeah. I found another blog of his that we'll talk about later. Did I send it to you? Yes. That was pretty sweet. I think it topped the first one. Even so, Strickland is involved, the UK is involved. Robert Crowwitch has already been mentioned. Basically, this is going to be a big, sweeping, enormous, epic podcast, if you ask me. Okay. Part of North Korea's spiel after 2006, when it became officially a nuclear state. Was that a press release that said there was no nuclear fallout from this test? It was totally contained. I don't believe it. Well, it's kind of unbelievable. One of the things you think of with the nuclear weapon is radiations. One of the things it's designed to do is not just wipe out a population with the explosion, but to really plague it for generations. But it turns out that it is possible, depending on the type of test you conduct and the conditions. And if you carry the two well, then you might be able to conduct a nuclear test that doesn't have any fallout, at least atmospheric fallout. Is that true? Because I didn't even gather that from this. I thought, well, we'll get into it. No, it can be totally contained. Oh, really? I never drew that conclusion, that they have done it and contained it completely. Okay, then theoretically, it can. Okay. I don't know if it can, but I saw this awesome article on the BBC that even had a flash slide show, which is the mark of quality, that showed how an underground test could be done. We just gave it away. It's the underground test that you can contain the fallout, but how it could contain all the fallout. Yeah. And that Korea supposedly went to these links to do it. Supposedly. Well, let's talk real quick about what happens in nuclear reaction. Chuckers. Yeah. I guess we should define a couple of things because we're going to be throwing around some terminology that we might understand. And you might be like, what's an isotope? I forgot chemistry from high school. An isotope is basically a different version of the same element determined by the number of neutrons. So like, if you got hydrogen, just a regular old hydrogen atom doesn't have neutrons. If you add one neutron, it's dertrium. If you had two neutrons, it's tritium, but they're all hydrogen. So they're just different versions of that same element. Okay. Pretty easy. Sure. So fission happens when scientists basically bombard a larger isotope with neutrons and the collision basically is fission, and it produces an incredible amount of energy because of mass defect. If you were to write out this formula for a nuclear fission reaction I have, and it was like really accurately measured all the mass of all the atoms and all these subatomic particles before and after, you're going to find a mass defect, you're going to find some missing mass. And that missing mass is the energy, which is awesome if you have a nuclear reactor because you're creating like tons and tons of energy. Right. And I guess it's awesome if you want to a make nuclear bomb. Right? It is. What you're talking about is fission. So fission is like when one of those neutrons is picked up by an atom, that additional neutron just splits the atom and that releases more neutrons, which forms a chain reaction. Well, the key there is it reduces, it has to release extra neutrons. And there are only two main isotopes that can do this, they found out. Which is uranium 235. Plutonium 239. I'm more of a plutonium guy. Are you really? Yeah. So they're fissionable, which is kind of an awkward word. Right. But it's not just fissionable because we can split an atom if you want. Let's do it right now. Yeah, but we're just splitting one atom. The point to this is that there has to be a sustainable chain reaction so that when we split one atom, it causes another atom to split another atom. To split another atom is split. And as the splits are taking place, a huge expansion is undergone. Right. It's growing and supposedly at critical mass, which is like the full sustaining of this chain reaction of nuclear fission among these atoms. Yeah. That's the minimum amount required to create that chain reaction. So at critical mass, the number of neutrons can be doubled 80 times a microsecond. A microsecond is a millionth of a second. So that means that in 1 second, the number of neutrons can have doubled 80 million times. That's called something special. Yeah. And that's not 80 million times too. That's the 80 million power, I believe, isn't it? I think it's exponential. Yeah. It's crazy big, right? You go from something very tiny to kaboom, where all of a sudden enormous mushroom cloud. That's right. And how you get that cloud. If you want a bomb, you're going to have two subcritical. Subcritical means it hasn't reached critical mass. You have two subcritical but fissionable isotopes, and you keep them separate. That's really key. And then you combine them with a traditional explosive, and it's all over after that. And remember, there's one of these just sitting off the coast of Savannah somewhere. Lost. That's right. It's just sitting there. And there was dynamite. I forgot about that. They're not wearing the same there's a TNT detonator that's just aging terribly underwater. I thought they found it. Now, remember, the Xcia offered to locate it for a million bucks very publicly. Well, that was a long time ago when we talked about that. I think that was maybe the steal the nuke one. That was an early one, for sure. Wow. So that's another reason to be scared all over again. Right. So, Chuck, there's four kinds of nuclear weapons testing, at least four that we've come up with and carried out so far. Yes. There's high altitude space, which I think we wondered, like, what would happen in the Star Wars episode. Yeah. Answered right here. Yeah. Underground, underwater, and atmospheric. Yeah. Let's talk about this. All right, well, let's talk about atmospheric. Let's do it. This is the one that I set the YouTube of. It showed a plane flying and shooting this bomb off. It wasn't, like, dropped. It was, like, launched like a rocket and then exploded above these dudes heads where they could see it. Not a good idea. I don't know why they ever thought this was a good idea, even in the middle of a desert. It's going to fall. It's going to rain down what happened up on the ground. Whoever's down there is Billy Idol. Put it it's going to rain hell from above. Is that Billy Idol? Yeah. Okay. It's a rebel yellow, was it? Yeah. I don't know how the words of that that's a good song. Where does that come? I can't remember. What is it? Rainhill from above. All pretty good. Billy Idol. So the scariest thing about when they do these tests out in the middle of the desert is all they do, basically, is, quote, clear the area. That's how they prepare the surrounding area for a nuclear fallout. They just clear it as best they can, which usually consists of clearing, like, one or two micronations, consisting of one or two guys who use, like, chocolate chip cookie dough as currency. Right. Yeah. I mean, what about all the animals? What about all the vegetation and plants? Stop thinking about them, hippie. We're trying to test nukes here. Well, and that's why they do it out, like, in the middle of the Nevada desert is because they think there's barely anything alive out there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The groundhog, the prairie dog populations have been decimated because they were reduced by exactly 10%. Did you see the guy that wrote in about that today. No. He says, by the way, when Josh said factoid and decimate, he is both of them wrong. And I had the same reply. I was like, Buddy, it's not ancient Rome anymore. Look it up. Decimate means a completely different thing now. True that. Okay. At the spectoid. All right, so let's talk about a ground test, the Castle Bravo test. Well, hold on real quick. The atmospheric test. You said, like, you drop it out of a plane. There's other ways you can do it. You can also launch it via weather balloon. Yeah, sure. And you can just put it on top of a tall pole. But basically, an atmospheric test is anything just above ground. You could also detonate it on top of the ground because it's atmospheric. There's nothing covering it. Right. Between that and, say, about 250 miles, that's an atmospheric test. Okay. 250. I believe so, because 250 miles or more is typically the high altitude test. How would they do that on the ground, though? Get it? 249 miles up is what I say. Yeah. I mean, they were standing underneath the hypothetical. They dropped two of them on Japan. People were a little more reckless with nuclear weapons back then. All right, so the Castle Bravo test. Yeah. So basically the reason we talk about this is things back then, at least they would clear the area for what they thought was going to happen. Yeah. But when you miscalculate and you make an error in your math, bad things can happen, which is what happened in 1954 at the Bikini Atoll. That's right. And that's actually where the Bikini Swimsuit is named after that's right. There was nuclear fever around the world, and some French designer made the Bikini in honor of nuclear testing in paradise, and they said, how about some midriff fellas? Right. And then the guys went, all right, I love the atomic age. Let's screw up this big test. Yeah. So basically what they were trying out was a new type of fuel core made of lithium 15, I believe, and they had not carried the two and were estimating a six megaton detonation explosion. Yeah, I saw as low as four. Okay. So they were off by almost three times. Yeah. It turned out to be a 15 megaton explosion, which means that the blast radius, the area where it's still safe just from the explosion, was expanded tremendously, or should have been expanded tremendously. Oh, yeah. There was a group of Japanese fishermen on a boat that in English translates the name of which translates to lucky dragon. Yeah, they were not so lucky because they were just outside of the blast zone and of the original blast zone, and all of a sudden, all this stuff starts raining down, and one of them is sticking out his tongue, trying to taste it. It's all nuclear fallout. And the whole boat came down with sickness. And actually, the one fatality from the Kethel Bravo test was on that boat. Yeah. I can't believe it's. Just one, but people one direct birth test. Yeah, there was a lot of, like, cancer. Sure. Birth defects. Second generation birth defects. Yeah. It was a huge screw up. Oh, yeah. To say the least. I got some stats on that. Okay, let's hear. They produced a four and a half mile wide fireball. Four and a half miles? Dude. Left a crater 6500ft in diameter and 250ft deep. And in the end, it was a thousand times more powerful than either one of the bombs we dropped on Japan. And it's still the largest nuclear detonation by the United States ever. Really? Yeah. I think Russia topped that, of course. And they basically just put the device out on top of this atoll and ran away. Like setting off a firework or something like that. Yeah, that was pretty nuts. Very sad. Shall we go underwater? Hold on. If you're interested in this at all, especially, like, the bikini at all, there's footage in this awesome documentary from Atomic Cafe. I think I've seen that. Awesome. It's just, like NewsReal footage. Basically. It's like Cold War nuclear hysteria and love and reasons behind hysteria. But there's a newsreel clip of the King of I can't remember, but the Marshall Islands, basically, the indigenous king stands up, and he's like, we're really excited to evacuate our home for you guys to do nuclear testing, so let's go. And it's really just awkward and staged and something else. Where the people behind him going? Did he just say I think he said yeah. They're like, what did he say? That actually sucks. Yeah. So it's a good movie, the whole thing. Is that the documentary? Yes. I think there's a movie called The Atomic Cafe too. That's it. Oh, I didn't think it was a documentary. It's a documentary. Okay. It's by two brothers and a friend. A lady friend. Really? Yeah. Is there a person on the bicycle? On a bike? On the cover? There may be. I believe there's definitely a mushroom cloud. I might be thinking of something altogether different. Okay. You're thinking of Fables as a reconstruction. Oh, you're right. All right. So now, Mr. Zhu, can we go underwater? Yes, sir. That's all right. Underwater is going to have less fallout, obviously, because you're underwater, so that's good. And you don't see a lot of this. It's hard to get a lot of information on this, but obviously you're going to destroy any kind of marine life, coral reefs that we've talked about and basically anything else that it comes into contact with, not to mention fishing villages and basically these people that depend on fishing to live. Right, yeah. It's not just the immediate impacts, which is basically blowing up tons of dolphins and whales and stuff like that. Right. It has a long, sustained impact. Like, think about it. Just from Fukushima that's another one in our nuclear suite how nuclear meltdown works. That's right. Of course. Fukushima. There are people who won't touch any kind of seafood from Japan now because they're afraid of fallout. Whether that's correct or not, at the very least, in the public opinion, you can't just blow up a nuclear weapon underwater and expect everything to be okay. Yeah. And the economic impact it has on the fishermen, of course, right. Is huge. And the three eyed fish, like the Simpsons blinky. Was that who it was? And it blinked all in succession, right, yeah. That's pretty funny. And you just confirmed that it was a bicycle in the front of the Atomic Cafe, right? Yeah, that's Atomic Cafe, all right. I always wanted to see that, and I never knew it was a documentary. Very good. I always associated with the tackle, the killer tomatoes, because I think they came out at about the same time, and they both seem to have, like, the same kind of thrilling poster. Okay, shall we go into underground, or should we save that for last and do outer space? Let's go underground. Okay. Because this is the winter as far as the only way, theoretically, to contain fully a nuclear blast. But you got to go down really deep, like 800 meters deep, which is a half a mile, about 2600ft. And that's a bomb of what size? Well, okay, this can put it into comparison. At least 300ft down, you could contain a one kiloton bomb. That's kiloton. You got to remember, the Castle Bravo was 15 megatons. Right. So, yeah, there's some math involved there somewhere, but I imagine 800ft, you said 800ft. 800 meters. 2600ft. And supposedly, even though they do point out in this article, you never really know until you do it because it can be unpredictable, obviously, in the case of the Bikini Atoll. Right. But it's worst case scenario if it does go above ground, because then it's raining down radioactive soil and lots and lots of radioactive soil. So to outfit the best case scenario, basically, you want to dig this. You want to bore an 800 meters hole, and you've hit subterranean rock like the mantle of the Earth at this point, depending on where you are. But most likely you have, because you're half a mile into the Earth, you put your little nuclear bomb in there. And it says here also that North Korea has done something like four to five megatons underground yeah. In the chamber, which is like the bottom of the hole, and you back fill it with, like, gravel gypsum, like this composite of all these different solid materials that are going to pack that whole solid to absorb the shock wave, the glass. So that means that it can go up, but it's not going to go up very far. What it's going to do is go out. So you set the thing off and it goes out and down, and the blast vaporizes the mantle of the earth around it, which then eventually, after probably a few seconds, cools into molten rock, and after that, sits there and stewed for a couple of minutes. The hole above it can't support the Earth above it any longer, and so it collapses. And then what you have is called a subsistence crater, subsidies crater. It cannot be good for the Earth. It's not. But YouTube's lousy with, like, underground tests where these craters just form. It's nuts. But that supposedly contains the fallout. Supposedly. That's what the BBC says. Well, we'll see. But if you're ever interested, that's how you perform an underground nuclear test. If you have a nuclear bomb and an 800 meters bore. Yeah. That's got to be some high engineering right there. Sure. To get down there and not have a cave in on itself. And it's not just a hole, either, probably. Hey, Kim Jong Il knew what to pull the stops on. He did. Yeah. All right. So now outer space, which is one of the dumbest ideas, actually. They're all pretty dumb, if you ask me, but we did it, and so did Russia. And we would see, basically, if we could kill satellites with nuclear bombs in space. Right. One of the problems is it kills a lot of satellites and possibly your own importance satellites. So they just discovered the Van Allen Belt of nuclear radiation around the Earth, and they figured out that if they blew up a nuclear bomb in the Van Allen Belt, they could create an electromagnetic pulse that would wipe out satellites. But it wiped out more than just ours, and it actually created that. This is where we hit Robert Crowwitz again, who apparently shares the same interest in nuclear history, cold War nuclear history that we do, because this is the second blog of his on this topic. But I would definitely recommend looking this up. It's called a very scary fireworks show, and it's about this US launch of nuclear weapons into space. It was called Starfish Prime was the operation was a pretty cool name. Starfish prime. Prime is cool. Starfish not so much. I think it's cool. But they were publicizing. It was all over the newspapers. It was like, look for a great fireworks display in the sky, and you could see it looked like the Northern lights well up in space when this thing was exploded 250 miles up. Well, the good news there is there's not going to be any fallout because the Earth's atmosphere is going to deflect. That. The bad news, though, is, like we said, it's not an exact science. You're not sharp shooting. Right. So you can take out all kinds of satellites, and I think there was an electromagnetic pulse that actually can wipe out electrical systems here on Earth. And it did in a big way. Yeah. And then, of course, radiation in space. Who knows what that means to, like, manned space flights. You don't want that stuff out there which is strange because I thought there was a lot of radiation already in space. Solar radiation. Okay. There's tons of isotopes up there. Don't even get me started. So is that it underground? Is that our consensus? It seems to be the way to go. How about no more nuclear weapons testing of any kind? That's what I'm getting behind. Me too, man. There's tons of cool stuff on the Internet. If you want to check out those five crazy guys standing beneath the hypo center of a nuclear blast, and I think 1952, you can check out five men agreed to stand directly under an exploding nuclear bomb on Crowwitz's blog. Also check out this very scary fireworks display while you're there. I would strongly recommend Atomic Cafe and Radio Lab and Tech Stuff. Yeah. And there's this really cool time lapse video that was the 2053 nuclear bombs exploded on Earth ever, by a Japanese artist named Isayo Hashimoto. Is a cool name. It's called nuclear testing. WMV on YouTube is we're checking out. Yes, it's cool. It represents them by just little flashes instead. I was expecting something different, but did you see it looked like an old Atari game. Yeah, looks like Missile Command, but it had the years. As the years tick by, it shows when they were in, when and where they're detonated. And it's funny to see the heyday of when they're going off. A lot more. Craig Crane. Heyday. And if you want to learn more about nuclear weapons testing, you can type in nuclear Weapon Radioactive Fallout. It'll bring up this excellent article on housetophors.com. And I don't think I said search bar, so search bar. And now it's time for listener. Now I'm going to call this farmer. Garrett writes in my favorite Farmer. Hi, guys. And Jerry. I just want to take this time and say how much I enjoy the show. Without you, I would not know what to do with myself for hours on end, literally. My friend and I often find ourselves having nerd rampages where we talk endlessly or debate about something you cover in the show. First started listening when my cousin introduced me to the Ten Strange Deaths podcasts, and I was hooked immediately. Subscribed. Been listening ever since. Without you, I would be working in silence right now. You see, I work on a farm, and most of the farm work is done at night. Where I live, we have to wait for the moisture to be just right before we can work in the fields. So it's 02:15 A.m., according to my clock right now, and I'll be heading out to work shortly. So this is from Garrett. Matthew and I wrote Garrett back, and I was like, dude, what kind of farming are you doing at 215 in the morning? I don't know anything about farming. And he said our family worked with corn and hay, and the reason we get up sorely is so there's plenty of moisture in the hay leaves before you rake and bail them. So that's what I've been doing. I start at 230, get home around 10:00 a.m. In the morning. His work day is done. We live in New Mexico, not New York. Very different. And it gets really hot and dry here, which is why we have to work at night when it's coolest and most humid. So I learned a little something from that one. And since he brings up New Mexico, that raises an excellent point. Just two days ago is the 67th anniversary of the very first nuclear weapons test. Alamogordo, New Mexico. Really? The Trinity test? It's all coming together. Yeah. Almost like we plan this stuff out. It's crazy, but we don't strickland sending that. I know. Farmer Garrett sending that. Tyne time, Jerry. Yeah, well, if you want to send us something that blows our minds, we're always looking for that kind of thing. And we're not even supposed to blow your mind, but we can appreciate it. That's true. You can tweet to us at Xyskpodcast, you can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow, and you can send us a good oldfashioned electronic email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-10-27-sysk-simpsons-part-two-final.mp3 | Episode 1,000: The Simpsons Spectacular Part II | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/episode-1-000-the-simpsons-spectacular-part-ii | Today concludes our two part celebration of one of the greatest TV shows of all time - The Simpsons! It also officially marks our 1,000th episode. Can you believe it? We sure can't. So join us today as we wrap up our tribute to America's favorite TV famil | Today concludes our two part celebration of one of the greatest TV shows of all time - The Simpsons! It also officially marks our 1,000th episode. Can you believe it? We sure can't. So join us today as we wrap up our tribute to America's favorite TV famil | Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:18:31 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=15, tm_min=18, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=299, tm_isdst=0) | 58201751 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, this is Chuck here with a tour show announcement. We're gonna be back at Sketchfest this year in January in lovely San Francisco. We don't have the firm date on that yet, but stay tuned for details. But th we do know when we're going to be in Seattle and Portland. We're going to be in Seattle on January 15, in Portland the next day, January 16. That's at the More Theater and Revolution Hall, respectively. And there is a presale going on today for the Seattle show. Use the code Hippie Rob. You can either go to the More Theater website or just go to http bit doseeattolive and use the code Hippie Rob to get your presale tickets. Portland goes on sale tomorrow and that would be bit. Dopdxlive come out and see us, everybody. We're looking forward to these. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast again to the actual real episode 1000 of Stuff You Should Know. The 1000th episode of Stuff You Should Know. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. Chuck, episode 1000 is upon us right now. You know what my mom used to always say when I was a little kid? What? She said, Son, if you live your life right, one day you're going to have a four digit podcast. Wow, she has some real predictive powers. Absolutely. I'm going to take her to the horse track. You should do that. And we should probably just get right into this since we left everyone with a cliffhanger. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Everyone's like, shut up. I almost feel like we should apologize for splitting this up, but there's no way to get this done in one episode. No, there really is. All right, so you may remember us from certain podcasts as Simpsons tribute. When we left off, I believe we had told our writers room story. We had. So that's as far as we got. No, we got to the table read part. Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry. Table read story. So once the table read happens, then all of the is everybody with us? I guess they've had a few days for this. To stew, right? To disco stew. Yeah. There's another great one, too. So after the table read, everybody's kind of got their ideas down, the notes get sent out, edits get made, that kind of thing, and then the voice actors all go do their parts. And I think a lot of people think that they're all in the same room together, acting off of one another. That is not at all the case. Yeah, this is no surprise. Like, people know that's how animation works. You don't all get in a big room and read to each other. You're in a booth by yourself. Right. And it's really up to the director now at this point. So once the show or the episodes get divided up or whatever, they get handed off to directors. And there's multiple directors for the Simpsons. Right, right. I should say in this case, I think it's the producer who would be handling the audio bit at this part, and the director really is working on the animation part, but they go off and they record the audio, the dialogue and the sound, and they hand it off. And at the same time, there are animators who are working very closely with the director to bring the script to life and to do that. This is totally different from a live action show. Yeah, right. Because at a live action show, you write the script and then people mess with the script or whatever, and you rehearse it and everything, and then you shoot it. This is different. You have to draw everything out. There are several extra steps for any animated show. And from what I understand, The Simpsons do far more than any other animated show on television today. It's way more expensive, there's way more steps. But you could argue it produces a really polished, finished product. And the steps really begin, as far as animation is concerned, by creating a storyboardstoryreal. Yes. And this whole process, soup to nuts, can take about six to eight months from pitching the episode to having a completed episode. So they're constantly working this process. Like, as soon as they have recorded those lines, there's already writers working on the other episode. Just like just a constant cycle going, basically. Right. There's different groups of writers. There are different groups of directors and producers and animators, and they're working simultaneously on multiple episodes. All right, so we're at the story real and what the storyreal does. It sort of just sets the basics down for each scene, how you position the characters, what kind of expressions they're making, what's going on in the background. And then this goes on to more artists who refine that storyboard and story reel. Right. And so apparently they used to do storyboard and then story Real, which is like, the storyboard is just like a bunch of stills. I've seen it compared to, like, a picture book. Maybe it's like a comic strip. Whereas, like, a story reel would have a little more movement and animation and motion to it. Apparently they've combined those now in their process. Okay. And then there's also another step called layout. And I think layout takes the longest of all of the parts of putting an episode together, because, again, if you compare it to, like, a live action television show, when you shoot a rehearsal, the director and the producer and the writers can go back and watch and then make notes. When you're animating A show, you have to animate that rehearsal. You have to animate the rehearsal so that the director and the show runner and everybody else can get together and then make those notes. So you have to kind of animate it first and you want to get it to a certain level of completion so that you know what's going to come out ultimately in the end, but you stop short of actually animating the entire thing, because apparently the Simpsons shoot their show in, like, 24 frames per second. And what they're doing says as far as layout, which is about the most finished product they're going to do in house, is maybe a third of that or a quarter of that. That means somebody has to go and fill it in. And once they've got everything set and we'll talk more about that, they send it overseas. Yeah. And with this layout, like we talked earlier about the style guide and the show bible, and this is where that really comes into play, because you have different people drawing, and everyone has their own style unto themselves, but you have to remain true to the show. So that show bible and style guide are really sort of the rules of the show that everyone can refer to and say no when Homer yells literally, like his lips do this. Exactly. That's how it works. And we can't deviate from that. It's got to be consistent. Right. And I saw a couple of style guides. For example, if you look closely, I never noticed this, but the nose always overlaps. The eye. The eye is never drawn over the nose. Their teeth are never square or pointy. They're always slightly rounded, but not too round. So you'll see, like, examples of these things, and you'll see examples of yes and no kind of thing. And here's a bit of trivia for you, especially if you're an animation nerd. Bart's body minus his shoes, but from his shoes up, is two heads high. So his body and his head are the same size. Interesting. And then you have his shoes. And if you put all those three things together, you have a correctly proportioned Bart. That's pretty good. Yeah. All right. So once you have the layout done, you have moved on to something called an exposure sheet. This is a pretty complicated chart, basically, that really breaks down in super precise detail each frame and everything in the entire episode. So think about this, Chuck. The Simpsons shoots 24 frames per second, and let's say that the average episode is 22 minutes of actual content, right? Yeah. So if you allow me to pull out my Texas instrument pocket calculator, as I am doing right now, we're going to do 24 times 60 times 22 equals 31,680 frames in, say, a 22 minutes episode. Okay. Amazing. Indeed. So get this, man. With those exposure sheets you were just mentioning, every single one of those 31,680 frames is accounted for. Everything that's going on in every single one of those frames is written down and accounted for. Not just like, the movement of Homers eyes or what Homers doing, but also what the background characters are doing. Yeah. How wispy Patty or Selma cigarette smoke is. And you do this for every single character, whether foreground or background, in every single scene, for every single frame of every single episode for 30 years. Isn't that insane? Yeah. They break down words into phonemes, so everything just matches up in times outright, not only to be realistic, but for comedy. Right? Exactly. And the whole reason they're doing this is for what I said earlier, that the people who actually do the animation, the people who draw those 31,860 frames for every episode, they're located overseas, I think with The Simpsons in particular, they work with ACOM, which is a South Korean company, and they do the actual animation. Most animation from here in the States is actually done overseas in Asia, for the most part. Yeah. Like the final, final animation. Right. The ones the people who do the actual animation of every single frame. So up to the point here in the United States, in house, they've gotten it pretty close. But again, they've just maybe animated a quarter or a 6th of the actual frames that are going to be animated for the episode. And they've gotten it as far as they have because they're trying to work out the acting, the comedic timing, making sure that all the facial expressions are right and the movements are right. But then the people actually go through and animate those frames based on that frame by frame bible for every single episode. And it serves as a blueprint for both the animators and for The Simpsons creators because they can point to it and be like, no, we didn't want this. You guys need to reanimate that. Supposedly. And this is like the most mind bendingly detailed process anyone's ever done. Supposedly, The Simpsons kept it up longer than anybody, but even they have moved to almost all digital process now. Yeah. I mean, they use software that has streamlined some of this, but it's not like they plug things into a computer and it animates things. Right. No, they're just using it to say, like, rather than using a film stock to slowly capture each phoneme frame by frame, now it's all digitized. Like, they can upload the audio, upload the layout, and put them together and time it like that, which is I'm sure the production assistance lives are so much better now. Yeah. And of course, once it's animated, it comes back from A.com in South Korea, and then it's sent to the editor and producers. They're going to add all the music, of course, the iconic score from Danny Elfman, and it edits it all together and you slap it on the television, slap it on the behind. Wow. I know. And each one of those takes about six months, right? Yeah. To get an episode done. And again, I've read South Park can be done in a week. Well, yeah, there's a great documentary about South Park, how they put together a show, and they do that so they can stay super current right. Which is how that show works. Yeah, for sure. Different beast. I mean, it looks good, too, especially once they made their mark on this is what this style of animation looks like now. It's like you're totally absorbed into their world the moment you see it, you know? Yeah. Alright, so let's talk a little bit about springfield, the beloved springfield, USA, where the show is set. It has been a running joke over the years. Graining picked springfield because there are many, many springfields in the country, here in the United states, and one of the running jokes is that they have never named where exactly what state springfield is in and shall not. No. Although supposedly, I don't know, the last couple of years, he gave an interview and said that he named it after springfield, oregon, because he's apparently from portland. And so everybody's like, oh, that's where springfield is. And I think the next episode they released, bart's chalkboard gag said, springfield is in any state that yours. Yeah. But yours. Yeah. I think he might have named it because a lot of the streets in portland are in the simpsons as well. But it's characters. But I don't think he was saying, and this is why they did that. I don't think he was saying, hey, it's in Oregon. That's just where he got the name originally. Right? I think, yeah. The reason he chose that name was just to make it as generic as possible and as relatable as possible to any small town. And the grabster makes a pretty good point. Springfield is you could mistake it for any small town. Everybody knows everybody else's name, everybody knows everyone else's business. It's just a small town. But then just to keep the plot going and this is one of the great benefits of making it an animated show. It also has a gorge. It has not one, but two mountains. It has like world class museums. It's got a volcano. An airport. Yeah, a volcano. It has a squid port, like the waterside area that they redeveloped. It has malls, it has a casino, it's got like all this stuff. So it's a relatable small town, but at the same time they just played with it and made it as big as they want it to be too. Yes. And of course, aside from all the big, huge things, the simpsons has gotten a lot of comedy over the years from the names of the businesses. A few of my favorites, there's a pastry shop called the french confection. They're a museum louvre, american style. Did you ever watch that show? Love american style. Oh, yeah. So great. The soup kitchen was called helter shelter. And there's a seafood restaurant called the frying dutchman. And those are just a few. That's sort of a long running gag is to get good pun names out of the businesses. So in addition to matt graining saying that he chose or he named it after springfield, oregon, there's an episode that certain purists point to is the tipping point where the simpsons went from good to bad. It was the end of season ten, and the episode was like behind the music parody. Yeah, it was called behind the laughter. Yeah, I remember that one. And in it, at the very end, the narrator references them as northern kentucky family. Yeah, I was like, well, they just said it. But then apparently for reruns, they had the narrator also recorded a couple of other states, so it's just totally up in the air. One of them is apparently like, lanai, hawaii. Springfield. Lanai, hawaii, apparently is a place, but it's not, of course. And then just to kind of they took that fact that they never identified springfield, and they managed to use that as like a running gag as well. Right. So this referential humor that the show is deeply involved in also a self referential, too, and that like, anytime somebody went to point to a map where springfield was, somebody would get in front of the camera in between you and the camera, or would suddenly talk over somebody who was about to say what state springfield was in. So it just became kind of an injury for people who watch the simpsons as well. Yeah, and I think ned, even at one point, said the state borders kentucky, maine, nevada, and ohio. So no one knows where springfield is. But I think that bark chalkboard thing was the closest we'll ever get to it. Why would you want to know where it is? You know what I mean? No, I get that certain nerds might be like, I want to solve this, but to me, that's just part of the charm of the show. Sure. Agreed. So I want to say something. I mentioned museums, and you mentioned the louvre american style. I wonder if that was the one. But there was one episode where the simpsons went to a museum and they took the audio tour, and the audio tour was hosted by melanie griffith. But rather than talk about the paintings, the whole thing consisted of her going, this one's nice. Look at this one. Oh, this painting is nice. Let's see what's in the next room. Oh, this room is nice. Like, that was the audio tour. That's great. It was great, man. So aside from the multiple universities, the sports teams and stadiums, the international airport, the tire fire, the mystery spot, and all the huge landmarks in this small town, you're going to see the simpsons spend a lot of time at places like quickie mart, mob power plant. Power plant where homer works. Springfield elementary, where bart and lisa been going to school for 30 years, which is I think that he decided early on he didn't want to age the characters at all. Yeah, it was a good choice. Yeah, because you can go on forever. Very smart move. Bad news for maggie because she doesn't have many lines. Yeah, that's true. And I think Matt granny does the pacifiers suck. I saw that, too. Yeah. And of course, next door to Homer lives one Ned Flanders with his family. And here's another little tidbit that I did not know. I don't know how it got past me, but apparently Ned Flanders is 60 years old. Yeah. He's kept his youthful looks with a healthy dose of vitamin. Church. It always cracks me up that Ned just looks like a normal guy until in the skiing episode, where they were skiing when he's all buff and his buns are all tight or in a street car named Marge episode, he has to take his shirt off because he's playing Stanley Kowalski, I think, and he's like, ripped. It's so funny. All right, well, let's take a break here, okay? We're going to come back and talk a little bit about the odd episode numbering code right after this. Let's do it. All right, so if you're a Simpsons fan, you might say, what about season seven, episode three? It is good enough for us. But you'd be mistaken because they have a very what's the word? Not obscure, but just very convoluted way of numbering their episodes. Yeah, they do it. So remember, they're working on multiple episodes at once and not all of those episodes make it into the same season. So the way that they keep track of their episodes is by batch number. And I didn't see anywhere how many can be in a batch, did you? No, but let's say between six and a baker's dozen. Okay. That's my guess. Sure. Stab in the dark. And maybe Matt grading will write in to correct us one way or another. I hope so. But the batch number and letter is the first two digits or whatever you want to call them. Number and letter, sorry. Right, that's what I was having problems with. So, like, for example, season four, episode six, that would be nine f three. And the three is the number that the episode had in the batch. So it really has nothing to do with release date or where it fell in the season. It had to do with when it was assigned in her production. Yeah, I think what's important is they get it. Yeah. And then they even switched later in the series to letter codes only. Is that right? They changed the well, no, not letter codes only because season ten, episode 13 would be a ABF nine. Right. So they changed the batch code to letter. Okay. Alright. And God knows what a ABFO nine stands for. But even Chuck, as far as I'm concerned, if you are referencing an episode and you say something like season four, episode six, I don't know what episode that is. Yeah, I go by title. I don't even go by title, I just go by the one about this. Well, yeah, I mean, let's say I go by title when it's obvious, like March versus the monorail. But, yeah, I usually will go by the one where Homer did Blank. Right, exactly. That's what Friends did. Yeah. That was actually the title, though, right? Yeah. So season four, episode six, by the way, was the one about the Itchy and Scratchy movie, which Barter is banned from seeing but ends up becoming a Supreme Court justice because Homer took the stand and punished him. So they have many staples on the show that they've done over the years. We mentioned the blackboard gag at the beginning of the intro, and the intro itself has got some long running gags besides Bart writing different messages on the chalkboard during detention hall. Over and over. The couch gag when the family runs in finally altogether into the living room to get on the couch. It's always something different and special and funny. Yeah. And apparently some of them are, like, way longer than others. Yes. They will add seconds onto it if, like, an episode came in shorter than they meant it to. Yeah. It's kind of nice to have that leeway to play with, I think. For sure. And they've actually made pretty good hay by outsourcing that, too. Like guest animators. Like Guillermo del Toro did one, banksy did one. So they're actually doing those. I just thought it was sort of an homage. No, they're either actually animating them or coming up with the idea or directing them. That's awesome. Don Hertzfeld did one. Bill Plympton did one. John Crick Faulsey. I've never known how to say his name, but the guy who did Rent and Stimpy, he did one. I just can't imagine what an honor it would be to do the couch gag. Yeah. But they've come up with some really cool stuff. Matt Graining can we do a couch gag? What if he's been listening since he wrote that down on the script? Man, that would be something else. I would guess. He would be like, I'm not even listening to this one. For these two. Yes. Or what if you listen to the first and not the second? That would be the biggest dagger can't go on. Yeah. So Maggie, when she gets scanned at the grocery store in the beginning sequence, originally in 1989, she got scanned as $847.63 because apparently that was the price, the estimated price of raising a baby for a month. Wow. That's a lot for back then. It is. And then in 2009, that was changed out the grocery store with a number of 243 26. And then Maggie, when she has swiped, doubles that to 486. 52. I'm not sure of the significance of that. Not either. But if it's someone knows again, Matt Greening. Let us know. What else? Treehouse of Horror. Very classic. Was that in the first season? Did they start that in the first season? Do you know? I think so. I think so, too. But just like, what a great tradition to just throw like they threw continuity out the window. Characters could be killed off. They routinely would spoof, like, great Sci-Fi and horror movies. It was just fun to watch because it didn't count. It didn't have anything to do with anything. It was just like taking the cartoon aspect of the show and just flushing it out in the grand tradition of cartoons. Yeah. And those are always some of my favorite episodes. Over time for the halloween episodes, many catchphrases over the years have become part of just part of american culture, part of the lexicon. From doe, from homer. Right. Which is translated into different languages. Yeah. In french it's tough with a t, and then in spanish, it's ouch. Did you know that? I did not know that. Which is weird because it's not a physical thing, but it is sort of an ouch. An emotional ouch. Well, did you know that it's in the oxford english dictionary? I did. What's the definition? Did you find it somewhere? I did see it, but I don't remember. Do you have it? I do. I found it. All right. It is expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has said something foolish. All right. Pretty good definition of dough, I think. Everyone has had a friend over the years that said, excellent. A little too much. Yeah. And then, of course, comic book man, worst episode ever. Yeah, that one is kind of a classic one. That's a good starting point to talk about some more self referential humor. So that was about I don't remember what episode that was or what season it was, but that was from the itchy and scratchy and poochy episode. Right. So at the time, people were kind of hating on the simpsons. It was becoming trendy to talk about how it jumped the shark, although I don't think that was the term yet. And the simpsons made fun of it by creating this episode where itchy and scratchy had become unhappy and old. And so to rev stuff up, they brought in poochie, the talking dog, who is an extreme, like, skateboarding, guitar playing ninja yeah, I think. And just completely threw off, like, the whole itchy and scratchy show. And that's where comic book guy says, worst episode ever. He's talking about the itchy and scratchy and poochy episode, and Bart's like, well, where do you get off saying that? And he's like, well, as a loyal fan, I feel like they owe me. He's like, what do you mean they owe you? They've given you hundreds of hours of free entertainment. If anything, you owe them. And he goes, worst episode ever. Yeah, I would say that's a subtle dig. Yeah. From simpsons writers to simpsons nerds, for sure. And then also in that same, there's another great one, too, if I may. Like the super nerds. I don't remember the guy's name, but he's like, get the messed up hair. And he's wearing like a green cardigan all the time in glasses, but there's an itchy and scratchy, like q and a or something like that. And the guy asked the question, he says he goes, so an episode, whatever. Like itchy plays scratchy skeleton like a xylophone, and they show him hitting the same rib twice in secession, but it plays two distinct notes. I hope somebody got fired for that screw up. So they were very much aware of the growing viciousness of their own fans. Yeah, for sure. That is just totally commonplace now. But at the time, it was just developing, because that was about the time the internet was really developing. Of course, everybody knows the internet brings out the absolute worst in humanity. Yeah. Here's another cool thing that's happened over the years. The simpsons had in time magazine wrote this great article where they kind of broke it down 13 times. The simpsons actually predicted the future. It's not quite on the level of me wanting to punch jared from subway for sharknado. I know, man. You do have a pretty good track record. But it is pretty interesting. Over the years, some of the things that the simpsons has parodied that ended up happening in real life. So thanks to time magazine, we're going to go over some of these. Maybe not all 13. No, just the good ones. One of the best. It's very sad and tragic, but they actually did predict a full ten years earlier, sigfried and royce tiger attack. Did they correctly predict which one would be attacked? I'm not sure because roy was the one who was attacked in real life. And I want to say I think sigfrey got attacked in the cartoon. Oh, really? I didn't know if it was one or both. I can't remember. Oh, maybe it was both. But that was in 1993, and it actually really did happen in 2003. And season five, episode ten, springfield s being a dollar sign or how I learned to stop worrying and love legalized gambling. That was so great. That was the one where robert koola hits mill house with this microphone. Right. And that title, of course, is also a reference to doctor strangelove. Right. All right, what else we got? Let's see. Voting machine errors, counting the wrong votes. I don't remember what the episode was, but season 20, episode four, treehouse of horror. Oh, was it that one? So homer was trying to vote for, I guess, McCain at first, and then it ends up being switched to obama. No, he tries to vote for obama, and he does it a few times and it gets switched back to McCain got you, which actually happened in real life in that very election. That's right. In 2012, there was that famous video footage in pennsylvania of people voting for obama and switching it to mitt romney. Oh, that's right. So the next election, what else? The. Auto correct one was kind of funny. 1994, episode eight of season six, Lisa on ice. Lisa Kearny, actually, during a school assembly, asked, dolph this fellow bully, to take a memo to beat up Martin on his Newton. Remember the Newton apple's little, I guess. The original PDA from Apple. It was, but it had, I guess, writing the text function that didn't work that well. Yeah. So he said, take a memo, beat up Martin, and it changed it to eat up Martha, which is pretty funny. And everyone suffers through that today with it, well, let's get real. It's not suffering, but gets annoyed by their smartphone. It feels like suffering. I got another one. President Trump. Yeah. So there's this clip, apparently, of Trump announcing his candidacy that they made after he actually had announced it, but people sent it around and said it just became an urban legend that they had made this before he actually announced his campaign. That's just false. But there's another earlier episode from, I believe, 2000, if I'm not mistaken, where it shows the future and Lisa is president, and she just references President Trump. She says, we inherited a pretty big debt crunch from President Trump, so we're going to have a lot of work ahead of us. And I guess Al Jean or somebody who was interviewed said that they asked themselves, like, what would represent the lowest point for America that we could possibly hit in the future? And they said to themselves, well, President Trump, now we've hit, apparently, the lowest point as far as the Simpsons are concerned. Last one. I'm going to pick America's. Ebola outbreak. And this one I'm picking because it was 17 years early. In Season Nine episode Three elisa Sachs In 1997, Marge offers to read Bart, but he was depressed. She offers to read him a book called Curious George and the Ebola virus, which, I mean, no one knew at all what Ebola was in. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, not bad. Simpsons, any other ones? No. All right, check out that Time magazine article if you want the full list. So what's up next, Chuck? Should we talk about the success of assumptions, the cultural impact? I feel like we can take our final break now. Man, what a journey. It has been a heck of a journey, buddy. All right. And we'll come back and finish up with a lot more Easter eggs, what some critics have said over the years, and kind of just a lovely summation, sufficient learning stuff with all right, Chuck, so you promised easter eggs. People want Easter eggs. I want Easter eggs. Let's talk Easter eggs. Yeah, this was compiled. NME put together a list of 50 Easter eggs, and we've covered a lot of them. And so we'll go over some of the faves here that remain. I did not know this, but Bart obviously is very famous for his prank phone calls to Mose Tavern, one of the great running bits over the years. And the number he dials is 764-8437 seven. Which is funny in itself because it's got one extra digit. Right. But that actually spells out Smithers. Perfect. Pretty good. I got one. Everybody on the show has four fingers, four digits on their hands. Right. And there's only been one person on the entire show who had five, and that was God. When I think heretic Homer episode where Homer decides he doesn't want to go to church anymore. That's a good one, too. Pretty good. Speaking of Dope, originally, that was just written in the script and continues to be written in the script. They may actually write it as a line now, but originally it was in the script as annoyed grunt, and that's what Dan Castlenetta came up with. Not bad. And apparently he based it on a recurring character from the old Laurel and Hardy series. Yeah. Dude, that is an arcane reference right there. It's not bad. Like we said, doe made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. So too, did Ma. You know that. Yeah. And they didn't make up Ma, but apparently they kind of brought it back into popular usage. Right. And it was kind of big starting in the it's just a timeless classic, basically, but it was added in 2015 to the OED, and the definition is expressing a lack of interest or enthusiasm. Pretty succinct. Yeah. I think Al Jean said something about it being, like, one of the funniest words in the English language. I think he's right. It really if you time it outright, a good math is really pretty great. Yeah. Because a lot of times it's used not sarcastically, but like, if something is really great and then you say it's math, it just shuts it down automatically. Yeah, it is pretty great. Here's one. Principal Skinner, his prisoner uniform in Vietnam was 2461, and he shared that prisoner number with Jean Valjean from Lehman Zarab from Hank Jennings and Twin Peaks, who no doubt got it from John Valjean. Sure. And then Sideshow Bob also has that very same prisoner number. It's a good prisoner number. Bob A-K-A Robert Towilliger. Right. Robert Underdunk Tarwilliger is his full name. Yeah. Such a great name. I've got another one. I did not know this. I hadn't even heard this. But do, the Bartman single that actually topped the charts in the UK and I think the US. Too, in 1990. Yeah. Not a fan. So you had remember where Auto is listening to the Simpsons calypso records. Yeah. So apparently Michael Jackson actually produced that song. Oh, really? That track, yeah. He was a guest on the show, too. He was. He was an uncredited guest. He played a large, white, maybe, construction worker, I think, who Homer met at a mental hospital, who thought he was Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson's voice. But they never credited Michael Jackson on the episode. Interesting. Yeah. Here's one of my favorites, millhouse Van Houten. His middle name is Mussolini. One of the greatest Millhouse gags of all time was when Bart had his leg broken and they got a swimming pool, and they basically did Rear Window. Remember that one? Oh, yeah. And Mill House is signing Bart's Cast. And he's like, I got to go, Bart. And Bart looks down at his cast and says, Mill pool. Because he wants to go to play in the pool rather than hang out with Bart. Yeah, it's one of those ones. You just got to see it. I think it's a funnier scene than explain. And actually, isn't that the premise that it's just funnier to just go watch this stuff? Oh, yeah. I hope everybody knows that we know that. Yes, absolutely. Please go watch this stuff. If you haven't already, dive. Here's another one springfield Hillbilly Cletus, which we mentioned earlier. Cletus is like Jody and his wife Brandy. They have 44 kids. Some of their names these are great. One of his name is Incest. One of them's name is Crystal Meth. Sure spells, like the name Crystal normalhead Joe. I think that's probably the best one of all. Normal head. Joe is good. My favorite one is Mary WrestleMania. But Normal Head Joe is great because it references the idea that the other kids heads aren't normal or that there's another one named Joe who doesn't have a normal head. And that actually brings to mind, if I may, another joke that I think is possibly the best joke ever said on The Simpsons. Are you ready for this? Yeah. I don't remember what episode it was, but Homer is reminiscing about something that happened in his past in his life, and he got in trouble or something with some bootleggers, but luckily, his friend Fonzie came and beat them up and saved the day. And Marge goes, that was happy days. And Homer says, no, they weren't all happy days, Marge. And it says a lot. So, number one, Homer is thinking that in a Happy Days episode is an actual memory from his life. That's funny enough, but there's also, like, this other nuanced joke, too, where he thinks that either March's grasp on grammar is so bad that those were Happy Days comes out. That was Happy Days, or his own grass spawn grammar is that bad that he thought that was correct, and he fails to remember the show happy Days. Right, exactly. So there's, like, five different things, like, writhing in this perfect joke that was just like a throwaway joke for The Simpsons. But if you put 30 seasons of that combined, you get just an amazing masterpiece. One big masterpiece. Yeah. So I went through and looked up a bunch of best episodes of The Simpsons lists, and I'll just rattle through those to see what different people think. And you can see a little bit of a pattern here. I'll be named like the one and two you're going to share yours, too, though, right? I didn't narrow it down. Okay, I got a couple of mention then. All right, so Rolling Stone magazine says March versus the monorail is their best ever, with Lisa the vegetarian is number two. That's a good one. So good. Digital spy, says Homer the Great is number one. Homer the heretic number two. IGN goes with March versus the monorail is number one again. And Rosebud is number two. So good. That one's so great. It's Citizen Kane parity. Yeah. Entertainment Weekly monorail again, is number one. And I think, actually they're number two is one of my top two. The Cape Fear spoof. That was great. Yes. Where Sideshow Bob comes, gets out of prison and stalks Bart and family, and they go into the witness protection program, and Homer can't get that. He has a different name now, and he's supposed to respond to it. Yeah. He's like, when I call you Bob Williams and step on your foot, you say, yes. Den of Geek goes with you only move twice as number one. That's the great James Bond spoof the hank scorpio. And then Homer versus the 18th Amendment is number two. Oh, is that the beer bearing episode? Yeah, I think so. That was so great. Consequence of sound, homer Goes to College, number one. Monorail, number two. And then Vulture goes with Cape Fear number one. And last exit to Springfield is number two. That was the one with the dental plan. And Lisa needs braces. Right. It's all about, like, union organizing and union busting and all that. Yeah. So, I mean, definitely minor in there. And I'll just go ahead and throw the stone cutters in there as well. That was a great one, too. Yeah. I have a couple of others to add to it. If I may, please. Homer. H-O-M backward R. The one where it turns out that Homer has a crayon lodged in his brain, which accounts for his sub average intellect, right? Yeah. And he has it removed, and he suddenly becomes smart. So this is, like, a really good example of the impact The Simpsons had on my life. I love that episode. I thought it was great. I watched it again last night. It was as good, if not better, than it was ten or so years ago. And then today, as I was researching it some more, I realized and I didn't realize this, but it was based on the premise of Flowers for Algernon, and then the movie that was made based on flowers for Algernon, Charlie, which explains the backward R. There's a backward R in Charlie in the movie title, and it kind of roughly parallels that. There's a rat that Homer is playing a test with that I didn't get until I read up on it. Oh, yeah. So this episode that I love, and I think it's hilarious, just introduced me to Charlie and Flyers for Algebra, which I did not read in middle school or high school, right? Yeah, I did. So I will probably go back and watch Charlie now, and I will love that Homer episode even more as a result. Yeah, and they go so deep. They really do. Because also, it's not just that. Like, if they didn't just leave it at, well, here's a parody of Charlie or flowers for Algernon. And you'll love it for that. It's also the premise of the episode is it's an examination of anti intellectualism, and the whole basis of it is like, hey, no, actually, it's pretty great to be smart. Yeah. And that is hard to be smart, too, especially in a world of dumb dumbs. As for Matt Graining, his top ten, and this was I mean, it's hard to believe this was done 17 years ago, but a lot of people look at the 90s as sort of the golden age of the Simpsons. So as for that golden age, granny's top ten, or Bart the Jared Double Life on the fast Lane, much apu about Nothing, a streetcar named Marge. That one is so good. In Marge, we trust Homer's enemy treehouse of horror. Seven natural born kissers. Crusty gets busted. And there's no disgrace like home. Is that the one where the child services maybe comes? Oh, I don't know, but that one's good if that is the one. If you don't have keep your milk in a refrigerator or barring that in a cool wet sack. Oh, man. Maybe we should just launch a side podcast on the Simpsons. Yeah. Just called Josh and Chuck giggle a lot. Yeah, I think that's right. Can I throw out a couple more? Oh, yeah, sure. Lisa the skeptic was a great one where Steven Jay Gould's in it, they find, like, what looks to be an angel fossil, but it's a PR stunt for the local mall. Yeah, I remember that one. The death of mallet again, I think was just about as good as an animated TV show has ever gotten. Tackling. Like a serious subject. Totally. And then I went back and watched it again last night, and it is really great. So it's still in my top echelon. But in March we trust, which is the Mr. Sparkle episode. Yeah, and that was on Matt Graining's list. And I think I look through the top tens of all the sites. That one's in the top ten of everybody's. It's just so good. But the thing is, it's so trendy now. It's like a social signifier when you're in, like, a hip in group to say, the Simpsons sucked after season eight, or the Simpsons sucked after season ten. And that is demonstrably false. There are so many good episodes that you can point to that came after season ten. There's this whole idea that there's this thing called zombie Simpsons, and it's the show that closely resembles the Simpsons in look and feel, but is nowhere near as funny as the simpsons, which actually took place during the me. It smacks of that whole refusal to surrender what you thought was cool or what was cool when you were young is now not necessarily as cool as it was, which means by proxy, you're not as cool. Right. And so there's that whole side thing of aging where you want to remain relevant or whatever, and you can become cursed to just hang on to what you identify with rather than branching out and looking at the world as it changes. As it changes. Right. Yeah. And I think that that's part of it. And I think that's stupid to just close your mind like that and be like, the simpsons sucked after season ten, end of story, period. And there seems to be a lot of people out there who are more than happy to do that. Yeah. I mean, the grabster actually had a nice little summation about that whole attitude. And dude, what this has done is it's made me want to go back, and I'm going to and start watching the show again. Well, you can. And here's a little bit of buzz marketing for FFX. Sorry. They have every simpsons episode online, and you can watch it. I'm not sure if you have to pay or if you just have to sign up and submit to spam or whatever, but it's all there. Yeah. Well, I know what I'll be doing now, Emily's. Like, seriously? Yeah, you're regressing. So ed had a lot of good points as far as that it's not as good as it used to be. It could be a perception thing because they might be a victim of their own success, that it was so great during the 1990s that even the slightest fall off from that might be bigger than expected. Yeah, and they addressed that in the itching scratching preachy episode, too, because Kent brockman reports that fans of the beloved show have been watching for cracks in its veneer for years. I know. And it's the same thing. If you are that good, can you possibly keep it up? And if you even slip a little bit, people are just going to throw their hands up. Yeah. Part of it is the fragmentation of the audience. I'm 46 years old, and I saw the first episode my senior year of high school. Yeah. It's ridiculous how long the show has been on, and I didn't think, oh, this show sucks. Now I got to quit watching it. I got a little busy. It fell away and never came back. And that just happens sometimes. Sure. I think that happens with people who listen to our show. Absolutely. I don't think people who stop listening some people stop listening out of disgust. Mostly conservative american, but a lot of people like, their lives change a little bit, then you just end up not listening anymore. That's fine. Yeah. It also makes a point about the simpsons was so groundbreaking and it's satire that that's being done so much. It's just not as unique as it used to be. They didn't create satire, obviously, but in 1989 and 1990, there wasn't a lot of stuff like this at all going on television. No. So there's so much of that now. They're, again, a little bit of victims of their own success in that there's just so much to choose from satirically that it's tough to stick with something like that for 30 years and say it's just as sharp as it ever was. It may be just as sharp as it ever was, but it just might not seem that way because so many other people are doing what they started. I read this 1990 article, and I think the new statesman, and it was basically saying, the simpsons is a direct challenge to the GOP's identity as the party that provides for the middle america, middle american family, because if they were doing such a great job of it, then there would be no popularity for the simpsons or for roseanne. Right. So early on, it was like a real challenge to the status quo and the established sense of wholesome americanness. Oh, yeah. George bush even very famously said george bush senior, who was a president before w, for those of you who aren't alive back then. But george bush senior said, I want america to be more like the waltons and less like the simpsons. Yes. And barbara bush said it was the dumbest thing she'd ever seen on TV. Right. And there was a lot of that at first, and especially it was because his t shirts were everywhere and kids were saying, like, don't have a cow man to their parents, and stuff like that. Part of it was the initial mistaken taking of the simpsons and missing what it actually was. But then another part of it was america was just a different place, and the moral majority was in charge and pretending like everything was absolutely perfect. And shows like this came along and really challenged that. Today, if you look at the current climate, I saw a really great description of how hard it is to be satirical. It was in al jazeera, and they said, in an era when dennis rodman is serving as a makeshift ambassador to north korea, it's difficult to write satire that stands out. Yeah. And we have friends that write for TV and for the onion and satire. And I know that it's been a challenge for them to come up with anything that seems fresh and unique in this day and age, for sure. So I'm sure that's part of it, too. Here's some sanctimonious drivel from bill cosby. August 31, 1990, entertainment weekly magazine. Mr. Cosby said, TV should be I would do a cosby voice, but funny to do that anymore. TV should be moving in a direction from the huxtables forward, not backward. The mean spirited and cruel think this kind of programming is the edge and their excuses. That's the way people are today. But why should we be entertained by that? And this is the time when bill cosby was like the moral mouthpiece of america. And so in a sense, matt greening took him on and took on the bushes and just took on that whole false wholesomeness. And today it's not even a question. Like, of course that whole thing is taken on. Like, try to find a show on primetime that even vaguely resembles major dad or my two dads. You can't find it, they're not there. Everything has gone the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's become we're just entirely cynical, but we're so cynical that there isn't room for satire like there used to be. So now I think there's going to be a backlash probably from I don't know where it's going to come from, but I predict basically a wholesome backlash or I don't think it's going to be that whole earnest thing that didn't actually take off very well. Yeah, everybody got sick of that really quick. But there's going to be, I think, something a little more bona fide and genuine that will develop out of cynicism, because I don't think cynicism can be maintained for too long before everybody just kind of commits cultural suicide. You know? I think it's already happening. Like shows like masters of none from aziz ansari and tign taros one mississippi. Have you seen those shows? They're not cynical. They're very kind of sweet, warm hearted shows, and they're funny, and they may bring up relevant satirical things, but they're both very genuine shows, and it's just done in the right way. It's not touched by an angel. Right? And that was another reason, chuck, that barbara bush and george bush really missed the point, because the simpsons may have ultimately kind of created the groundwork for america to create the cynical shift or shift to the cynicism, maybe, or maybe that was politics, one of the two. Right? But they missed the basis of the simpsons, and the basis of the simpsons is morality. Like actual real morality, like making good moral decisions, making bad moral decisions, having consequences, family coming together and actually looking out for one another. Things actually kind of working out in the end, like bart and marge having their marriage tested, but then it's surviving and being stronger on the other side, but without a hint of schmalziness, without a hint of fake wholesomeness. They had the wherewithal to put that through those tropes or those moral ideas, through the grinder of reality, and managed to get it out on the other side and said, see, you actually can be a good, moral, upstanding person and survive in cynical times, in times that beat you down. And we're proving it every sunday with our show. Yeah, man, what a great show. What a great show. Eight show. Thank you. Thank you to the simpsons and everyone who's ever been involved in it for making it because you literally changed the world and for the better. That's right. As of May of this year, the Simpsons has broadcast more than 600 episodes aired for more seasons than any primetime scripted show in TV history. And by the time the 30th season will end, there will be more episodes of the Simpsons than any other prime time scripted show. Finally passing gun smoke. Man alive. Chuck, dude, great job. Great job to you too, buddy. This is a pleasure. I think I'm going to just go back and start researching the Simpsons again. So maybe we should do that side podcast. My good. So is this it? Is this the end? Yeah. So in lieu of listener mail, 999th and 1000th episode, we shall give thanks to everyone out there. How appropriate that the Simpsons is our tribute. Such a long running show and here we are at some place that we never, ever thought that we would be, to say the least. No, we've done pretty good for a show that has rights. Free theme music, you know? Yeah, like software canned theme music. Yeah. Like people write in sometimes. Like, I heard your theme song on a mattress ad. Are you guys going to sue them? No. Can't do it right. Free. So we said it a lot over the years, but obviously we would not still be doing this if all of you were not out there downloading and listening and interacting with each other via the stuff you should know army coming out to see us live on tour. Man. This has surpassed every expectation that either one of us, including Jerry, ever had for ourselves. And thank you forever. Yeah. Thank you to not just like the super fans, but the fans, the casual listeners. Basically, anyone who's ever heard of stuff you should know episode, listen to it, learn something from it, laugh to themselves over it, maybe get a weird look on the subway or whatever. Yeah. Thanks to all of you. Thank you to all of you for supporting us for this long. And Chuck, here's to the next thousand episodes, buddy. Let's do it, brother. And then, Jerry, you are you down with another 1000 episodes? That's great, Jerry. And you know what, jerry, do you want to say a few words? Go ahead. I think she should. Chuck. All right, let's hear it. Go for it, Jerry. Well put, Jerry. Yeah. That actually made me tear up. Yeah. So in the meantime, while you wait for episode 2000, you can get in touch with us. You can tweet to us at xysk podcast. I'm also at Josh Clark on Twitter. Chuck's at Charlesw. Chuckbryant on Facebook. I'm at Josh Clarke, I think, on facebook, something like that. You can also visit our official Facebook page atststepyysheanow you can send us an email including Jerry. Dear Jerry Roland, who I'm just going to go ahead and say it for a 1000th episode. Chuck Gerry does in fact exist. Of course she does. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyoushorenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housedefworks.com hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
448bbdaa-53a3-11e8-bdec-cf8b99d428a6 | Joseph Merrick, aka "The Elephant Man" | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/joseph-merrick-aka-the-elephant-man | Joseph Merrick was known as The Elephant Man because of his suffering from what we now know was Proteus Synrome. Learn all about this brave man in today's episode. | Joseph Merrick was known as The Elephant Man because of his suffering from what we now know was Proteus Synrome. Learn all about this brave man in today's episode. | Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=350, tm_isdst=0) | 42078966 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's out there floating in the ether like the Omniscient Green Goddess salad dressing that she is. Wow. This is stuff you should know. How long do you work on that, buddy? That is off the cuff. Don't you know me by now? Off the dome, as they say. I don't say that. I say off the cuff. I'm not cool enough to say off the dome, but you're shirtless, so there is no cuff. That is true. Man, I hadn't thought about all this. Maybe she changed off the dome. Speaking of Domes. Chuck yeah. What were you going to say? I was going to talk about Thunderdome. Were you really? I'm always this close to talking about Thunderdome. Yeah, I guess that's a pretty 2020 way to be, isn't it? Sure. So who's who Chuck? Am I master or blaster? And are you Master or Blaster, or are we both Blaster and both Master? I'm not sure who is who, but I would prefer to ride around on your shoulders. That's fine. I prefer to be a giant shirtless man wearing nothing but a leather Daddy Cross belt across my chest, which I guess I could probably do that anyway. Yeah, why not? I'm Tina Turner. Oh, so you're Tina Turner, riding on Blaster's shoulders. Yes. What happened to Master? We don't like to talk about it. Two men entered. That's all I'll say. Okay. He was suffocated by Tina Turner sitting on him. That's right. So obviously, Chuck, we're talking about one of the most, in my opinion, admirable brave human beings to ever walk the face of the Earth, and a man named Joseph Merrick, who a lot of people know of as John Merrick incorrectly, but probably know him even better as the Elephant Man. That's right. And we have to use those words because that's how he was referred to. We'll get into the reasons why, but we were going to call him Joseph Merrick, mainly because that's the man's name, and we don't like to call somebody by their sideshow name. It's a rule here. Sure. No, but it should be noted that he was and I think a lot of people probably don't realize this, but he was an active, willing, and initiating participant founding member, you could say, of his own sideshow act. So he was fully on board with the idea of being called the Elephant Man, which is just another facet of this extremely complex person who I think it's painted with a very simple brush sometimes. But the great thing is, a lot of times when you look into a widely misunderstood, wildly oversimplified person, you very frequently find that there's a lot of, like, really terrible stuff to them. Like, they were fine with hitting women. They thought that that was, like, a totally fine thing to do. Like sean Connery. Right. And instead, when you look into Joseph Merrick, you find, oh, my gosh, he was an even better person than I dared hope. He was a really great guy who went through just hell on earth in the 27 years that he was alive. Yeah. So you may have heard of the story of the Elephant Man from a few things in pop culture, namely the David Lynch movie, or perhaps the various Broadway shows I watched a few of those, like clips from a few of those. He's been played by David Bowie. Billy Crud up recently by Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper said that the movie caused him to want to become an actor. So it's actually pretty apropos that he played him eventually. Well, we can all thank Joseph Merrick for Bradley Cooper's success. That's right. But yeah, I was kind of curious because I was like, do they undergo prosthetics? Like, how do they pull this off? But I'm sure you looked at some of the clips. No one does that. When you play Joseph Merrick, you just embody demand you sort of contort your body in certain ways and you just sort of play the person. And I think that's a good way to go about it. Rather than just throwing some big mask over David Bowie or something like that. Right. Yeah. They just kind of contorted their body. They altered their speech and just affected yeah, I think it was a good way to go, too. And apparently I don't remember the guy's name, but the first guy to play Joseph Merrick in the stage version. And that came out in, I think, 79 or 80. He was the one who started that trend and really kind of came up with this embodiment that everybody else has kind of followed suit with afterward. And I don't know, I didn't catch it. Did you say Mark Hamill was one of the people who played him? Yeah, Luke Skywalker. He used the Force. He did. So there's something really weird that happened in the late seventy s, and I'm not quite sure what it was, but in 1979, the stage play based on Joseph Merrick came out. In 1980, David Lynch released just a legendary film, one of the best films ever made about Joseph Merrick. And then there was a definitive book that was written as well by a pair of authors, one of whom I believe was like a doctor who had all this great research, but his writing was a little over the top, so they assigned a ghostwriter with him and they basically wrote the definitive book on Joseph Merrick's life and medical condition. And all three of these projects happened independently. Like, one wasn't adapted from the other or anything like that, and they all came out at around the same time, which is really strange in and of itself. But it's even stranger to think that all of this happened centered on a character who had been largely forgotten. By this time, there was really only two surviving pieces of literature about him, about Joseph Merrick, the man that anyone was aware of, and they had been written in the 19th century. But then suddenly, for some reason, in the late seventy s, three different projects started up about Joseph Merrick and kind of made him an icon for humanity that is still lasting today. Yeah. I think the 70s spawned Disco Fever and Elephant Man Fever, and they were both rather unlikely considering both Disco and Joseph Merrick were born in the 1800, specifically in England on August 5, 1862. So I meant to look it up. I don't know if it's Listershire, like the sauce. Lester lister. Lester, right. Yeah. You have that last time. It's just Lester. From what I understand, okay, so he was born in Leicester, England, on August 5, 1862, and we'll talk a little bit about what they are. Pretty sure his condition was. But being 1862 at the time, after he started developing some very strange symptoms at the age of five, doctors back then were pretty flumxed. Yeah. So the reason why is we'll see is because they think he's one of maybe 100 people in the entire history of the world, or at least as far as people have been writing stuff like this down to have this condition that he had. So it's not like he started developing strangely, and they were like, oh, well, this is what's going on. This is what's to be expected. Instead, just little by little, his body started taking on these odd, differing forms. And like you said, I think it was around the age of five that he really started to show that he was going to be rather different. Yeah. Was five. His father, Joseph, and his mother Mary Jane, noticed he had swollen lips, and then a lump started to form on his forehead. His skin started to kind of get loose and rough, and this was just sort of the beginning. His face became spongy, his jaw started to deform. His speech was impaired. The right side of his body was, or at least upper body was, I guess, a lot more affected because it seemed like his left arm and hand stayed kind of as is, but the right side arm became sort of like this giant fin. Right. So the thing that I guess kind of gave him the moniker the Elephant Man was growth that started protruding from what I saw beneath his upper lip. So the way that I read that, Chuck, is that, like, when you pull your top lip up the part of your gums right there above your teeth, that he had, like, a growth that started there, and it got pretty big. I think it got up to about eight inches long, and that I guess you would just look at it and be like, wow, that looks a lot like an elephant's trunk. This strange growth that's growing up from under this poor man's top lip and he later had it removed. So it doesn't show up in any photographs of him. But that supposedly is one of the places where the idea that he was an Elephant Man came from. Yeah. So as far as his family goes, he had a couple of younger siblings. It seems like both of them passed away. William Arthur succumbed to smallpox, and Marion Eliza just says on her death certificate that she was crippled from birth with an unknown ailment. Right. And he went to school. Like I said, it didn't start happening until he was five and it wasn't so severe right away that he couldn't go to school like any other kid would. His age. Things really took a turn, though, when his mum died when he was eleven years old, things went really bad for him. Yeah. So there's like a few things that you should know about his mom. So his mom was vilified by his biographer, who also would turn out to be his surgeon, who will talk about later Frederick Trees as a terrible woman who abandoned him. And that doesn't seem to be the case at all. And in fact, Joseph recalls his mom is a very saintly, sweet woman who was basically his only friend, because when you're starting around five and you are having trouble keeping up with other kids, something else happened to him when he was five. Two chuck. He fell really hard and injured his hip and that injury became infected. So he became, at the time they would have called lame or crippled in his, I believe, his left leg. So he had trouble walking from the age of five, in addition to his genetic condition that was making him look more and more different. So he became further and further alienated from his friends. I saw a quote that said that he was becoming a lonely, introspective child, increasingly dependent on his mother for company. And luckily his mother seems to have been a very sweet woman who again, in the verdacular, was crippled. That's how she was described. So we have no idea in what way. But today you would describe her as without the use of, say, one or more of her limbs. So they had that kind of connection. But she also was very protective of Joseph too. So when she died, it was more than him just losing his mother at age eleven. It was him losing like his best friend, his main companion, and the source of basically anything good in his life was taken from him at a very young age. Yes, his father remarried and by all accounts his father and stepmother were not very kind to him at all. They were emotionally abusive, could be physically abusive. He left school at age 13, which is about when kids left school back then and got a job at a cigar factory and worked there for a couple of years until his left arm got to the point in hand such that he couldn't do the job anymore. Right. So at that point, he got what they called a hawker's license in order to help his dad, who had a couple of small businesses, but he helped his dad sell stuff from his habadashery in England there and then eventually went to work at the Lester union workhouse. He ran away from home a couple of times, it was just a really bad scene, and eventually landed with his uncle, who was a barber named Charles. And he was a good guy and he felt bad for what Joseph was going through and sort of his home life. So he took him in and that ended up being, after a couple of really bad years with his dad and stepmother, a really nice place to be for a little while. Yeah, stepmother was just pretty evil. She was the one that made him drop out of school at 13 and go get a job. And when he was hawking stuff from his father's shop, if he didn't come home with enough money, she wouldn't give him a full meal. I guess she'd give him enough food to sustain him, but if he couldn't pay for the meal that she had on offer with the proceeds from what he sold that day, she wouldn't give him that meal. And then his father would frequently beat him too. So it's no wonder that he tried to run away, but then his father would go get him and bring him back home. So he had a terrible life and, yeah, luckily he had that uncle named Charles who took him in for a little while. But even he was like, I can't support you anymore, kid. Because after a little while, very sadly, joseph actually had his hawker's license revoked because he was deemed a menace to the community, because he was scaring people when he was going door to door trying to sell stuff. His appearance scared people and there were enough complaints that the city revoked his license. So at the end, by the time he was 17, he had no choice but to go to the union workhouse, which is a poor house. It's what Dickens described in all of our twists and some of his other stories, where you went there if you were either unable or unwilling to support yourself through honest work, and they would put you to work. And it was basically like a prison for poor people. They feed you and they give you a bed, but it was a very cruel place to live. And that's where he spent a little while, I think five years, because he had no other choice. And then finally, Chuck, at one point toward the end of his stay at the union workhouse, he said, you know what, there's an alternative for me and I'm going to take it and we should probably take a break now. And maybe come back and talk a little bit about this mystery illness that he had that we now sort of understand. Yeah. So he referred to himself as the Elephant Boy and then the Elephant Man. This was a moniker that he sort of embraced, but he thought his whole life that he was this way because of something called maternal impression, which was still a common belief back then, which was that something could happen to a mother while pregnant that would affect the baby. And that's not to say she drank or smoked and had a literal effect on the development of the baby. What they meant was she was knocked over by an elephant when she was pregnant, and that is what caused his illness. And he believed that his whole life. And the whole notion of maternal impression, obviously something in the late 18 hundreds was it's kind of crazy to think about now, but they actually thought that in utero, it could have an effect like that. Yeah. But it also kind of makes sense since you think that if he started to basically grow, what you'd be like that looks like an elephant's trunk. Your mom was knocked over and almost stomped by an elephant once when she was pregnant with you. We have no idea what genetics are yet. You could see somebody making sense of it that way. Maybe. I guess it's hard to kind of put my head in that mindset back then. But what we now think, and what doctors now think is that he had either a case of neurofibromatosis or and or something called Proteus Syndrome. And it really seems like Proteus Syndrome is rare, as that is, is probably what he suffered from. Yes, I saw that. Experts in neurofibromatosis have categorically ruled that out as what he had, because with neurofibromatosis, you have all sorts of tumors that actually grow on your nerve tissue. So your nerve endings, your spine, your brain. And he may have had those. So it's possible he did have a case of that. But like you said, it's much likely it was Proteus Syndrome, which is characterized by basically an overgrowth of tissue, of bone, of organs, even. I looked into this. So it has a genetic basis, as I kind of mentioned a couple of times, Chuck, but it's based on this idea of mosaicism, which is where you end up after you're conceived, and your cells start dividing. At some point, there's a mutation that occurs, and your cells start dividing differently in that they have two different sets of chromosomes. So you have two different sets of cells with different sets of chromosomes, and they start doing their own thing in building a human body, but it becomes incoherent. Whereas if they were uniform and all the cells share the same set of DNA or the same gene set, they would build a coherent human. But in this case, it's incoherent. And it's kind of like if you gave two different building plans to two different construction companies and told them to build on the same site at the same time and just ignore each other, that's what you would produce. But in this case, it's not a building. It's a human body. Yeah, I've heard of mosaic downs is the only time I've heard that used. And I think it's sort of similar in that case. But as far as protein syndrome goes, it's progressive. Your body could be covered with tumors either benign or malignant. It can malform blood vessels. You can have skin lesions. You can have blood clotting, which results in all kinds of problems like deep vein thrombosis or maybe pulmonary embolism. It can affect basically any kind of tissue from fat to skin to your central nervous system. It really depends on the patient and who's afflicted how it can affect you. And usually his was on set pretty late if it started, I guess outwardly, at least at five years old, because it typically starts anywhere from six months to 18 months of age. Right. But that's another thing about neurofibromatosis is that it usually starts its onset is at birth or before birth. So that's another reason, another strike against it. Yeah. So it's pretty clear they think, that he had Proteus syndrome. And it's actually a pretty recent thing. Like, I think it was first described in 1979. And they said there's probably about 200 people who have ever appeared in the medical literature that had it. And then some other reviewers in 2011 did another survey of the medical literature and pared it down to basically 100 people in the history of medicine whoever had Proteus syndrome. And the thing is, Joseph Merrick may have had the most pronounced advanced case of Proteus syndrome ever of anybody. He had basically every symptom you can possibly have. But the big problems that he suffered from were, like you said, his right hand. He couldn't use it because it had kind of fused into a fin like appendage. He had joints that he couldn't move because the bones had overgrown. He couldn't hear out of his right ear because his skull had overgrown. And actually, if you see pictures of his skull today, it's just huge and massive. And apparently it weighed something like \u00a320 and got to something like 3ft in circumference, which is about a foot in circumference more than the average human man's head. So it was just enormous. And all it was was he had cells that didn't know when to stop growing, whether it was bone or tissue or skin or whatever. And he also had problems inside of his mouth with bony growth, too, which affected his speech. Yeah, he couldn't sleep lying down. He had to sleep, I think one of his associates later in life, he liked to draw a curtain around himself when he slept. But one of his associates kind of peeked in one night and saw that he slept sitting up with his knees drawn into his chest with his head resting forward on his knees. So if you can imagine sleeping like that every night of your life because his head was so strong and so big that he would risk waking up with a broken neck and it affected his breathing. Right. I wonder if the late 70s, when they first described Proteus Syndrome, if that coincided with the interest in Merrick story. Maybe we solved it. That's weird. Yeah, that would be weird. But I haven't seen anybody mention that. It's almost like he just appeared in the Zeitgeist somehow around then. I don't get it. But, yeah, maybe that was it. But no, it couldn't be, Chuck, because it wasn't until 1986 that some geneticists said that he probably had Proteus Syndrome for the first time. So it would have been after that. Yeah. It's just strange. So one thing I want to say, though, about Proteus syndrome and mosaicism. Mosaicism. That mutation happens after conception. The weird cosmic irony of this whole thing is it's entirely possible that that mutation did happen around the time that his mother was pushed down in front of that elephant. It would have had nothing to do with the elephant. Like, she wouldn't have been frightened into this mutation or anything. But how ironic would it be if it happened at virtually the same time? Yeah. So in the late 1884 is when Merrick decided it was a pretty brave choice, basically, to take his life in his own hands and say, listen, I can't go door to door. I can't stay in this work, poor house any longer. I want to be able to sustain myself and not just end up in some dark room of a hospital living off the government. Like, I want to live my life as best as I can. So he checked himself out of that workhouse and he decided to reach out to a man named Sam Tor, who ran the Lester Music Hall called the Gayety Place of Varieties. And he started exhibiting himself as the Elephant Man. Half man, half elephant. And he achieved a lot of success early on there. And then he eventually moved to London, made even more money, and was actually I mean, we don't have real numbers on his income, but it was reportedly fairly substantial. Like enough to live and live well. Yeah. Although living well, I mean, that's a relative term because when he made the move to London, he was on display in a storefront in a building that's still there today. It's now numbered. 259 White Chapel Road in Shadwell. In London. And you can go visit the store today. They sell sorrys there, from what I understand. But he lived in an iron bed in the back of the store and then would come out for these performances, this exhibit. But the thing is, he was part of a sideshow, but he was a partner in the sideshow act. He partnered with a man named Tom The Silver King Morgan, who was already a showman, and I guess bought out Sam Torres shares in Merrick's exhibition and took over for him. And when he was displaying them, like I said, they were partners. Like, there was a pamphlet that you would get I think there's still copies of in existence today with kind of a crude drawing of Joseph Merrick on the front. And like you said, it said the Elephant Man. Half man, half elephant. And part of the biography in the pamphlet was written by Joseph Merrick. It had the whole story about his mother being pushed down in front of an elephant and everything. So a lot of people just talk about how he was exploited or whatever he was doing this for work. And I guess part of the rationale that he used was people stared at him anyway. Like by this time when he went out in public, he would wear, like, a cloak. He had a cap with a hood that hung down from it. And he put this on so that he just looked like this mysterious shape moving through the town. But at the very least, he wasn't just like as gawked at as he would be without wearing a hat and hood and all that. But his rationale was that people are going to stare anyway. I might as well charge him for it. And that's exactly what he did at that storefront in London. And it just so happened, Chuck, that that storefront was located directly across the street and still is from the London Hospital. And some doctors, they're caught wind of this curiosity who was on exhibit just right across the street, and some of them showed up to check it out. Yeah, at one point he met up with a surgeon who had heard about a story named Frederick Treeves, and he invited him to come in for an examination. And at this point, Merick had, I guess it was sort of his peak of his deformities and his troubles. At this point, his head was about 36 inches in circumference. That right wrist was about twelve inches around. And he had those tumors all over his body. Like we said, a lot of trouble walking and talking. But when he was examined by the doctor, he was like, other than this, you're in pretty good health. He ended up having a heart problem later on, but he said, Other than that, you're in decent health. And he said, I would like to present you, if I could, to the Pathological Society of London and to come in for more exams. And it's at this point where Merick, I think, sort of caught the notion in his head that, listen, I am getting the same feeling of being on display in the storefront, and I don't like how it feels. I think one of his quotes was the experience made him feel like an animal in a cattle market. And he said, I'm not going to go from showing myself in the storefront to being paraded around in front of a bunch of doctors for free. Some sort of weird medical experiment. Yes. Trees clearly identified Joseph Merrick as a really great case study that Trees could make his name on, and ultimately he did. But when he asked Joseph to come back for more tests and more displays and demonstrations, and Joseph declined. Apparently Trees was very upset by this. And then a lot of people say, not coincidentally, but it's never been proven that he had any hand in it whatsoever. Shortly after he was rebuffed, or he rebuffed Tree's invitation again, the Elephant Man exhibit was shut down by police. London outlawed that particular exhibit. On the one hand, it makes sense because Victorian society kind of started to come to see side shows, or freak shows as they were called at the time, as really exploitive and distasteful, even ones where the person on display was a willing participant. And then other people think, well, it was revenged by Trees. He was kind of that kind of person, potentially, to do something petty like that. But however it happened, his show got shut down and he found himself pretty well off. Like you said, he had a lot of money, he just wasn't living very well. He's living in an iron bed and a cold storefront. He said, I've always wanted to go see Europe, the continent, and I'm going to go try my hand in Belgium and see what they think of my exhibit. And so we moved to Belgium for a while and started up an exhibit there. Yeah, so in Belgium is where he had some sort of ups and downs. He ended up being robbed by a manager there who took him on and he took basically all the money that he had saved, and it was a good amount of money. And I think that's kind of how we know that he had some decent success and made a decent living back in the UK. And in 1886, he goes back to England, and once he's there, he goes back to the London Hospital. They say that this is an incurable thing that you have. And there was a letter published in the Times from the chairman of the hospital, Francis Carr GoM, that talked about his case, basically, and said, hey, if there's anyone out there that thinks they could help this man, please get in touch with us. There was a big outpouring of support, mainly financial, which really helped Merick out, because, like I said, he had his life savings taken and was definitely a hard luck case at this point, financially, and he was able to use that money, basically, to live on for the rest of his life. Yeah, I mean, there's a story that Tree said in his memoirs, like I said before, there's only two surviving pieces of contemporary. Writing about Joseph Merrick. One is the memoirs of Fredericks, his doctor, the man who ended up becoming his doctor. And then the other was the pamphlet written in part by Joseph Merrick about his life that was handed out at the sideshow but intrigued memoirs. He recounts a story that Joseph was so bad off when he finally found passage back after being abandoned, beaten, robbed in Belgium. When he found passage back to UK, he couldn't even speak, either because he was just so shattered by the experience or because the bony protrusions in his mouth had progressed so much. But regardless, the police supposedly found a business card of Frederick Trees on him and they took Joseph to Frederick Trees. So he was kind of, at least according to Trees memoirs, delivered by Providence back into Trees hands. And then at the hospital, they were kind of like, this is a really sad story, but he's an incurable, there's nothing that we can do about it. He's got to go. And if it hadn't been for Francis Carr Gon basically turning out and saying like, hey, we don't know what a Go fund me as yet, but this is basically what we're going to do. And the response that he got was just so massive that they basically said, okay, there's enough money here now that you can live here for the rest of your life if you want to. And one of the big things that really kicked it off, Chuck, was a visit from Alexandra, Princess of Wales. And the Princess of Wales title is what princess Die or Kate Middleton has now. Like, it's a big deal title in the Royal family. So this is basically like Princess Die or Princess Kate showing up to visit him and shake his hand. And so it became very fashionable among London's high society to visit Joseph Merrick and patronize him, basically, and make sure that he was supported. And it really gave the last four years of his life, like, this amazing boost. He went from real hardship and exploitation to about as cushy a life as somebody with his medical condition can have, and being celebrated as a really interesting, good person by London the last few years of his life, which is a real silver lining to this story. Yeah, we should take our last break here and talk about those last few years a little bit more right after this. So, April 11, 1890 is when Joseph Merrick finally passed on. He was 27 years old. They found him lying flat on his back in his bed. So this article gets it super wrong from how Stuff works. They say that they quote a historian from University of Utah called Naja what is her name? Derbyck. And she says that it's highly likely that Merrick committed suicide and that is almost surely incorrect. The story, the legend goes that he wanted to always sleep like other people, flat on his back, but he couldn't because his head was too heavy and it would crush his windpipe. And that when he was discovered dead in his bed. He was flat on his back and clearly tried to sleep like that because he wanted to be like normal people. And I think even in the David Lynch movie, that's how he dies, isn't it? I've never seen it. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Really? Correct. Oh, you're going to love it, dude. It's one of the better movies ever made. I think it will be one of your favorites. I'll be very surprised if you don't absolutely love it. Wow. I guess this research just spoiled it for you. I knew the story, but yeah, I never seen it all the way through. Yeah, it's a good movie, but in it, I think that's how they depict his demise as well. But if you go back and you look at the post mortem report or the reports from the post mortem report, he was actually found in the middle of the day. He'd already been awakened. He'd been brought lunch at 01:30 p.m.. And he was totally fine. But then when another doctor dropped by on his rounds to see how he was doing at 03:00 p.m.. He was found dead, and he was laying across his bed. And they think the way that he was laying indicated he tried to get up and either maybe he pulled a muscle or he had a heart attack or something like that happen, and he slipped. And that's a big deal for him because his head weighed \u00a320. And apparently when he went down, his head twisted just right and twisted his vertebrae and killed him like that. So the initial autopsy said that he died of disconnected or dislocated vertebrae. And apparently somebody studied his bones in the last few years and said, actually, that's probably exactly how he died, based on what his skeleton looks like still today. Wow. So after he died, they basically took his flesh from his body. They boiled down his bones because they wanted to have those for display and for study, and they are still on display. And they ended up burying his very unceremoniously buried, what was left of them, his organs and his remaining flesh, and an unmarked grave. And there's a lot of speculation what kind of relationship he had with Trees and whether or not he really cared for him like he claimed to, or whether he was just sort of a doctor exploiting this really sort of exceptional case. The reason he's known as John Merrick is because Trees called him that in a book, even though that wasn't his name. So there's been a lot of speculation about the true nature there. Yeah. There's another author quoted in this house, the works article named Joanne Viegor Mungovin. She's written at least one book on Joseph Merrick, and she actually found his grave, his lost, unmarked grave, and confirmed that he had been buried in consecrated ground in a common grave, which apparently was common in those days. People had been buried in that grave before him, and people were buried in that grave after him. But it was in concentrated ground in an actual cemetery. It wasn't like tossed in a ditch, like right outside the medical school or anything like that. And so she made sure that he got a marker put up on that grave in the last, I think the last couple of years. She found it in maybe 2019, I think, even as recent as that. Wow. That's pretty amazing. And then one other thing, Chuck. Do you remember when Michael Jackson famously made a bid for the Elephant Man's bones? I do, except that did not happen. That was all just a big hooked up rumor from a man named Frank Dilio who said that Michael bid $500,000 and then a million dollars on the bones of the Elephant Man, who was someone he apparently felt very akin to, and apparently that is not true. And it was just sort of like the hyperbaric chamber that never happened. And Jackson ended up making light of it a little bit and they Leave Me Alone short film by dancing with an animated version of his skeleton. Yeah, and that's really weird. But the thing is, if you go back and search that, there are Associated Press articles from 1987 about it, and they include quotes from people who work at the London Hospital Medical College who said that they had turned down his offers. So it's really weird because I always had heard it was made up as well. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where his mom said it could have even come from him as far as not actually bidding on them, but just to make up the story to get in the newspapers. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things I just want to make sure to drive home is that Joseph Merrick didn't give up. I think that's why I was so bugged by the idea that this historian just so cavalier. It was highly likely he committed suicide, even though all the evidence points to the idea that he didn't. But Joseph Merrick lived 27 years putting up with some of the most humiliating, disparaging, terrible treatment that any humans ever had to endure. And he did it with, like, grace and dignity. He read and he wrote poetry and he corresponded with people, and he has, like, a gentle, soft heart. And finally, thanks to things like the stage play in David Lynch's movie, he's been portrayed accurately in that sense. And I think that's great because I think that will be his legacy forever. Somebody who is a very admirable human being who put up with a lot more than I probably could have with dignity and grace. It's quite a story. Well, since Chuck said it's quite a story, that means that that's it for the elephant man. And that it's. Time for listener mail. I'm going to call this the ghost story. Recently, for Halloween, we re released our ghost episode and where I detailed the old lady I saw in Athens in the middle of the road. And this comes from Eric King. He said, I thought I'd share this with you guys in the episode of Unsolved Mysteries that reminds me of this. There was a motorcyclist named Robert Davidson who was struck by lightning after pulling to the side of the road during a storm. When paramedics arrived, the situation looked grim. As a crowd began to gather around the incident. A mysterious woman in a black dress holding a Bible appeared just like my lady. She bypassed paramedics and began to pray over Davidson. After a few tense moments of her chanting and beating her Bible in the ground, he began to show signs of life again. The woman in the black dress smiled and then disappeared amongst the crowd. Davidson wound up in a coma for two months but came out of it with no permanent injuries. Upon further investigation, it was found that the road where he was struck was near a site that was once a religious community in the mid 18 hundreds. The black dress witnesses claimed the woman was wearing a similar outfit to the one on display in a museum containing artifacts from the site. So Eric says. I think he thinks I should investigate mine a little bit more. Maybe there was a similar religious site near there where I saw the woman in black and then it's from Eric King and he and his wife are big listeners. Well, thanks a lot, Eric. That was a great one. I appreciate it. Big time. Chuck, are you going to do some research? I was actually doing some anyway the other day, so I'm going to keep it up. Oh, cool, man. Have you found anything? So far nothing. Okay, well yeah, you got a report back if you find even the slightest shred of evidence of anything. Okay? Of course. Well, while we wait for Chuck's report on the source and origin of his ghost, we'll leave you to it and you can write in to us to say hi and how's it going with your research, Chuck? Write it in an email and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
20bffb3c-121b-11eb-85ed-23e433aba4cf | Short Stuff: Silverfish | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-silverfish | Should you be afraid of these creepy little creatures you find in your basement? Only one way to find out. | Should you be afraid of these creepy little creatures you find in your basement? Only one way to find out. | Wed, 13 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=13, tm_isdst=0) | 9464306 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpaline jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own sleeves. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. She's just kind of lingering quietly in the background. And this is short stuff. There's Chuck. The hiss went away, and that means Jerry's gone. That's right. When she was on, it was hissy, and now it's not hissy. She speaks like a Cobra Commander. I don't know what that means. From GI. Joe. If you watch the car hissy talk you ever seen a silver fish? That's my line. Oh, sorry, Chuck. I thought we were mixing it up. No. Chuck, have you ever seen a silver fish? I don't know what a silver fish is. Yes, you do, you liar. Is it from GI. Joe? That's right. He was Cobra Commander's right hand man. Silverfish it's actually kind of no, I have seen silver fish, and I think a lot of people get freaked out by silver fish, and I don't, and I don't know if I should. Well, I know I shouldn't, but I don't know why people do. I guess I think just because they're weird looking, they're very prehistoric looking, which makes sense because apparently they've been around since the Devonian period for 400 million years, and they haven't really changed much since then. So I think it probably triggers some innate primal part of our evolved brain that came from whatever those ancient silver fish used to eat. You know what I'm saying? Sure. I do know that. They've remained pretty unchanged, largely because they haven't really had to. I guess they were perfect little beings, and they're very hearty. I think they can live six months with just water or just food. I think as long as they have one of those two, they're doing fine. Yeah, which is pretty interesting. But that's a long time to go without either one. That's a long time for an insect to live. It is, yeah. And I didn't see how long they live for in general, but they do seem fairly hardy. But to kind of circle back to what you were saying initially of whether or not people should be scared of them, you shouldn't. They're actually not at all harmful to people. And the worst they can do is maybe degrade some of your old books, eat some of your favorite starch collars. Nothing really terribly untoward. And they also don't really tend to break out in infestations. And if they do, you've had silver fish a long time. If you've noticed that you have a silver fish infestation because they reproduce very slowly. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ever seen more than one. Same here in a place. Yeah, they're like lone wolves. I guess an infestation might creep me out a little bit, but you did mention books, and that's because back in the day books? Well, there are still books. Like, we just wrote one and are selling a book. It's true. But it is not put together with glues that use animal byproducts. We made darn sure of that. Right. Actually, we didn't have to because that's just the old way of putting books together. And the silver fish eat these things, not because I love to eat books or even like the paper. It's really kind of the starchy, sugary, glues and animal proteins used to put this stuff together. Right? Exactly. So they're sol with new books. But the problem is, if you have an antique book collection, it's probably worth some money. And the silver fish love that stuff. But for those of us who don't collect antique books, like we said, they love starch that you would say spray on like a collar and they can inadvertently ruin your clothes. They don't set out to ruin your clothes, but them just kind of sucking on and chewing up that starch can harm the fibers. As it stands, we should just leave bowls of mashed potatoes in the attic. Yeah, as a party and offering to the silver fish gods. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, well, let's take a break and we'll describe these things because we're going to start describing things in 2021. Oh, nice. We'll be right back. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibmcom. It automation. 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 L-I-F-E-L-O-C-K comST for 25% off your first year LifeLock. Identity theft protection starts here. So, Chuck yeah. That dude wrote in to say, hey, not all of us can go on the Internet and look at pictures of what you're talking about. So please do describe it. That's what you're referencing. Sure. Do you want to talk about what a silver fish looks like? Sure. They're skinny. Yep. They're pointy in the abdomen region. They got a little round head. Some people say they look like little carrots that mated with a fish because they had these little silvery, tiny gray scales, and they kind of shimmer and they kind of wiggle like a fish swimming. And I think that's where they got their name. Plus, also, if you look at their tails, they have those, like, three little kind of pointy appendage stingers, I guess. Is that what they are? They're not. They look stingy, but they're not. But I don't know if they could sting other things that aren't humans, I don't know. But, yeah, they definitely don't sting or bite or anything like that. And they don't want to be anywhere near you. So, again, you don't need to be worried about them. But if you kind of use your imagination and just kind of connect those three stingers and fill it in a little bit, it looks a lot like a fish's tail. Yeah. All the more reason to call them silverfish, and all the more reason to fry them up with some hush puppies and tartar sauce. Delicious. And have mushy peas, maybe, if you're from England. Yeah, I guess. Have a little party. So you're going to find silver fish in places, like we said, that have a high starch content, but also very humid places. And at a certain temperature, they apparently prefer high humidity, like between 75% and 95%, and then temperatures of around 70 to 80 deg Fahrenheit. So they kind of like it a little tropical, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like in the summertime in your basement or crawl space, you might see them. I think the things that freaked me out of those, I don't know what they are. They're not crickets, but they are cricket like, and the ones that jump in very unpredictable direction. Wolf spiders? No, they're crickets sort of. Okay. But they leap up in the air, and you never know which way they're going to go. Usually your cricket will just leap forward, like in a grasshopper, like they're trying to go somewhere. These things are just a little unhinged. Yes, I read a really good description of how silver fish move. They move really, really fast and then stop and just kind of hang out for a little bit, and then they move again really fast. And it's almost like this weird kind of disjointed movement from one place to the other. But again, usually when they're moving and they see you, they're trying to get away from you. They're not coming at you. Yeah. And their reproduction cycle is pretty long, so you're probably not going to see infestations. I think if you do have them, they say you probably have too much junk laying around, or maybe you've got a bunch of storage and cardboard boxes, which is not a good for many reasons, not a good way to store things. And they definitely suggest that you store things in plastic bins now that we have these sort of modern things available to us with lids. And it's a lot harder for it's just a better way to store things, period. Yeah. One reason I also saw why it is hard to why it is hard to end up with a silver fish infestation is because, like you were saying, it's a long reproductive time, but also female silver fish only lay about 100 eggs over the course of their lifetime, which seems really low as far as insect eggs go, don't you think? It seems like it, yeah. And I guess they only lay about three or six at a time, and it takes about three to six weeks for them to hatch. So if you see a silver fish, you probably don't have much to worry about. But if you do want to get rid of them, Chuck, what do you do? Surely you have to tape up your house and go get a fog and get all the furniture out, and then it's a real problem, right? Yeah. You know me, I tend to just leave them alone. But they do say that you can just vacuum them up, get rid of your clutter, reduce the humidity if you can. But I say don't really sweat it so much because there's probably not many of them. And if you do have a real infestation, you can call a professional. Right. But I don't recommend it. If you don't have an antique book collection at stake, then maybe just coexist. Right? Yeah. And if you're storing your antique book collection cardboard box in your car, then you don't care about it. Right? Exactly. You got anything else about silver fish? Nothing else. Leave them alone, everybody. And since I said leave them alone, I guess that means that this 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 are wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How the Rules of War Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-rules-of-war-work | The rules of war are agreed-upon rules that are intended to govern international wars and conflicts. Who developed these rules? And do countries really abide by them? Josh and Chuck take a detailed look at how the rules of war work in this episode. | The rules of war are agreed-upon rules that are intended to govern international wars and conflicts. Who developed these rules? And do countries really abide by them? Josh and Chuck take a detailed look at how the rules of war work in this episode. | Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:51:48 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=19, tm_min=51, tm_sec=48, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=336, tm_isdst=0) | 33054796 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. Charge LW Chuck Bryant perder. And we're recording. This is Steph. You should know the aggressive version. Hey, dude. Hey, dude. How are you? I'm tired. Hey, we're almost out of here, man. Let's wrap this puppy up. I'm not almost out of here. This is just like the middle of my day. Oh, you're working for, like, ten, and then you're working Saturday. I'm working Sunday. So are you, pal. That's right. Chuck? Yes, Josh? Do you remember when we talked about brainwashing? We did a brainwashing one, right? Yeah. I enjoyed that one. I did too. Do you remember we talked about the Koreans brainwashing American POW? Yeah. That's against the rules. The rules of what? The rules of war. I have more examples. Okay. Have you ever heard of the Dachau Massacre? The Dachau? Yes, you have. The Dockhow Massacre. Yes. You have? Well, I mean, you secretly told me have you seen well, you've seen Shutter Island, right? Yeah. I didn't realize there was a connection there. Yeah, the flashbacks were leonardo DiCaprio is, like, in the army, and they're at this concentration camp and they're shooting the German guards. That actually happened. Oh, really? Yes, at Dacow, the American liberators who came and saw this and were apparently so overwhelmed by it that they lined up the SS officers against a wall, 75 of them, and shot them. I guess I didn't know about it then. Yeah. So it didn't come out until 2001, actually, that this actually happened. It was covered up, ignored, but it was against the rules. Okay. I can't do that. Abu Grape. Remember that one? Yeah. That's been in the news lately. That was against, like, six or seven different rules. And all of these are against the rules of war. Right. It's actually kind of, to me, a triumph of the human spirit to know that we've tried to figure out how to create structure insanity in a chaotic and insane institution. That's when we look at it, what's another way, pal? Well, what I was most struck with was how messed up it is that you have to keep revisiting this over the years, because all of these rules that are in here are there because someone tried to do something awful to someone else, and that they said, you can't do that more. Right. And so then they said, oh, well, then let's think of something else awful we can do. Then they said, well, you can't do that now either. Well, in this article that Julia Layton wrote, how the Rules of War Works, she makes the point that as the technology of war progresses, it usually means that we are figuring out more horrible ways to inflict damage on one another. And so as that happens, as technology progresses, the people who oversee the rules of war are trying to come up with new ways to stem that progression. Right. But yeah, that's a little mopier way of looking at it than mine. That's weird, because you're usually the mopier one. Usually interesting. Chuck, let's talk about the rules of war. Where did they come from? How long have they been around? Well, they've been around for a long time, but prior to the 19th century, they were established per battle and per country participating in that battle, and that was where they ended. They were like, for this skirmish, you can do this and this, but you can't do this and this. Once that skirmish was over, or once that war was over right. Then they would say, alright, forget all that then and let's just we'll make up a new set of rules. If we fight again the next time they were like, no scalping. That was messed up last time. Do not scalp in this one. Finally, at some point well, actually, we know exactly the point. In 1859, a guy named Henry Daniel, who went on to found the Red Cross and was the co recipient of the first Nobel Prize, I understand. Oh, really? Came upon a battlefield after the Battle of Salafino in Italy in 1859. Yes, Chuck. That's German and Italian. In one podcast he came upon this battlefield, I guess, right after the battle that happened, and there were all these dying, wounded soldiers laying around and he gathered up the villagers around the countryside and said, we have to treat these people and treat everybody, both sides, because we're human beings and that's what we do. That's one of the things that the Red Cross still does today in wars. They're a neutral party, not on either side, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, and they treat everybody regardless of what side they're on. Sure. Right. So that happened in 1859. It gave birth to the Red Cross and it gave birth to the First Geneva Convention. Right? Yes. And I think I told you at some point we were chatting about this, that the whole convention aspect of it kind of cracks me up a little bit because I always picture like a bunch of world leaders with their name tags. Hi. My name is Kaiser Wilhelm Mulling. About some Hilton conference room. I imagine that's how it went down. But with the First Geneva Convention in 1864 did you already say that? No, they started becoming an international thing where it crossed boundaries, it crossed time frames, and there were solid rules for everybody, for any war. They were just standing rules of war. That's a more succinct way of saying it. Sure. And the first Geneva convention produced the convention for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick and armed forces in the field. Yeah, that was the first one. There's four of them. Like you said, over time, as we saw new atrocities take place they went and created and amended the existing conventions, created new ones. So there was a convention that addressed six shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea. Yeah. They forgot the Semen in the first one. And they said, yeah, we got to think about those guys. Exactly. The rules governing the treatment of POWs, and then the Fourth Convention, which is ratified in, was the treatment of civilians, not surprisingly, shortly after World War II. Yeah. And actually, after World War II, that drove the first Geneva Convention. And actually, the first three were all created before World War II, and people were like, that's really nice. We like that. It's a great idea. And then World War Two happened, and everybody came to the table under the auspices of the UN and said, we need these. So 190 countries have ratified the Geneva Conventions. And you get the impression that if you want to be recognized as a sovereign nation internationally, that's one of the steps toward being an independent nation. You got to ratify the Geneva Conventions. Yeah. Otherwise, what are you doing? You're just some rogue jerk, jerk country. Yeah. So that's the Geneva Conventions, and we'll get more into those later. But they're also everyone's heard of the Geneva Convention. Not many people have heard of the Hague Conventions, although they should, because they were just as important. The Hagan, the Netherlands is where these took place. And they were called the International Peace Conferences. Yeah. About the same time that the Geneva Conventions were being held. Right. Yeah. And they had one in 1899. They were going to have one peace Conference, and then they decided to cancel it and have a world war instead. Yeah. And that was World War I, obviously. And the hate conventions fall into the categories of combat, weaponry, property rights, and duties of neutral countries. But in addition, a lot of the rules established in the Head Conventions are similar to the rules of the Geneva Conventions. They overlap. Sure. One of the things that defines the Head Conventions specifically is that there are steps outlined to prevent war. Yeah. Right. So in the lead up, the build up to war, there are steps you have to take to be in step legally with the Hague Convention, which are there's like a 30 day cooling off period timeout right. Arbitration, mediation, liberation. No, sorry, that was in excess committees of inquiry. Yeah. Basically, you have to also declare war formally, or you have to declare an ultimatum saying, like, give me back my sandwich and pull your troops out of my South Asian territories, or I'm going to come at you. And that's after they've gone through all the previous steps, the 30 day time out in the corner and everything else has failed, then you have to officially send the evite saying, we're going to attack you at some point in the not too distant future. Surprise attack. Illegal. Pearl harbor. I would say illegal. Right. That's illegal. That's one of the reasons why the Democratic Peace Theory works. Yeah. What's all that about? So Democratic Peace theory is based on the idea that democracies, especially democracies that follow these conventions, are so transparent that two democracies will never go to war because they're both following the same transparent steps in the lead up to war, and communication will be much more open. A surprise attack is impossible. Not only illegal, but impossible because they have vibrant, independent media. Right. So Democratic piece of theory says that two democracies will never go to war. I don't know that's necessarily true, but it's based in part on this Hague Convention. Got you. Thanks. So, combat and weaponry in the Hague Conventions, they're pretty obvious. Things like you can't fly a white flag and then shoot someone in the face, which apparently Iraqi soldiers did in 2003 when the US. Invaded. Not very nice. No. Illegal. You cannot if a person has surrendered or is injured, then that's it for them. You can't go shoot them in the face, and you got to treat them. Well, we'll get to that in a minute, too. If a person has a visible or an audible speech impediment, you can't make fun of them. That's very true. You can't attack a defenseless person. You can't attack a hospital or a building being used as a hospital. No. That's what they call using a human shield. That is a huge no. Yeah, that's big time jerk quality right there. See, this is what I thought was kind of interesting. National and cultural symbols are protected. So you can't desecrate a flag or use the enemy's flag, or, like, dress up as a soldier and say, I'm really Nazi. Even though all those movies, they always did stuff like that. Well, it's illegal in glorious basketball, maybe. Sensible, but it's illegal. Yeah, the whole movie, they were dressed up. Well, not the whole movie, but a significant portion of it. Yeah. They dressed as Nazis to kill Nazis. That was such a great movie. That was pretty awesome, Chuck. You also can't hide out in museums or libraries. Well, yes, you certainly can't bomb them. Just like a hospital. They're protected as well. That's what we'll talk a little more about later. And there's certain weapons you can't use. The higgs specifically says, the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited. Right. Basically, you can't use poison bullets. No, you can't use poison gas. You can't use weapons that are designed to inflict further harm beyond the initial injury. Like, they have those bullets that once they get inside of you, start doing all sorts of wacky things for further damage. Yeah, like they have the bow ties that spin around slapping dickies. Chemical and biological warfare is made illegal all the way back in 1899. Yeah. Seren gas, chlorine gas, mustard gas. All those are old, tiny poison gases. Smallpox. Yeah. Can't do that. So we were talking about wounded and sick. Basically, the Hague Convention spells it out pretty clearly. If you're wounded and you're sick or if you see another soldier, an enemy that's wounded or sick, you got to help them. Yeah. And we should probably say about at this point, that you can break down the Higgins Geneva Conventions by combat weaponry, treatment civilians. Sure. Or you can look at the rules for overarching as they apply to the different groups involved, and the group with the least amount of protection are active combatants. Right. But once you're injured or you're sick and you're no longer capable of fighting, you slip into the sick or wounded soldier category, and you suddenly enjoy far more protections than if you have a gun and you're coming at somebody. Right? Well, yeah, like I said, not only can you not shoot the guy in the face, you have to help them or at least allow them to be helped by the Red Cross. Right. And, Chuck, you can't just walk away right now after a battle, you can't just walk away from the battlefield. After you've won, you can't just release the chows, which did you know that that's what cows were originally bred for in China? I did not know that. They would release them onto the battlefield, and they chew the throat side of survivors. Really? Yes. Is that what the suckers are so puffy and mean. We used to have Chowles, actually. They're not mean, but they are protective. They can do some damage. True, but you can't release the child on the battlefield. But not only that, you can't just walk away from the battlefield. You have to help injured soldiers. You got to help with the injured, and you got to clean your plate. You can't just leave the deadline around everywhere. No, as a matter of fact, you have to give the enemy soldiers that you've killed a burial that's appropriate to their religion. Yeah, you're supposed to. You're supposed to. And at the beginning of every war, there's supposed to be a Graves Registration Service, which is neutral party like the Red Cross, and it's possibly operated by the Red Cross, where you bury a bunch of soldiers and you say you contact the Graves Registration Service and say, there's a bunch of dead soldiers here that we killed and they're buried here. And here are the coordinates. And then the Gray's Registration Service provides each side with these coordinates after the war so the bodies can be exhumed and sent home. Well, yeah, not only that, but you're supposed to return all property found on the body so you can't like you see in the movies, where you go looting the body of trinkets and things to take home, like a brooch. Right. Let's say you can't do that. You're supposed to mail that to their next of ken, which kind of wonder about that, how often that happens. I wonder myself. You cannot perform experiments on a wounded or sick person like the Nazis love to do. That's a big one. Oh, yeah. And that's about it for the second wounded. And it's biological experiments, but I think also brainwashing. Sure. An experiment. And you're not allowed to do that either. So let's say that you have been caught, you received treatment from the enemy. Yes. And they're like, well, you're well, now you're a POW. You still have some pretty wide protections, actually. Yeah. This is a fact. That your next cocktail party that you should pull out of your hip pocket. If you're a POW, you're a prisoner of the country, not a prisoner of the soldier or the platoon or the commander in chief of that region. You're a prisoner of the United States of America, if that's who is fighting against America. But not only that, your detention is legal under international law. Therefore, an escape is illegal and can be punished unless you make it to your other side. To your side. Yes. Then they wipe the slate clean, right. It's totally clean. Like you were never captured in the first place. So if you're a spy and you're caught and your hell is a POW, you're going to be tried as a spy and possibly hanged. If you escape to, say, in occupied territory that your army controls, your detention is just wiped off the map. And if you're caught again, say, as a regular soldier, you can't be tried as a spy. It's like it never happened. Isn't that interesting? That's kind of cool. Tell them about name, rank and serial number. Yeah. You've often heard that in movies that is definitely a part of the third Geneva Convention, but it is not merely for name identification, but you are awarded privileges. If you are an officer and you're a POW, like, you don't have to dig the latrine ditches like the privates and the corporals do. If you're an officer, you have a little bit of I don't know about cushy your life, but you get the drink ticket every day. You can turn in for a nice vodka Gibson. Sure. But it's like when you see all the World War II movies like The Great Escape, the officers, they always had a little bit better deal than their men, right? Like they were the ones like Hogan's Heroes. Hogan was always meeting with the Fennel Clink, but the rest of the guys wouldn't meet. It was always Hogan because he was the main man. Did you ever see Auto Focus? I think you're going to say that it's hard to watch Hogan's Heroes ever again. Autofocus, yeah. God, I love that movie, though. Yeah, it's right up your alley. The other thing about POWs is they are prisoners, much like a civilian prisoner would be, and they are innocent until proven guilty. Supposedly, you have to treat them as such. So if you are captured as a POW, if you're captured, you're required to grant this person POW status. You're supposed to err on the side of caution. Yeah. But you're not sure whether they're POW or not. Right. But there are very specific qualifications that you have to classify them. If they're obviously members of the armed force, they can be a member of a militia or a volunteer corps. Still got to be a POW. Right. They could be some guy who happened to be, like, carrying a gun out in the open. Sure. And you still have to say, we're going to treat you like a POW until we set up a tribunal. And they say, no, it's not. A POW is a common criminal. Members of the media traveling with the armed forces. Really? They have to be granted POW status. Awesome. And that's about it. Cruise of merchant marine and civil aircraft if they're working with the army. One of the reasons why Abu Grave and the treatment, the degradation at Abu Grave was so illegal was because these combatants weren't granted POW status. Right off the bat, these captured combatants were treated as criminals. Basically, they were imprisoned. So that's one, you can't imprison a POW. You can intern them in an internment camp so they have borders, but not a cell. It's another one. Unless they're like a specific danger, then you can work around that. Okay. Which is probably what they said. You can't subject them to degrading treatment. Interrogation basically amounts to you ask them a question, and it's up to them whether they want to answer it or not. Yeah. And if they don't want to answer, then that's it. You can't ask them again. Even they can't be coerced or tortured under any definition of torture, and their detention can't be paraded in front of the media. Right. That was another thing, too. I mean, you remember Lindy England, right, pointing and did you ever see the Mad magazine one? Or is Alfred Newman in there? No, it's pretty good. So there are several reasons why Abu Grave was just so horrendous. Well, yeah. And you also have to grant them any rights that your own soldiers get, like food, water, shelter, clothing, exercise correspondence. You have to let them know exactly where they are, and you have to make them available to receive mail from their family. Yeah. Not only do you have to tell them where they are, you have to give them the mailing address so that they can receive care packages, letters, whatever. Crazy. So, Chuck that's POWs, right? Yeah, pretty much. Let's talk about civilians. Do you remember right, Don, we've talked about this often. I should say that recently when we were hanging out with our friend Chad, he remarked after I said that I had just recently seen the Fly, david Kurtemburg's, the Fly, for the first time, that he had just seen Red Don for the first time. And I thought you were going to beat him up. I thought you were going to punch him in the face. I just don't understand how you could he's our age. Well, he's my age. I get it, too. Between our ages. Yeah, he seems like it. He should have seen Red Dawn long before this. That's like saying you hadn't seen war games if you were a child. Like a teenage boy in the 80s. Right. So back to it. Red dawn. Well, okay, so you remember Harry Dean Stanton, where Jed and Charlie Sheen come to jed and who? It was Swayze and Sheen, wasn't it? Yeah, but I can't remember she Thomas all too. Did they all three go? Possibly, but it was definitely Jed and his brother. Yeah. And they go to see their father, who happens to be harry Dean Stanton. Interned. He's interned. Notice he's not in a cell. They've put up fencing around the drive in and they're projecting propaganda onto the screen and they're playing like, Russian Soviet music. That's legal, right? Yeah. When he passes by, I think Arturo's father, who's getting like, a German Shepherd to the face, that's highly illegal. Can't use the dogs. No, you can't. The chows. No. No childs, no German Shepherds, no dogs of any kind. When the Russians landed and opened fire on the unarmed high school students, that's highly illegal, too. I mean, they just flat out shot up that teacher. Remember that? Yeah. And that kid, too. The kid who's hanging out the window. That was one of the most disturbing images of my young life. Very impactful. See, I wanted to be a wolverine. Oh, yeah? So did I. Guess all little boys like playing war. But I didn't know it was going to be a peacenik later on, but at the time and I was like, bring it. I'll get a gun. I'll go to the woods, pack a football and some canned beans. I wish that you could take the video of your life and edit it, because I would make a montage of all the times I shouted wolverine in the woods as a kid. That's what I would do with my time. It was more than once. So Red Dawn, somewhat on the Soviets took care of the civilians. To a certain extent, they legally interned. Others they illegally attack, some with dogs. But let's say you were Daryl's dad, the mayor, and you're riding around with the Cuban commander, right? What rights do you have as just a general civilian who's not been deemed a threat? Right? Let's say could Daryl's dad talk to Daryl's mom? Is open communication legal? Well, yeah, it's a basic right that you're supposed to have. It can be curtailed if they think that there could be a detrimental effect on the correspondence. But even then, they allow you to tweet. Basically, yeah. Not really tweet, but they allow you, like, 25 words. Right. There are special forms that every occupying force will have or should have that people can fill out to communicate with one another. If free speech is curtailed. And 25 of those words have to be freely chosen by the person. You cannot be removed to another country unless it's for your own safety as a civilian, and you can't bring in your people as the occupying force. You can't bring in your civilians to settle that's. Right. You're not allowed to do that. Not allowed to do that. Nothing. They can force you to work, but they do have to pay you. And it can't be work for your military against your own country. Right. You can't be made to make bombs that are going to be used against your peaks. Exactly. And if you are working and you're not making bombs, you can't be made to physically punish your own countrymen if you're a middle manager. Forced laborer. Right. And you can force kids to work too early. And Chuck, it's illegal to tattoo civilians for the purposes of identification. Yet another one that came out of World War II. Yeah. Boy, Hitler. They just went gaga after that. Like, with genocide that had never probably oh, no, there was genocide before that, but after Hitler, they said, no, we can't do this genocide thing. Right. So, Josh, let's talk about cultural property, because I think it's one of the lesser known aspects of these conventions. I didn't know about it until I read this stuff. Okay? It's absolutely protected, like your museums, your works of art and science. Remember when Saddam's statue was toppled? The American forces couldn't do that. The Iraqi people did that. But if the Americans had toppled the statue and looted his palace, big no. Right? Because like you said, both the Hague and Geneva Conventions specifically outlawed genocide, which is the systematic extermination of a group of people. In much the same way the head conventions are like, you can't do that to their culture either. Their cultural legacy and not just statues. Books are included. Scientific achievements, works of art, archaeological areas, and then the buildings that houses things. Remember we said you can't go hide out in a museum or a library because these are culturally protected, too. Yeah, but it's on the state to provide identification. There these special symbols, and it's up to the country to identify these places as such so they don't get bombed. Right. So what happens if you break these rules? Let's say you're just like, you know what? I don't want to follow these rules. I want to shoot this guy's face in. Even though he's wounded already? Yeah. I don't like the way he looks. He's dating my girlfriend. Are those awful things you've seen in the Vietnam War movies? The mila massacre? Yeah, when they just go nuts and just start doing bad things. So neither the Geneva Convention nor the Head Convention specify what kind of punishment should be doled out, how offending parties should be charged. Right. They basically say, hey, everybody who's, like, on the side of the law, take these people to international court and then dole out whatever punishment you think is necessary. So, for example, after Nuremberg, before actually, the Geneva Conventions were ratified. I guess France, Great Britain, in the US and Russia all formed this international tribunal where they tried these Nazi war criminals and hanged, I think they executed eleven of them. Wow. So in much the same way, we formed tribunals for Yugoslavia, the Balkan War, for Rwanda. But it's up to the country that has been offended, it's up to the country that has been impacted to do the legwork to make this happen. Like there's not some big general body that's going to say, yeah, we heard this happen, so we're going to make sure they get prosecuted. No, but there is a standing body in The Hague called the International Criminal Courts, and this body hears these war crimes trials. This is where you go to have a war crimes trial. Right. And there's a lot of debate over the legitimacy of this body. Some people want this body to take up more issues than it has now. Are they already up and running? Actually, I don't think so, but there's a big movement to get it going. Yes, there is one that's standing right. The World Court basically got you. Yeah. The other cool thing is I got one more. You got anything else? I have a little more, but go ahead. Okay. One thing I found interesting, Joshua, is that these rules don't just apply to the armies, but militia and volunteer corps. And we'll go back to Red Dawn here. Just for the sake of continuity, if you have a person in command, read Don. Who is that? Jed Swayze. Jed, God rest his soul. Yeah. If you have a representative symbol that can be recognized from a distance, if you spray paint wolverine says you're representative symbol. So what they were doing, they were basically kind of putting themselves in the corner. They didn't realize it. Right. If they carry weaponry in the open, yes, they definitely did that. Powers Booth showed them how to do that with effectiveness. He was the pilot, right? Yeah. He was the guy that crashed and kind of headed things up for a little while. Yes. And then they got to follow the laws and customs of war. So if you meet those criteria as a militia so if we just formed our own little pack of house, the forks ruffians. If we were attacked and you are our leader, and we carried open weaponry and we had our symbol, it would be Wolverines. Clearly. Sure. Then we would be subject to the same rules, just like we were in the army. Well, that fourth one in particular is a little ticklish because it basically says if you follow the rules of war, the rules of war apply to you. Yeah. So what happens if you don't? And we asked this guy who is a professor of international law, his name is Michael Matheson. We. Talked to him, actually, about from GW? Yeah, George Washington University. And he said we asked him, how are these followed? How are these enforced? Why would anybody follow these if you didn't really have to write? And he basically said the idea that if you don't follow them, the other person doesn't have to, and all of a sudden, you can be tortured. Right. Or you can be attacked by dogs or humiliated, degraded, whatever the slippery slope that forms. If you don't follow the rules of war. Keep both sides in line, actually, and that these rules are indoctrinated into the military rules on each side already. So basically each side regulates itself in the hopes that the other side will, too. They call that where I'm from. What the Golden Rule? That's right. We're going to end it with that. All right. If you want to learn more about the rules of war and see what the cultural property emblem looks like, we know where you can find it type rulesofwar in the search bar@howstepworks.com. That means now it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this hand picked by you. Yeah, you picked this one out. It's a good one. It's a big day, and it was a really good email, actually. It was on my list, too. So this is from Clovis, and Clovis had some thoughts on the Addiction podcasts that were very relevant and I think made some great points in your podcast on Addiction. I thought you treated the issue fairly, with a couple of exceptions. First of all, Josh, you said that AA was radically successful, or something to that effect. The truth is, no one really knows how successful it is. It might be successful at helping someone obtain sobriety for some amount of time, but it might not be any stronger than if a person just cycles out of drinking on their own. Also, AA's goal of lifelong abstinence is a set up for failure, with some studies showing that only about 5% of people remain completely abstinent for the rest of their lives. Well, Clovis goes on to say, it also seems like you bought into the idea that was cultivated by the government that rates use rates are the best measure of the harms that drugs and prohibition due to our society. So if use rates are up, that's bad, if they're down, that's good. Not quite true. Use rates are actually a terrible way to measure the success or failure of a drug treatment and drug policy. Meaningful data would measure the increases and decreases in drug related death, disease, crime, and suffering. All of these things can be significantly measured, and in some cases even more accurately than self reported use rates. Use rates are especially useful to politicians who use this quote unquote evidence to say, Use rates are down, we're winning. You should increase our budget to help keep this fight. Or Use rates are down, we're losing. So you need to increase our budget to stamp this thing out. So either way, they're trying to get more money. And I guess the point about addiction, that's the point about addiction and treatment. Our society has defined both way too rigidly. Addiction is really drug use plus problems. What do we do for those people who can't use drugs without causing problems? The addicts? We should give them treatment. And treatment can be anything that works for them. It can be AA, can be heroin assisted treatment, it can be knitting. But if it lessens the death, disease, crime and suffering associated with the drug use, then it should be considered a successful treatment. Putting them in prison cells is about the worst thing we can do for them. With all respect, Clovis, thanks for that, Clovis. For one of the better emails we've ever received, I would say yeah, it was a good one. If you have something you'd like to point out to Chuck and I that we've maybe erroneously bought into something and you want to tell us how it is, we always love that. Wrap it up and send it to stuffpodcast@howstoughworks.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 house upworks. iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey 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 in 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." | ||
d6336498-3b0d-11eb-aa42-b3f0172a3149 | Sacagawea: Impressive Teen | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sacagawea-impressive-teen | Sacagawea was only 16 when she joined the Corps of Discovery. That is one seriously impressive teenager. | Sacagawea was only 16 when she joined the Corps of Discovery. That is one seriously impressive teenager. | Tue, 09 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=40, tm_isdst=0) | 45941315 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there. And this is stuff you should know. And I can't help but feel that that I'm being sub tweeted right now. I don't know what that means. Oh, it's where you talk about somebody without directly talking about them. You just kind of maybe talk about their behavior or how you disapprove of something that they did, but you don't directly say, this person did this, and I don't like it. One time, I don't know all this lingo with a Twitter because I was never on it, and I was emailing with Jonathan Colton, musician Jonathan Colton about coming on Movie Crush, and I can't remember what I said, but he said something, something don't at me, and I didn't know what that meant, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm sorry. I'm not sure what I did. I apologize if I did something wrong. And I think he was kind of like, who is this idiot? Hodgeman likes this guy. And I think, didn't that just mean you're tagging someone on Twitter or something? Yeah, but usually it means, like, you're telling them that they got something wrong or you disagree with what they said. They should be ashamed of what they said. It's usually a hostile thing that you're adding somebody, or they have made their point, and they don't want to hear any feedback from you about it. Right. That's kind of what I took from it, and you have to kind of snap a few times when you say it. I'm just really so thankful still that I never joined Twitter. That's the last thing I need. I'm already on Facebook, which is terrible. I've been enjoying Instagram. I have to say, that seems like a pretty nice crowd. Totally different place. Yeah. But we're talking about all this because we're talking about Sakagoea. Yes, we are. Naturally. Yeah, naturally. Who would probably issue both Instagram and Twitter, because she seems like a pretty solid human being. She'd be like, don't at me. That's right. So just to get this done out of the gate again, I thought that her name was pronounced Sakajuia. I am not, like, in the minority in the United States, at least, because that's how we were raised to say her name. Unfortunately, we have such things as historians and people who listen to Native Americans who have been told over the years, no, it's not Sakajawaya. It's Sakikawaga. Right. There's one pronunciation of it, but it's not J, it's GH. And we've started to kind of pronounce her name correctly. You say it way better than me, so why don't you take it? Well, I mean, gosh, this is the third time now we're on this. I've seen different things from Sakagaway to Sakagawaya. I think, in Clark's journal, william Clarke, that is, of Lewis and Clarke fame, spelled it S-A-H-K-A-H. Emphasis on that. G-A-R-W-E-A sokagarway or Sakagarweh, but then the Chawn, which is a Native American tribe that we'll get to the importance there. They say actually it is Sacajawea, and that means boat pusher, not the Hidatsa language of bird woman. So there is some debate. Yeah, one thing that I did see is that Lewis and Clark and they factor in this because Sakagua was the main guide and interpreter. As they pushed further westward, they actually tried to spell every Indian or Native American word that they encountered phonetically as best they could. They were terrible spellers, even of English words. I mean, just like barely literate, it seemed like. But they tried their best. Yes, it's really bad. But they tried to spell every word that they found phonetically. And I think Sakagoaya's name appears 17 different times in both of their journals. And not once do they spell that third syllable, GH with a J. Sounds with a J is A, always a G. And they think that it was a hard G. So that it's Sakaggoya, not Sakagguia. So they said it's definitely GIF and not Jeff. Right. Which it is definitely GIF, as we all know. So if you listen to the Lewis and Clark episode, was it a two parter? I feel like it was. It was not. It was not. You're thinking of the evil Kaneville episode. God, I'm so embarrassed. You always bring that up to shame me. I think it shames both of us and Jerry to a certain extent as well, for letting she stepped in and like, for God's sake, what are you doing? Totally consolidate man. So, a great episode, though. I know in that episode we talked a bit, obviously, about Chicago Way and Ken Burns in his great documentary about the core of discovery. But she was born, she lived a short life, and there is a little controversy on how long she did live, which we'll get to at the end. But she was born in either 1788 or 89 as a member of the LIMKi, is what I'm going to say. Okay. L-E-M-H-I band of the Shoshon tribe, which we spoke about a minute ago. Is it Sashon or Sashoni? Sashoni. That's what I've always heard. But then again, I always heard it was Saka jawa, too. I believe it's Sashoni. She grew up, though, in a very, I imagine, lovely, lovely part of the country in what is now Idaho, in the Salmon River region. Yes. So she was actually a member of a specific band of the Lemhi Sashoni, the salmon eaters is what they were called. And she grew up in that part of Idaho, I guess it was around the Bitter Root Mountains near the Continental Divide. And the bitter roots are part of the Rockies. But yeah, it just sounds absolutely gorgeous. The Shoshani tribe was enemies to the Hidatsa, who you mentioned earlier, and the reason that they say that Sakagoe means bird woman is because Sakagoe became an involuntary member of the Hadaza tribe when she was around twelve years old. I didn't get if she was out on a buffalo hunt or if the Hadotsa happened to be out on a buffalo hunt and came across her. Did you understand that? I'm not sure. I kind of just, in my mind thought that they were out, but I guess it doesn't really matter because either way, she was kidnapped and settled with them near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. And here's where her life took, or I guess that event actually took her life in a very different direction. And that was a trading center, an international trading center. So people from all over the world would kind of stop through there to trade their wares. And she was essentially I mean, it's hard to not say kidnapped again. A French Canadian fur trader tucson. Charboneaux beautiful. Took her as property. He called her his wife. But we can't, you know, now through today's lens, we've gotten a lot better about not glossing over that stuff. Right. She was property to him. She was a teenager, I think, like 16 or 17. I think she was actually 15. Was she? And she was about two decades younger than him. And there's no other way to say it other than she was property. And part of being property was that she was raped by Charlotte. Yeah, there's no way you can put it that she didn't have any say in the matter of whether they had sex. So that's rape no matter what. But yeah, over the years, she's always been referred to as one of his wives because I guess Americans didn't want to kind of confront that stuff. Right. So she ends up living among the Hidats as Charbano's wifeproperty because Charbonneau being a fur trader and the Hidaza settlement that they lived at, being this kind of international trading post, he had kind of adopted, like the Hadothe way of living himself. Just being a fur trader, he had to be able to handle himself out in the elements. So I think it was his speed, from what I gathered, for the rest of his life, he just basically lived in a style similar to Native Americans. So aside from being away from her native tribe, she lived probably in a fairly cosmopolitan manner compared to how she would have had she never been kidnapped from the Lemhi band of Shozoni, which is kind of sad. But there's one thing that should be said. There's documentary opinion that she was not unhappy living on this kind of borderland between the two cultures. She seemed to feel somewhat comfortable living among the colonizer's way of life on the frontier just as much as she did living among the Shoshoni. Yeah. And we should also point out that a lot of this is very little is recorded, a lot is speculative. Because there's remarkable well, I guess not remarkable because it was 18 three, but very little actual recorded information about her life. But it's remarkable how much there is for the typical teenage Native American girl at the time. Like, the fact that there's anything recorded about her is kind of a huge testimony to her and her personality, no? Absolutely. So 18 three is when Charbono takes control of her life. 18 three is also when Thomas Jefferson said, hey, we got this big tract of land, really sweet deal, called the Louisiana Purchase, 828 0 sq mi of land stretching from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Mississippi to Colorado, and we need to go see what's out there, because white people have never explored this territory. I want to find a Northwest Passage, which was eventually found. They were looking in the wrong place, but that's what they were sort of after, but they were after more. Jefferson really wanted to know what was out there, the landscape. He wanted maps. He wanted to know about the Native American tribes. He wanted to know about the plant life and the animal life. And just like, go Mary Weather Lewis out there and record everything you can. Yeah. Mary Weather. Lewis was Jefferson's personal secretary and Lewis selected what was Clarke's first name? Josh. Billy William Clark. Billy Clarke, who had been his captain in the army as the leader of the expedition, he found him to be an able leader and said, hey, you want to come lead this super high prestige expedition for the President that the entire nation is going to be watching? And Clarke said, sure, let's do it. So Louis and Clark set out on this expedition, and they actually traveled, I think, 1600 miles before they ended up at that Hiraza settlement, which is about where they really started to hit the frontier, from what I understand. All right, that sounds like a great turning point to take a break. Okay, so we'll be back right after this and pick up with the meeting of Lucian Clark and Sakagawaya stuff you should know, Josh, and Sharp stuff you should know. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money when you use stamps.com to mail and ship. Sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, Chuck. So we've reached what is now today bismarcked, North Dakota. At the South Dakota. Are you sure? I think so. No, it's Bismarck, North Dakota. Are there two? I was going to say it almost literally doesn't matter. We're going to get crushed for this. It is. No, it's definitely Bismarck, North Dakota. Okay, then that was a misprint then. I'll tell you what, get this. I've got this machine called the Computeor. Are you actually going to look it up? Yeah, I'm going to look it up. I'm going to do a favor for the people of Bismarck for once. Bismarck, North Dakota. I think it's North Dakota. It is. That's weird because I think this is how stuff works. I got South Dakota written in there. Oh, boy. All right. I'll have to send an email. I'm going to add them. Yeah, don't you know that's the tagline of how stuff works. Don't add us. That's right. So apologies to all the people in both Dakotas. All three Dakotas. We met, nothing by it, and we're going to do a live show there one day to make up for it. Are we sure? Why not? I'll tell you later. Okay. All right, where are we? It's November 2 18, four when they finally land and they meet up with Chicagoaya, who is six months pregnant at this point. And Charvino is I get the impression that he's a bit of a not a grifter maybe, but sort of an opportunist. Yeah, yeah, I think so, for sure. I mean, he's a fur trader, for Pete's sake. That includes not just survival in the woods and killing animals, but also having to get the highest price you can for your pelts. So I'm guessing there's a bit of used car salesman to charmineau. For sure. He was not well liked by Lewis and Clark. I don't know that he was heated or despised, but I get the impression from reading historians interpretations of their journal entries about Sharpness, he's kind of across between Chris Farley okay. And Gollum, maybe. I can't wait to see that photoshop. Oh, goodness. Yeah, I know. Who's going to take care of that for us? So just this idea that this guy was not competent necessarily and was maybe a little bit evil and that's all you need to know about charming. I also get the impression, Chuck, that we'll talk about later, but Sakaggoaya was plucked from historic obscurity and really kind of raised up on this pedestal and I think rightly so. But there was a sport that developed alongside of that where you could very easily raise psychic away up by contrasting her to her good for nothing slaveholding quote husband and showing how just terrible he was at everything. It made her look all that much better. So I think there's a sport to it. There's a kind of a long history of putting down Charbono, but I think that it's kind of rooted in fact, from what I understand. Yeah. So at any rate, he comes along and he's like, hey, you guys really need to bring me along. And my wifeproperty here. I speak Hidatsa and French, and they're like, we don't really need that. But I see that Chicagoay speaks Shoshani, and we really need to learn that because at a certain point, we're going to need to talk to them to get some horses. And since we can't hire a woman because it's 18 three, we have to actually hire the husband to get her to come along. I guess you both can come. Yeah. So we got to explain why Sakaguaya being Shoshone was really important. And it was like you said, there's horses. Somehow. I'm not exactly sure how they already knew this, because these are the first Americans to chart a course westward, but they knew that the Missouri River and the Columbia River was separated by mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the Bitter Root Mountains, to be specific, and that since they were taking to the river, they were going to need to get from one river to the other. And that the Sashoni Indians happened to live exactly where they needed or where they needed to pass through, where they needed the most help, where they needed horses. And so having a Shoshoni along to help broker a deal would be incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that the arrangement was going to be that when they finally met up with the Sashoni tribe in this area where they needed the horses the most, sakagoeya was going to speak to the Shoshone, and then she was going to translate what the Shoshones said into Hadatsa to Charpano. Yeah, chardonnay was going to translate from Haze into French for a French speaking member of the core discovery, who would then translate from French into English for Lewis and Clark. That's how he didn't even speak English. No, he spoke Hidas in French. Okay. I thought that meant in addition to English. No, he did play a role that was important. He was going to translate from hadatsa into French. It would have been way better if he had spoken English, but it just meant another person in the chain. Everything came out purple monkey dishwasher at the end. So one thing we failed to mention, I think, which is just remarkable, is that a couple of months before they leave together, chicagoaya has her son, Jean Baptiste, known as Baptiste. And I know we talked about this in Lewis and Clark, but I think I didn't have a kid at the time. It's just astounding to me now that I've had a two month old baby to take and like keeping that baby alive and all the comforts of modern day America. To take a baby like that on a voyage like this is astounding. Yeah, for sure. It's really remarkable. Yeah. And I mean, like, if you look at all of the memorials to Chicago AA, I don't think there's one out there that doesn't also show Baptiste as well. Of course not. Not just because he was an adopted honorary member of the Core Discovery, basically a mascot. Sure. But also because it just goes to point out just how astounding what his mom did was. I think when ChicagoA was put on the dollar coin in the United States in 2000, hillary Clinton famously referred to her as the original working mom. Wow, that's a pretty cool designation. I thought so too. So, yeah, I think it's great that she's remembered as doing all this with a baby strapped to her back the whole time. Right, so that's their plan. They plan to get there, send her out to talk to the Shoshani tribe to get these horses, which was a good plan, but it was even way better. It worked out, like almost like it had been written in a movie script or something because I think Lewis shows up first and has contact with an older woman of the tribe. And then about 60 Shoshani on horseback ride up and they're like, you seem like a decent guy, you're friendly. Let's all make this work out. Then Park's group shows up about a day later with Chicago Way and they're like, oh, my God, it's you. You were the one that was kidnapped and taken away so many years ago. And then Chief Kameha weight rides up and it's Chicagoay's brother. Yeah. So not only do they get to have this reunion, but Louis and Clark are like, yes, we're going to get a good deal on these horses. Yeah, the chief is her brother. Like, this is perfect. But you know what? That stuck out to me. As Chuck. That meant that Chicago way, it probably would have met Louis and Clark even if she had never been kidnapped. Yeah, maybe so. Isn't that really crazy to think like, that one way or another she was going to probably meet Lewis and Clark even with her life diverging that radically from its original projected path. Yeah, and what it really did was she was already proving to be useful in that she could identify berries and things that you could eat and plants that you could use as medicine and kind of acted as the navigator in a lot of cases. Like, now we need to go this way. I've been here before. This is where I grew up. Yeah. There's a huge rock called Beaverhead Rock that she famously recognized that you can go visit and stand in the place, basically where she showed Lewis and Clark like, look, my people are going to be right around here. I recognize this place. Yeah. So they've already got all this respect for up until that point, and then she has such an end with the shoney. Like you said, they get, I'm sure, a really good deal on the horses. And not only that, but they get help. They kind of partner up with them to help them along, which is a really big deal. Yeah, because Louis and Clark's expedition had somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 people involved, huge boats, several huge boats, lots of equipment, lots of instruments. And some people say, well, if they needed horses, a bad way to bring the horses because they traveled by water, they really needed horses really badly. But just for this one specific part of the trip in between the Missouri and the Columbia river, thomas Jefferson very famously called it a dilly of a pickle that they had run into. But the fact that they were able to get the horses from the shone, it just basically checked this enormous box that the whole expedition was predicated on. They just could not have completed their mission without this. So I could go away and basically brokered that made sure that box got checked. And there's one other thing that stands out about it, too, that gets overlooked. I saw in a few places charbonneau had another wife who was shozoni, and if they needed a shoshoni speaker, who was with chardano, who came with sharbano, they could have very easily gone with otterwoman, the other, I guess, victim of Chardonnay, and they didn't. They went with soccer. Go awayah. Who knowing full well that she came with an infant now, like, there was going to be an infant, even though with otterwoman, there wouldn't have been. So clearly, Chicagoay is like putting out the right kind of vibes. It's saying, like, I'm extraordinarily competent, you should probably pick me, even though if you pick me, I'm going to be bringing a newborn baby along on this frontier trek. I think that says a lot about the kind of, I guess, charisma or competence or whatever she was putting out that Lewis and Clark were like, yes, I think she would be the better of the two. Yeah, because you don't want a two month old baby along. No, but if you're cute, but nay. But if you say, okay, we'll have a two month baby along, like, that says a lot about the mom that's carrying the baby around and her abilities are, I think, yeah, absolutely. She also proved her worth. When and I can't remember, I think we might have talked about this when there was one of their sailing vessels almost capsized when a big squall hit it. Apparently charbonneau was navigating. He panicked under pressure, and it was Chicago a who was calm and said, you know what, we need to get these papers together. We need to get the books that we've been writing in all these navigational instruments and medicines and provisions and other stuff. We need to get it all together and take care of it and also this baby and basically saved that situation in Charlotte was just he was like, oh my God, oh my God. Sacrobu. Sacra blues. That's right. So yeah, that's one of the big stories that's told about psychegoue. So much so, I mean, that either Louis or Clark wrote about it and basically was like, the Sakuraway is an amazing person. She's doing stuff that other members of the Core are not doing. There is, I think, at least twelve members of the Core Discovery who aren't mentioned by name in either of the journals of Lewis and Clark throughout the expedition. They did work, they did their job, obviously, but they didn't get mentioned because they weren't doing stuff like Sakagoaya was. And I think the fact that she's mentioned multiple times with kind of frequently discussing how impressed they were with her, that says a lot as well. Yeah. I mean, they named, because of that sailing incident, they named a branch of the Missouri River after her, and I think Clark was the one who really grew closer to her. It's really hard to get a read on exactly what the nature of their relationship was. It seems just like maybe a mentor type of relationship and that he kind of took her under his wing and took these long walks with her. I don't think there's anything untoward about it, is kind of what I'm getting at. I don't have that impression either, and I have not run across the historian and that's asserted that there was something untoward about it either. They were close. Yeah, they were. The way I took it was like an adopted little sister kind of thing. Yeah, that's kind of the way I see it, too. I also don't think Charvino would have stood for that. I think that would have been not okay with him because he was the kind of guy who'd be like, that's my property. Right? Well, of course, yeah. I don't have that impression, but yeah, I thought the same thing as well. And in fact, they thought so much of her, especially Clark, and this is a really telling thing, is that when they reached the Pacific Coast, there was a vote on whether or not to stay there for the winter or not. And they actually let her vote, which in the early 18 hundreds, to let a woman have a vote like that was remarkable. Yeah. So when they decided to stay, that vote led to them staying in what's now Astoria, Oregon. They built a winter quarter, it's called Fort Clatts up after a friendly tribe nearby Fort Katzip. It's what I thought, too, but it's close. There's an L in there. Yeah, Clatzup. But the CLAT SUPP people said, hey, get this, there's a beach whale. You got to see this thing, it's enormous. And so I think Lewis was like, okay, we're going to go check this out. You guys stay here and psychic away. I know we talked about this in the Lewis and Clark episode. Psychic going to AA said, look, man, I have walked long ways and helped you guys out. And the idea that you're not going to let me see the ocean, I've never seen any ocean. You're not going to let me see the ocean. And this giant whale that's been beached, come on. And so Lewis relented very famously and was like, okay, come along, so I could go away. She put her foot down, basically, and said, no, I'm going to see this. That would be unusually cruel not to let me. So she went and saw this giant whale. She saw the ocean for the first time. It's a pretty big I've never seen a beached whale. Imagine seeing a beached whale the first time you see the ocean, too. Yeah. I remember when I was a young kid when we showed my grandmother the ocean for the first time. And she was in her she was probably in her 70s. She lived to be 100s. Wow. So she had to be in her mid 70s when we took her to the ocean. And we walked her out there and she walked out on the beach. I'll never forget it. And said, it's big, it's cute. And that was about it. She didn't hang out for long. She's like, I'm good. This is enough. Yeah. And there was no way I could poke with a stick. I'm kidding, by the way. You should never do that. Poke a whale with a stick. Yeah, I was making a joke. That wasn't nice. I think everybody knew that. Chuck. Yeah. You try and get that whale back in the water if you can. Not with the stick, though. Not with the stick. You want to take our second break? Yeah. We'll talk about how this all wrapped up and what happened to her afterwards. Right. For this stuff you should know. Josh and Shawn stuff you should know. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps. Com's, 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 they made it to the Pacific. They overwintered there, and I think 18, 518, six. And then they started to make their way back, and they actually went right back to the same Hidats settlement that International Trading Post are outside of Bismarck, North Dakota, where they picked up Charbonneau and Sakaguaya and they said, hey, thanks a lot. We'll see you guys later. And everywhere I saw Charbono was paid something like $500.33 for his efforts, and so I could go away. It was not paid anything, although I saw also in this article that she was paid as well. Do you have any idea? Yeah, I was confused, too. Everywhere else I looked said that she did not get direct payment. Which article said that she did? I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be right. Or maybe they just sort of said, well, since her captorhusband was paid then sort of means she was. I'm not sure, but I saw nowhere else that said that she was actually paid independently. That would make the most sense. Although after that expedition, I would also not be surprised if she was paid directly, even though it Bucked convention. Yeah, he got paid $500 and 320 acres of land, which was pretty good. I tried to do an inflation comp, but they don't even have anything. I think it said when you go that far back, you can't even compare it to today's. Oh, really? Westgate gave me an estimate of about 9%. I saw that too, but I didn't see that as a direct inflation calculator. More like the goods that you could have bought back then. No, they said nine grand. No, I saw that. It just didn't seem like a one to one to me. Oh, I see. Even still, it seems like really? I would imagine $500 back then would be like 10 trillion today. Yeah, it would seem to be the case. It's a little weird. Yeah. Because, I mean, like a journey of thousands of miles at the behest of the President of the United States getting paid nine grand, it just seems like you would get more than that. I don't know. But then again, he's a fur trapper who only speaks at in French, so who knows? I think what confused me is, like, if you enter $500 100 years later, it's like $15,000. Or maybe that does work. I don't know. It just didn't seem to work out math wise. But what do I know? Yes. No, I'm with you. You kind of have to be able to peer back into the vagaries of the American economy over the last couple of hundred years to suss that out. I looked it up and it said what that would be today would be 200 MK, 80 Beaver tails and $9,000. Poor beaver. I know that's. The other thing about Charlotte is that people don't say he killed a lot of animals for their pelvis. That's right. All right. So after the expedition, she stayed with Charbonneaux, I think, a few years later, they moved to with little Beepties. Moved to St. Louis. Yeah. The invitation of Clark. Right. Yeah. And it says that he offered them an opportunity of land to farm, which I don't quite get, because he just got 320 acres of land. I was wondering if that was one in the same, maybe. I couldn't quite parse that out. But at any rate, he's like, here you come here. Here's some land to farm. If you let me educate your son in the American sort of schooling system. And he was the godfather of the boy at that point. Really cared a lot about Baptiste and Chicago. A and one of the best for him. And I think that was a pretty decent deal for Charvaneau. Yeah. So, I mean, I believe Clark officially adopted Baptiste as his guardian, at least, if not as his adopted parent. And he was educated at the St. Louis Academy, I believe. And then I don't know how he met him, but Baptiste went on to meet a German prince who was like, hey, you should totally come back and hang with me in Germany, and I'll make sure you get a European education. And he did. He moved to Europe and was educated there. Lived a pretty interesting life. Said, yeah. I'm going to go back to America. Became a trapper for a while. Had a bunch of different interesting jobs. I believe it was a hotel clerk in Auburn, California, for a little while. So he did a bunch of different stuff and had a pretty amazing life. In addition to basically being the official mascot of the Corps of Discovery's Expedition. Yeah. And he ended up taking guardianship because Charbonneau and Chicago left in April 18. Eleven to go on another for trading expedition. And they left Baptist with him. So I think it kind of worked out for everyone. Yes. I get the impression it wasn't like, we don't want our kid and Louis to give me your kid. I think it was for the best interest of the kid, and they all loved him very much. That's the impression I have. She also had a daughter about a year after that in 1812. Lizet or Lizet. I don't know if it's an S or a Z. And this is where we get to the sort of fork in the road as to what actually happened to Chicago. A there are a couple of stories. One is that she died not long after of what was called putrid fever, which is probably typhoid fever. Terrible. There's another story which she would have been about 25 years old in December of 1812. There's another story that she went on to live a very long life in another part of the country, but I think that one has kind of been shot down. Right, yeah. So at the turn of the last century, ticagoaya was kind of dug out of obscurity. Well, actually, there was a guy who was the official, I don't know, biographer, chronicler of the Corps of Discovery expedition, where he was in charge. His name was Biddle, I believe. He was in charge of basically taking the notes of the core discovery and getting them ready for publication. He just couldn't publish the whole thing like that. He edited them, basically. But he also interviewed Clark. And out of his interviews with Clark, we found a lot more out about Chicagoaya than we knew before. And Bill was like, this is a very interesting story right here. I'm going to put Chicagoaya front and center. So he kind of brought Chicagoaya into the foreground for the first time. But then almost a century later, as the women suffrage movement was starting to gain momentum, there was a woman named Emily No, Eva Emery Die, who wrote a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition and said, here's my heroine. Sakagawaya is a heroine. I'm going to basically use her as an icon for the suffragette movement. And that's how she kind of became this symbol from that point on. I don't remember what kicked off the spiel, though. You asked a question and you said something. What was it? Do you remember what spiel? My spiel about how ChicagoA was kind of brought out of obscurity by these writers, where this idea came from, that she had gone on to live a long life. Right. That first book that was written by Eva Emery Die was picked up by another historian who said, you know what? I've heard these stories about this woman who went on to live at the Wind River Reservation, and I think she's actually Chicagoaya. And that kind of kicked off this whole hunt. Yeah. Because like you said, there are numerous people who wrote down sort of officially that she did die very young at 25 years old, including, I think, Clark and one of his, I think, maybe a financial ledger. Ledger. Ledger. It was a cash book about where are they now, basically, and have they been paid. And next to her name, he just wrote Dead, which not even a frowny face. Next. I guess if it's a ledger, you're just trying to sort of be cold about it. But for someone who really cared a lot about it, it seemed it probably wasn't the right place to wax philosophically. Right. But also, some people have said, well, no, he was covered for her, because the legend goes that she left Charbono, ran off to live a life away from her as an independent woman. Right, exactly. Which really kind of dovetailed with the suffragette movements push for women's rights. So that was a great idea that that's what she did. And the idea was that Clark was covering for her in his little cash pledges by saying she was dead, knowing full well she was alive. Other people are like, who's going to ever look in Clark's cash ledger like Sharpened is ever going to get his hands on it? That's probably not correct. And the whole idea that she went on to live on the Wind River Reservation until age 100 when she died in the 1880s, makes for a good story. It makes for a great story. And there was a woman who did live like that. Her name was Para Evo, also known as Basil's Mother, who lived to be 100. And a lot of people said, no, that's Sakagua. But that was before more historical record came out, including an account from a guy who worked for the same fur trading company that Sharbano did, knew Charbono personally, and wrote in his journal, had no reason to make anything up. But in December, I think, on December 20, 1812, was it? Yes. Wrote that Charbono's wife he's the one who said that she had a putrid fever and died and that she was the best woman in the fort. She was a good woman and the best woman in the fort. She was aged about 25 years, which totally fits the bill for Chicagoaya. And she left a fine infant girl. Yes. Once that guy's journal was found, that was basically the nail in the coffin of the idea that Chicagoea had lived to age 100 after escaping her captor husband. Yeah. I think what's kind of cool is even though there's very little officially recorded about her life, everywhere she is recorded, it's all glowing praise. There's not like one entry where anyone was ever like, oh, boy, chicagoay and that baby are really like, what a mistake that was. By all accounts, she was a boon to the corp discovery and a big, big part of its success. Yeah. And so as a result, chuck lifetime is in lifetime movie Network Lifetime. I couldn't find the year, but they recently conducted a survey of memorials to create the Lifetime Herstery map. And of, I think, 5500 plus statues, monuments and memorials that exist in the United States, only about 200, which is around 4% honor women. But of those, 216 honor Sakaguwa, which means that she is the most honored woman via monuments and statues in the entire United States. Amazing. The first one, from what I read, was by a group of suffragettes in Portland, Oregon. In that statue is obviously still there today, and it is beautiful. And guess who's strapped to her back in the statue? What's? That close enough. Little Baptist. Little Baptist, that's right. You got anything else? No. Other than we should mention, I don't think we know a lot about what happened to licette. Unfortunately, she was sort of lost to history. Yeah, for sure, I guess. That's it. That's it. All right. So since we said that's it, that means it's time for everybody for listening to mail. Yeah, we're going to do a couple of corrections. A bit of a Meccalpa for me and a correction. Oh, I like that. I said the word redneck a lot, entitled the episode about the clan used the word redneck, and I probably shouldn't have. That's a derogatory term. The name actually has a different history. I think West Virginia coal miners has something to do with that, and I just wasn't really being sensitive enough. I'm not apologizing for degrading the clan, right? But I probably shouldn't use the word redneck with such a broad bride. But think about it, though, Chuck. That means the clan is so rotten they give rednecks a bad name. That's essentially what we're saying here. I love it. And then from that same episode, we need to address the Robert Bird incident from a lot of people. That was all me. Yeah. So I think we were talking about Senator Robert Bird sort of being unapologetic about being in the clan. That was very much not the case. This is one of the many emails. And this is from Aaron Patrick Lyons. He him his. Hey, listen to the great episode on the KKK. As usual, did a bang up job. However, I have to take issue with Josh's statement indicating that Senator Robert Byrd was an unrepentant clansman. He was indeed an exalted cyclops or local leader of the clan in the 50s into the 50s. But through the, he had a sincere change of heart regarding race relations and voted for the Martin Luther King Jr. National holiday, among other legislation, in his very long career. He was deeply embarrassed and apologetic about his time in the clan. And that is, like I said, from Aron Patrick Lyons in Cedar Falls, Iowa, we heard from a lot of people that not only did he vote for the MLK holiday, but apparently did a lot of work for legislation for equal rights for African Americans. I totally flipped that one. So my apologies to Robert Bird's family for tarnishing his legacy in that small way. And I'm glad we got corrected almost immediately. Right after the episode came out, it was, I can't believe you guys use redneck so much. You were totally wrong about Robert Byrd. So this listing or mail is perfect. And then there's one other thing I want to say, too, about the redneck thing, Chuck. Somebody pointed out, I think it was on Twitter that using the word redneck was not only derogatory towards rednecks, it obfuscated. It covered up all of the people who aren't rednecks, who are just kind of everyday, normal people who are either in the clan or subscribe to the clan's. Ideologies that it makes it seem like just a marginal group or a marginal thought or friends thought, when it's really kind of subscribed to by an alarming number of people that you live and work beside and might never really guess at just how deep their racism goes. So I think that's another reason to shoot it as well. Yeah. And I'm not going to stick up for myself, but I think when you grow up in the south, you might feel like you have a little bit of ownership like that, for sure. Yeah. My apologies to all the great rednecks of the world. That's right. Sorry, Jeff Foxworthy. Sorry. Larry the Cable Guy, who's actually not really a redneck if you listen to David Crosses beef with him. Yeah. That's fully enacted, right? Yeah. From what I understand, he created that persona to get more fans of comedy. That's right. Smart man. Well, I guess since we started talking about Larry the Cable Guy, that's the end of this episode and listener mail is petered out. And if you want to get in touch with us to correct us or call us out for something or whatever, lay it on us, send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your phone. Favorite shows." | |
c3b0b56e-5460-11e8-b38c-9f76afad3ce8 | SYSK Selects: How Haunted House Attractions Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-haunted-house-attractions-work | Ever since the Egyptians, humans have been evolving toward haunted house attractions. The level of sophistication in the scares and gore effects continues to rise over time, but the purpose remains the same: to scare the pants off you. | Ever since the Egyptians, humans have been evolving toward haunted house attractions. The level of sophistication in the scares and gore effects continues to rise over time, but the purpose remains the same: to scare the pants off you. | Sat, 26 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=299, tm_isdst=0) | 46523554 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody, its me, your old friend Josh. And for this week's SYSK Select, since we're nearing Halloween, I chose a wonderful little episode from 2014 called How Haunted House Attractions Work. Full disclosure, I was thinking that this one's going to be boring, but to my surprise, it was not. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I surprisingly did. 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 Jerry. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the prehalloween spooktacular week of dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No, this isn't about attractions. Haunted attractions. Right. Not dark. Although I don't want to spoil it, but there are some darkness. Now is it dark or not? It's dark. Okay. But not all of them. Just the really creepy ones. So it's mid level dark. What a train wreck this is. Yeah. So for those of you who tuned in thinking that we're talking about haunted houses, sorry to let you down. Real haunted houses. Yeah. Of which there may or may not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot, I wanted to yell at you so bad. This is just about attractions. Yes. These things are proven to exist. They are real. Because you can probably if you live near any kind of major metropolitan area, you can probably find one somewhere in your town. I think you can find them almost anywhere if you live in a major metropolitan area that may be one of those really big daddy ones. Right. But chances are your small town has some form of haunted attraction. Even if it's the local if it's for charity and they're trying to raise money for the local JCS and it's set up in like a school gymnasium or there's enthusiasts, there's home haunters and they basically set up a haunted house in their backyard. Yeah, there's some documentary about two guys that are I don't know if they do haunted houses or just take their Halloween decorating to extremes. Well, I think that's one of the same for a home haunter. Yeah, I think they're competing guys on the same street that someone did a documentary on because they just keep like ramping it up and ramping it up and have become obsessed without doing one another. Right. But I don't know what it's called, so it just came to me right now. Me either. Yeah, but you do make a good point. Haunted houses are everywhere. Apparently in 2014 they expect they being the American Retail Federation who likes to put out statistics and figures about holidays. They expect 33 million people to go into haunted houses across the United States. Yeah. About 4000 of them, 1200 of which are the pay some money to go in professionally. About 300 are in theme parks. Like amusement parks. Right. And then about 3000 of them are the charity ones that I spoke of. Right. Which you'll still pay. But they're not going to the fat cat Koch brothers or whatever the profits are. They're going to your local community organization. Yeah, and those are fun. You might get some light scares. It's not like these, the really super scary ones where you pay good money to leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more little bit of data statistics, if you don't mind some numbers. Talk about role reversal. Remember you used to be stack guy. I know. I got so bored. It in 2014 again. The National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend $87 per person on Halloween for a total of $7.4 billion. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas. Right behind Christmas. People love getting their scare on. They really do. I don't decorate at all anymore at the house, just because I think I've talked about this before. We don't have trick or treaters on my area of the street, so it just seems kind of pointless. Oh, yeah. I mean, what is the point at that point? Yeah, there is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for people that drive by during the month of October to see the house, but I don't know, man. Whatever you put up, you got to take down that. And plus, it's like you get no satisfaction from somebody driving by. It's not like they honk at your declaration with little kids coming up and trigger trading. There's some sort of payoff, I guess, to your effort, right? That's right. Scarring him for life. All right, so let's talk the history of this, because it turns out that haunted house attractions are relatively new, but they're probably not as new as trick or treating in the United States. Did you know that? Not as new. So they predate trick or treating by a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And when we look at the first one, I read some of this history, the ancient history. I was like, come on. This is from Fangoria magazine, by the way. Oh, it was. But then when I started really getting into it, I was like, you know what? It actually did pave the way for what we see today in, like, ancient Egypt to keep people from grave robbing, basically, they would make little scary things like trapdoors and snakes and creepy insects and things to keep people away from robbing their ancestors graves. Right. They'd put an old lady in a rocking chair who would go, behold the ravages of age. What's that from? The Simpsons. Okay. Greeks and Romans kind of paved the way as well. They had mazes and labyrinths set up with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly, they started stage effects, like fake blood and things like that. Yeah. And that's where a lot of this stuff finds its roots. As in early stage special effects. Yeah. And it's still a theater when you come down to it. It's just like an interactive participatory theater that you walk through and then the Dark Ages the Medieval Ages, I think the Dark Ages. The Medieval Ages are part of the Dark Ages, but they are not one and the same. But during the Dark Ages, the introduction of well, the syncretism between Christianity and paganism that led to the adoption of Halloween kind of saw a rise to this. Basically a scare show. Yeah. These little plays that would scare people into remaining pious and remaining on the narrow path right. Which is still very big today, made a huge comeback. But these scare shows, if you want to call them that, I'm pretty sure that's not what they call them during the Dark Ages, but they featured plenty of gore and fake blood and violence. The people who went to see them weren't necessarily going for the religious message. They were going to be grossed out. Right. And get a kick. Yes. During the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous for incorporating, like, demons and ghosts and monsters in his plays. He loved us. And in the 18 hundreds we've talked about this before, there was a big rise in spiritualist and conjuring sessions and mediums and fortunetelling and communicating with the dead was like a really popular thing during the Victorian era. So it's debunking it. Yeah, that's true. The Victorian era also gave us the wax museum, which very quickly went from celebrities to include scary stuff, too. So you could walk through a wax museum and while the stuff didn't move or jump out at you, you would come across like some sort of tableau of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like kind of a room. And it was scary and lit. Oddly, the intention was to scare you, even though, again, there wasn't an overt scare or startle. Right. It was something that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted houses to come. They were to instill dread in the hearts of all right. John Pepper invented something pretty neat in the 1800. It was sort of set up where you use mirrors to appear translucent. If you've ever been to Disney's Haunted Mansion, I think Pepper's ghost is what they call it still. Is that right? A trick they use to hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah, but using mirrors. Right. It's not like the Tupac hologram. It wasn't high tech like that. No, but it still looks pretty awesome. That's right. The 20th century, then, Chuck, is where we really find the progenitors of the modern haunted house, the dark rides. There's this really neat article on Collectors Weekly. You ever read any of their stuff? No. They write a lot of really cool, long form articles about stuff that's come and gone, like old ads and things. And one of them was called Jeepers Creepers. Why, dark rides scare the pants off of us. Nice. But it's a Collector's Weekly article. It's an interview with a guy who collects old dark ride stuff, but dark rides were like if you went to some rinky dink amusement park or whatever. They couldn't afford to have a roller coaster, but they could afford a little dark building with the walls painted black inside and a little train track or maybe a little boat or something that road you through, and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of the wall or a strobe light went off or something like that. And these were the direct progenitors of the haunted house. Yeah. In between that and the traveling freak shows, really? Like you said, everything was in place. And couple that with the fact that a lot of these houses from the 18 hundreds are starting to crumble. And there was nary a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy old vacant house and to keep their kids out, people would say parents would say, you know that place? You don't want to go in there. It's hard because you may not come out. That was an interesting point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah. But if you think of the modern conception of when you think of a haunted house, what comes to mind typically is a dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a story around it. Yeah. It's never just like, oh, yeah, that was where Mr. Johnson lived. He was a farmer and kind of a good guy. Yeah. Died quietly asleep. No reports of his ghost at all. Well, what's probably funny is that was the real story, but what you heard was that he killed his family and had their name written on each knife blade. That's what I heard. The first official recorded haunted attraction, according to this person who wrote this article in Vancoua, Becca McKendry, he says that the Orton and Spooner ghost house in the UK and the Edward Are in Fair was the first genuine haunted attraction. Yeah, that was the first ghost house. And in France they had something called the Grand Guinole. And that was sort of similar, I think, and around the same time. So you've got that haunted house. You've got the dark houses that are coming up in places like Coney Island and stuff like that. Sure. And then finally you have the first big time permanent haunted house, as we understand today, which you've already mentioned, the Honda Mansion that was first built in 69 at Disneyland, and apparently it was supposed to go up at Disney. Oh, no, it was so Disneyland. The one in California. Yeah, and the one in Disney World that came up in the 70s, right? Late seventies, early 80s. I'm not sure, actually. I've been to that one, though. If you want to know more about that stuff, though, I think stuff you Missed in history class did like a whole episode on the haunted mansion ride. Oh, holly from stuff You Missed in history class is an absolute haunted mansion fanatic. Right. I think they have a whole episode on she knows more about it than anyone, more than Walt Disney himself knew, I think. But here's a little known fact besides what you just said about Holly, she knows more about us than Walt Disney. Originally, the haunted mansion ride was a walk through ride like today's, haunted houses. But instead they found that, I guess the people, the ushers couldn't get people on a pace easily enough, and so there'd be traffic jams and backups and everything. So they said, we'll turn it into a dark ride. That's what they did. Yeah. Which we'll get to this later. But that's a big part of running your own haunted house, is the flow throughput. Yeah. Also the haunted house and the Hana Mansion. And Disney was based on the Winchester Mystery House. As far as the look, they didn't want to have some credible dilapidated psycho house in the middle of their lovely park. So they said, well, we can make it creepy on the inside. Let's just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside. Yeah. And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the Winchester Mystery, I also recommend it's pretty neat. The Son of Ours. Yes. Man, that's a good one. Not the Disney podcast. Right. So then you mentioned the JCS, Chuck, and I didn't realize this, but the idea of a semi permanent so not located in, like, an amusement park or something like that. Yes, but an annual attraction that just comes up around Halloween and then comes down in November. November 1. Yeah. As far as haunted houses go in the United States was created by the JCS, which is the United States Junior Chamber, which is like a community organization with chapters across the country. And in the JCS hit upon this idea of, why don't you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers? And it just took off like a rocket. And the JCS became synonymous in the up to the 90s with haunted houses. Like, if you went to a haunted house in your town, it was probably put on by the local chapter of the JCS. Yeah, I remember specifically going to some of those as a kid, as well as my church would have their own haunted houses. Not hell houses. Oh, haunted houses. Yeah. Just very like, kid oriented minor spooks and goblins. We'll get into hell houses later. But even though I did go to Baptist church, it wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah. I mean, it was before the concept of the hell house. Yeah, it was just like we'd have like, a Halloween carnival. Got you. You bob for apples and did that little fishing game where you get something clipped to your fishing pole behind a curtain. Yeah, those are awesome. It's so funny. Do you remember when you were a kid just being like, god, this Halloween carnival is really well done. If you go to one as an adult, you're like, this is really junkie. Like, are these kids really falling for all this stuff. Yeah, they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school had a pretty rocking Halloween carnival every year, too. It was one of the highlights of my year. But, yeah, you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples. There's no way I would put my face in that disgusting water. No. Anyway, out of the JCS in 1975, there were a couple of guys from a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois, named Jim Gould and Tom Hilligos, and they said, you know what? Let's just create our own haunted House book. Basically, like, I don't know if it was a book. Yeah, I guess it was a book. And let's teach people how to open these up and sell it. And they distributed about 20,000 copies and they formed the Haunted House Company, and it was the first real group of outfit to kind of just sell the plan and the stuff that you needed. The props. Right? Like details like how to do special effects. Like a starter kit. Exactly. Yeah. And because of the success of the JCS in the private companies finally were like, we can make some cash off of this. Starting in the so the haunted houses that we think of today, the for profit ones, like Another World in Atlanta or 13th Story in New Orleans is another big one. They came out of the 90s. Do you go to those? No. No interest. No. Do you know, Emily and I, we still may go. She has a hanker in this year to go to Netherworld just because we haven't been to I think we went to one in La. That was pretty decent. I'll go, I guess, if she wants to, but it's not my favorite thing. I like scary movies and stuff. I don't avoid that stuff. I am depressed. Chuck, on Twitter the other day, I said, the best scary movie or the best horror movie I haven't seen go. And I have heard of vampire Brooklyn, Eddie Murphy. Every single suggestion. And there were a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back. So I realized I'm really running low on good horror movies. They aren't around much anymore. Like, the ones that are to me, the ones that are genuinely scary are the ones that get into your head. And I'll take a fair amount of jump scares because that's a part of it. If it's got the tension ratcheted up. Right. But the ones these days, man, just the disgusting, torture important thing. I'm just not into that. No, I'm not either. It's just such an easy, cheap yeah, they don't scare me. Exactly. They just repulse me. Exactly. Which is a totally different sensation. That's fine if you like to be repulsed, whatever, it's great for that. But that's not true fear. No, it's not being scared necessarily. It's different. Yeah. I do have a recommendation for you, though. A movie. It's called either The Lady in Black or Woman in Black. And it stars a grown up Harry Potter. So it's fairly new. I think it came out in the last couple of years. The Daniel Ratcliffe guy. Okay. And he does a great job. It's almost exclusively just him in the movie. Oh, wow. Is he the lady in Black? He does double duty. Nice. And there are some Conjuring esque style, like CGI ghost graphics. But it's not overdone and it's not overblown and it is a genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay. It was okay. I would say this one might be better. And that guy, I don't know if it's Ty or T west, T is his name. He's a director that did the innkeepers. Oh, yeah. That was a good one, too. Yeah. And then I can't remember, did he do House of the Devil? Those are pretty good because he's a little more old school. He's not just trying to out gore you or shock you. He tries to build genuine suspense and dread. The same guy to both of those movies. Not the Conjuring. No, no. The inn keepers and house of the devil. I think so, because both of those were good movies. Yeah. They seem totally different, though. Yeah, I may be wrong on that. The Inn Keepers there was a slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took a long time to build up. It was a little bit slow. Like you didn't even try to start the scares until like 30 minutes in. Yeah. You know the lady that's in that is Kelly McGillis. Did you realize that? Yeah, I didn't know till the end of the movie. It said Kelly McGillis is like, oh, she's got the same name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, I think. But then it's really her. Right? She looks so different now. Yes. So that's our Josh and Chuck's horror movie corner. We should have done it. Maybe next year we'll just do one of those, like a total horror movie talk fest. Sounds good. Those are fun. But back to the more boring subject of haunted house attraction. The industry is huge. Like you said, there's a lot of money to be made and no two haunted houses are going to be alike. Sometimes these folks that open them buy an old home or something and own it and do this every year. Sometimes they rent out a space. The ones I've been to haven't been in the actual space. Wasn't some cool old house or like a penitentiary. Yeah. Apparently, Eastern State Penitentiary is converted this year. And that is a scary, scary place. Just normally. Yeah. The only ones I've been to are the ones that it's in a big open, like a shopping center where there used to be like a sales jewelry closed down. Right. Yeah. The ghost of capitalism. And then you have themes. Some of them. I think the better haunted houses have themes because when you talk about scares, you can be all over the map from doing something, like, with a movie theme where you have classic horror movies or serial killers or cray scientists or, like, vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Those are two very different kinds of themes. Apparently, Rob Zombies got his own jam going in. Called his house. Yeah, pretty much. It's called Rob Zombies great American Nightmare, which I think is supposed to be a play on the American dream. But one of the rooms is the John Wayne Gacy room. And it's like a guy dressed up like John Wayne Gacy's. Bubbles the Clown. I think that was the name of his clown, wasn't it? That sounds right. Just kind of hanging out in, like, a recliner or whatever. And this is Chicago, and that's where John Wayne Gacy killed his victims. And a lot of the victims families are still around. So everybody is up in arms and Rob Zombies, like, could not care less. Thank you for the free press. Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, clowns are I posted something on our Facebook page the other day because that new clown in American Horror Story. Have you seen this clown yet? No. Twisty the Clown, the guy that made that show, is like, just wait. I know clowns can be scary, but I have got the scariest clown ever and it's pretty scary, dude. Yeah. I'm not bothered by things like that much, but I saw this clown and I'm not into that show, but I did watch the scenes that that clown was in just to see what it was like. Yeah, it's pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And there's a broad daylight killing, which are always super scary to me. Oh, yeah. Like they don't care about there's no hiding it or anything. Yes. Like a beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field. And those kind of creep me out more. Yeah. Because the whole idea of, like, oh, it's a good day to die to me, that doesn't mean it's beautiful out. It means the world is already ending. Now it's a good day to die. Right. The earth is opening up and magma is pouring out. That is possibly a good day to die. Then the serial killer can come along. Right? Yeah. So if you're opening one of these haunted houses, you can count on spending because it's a good idea. You can make some good dough if you've got the funds to get it going. Sure. Fifteen dollars to twenty five dollars per square foot for decorating and special effects is what, just that alone? Yes. And that's not counting the renting or buying of the structure itself. Right. So you have 5000 foot square footage. Okay. That's what I was going for. That's good. You can be spending up to 125 grand just in decorations and scares and tricks. Yeah. And you may be able to reuse a lot of that from year to year, but you probably shouldn't put out the same thing every year, because if you're in the same space doing the same thing, you're not going to get repeat customers. No. So you want to turn over, like, 30% to 40% of that each year to new stuff. Right. And like you said, themes often change. So just changing the theme alone is going to require that you change your layout, I guess, to an extent. Yeah. Like, if you're doing scary clowns, sure. You're probably going to have to get rid of your oar setting or whatever. Right. Unless you do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary, but it just seems a little off. Clown doing surgery, that's just that'd be pretty scary. The Clown Hospital? Yeah. Well, don't they have that children's Hospital has a clown character. That's what I'm thinking about. Cordary yeah, sure. By the way, this is written by Kristen Conger from Stuff Mom Never Told You, and she actually interviewed a few owners of haunted houses to get some good inside poop. That's where we're like, getting these numbers. And they say to open one up. I was just making mine up. Oh, you are? Yes. They said to open one up. You not only obviously it's a fun job, but you've got to have a lot of business acumen, too. It's not just like, oh, this will be a hoot. Right? Like, you've got to be super focused and have a good business brain or you're not going to make any money. Plus, also, safety is a big, big deal out to you, especially after a fateful event in 1984 at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. They had a 17 trailer, interconnected modular haunted house dark ride, basically, but a walking dark ride. So it was a haunted house, and it was basically a fire trap, and it went up and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in the fire. There were no fire sprinklers. There were no obvious emergency exit signs or anything like that. That's what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think, like, by the time the 80s rolled around, people would have figured out, oh, if somebody likes a match in here or doesn't put their cigarette out because again, it's the 80s, so people still smoke everywhere. The whole thing's going to go up because it's all plywood and foam and maybe we should put fire sprinklers in. But apparently it took this tragedy to really change the industry. But it did. Yeah. And safety is, like you said, a huge part of it because you're in the dark, you've got things flying out and props swooping down and people jumping out, and anything can happen to go wrong and someone can get injured. Yeah. And actually, did you hear about the girl in 2011? No. There's an employee at one of the ones outside of St. Louis called Creepy World, and she worked there and somehow got caught in a noose and accidentally hung herself. That sounds like a story that you hear. You would think so. It is so well documented that it actually did happen. I'm quite sure. Crazy. But she survived. She suffered some brain damage to an extent, from what I understand. I don't know if it was extensive or not. I'm on a roller coaster of emotion. Right. But she did survive, but she accidentally got caught in the news and hung herself. And it's possible some patrons passed her by, thinking that she was like, that's what was supposed to be going on. Yeah, I've heard some story that is not that of someone who hung themselves on Halloween and everyone thought it was just a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you need to go watch the most recent Don't Be Dump. Really? It comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes. Is that an old wife? Well, don't spoil it, okay? People should go watch it. Go watch. Don't be dumb about that and tell them Josh sent you. So after you've got your safety system worked out, you've got your fire safety, you got your sprinkler system, you've got flame retardant material, you've got cameras set up everywhere. Everyone has signed a lengthy waiver. Even if they do get hurt, they could probably still try and sue you, but you're trying to avoid that at all costs. What you're going to have is some sort of a maze like structure where you're walking around sort of lost, but really just getting shuffled along a path. Right. And like you said earlier, there's this thing called throughput. So there's a lot of thought put into it because apparently the worst thing you can do in a haunted house, and this makes sense, is to let the group behind catch up to the group ahead. Yeah, that ruins the whole thing. Ruins everything. Because you're in a group. It depends. But I don't know, six or eight people. And you don't want the scare that already happened to be apparent to the group that hasn't gotten there yet. Like, you see the chainsaw guy crawling back into his little trick. Exactly. Right, exactly. So this throughput is basically a calculation of how many people you can push through at what intervals to, say, meet your nightly ticket quota. So the numbers that Congregate gives is to get 500 people through in a night. You can put a group of six, you can set them out every 25 to 30 seconds, and they shouldn't bump into one another. Yeah. And then one of the ways that employees make sure that these groups don't bump into one another is the way that they scare people. Yeah. It's called scaring forward, which makes sense. It's kind of an interesting, boring term. But what they're doing is usually jumping behind you as you walk through the group to make you go in a forward. They don't want to jump out in front of you and have you move in the direction. You just came from right, backward. Yeah. So they want to scare you forward. And that is a little tip. If you are not into being the lead person, being scared, then you should be in the lead. But it's probably going to come from behind you. It's pretty counterintuitive. Yeah. I'm going to be in the back and I'll be just fine. You're the one that's going to get grabbed because if they jump out at the front of the group again, it's going to push the group backward, and the group ahead is going to run into the group behind. And that's very bad. Yeah. And I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now, there apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching, but you're going to be fully informed. That sounds so crazy. It really does. Light touching. You're going to be fully informed. Like, you're not going to not know that it's coming, like, in line. They're going to be like, sign this, an initial here, an initial here, an initial here. And we're going to give you a heart attack test first just to make sure. Please step on this treadmill, that kind of thing. See, that's how I would really scare people to say none of the actors are allowed to touch anyone. So if you're getting touched, that means something has gone horribly wrong. Right. And then have people grabbing you. Well, we'll get to, in a minute, the new extreme ones, where there's not only touching, like, it's beyond anything that you could imagine. Right. But we'll get to that soon. And since we mention actors hiding, those are called scare pockets. Yeah. Where they hide, they jump out from. Yeah. So, like, they're hiding behind that tree, and they may distract you with a bat swooping down in the other direction. There's a lot of distractions going on because what they don't want is you to be focused on the clearly placed faux tree trunk that has the smell of a chainsaw. Right, exactly. Yeah. But there won't be any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yes. Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah, right. The more you're going to be like, you're just some teenager who doesn't scare me. Yeah. And if you're looking to save a little money, you might want to double up and have that scare pocket. Have a couple of different ways that can go. Like, I can jump out on these people on the right who are in this one part of the haunted house. Then I can scramble back and then hit these people on the left. Not hit them, jump out and scare them. And that way you're saving a little dough with your actors. Yeah. Doubling or tripling your people and then apparently chuck. Lastly, a lot of the attractions are run on compressed air that is set up either through motion sensors, which I think everybody expects, but also through touchpads, which makes sense because you can control that. Right. Well, with a motion sensor, every group is going to set off that effect at the same point. Right. And what it does is it opens the valve and all of a sudden the skeleton sits up in the coffin or comes out from the side or some weird air. Exactly right. That was a really good impression. With a touchpad, though, if you say place the square off to the left or something, not every group is going to walk over the touchpad, so not every group is going to get the same set of scares. So it kind of randomizes the thing, which in turn makes the whole experience even more frightening, because if you hear the group ahead at the curve scream and you hear that, you get to that scream. Exactly. When you get to that curve, you're going to be prepared. And if nothing happens, well, then, my friend, you're just even more keyed up for the next one. That's right, yeah. And you're keyed up to begin with walking in there, because a good haunted house will put a little bit of money into getting you all ramped up in the parking lot in the line. You might have creeps dressed up, roaming around. They may have sound effects and spooky music and like, an air horn blast, which is really uncool. And that's just got you on edge. By the time you walk in that place, you're ready to be scared. All right, Chuck. Yeah. We've teased it enough. Let's talk about extreme haunted houses, which apparently are so extreme that people who are haunted house enthusiasts, like people who are in the industry, don't even like these things to be called extreme haunted houses because they're so extreme. That's what I gather. Yeah. And to say these are interactive, not really putting a fine point on it. You're basically paying money to be treated like an assault victim for up to 7 hours. Like you might be put in a headlock. Where's the one there's one in San Diego. Yeah. Mckaimy Manor okay. Is renowned as, like, the worst of the worst. The video that I saw, it was like, you are covered in blood, dude. It was unbelievable. Put into, like, a coffin and somebody is in the riding on top of you in the dark and you're trying to get out and they're pulling you back in just like it's insane how intense this thing looks. Yeah. They had a cage that locks your head in that they're dropping like fake snakes in. Yes. Which is not as bad as live snakes, but it's still pretty bad. And apparently the catchphrase of everybody who goes through these things is, let me out of here. If they shout or cry, it well, yeah, but apparently, supposedly, Mckaymy Manor, it's open year round and they only take four people a day through this thing. But like you said, it's up to 7 hours long in some cases, right? Yeah. So they'll take in, I think, just one at a time you have to go through by yourself. And they only do four people a day. It's only open on the weekends. And I don't know if this is true. Supposedly the one rule, like you have to apply fill out an application to go through this thing. Right. And be super fit and super psychologically fit because you're getting physically abused in some cases. Like nothing you can't walk away from, but they're mangling you without hurting you. So they held one guy's face in front of a toilet and it shot up some obnoxious stuff out of it, like stuff like that. So on one hand it is like physically abusive on the other. It's almost laughable that these people really put their minds to it and they came up with shooting stuff out of a toilet in your face. Yeah, but supposedly you can't leave this one at all. Like there is no safe word. I just don't believe that. I don't believe it either, but it's free. The one in San Diego is really yeah, it's free. And that's the one hook is that you're not allowed to leave. What? You sign a document that says I'm going to go through this thing from beginning to end. What else? That's what I say. Trust me. I would get out of that place. Sure. I would bust through a wall or something. That's what it took. Chuck MERD but that is McCaine Manor and that was constructed by Russ McKamey, who's a terror fanatic. They also have one in New York and La. Call Blackout. One called Gates of Hell in Las Vegas. And the common denominator of all these is you're getting physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want to wear again because you're going to have fake blood and vomit thrown in your face. Hopefully fake and be physically assaulted. I mean, they have scenes where there's a rapist after you, right? It's really dark. So disturbing. With haunted house enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things. It's usually because they say there's no story to it. There's very rarely build up. It's all just pay off, pay off, pay off. Like all of it. There's no ratcheting up of tension. It's like those movies that we're talking about very much. It's the haunted attraction version of I don't even know what they are. I don't watch any of them. Hostile. Okay. I did see that one actually. What did you think? Yeah, anytime. If you're going to pull out that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah. That is such a trope. By now, you know who did do it? Well, was the first couple of Hail raisers. They used medical instruments too. Yeah. Back in the day. Disheartening degree effect. Yeah. The ones that scare me the most, again, to delve back into movies. Did you ever see Wolf Creek? No. It's set in the Australian Outback. Yeah, it's the kids whose car breaks down and all of a sudden the rest of the movie is them getting chased by this homicidal maniac. Okay. That to me, is what's called a psychological thriller. Yes, I understand. It is Horror Friday the 13th. That's like Hallmark horror, but it's different. Yeah, the slasher movie is just different. I mean, there's not enough true, genuine horror movies, in my opinion, which amount to basically supernatural horror, I guess, is how you'd put it. That's what I'm into. You should check out Wolf Creek. I have no problem with it. It's just as far as horror goes, I'm not scared by that. I want to be scared. You might be scared. Okay, I'll check it out. The murderous guy is really, like, kind of a great character, and I think he falls into the pantheon of classic, like, Michael Myers characters. Oh, yeah. One of the good slashers. Which brings us to the Hellhouses, which, like we said, was sort of started back in the dark ages of Christianity. They do this today. The most famous one is in Cedar Hill, Texas. And there's a documentary called Hellhouse on these things, I think, from 2002. Fair Camp? No. Hell House, I guess. And the idea of these is run by churches, usually, and they are to just, like in the old days, scare you into walking straight and narrow. Right. And actually, they were originated by Jerry Falwell back in the those are the first ones, I think. Yeah. And then in the 90s, that church in Texas you mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, and they took over and they started actually packaging it. They started selling hell houses for like, 299, $299. And it was kind of like do you remember those JCS in the 70s that came up with the haunted house package? Yeah. These are the same things, but for hell houses. And then there's modules that you can buy that cost additional amounts of money so you can add rooms to it. And so, like, a room you might buy is the abortion room. Right. And in the abortion room, you're taught how to use raw meat. That's like a stand in for a fetus that you throw into a glass bowl. You got to make sure it's a glass bowl so everybody can see through into it. The quote literally from the manual that they distribute on how to run these says, quote, purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a baby to be placed in a glass bowl. Right. So that's their suggestion. That's a room from Hellhouse. Yes. And this is to keep you from having premarital sex. Exactly. Obviously, subtlety is not a hallmark of the Hell house. No. So, for example, there's one from New Destiny Christian Center. It's called the rave scene. And basically it's about club drugs and death, teenage death. Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their own life as a result of sin. Yeah, of their sin. Yeah, like the lesbian suicide room where a young lady succumbs to lesbianism and is so mistreated and she's not a lesbian, she's just saving herself and is mistaken for a lesbian. Confusingly. Okay. And then kills herself because her best friend rejects her and calls her a lesbian when she went to go hugger. That was from the Vice article you sent at least. Yeah, that's a great article. It's all repercussions of sins. So there's the lesbian suicide room, there is the AIDS room, right? The abortion room, the domestic violence room, the DUI room, and they're all just enacting these horrific scenes until you get finally to hell is at the end. Not at the very end, right. And Hell is where they're displaying what Hell looks like with ghouls and demons and then finally you get to go to heaven. Well, this is what makes a hell house a Hell house. Like, you send through these different types of sin into hell and then when you come out, you emerge through hell. And then the real life preachers there saying, hey, how about you repent? And for those of you who aren't saved, why don't you come on over to our church and we'll save you? Yeah, they call it in the Vice article, they call it a really cool pastor who jumps out and is the good cop to hellhouse's bad cop. And he's like, you can avoid all this scary stuff if you take the Lord Jesus as your savior. And sometimes they'll do that right in the room and have you sign something. Oh, I can imagine. And that's the Hellhouse. And in that Vice article, it's crazy, the author mentions that a little boy goes off in vomits during the whole house. So apparently they're very effective. Well, if the object is to make you sick and vomit, I guess so vomit from fear for your soul. And they're still around. It seems like something that might have gone by the wayside. Oh, no. But yeah, you can still go to hellhouses in a lot of places. I have one more thing for you, Chuck. What you got? Go to buzzfeed.com. You may have heard of that website. Sure. And search for 44 best picks of Scared Bros at Haunted House. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, I can't remember where the haunted house is, but it's all the same background but very much like roller coasters. They take a photo of this one spot, right? And it's like the scariest spot. And the people are it's great. They're wonderful, hilarious. And it's been around I think they first started publishing them in 2011, so they've been around for years and they're still just as funny as ever. It's great. The scared face is just so pure to me because it's just pure reaction. Like the toughest dude in the world. Like trying to climb over his girlfriend or push her toward whatever he's afraid of or something. Whatever is happening in that 2 seconds, it's pretty great. Yeah. So that's haunted house attractions, everybody I know. If you want to know more about them, type those words in the search bar@howstoughfworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Karate Kid email awesome. Which was the scariest movie I've ever seen. If you listen to our Karate Episode, we wax philosophical about the Karate Kid movie and we get a lot of emails of people feeling great ways of nostalgia and talking about it. So here we go. I imagine you guys will get dozens of versions of this similar email. Just listen to karate. And I have not finished it yet, but I'm writing about the first seven to eight minutes. Specifically, your ode to the Karate Kid was beautiful. I got goosebumps. Along with Chuck. I may have also had a tear in my eye when he described that magical moment in the film where it all comes together. And we realize, along with Daniel son, that Mr. Miyagi is truly a genius. By the way, Ralph Macchio's named his son Daniel. Is that right after himself? Yeah, I guess so. After the best version of himself. I recently sent The Karate Kid to my six year old nephew to ensure that despite what his friends and media tried to tell him, he will know that Ralph Machio is the original and only Karate Kid. Yeah, when I called him and asked what his favorite part was, he actually started singing, you're the best around. Nice. Nothing's ever going to get you down. It was the proudest moment of my Aunt Hood so far. Now, Chuck, I implore you to watch The Karate Kid, too. After all the other films that attempt to be a part of the franchise or Travesty Two is incredibly good. It is very good. The Peter Satura song Josh mentioned, glory of Love was my first ever favorite song when I was six. It's a good song because of the film is a classic and I think you are missing out. I'll watch it. I'll check it out. Anyways, thanks for sending me to work this morning. With an extra bounce in my step and a song in my heart that is from Nicole Beale at Jed's Barber Shop, Salt Lake City, Utah. Go get her to cut your head hair, not your head. She's doing a terrible job. She's cutting your head. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Did you know our friend Van Nostrin did his band, the Bangalores do a cover of you're the Best around. I know he loved that song. I don't know if I knew they actually covered it. It's good. You can go to SoundCloud Search Bangalores and you're the best around. It's on there. I'm going to do that right after this, too, if you want to let us know that we nailed something, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@housetoporks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.com stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's Hows Stuff Works. For more podcasts, myheartradios radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c8b38ff8-803c-4997-8fc2-aec201586872 | Short Stuff: What did we use before infant formula? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-what-did-we-use-before-infant-formula | There's an infant formula shortage. But infant formula is relatively new. So what did we do before it was perfected? Listen in and learn already!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | There's an infant formula shortage. But infant formula is relatively new. So what did we do before it was perfected? Listen in and learn already!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 29 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=180, tm_isdst=0) | 12201647 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Short Stuff. So let's get going. And Chuck, I have to say, if I'm grateful for one thing to not have one thing, it's an infant right now. Because I can't imagine the stress of having an infant right now here in the United States. Yeah, if you have an infant right now and you are not able to breastfeed for one reason or another, it probably is stressful because there's an infant formula, baby formula shortage, as everyone knows. I got to think our old colleagues at How Stuff Works and Alicia Hoight for this very timely article. But I was thinking the other day, I was like, well, what did they used to do? Because baby formula is pretty new. Mothers have not it's not like not being able to breastfeed is a new thing. There have always been conditions that could lead to that, or some people just don't want to breastfeed. Or like, in our case, you adopt a kid, you don't have the option of breastfeeding. So what did they used to do? And I guess the first thing we should talk about is wet nurses. Yeah, because that's the obvious idea. I mean, wet nurses go back for 4000 years at least, where women were hired or if they were enslaved, they would be forced to nurse babies. Usually it was associated with the elite, though, right? Yeah. And I did some more research on this and there's even a book about the exploitive nature and the history of wet nursing because it seems like lesser and lesser, it wasn't just like, oh, it's just a job you can have, and more. It's like, Well, I've got a lot of money, I'm not interested, so you do it or you're an enslaved person, so we're going to take advantage of you by forcing you to do so. It seems like it's got a pretty exploitive, ugly past, but it still happens. There are technically there are still wet nurses you can hire. But it seems like, from what I research, the sharing of breast milk these days is way more casual among friends and family. Like, hey, this mom is busy working, so their mom might chip in and help and pump and dump and you can hear, is my breast milk, you can have it for this week, you're really busy. It seems to be more of a breast pumping. Although there are still friends and family that are comfortable with saying like, no, you can just breastfeed my child. It's great, it's natural, it's lovely and beautiful. Right. It's not exploitive in that sense at all. Right. Like, things really changed post Civil War, it seems like, with the wet nursing. Yeah. And we talked also about milk banks. You might feed your baby milk from another person who you might never meet, who just donates her extra milk because she can and wants to. We talked about that in either a breastfeeding or bottle feeding episode. Remember that two parter that we yeah, those are good. Those are real good. Yeah, I think they still stand up, too. So if you want to know more about infant formula, go check that out. Or breastfeeding. Go check the other one out. But so if you didn't have access to a wet nurse, Chuck, what did you do, hot shot? What did you do? Milk a donkey. Yeah. Hold still. Donkey. I joke, but that's actually true. Obviously, animal milk is something that we drink. Some people do, at least. I like cow's milk, but they would give kids cow's milk. But in other places, depending what animals you had around, it could be a donkey or a goat or a horse or something. Yeah, sheeps, pigs, any mammal makes milk. Even Robert De Nira. You could milk me, Greg. That's right. So that makes sense. I mean, yeah, milk from another animal, it's probably a pretty good alternative, especially if milk from humans is unavailable for one reason or another. But they also came up with other methods, I guess, starting in the 16th and 18th century, where they would create something called PAP. And it was basically like milk toast or cereal, wet cereal with water. And they would feed it to a baby using a special device called a pat boat, which, if you look it up, it's a gravy boat. They would use a gravy boat to feed an infant milk toast. Right. They would clean the gravy out, put the PAP in, and it would be a PAP boat. Right. There you go. The problem here, though, is this was before they knew about sterilization and things like that. And so that was the big problem. It wasn't as much of the nutrients that the baby was getting, although that was a factor. But as far as infant mortality and kids growing up with deficiencies, most times it was because, I think, of the fact that these patboats weren't very sterile that they were shoving in the kid's mouth. Yeah, it was like the stuff you should know. TV shows, craft services, table. Remember that? That's right. I finally set my daughter down. We watched one of those the other day. Yes. What did she think? She kind of gets that I do a job where people know who I am, and then I've been on TV and stuff. But I think when she actually saw it and saw us, she was a little knocked out. I think she thought it was pretty cool. Was she like, wow, Josh is really wearing a lot of makeup? No, I said that right. She's like, oh, I see. Exactly. Couldn't miss it. Dad. So the first infant formula, or should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. All right, then we'll talk about the first infant formula. No, wait. Yeah. Okay. We'll be right back. Okay. Are you still humming? No. All right, the first infant formula attempt as far as like, hey, let's try and duplicate human breast milk was in 1865, and a gentleman named justice von Libig, and that is the first baby formula was cow's milk. It was malt flour, wheat and potassium bicarbonate. And then I think when was that? 1865. A couple of years later, another pharmacist name. Henri. Is it Nestle or Nestle? Nestle. That's the Nestle guy. I figured. But is it pronounced nestle in French? I think so. All right, they launched the well, why don't you say it? Mr. Frenchie Farine Lacte nestle. And it means plain flour, milky nestle. Yeah, and it was the same thing, basically, but it was just easier to mix together and get out the door. And then I think only like 15 years later or so, there were up to close to 30 brands of infant food on the shelves. Yeah, because von Liebig really kicked something off. And also we got to hat tip that guy a little more. He also gave us beef, bullion cubes and synthetic fertilizers, among many other things. So he definitely changed the world quite a bit. Interesting, the 1950s, I think, is when things really came around as far as formula before that, in the they would recommend like, evaporated milk or something once they figured safely canning things. But in the early 1950s is when the first liquid formula was invented that you didn't have to mix up. Yes. And a lot of mothers were just like, all right, I'd rather use this than breastfeed. And then I think in the it came back around a little more to mothers wanting to breastfeed more. And as Alicia Hood points out, we now live in a time, thankfully, where there's at least shouldn't be any judgment either way on how people want to feed their babies. Yeah, because I think you can trace that to different waves of feminism as well. Like that formula freed women in a lot of ways from being shackled to the household, necessarily like, sorry, you got to raise the kid or else it's going to starve. Now it's like, no, here dad, here's some formula. Even you can do this. Even you can do this without screwing it up. Roger and then as feminism kind of took different forms and it was like, hey, let's stop being judgy or let's stop forcing women to find to all follow one direction. As feminists, it kind of came back around and then finally we reach this kind of non judgmental state. And by the way, we need to do an episode on feminism once and for all. Yes. That would probably be at least a two parter because of all the different waves of feminism, I would think, for sure, maybe one per wave. Oh, boy, that'd be a lot. That's like a mini series. Alright, we'll see. But we should talk about whether or not because obviously with the shortage right now, there are probably desperate mothers out there, especially in lower income brackets, that are thinking, should I make my own infant formula? And sort of generally, experts say that's not a good idea for a lot of reasons. Well, yeah, I mean, infant formula today is heavily regulated. There was an act called the Infant Formula Act of 1980, which is described as one of the most specific and detailed acts ever passed by Congress that sets a lot of standards for maximum levels of nutrients. Minimum levels of nutrients. What constitutes adulteration, how a recall follows. It's really specific to make sure that formula is as safe as it gets. And so it's really heavily formulated. It's technically an ultra processed food to be a group for food, by the way, but it's like really scientifically calibrated, and you just can't do that at home with homemade ingredients. Right. I'm sure there are recipes that probably include things like cow's milk, rose quartz crystals, generally vegetable oil, lactose, but like you said, there are just a whole host of nutrients that they have settled on as like, hey, we know how to make baby formula. Because I think in the old days, like, the stuff they were doing, it would plump a baby up just fine, but they were not getting the nutrients they needed. And back then, it was like, oh, you got a big, round, chubby, healthy baby, dark circles under his eyes. Yeah. And that wasn't always the case. So now they've really thankfully honed it down to something that they say you shouldn't replicate at home. And I don't think this is a case where it's just, like, big formula squashing the idea that you could do this yourself. It seems like a genuine safety issue. Yes. And I should point out that we have enough self perspective that we realize we've done a complete 180 about face on ultra processed foods and made at home foods in this episode. Oh, yeah, sure. Compared to our ultra processed foods episode. That's a good point. It is a good point. And if that one hasn't come out yet, you have it to look forward to, you. Yeah, exactly. You'll understand a lot better when the episode comes out. That's right. You got anything else? I got nothing else. They say don't do it. Really? Just my heart goes out to anyone out there that stressed out about trying to find formula, and hopefully that can be corrected soon. Yeah. That has to be, like, a deep, profound, very unique form of stress. I can't imagine. So hang in there, everybody. If you have a story about that, especially if you have tips or techniques that are proven and scientifically based, maybe send them in and we'll try to share them with everybody. How about that? Agreed. Okay, well, since Chuck said agreed, everybody's, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1226503729937hsw-sysk-fda-herbal-supps.mp3 | Why doesn't the FDA regulate herbal supplements? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-doesnt-the-fda-regulate-herbal-supplements | For thousands of years, societies across the globe have used herbs as medicine. While this practice continues today, the FDA does not regulate these potent substances. Find out why the FDA can't regulate herbal supplements in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | For thousands of years, societies across the globe have used herbs as medicine. While this practice continues today, the FDA does not regulate these potent substances. Find out why the FDA can't regulate herbal supplements in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=318, tm_isdst=0) | 12922562 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. That's Chuck. I'm Josh. This is stuff you should know. Right. Coming to you live from Studio One, a deep within the bowels of how Stuff Works corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Right. That's gross. Yeah, I like to do that once in a while. That's nice, Chuck. My father spent the better part of the late 90s is kind of well, he took a lot of pills. Okay. They were all herbal. They were all herbal supplements, mind you. But he would take, like, uppers in the morning, like herbal uppers. Interesting. And then he'd take herbal downers, like 202 or 404. I can't remember what they're called in the evening to relax. And I call him the Herbal Elvis. I kid you not. He did this up and down and up and down. Finally he kicked the habit, I guess. I don't know if he takes it. I know he takes a lot of vitamins and stuff, but I think it's healthier. And plus, now that he's retired, he has less reason to wake up in the morning. As long as he didn't pass away in the toilet. No, he hasn't. Thank God. But the thing is, it kind of points out, like, herbs can really pack a punch. They can take mahwang, for example. Can I? Sure. Mahwang, better known in this country as a federal, or a federal, which is actually the alkaloid, the isolated alkaloid of mahwang, which actually in Chinese means bitter yellow. Right. Mahwang. Bitter yellow. It points to the color of this little evergreen shrub in the horrible taste of its leaves. Mahwang has a terrible taste. Sure. Butter yellow taste. So the Chinese have been using the shrub for 5000 years. Right. And they're not really having a lot of trouble with it. Right. It comes to the United States and the all of a sudden, between the early ninety s and two thousand and three, there's like 160 cases of death and injury reported to the federal government. Right. You've got truckers and college students popping white crosses. They're also a key ingredient in methamphetamine. Exactly. In meth labs, yeah. So, I mean, what happens? What happened, right. Chinese will have this stuff for 5000 years. Right. It would come to the US. And within a decade, 16,000 people drop like flies. I'll tell you what happens. Americans love to get high. It's as simple as that. Abuse. Exactly. It's abuse. It's a lack of understanding. It's a lack of respect. Right. To the Chinese, what we consider herbs, they consider drugs. Right? And what we consider herbs, we don't really fear. We find them all natural. It's not regulated by the FDA, so how could it be harmful, right. That's one of the interesting things I think you pointed out was the more heavily something is regulated, the more people will fear less something is regulated, the more they think it's just fine. Exactly. Think about how you perceive tylenol. Sure. And then how you perceive tylenol three. That stuff with codeine. Right. Which is pretty much like 800 milligrams of tylenol, something like that. Really not that big of a difference if you've ever taken them. The difference isn't significant. No, but yeah, one is, like, under lock and key behind the pharmacist counter. The other one is right out where God and everybody can shoplift it. Exactly. So, I mean, you perceive them as different because they're regulated, because the government's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pal. Right. You just need to kind of back off that with herbs. There's no regulation whatsoever. They don't even sell them in the same place as the tylenol, so they seem even less significant as far as the health risks go. But that's not true. There's plenty of verbs out there that are just crazy potent, like Deterra. You know what an angel's trumpet is? No, I don't. It's not an article. Don't bother looking for it. Okay. You can find an angel's trumpet plant in just about any Southern backyard. They have, like, these long, trumpet shaped flowers, and it's the name. Right. And if you eat one of those flowers, within an hour, you will be baying at the moon and beating up the cops who come to arrest you. Really? It will drive you nuts. And this is just an ornamental plant in the US. No one has any clue about it. Sounds like you've got some experience. Yeah, I've never had the gall to actually eat one because I don't like eating grass, which is apparently another side effect. I think you might have licked a toe or two in your data. No, well, actually, I've seen warnings to gardeners saying, if you have an angel's trumpet plant and you're messing with it, especially the flowers, like, do not rub your eyes. Right. Wash your hands. It will send you on a wild ride. It's interesting that's just one of many monkshood. It's one of the most potent chemical compounds, naturally occurring compounds known to man. It can kill you oh. Very easily. Right. Stop your heart and lung function just from handling it. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of potent herbs out there because they grow from the ground. Right. Because we have been weaned we've been at the forefront of modern medicine. We kind of disregard herbs. Right. Jimson weed. That's another one. That was an interesting one, wasn't it? Yeah, that's the hallucinogenic. I think you mentioned Jamestown in your article. Yeah. The attachment of the Jamestown colony militia ate a bunch of that in a salad. Right. And it just went crazy. We're just basically tripping for several days. I think the guy who described it said they turned to natural fools upon it for several days. Right. But that was quite a shock to them. Yeah. I bet they didn't get a lot of work done those days, but okay. So I think we've established the argument that herbs are potent very much, and the problem is Americans don't have an ingrained respect for their potency, as do some of the older cultures. Right. And beyond that, Americans in the 1990s and into the 2000s, traditional Chinese medicine became more and more popular. So not only are these herbs packing a punch and not regulated, but people really started getting into it. Yeah. Echinacea and what's the first? John's Wort sure. People think that these are just cure all. It's not that they're not it's not that they don't have properties. This isn't like snake oil that we're talking about. Since they're not regulated, since they're not really looked into, you have to effectively self medicate. Right. Or listen to some jerk at the health food store who may or may not have any idea what he or she's talking about. Right. So it can be kind of dangerous. The problem is, because of the arrogance of Western medicine, that it's the only true, viable and effective medicine. Right. People pick up on that. So when people started taking herbs, just average Joe's patients will call them when they started taking herbs. A 2003 survey found that 70% of people who take herbs don't tell their doctors about them. Right. Because they're afraid they're going to be told to not take them anymore. Right. Which is a good fear, because doctors don't understand herbs any more than the guy at the health food store doesn't probably last. Right. So you've got that problem, and as a result, this thing called complementary and alternative medicine came about. It was basically saying, look, people are running around taking herbs. We need to incorporate these other medicines into Western modern medicine, right. And see what we can do. It's probably a good idea. It was a great idea because traditional medicines generally are best at curing chronic diseases or handling chronic diseases, whereas Western modern medicine is best at acute diseases or acute conditions. So my rule of thumb has always been rheumatoid arthritis. Traditional medicine, shot in the leg. You want to go with the Western medicine, right? Yeah. So. Gunshot wound. Western medicine. It's a good rule. Rheumatoid arthritis, you want to go with the traditional medicine. So there was a movement to incorporate these two. Right. The problem is, again, doctors don't know any more about herbs than you or I. And doctors can get sued a lot more easily if they say, take this herb and the person dies. Right. If we say that, we're just like, oh, man, sorry, didn't mean to do that. Doctors like, oh, okay, well, there goes my practice. So of course doctors aren't going to recommend this stuff, so never took off at all. Right. So why wouldn't the FDA regulate herbs? Well, I think the research you found, or you posited, was that herbal ingredients and supplements don't have to be classified as drugs. They're dietary supplements. No, that's exactly right. And this came about through the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which was issued in 1009 and 194. Which is right. When this stuff is really gearing up, there are a lot of questions like should the FDA get involved? And the government said, no, not only that, we're going to put herbs squarely out of the FDA's jurisdiction. So with any kind of pharmaceutical, even in over the counter drugs, are we talking about approval here? Yeah. You and I would have to basically test these compounds, test them on rats and then possibly other primates, and then move to human trials. It costs millions of dollars, and not necessarily to the pharmaceutical companies. They get a lot of their research done for free by universities. But somebody's putting in millions, if not tens of millions of dollars in an average of eight and a half years. Yeah, I couldn't believe that. To get it to the FDA for approval. And the FDA either says no or they say yes, and then they decrease as a controlled substance, like a pharmaceutical, prescribed pharmaceutical, or over the counter. Right, right. I thought it was interesting that the fact that only zero 1% of compounds first tested receive FDA approval, that is way low. Yeah. Completely. You have to go back to the drawing board. I know, but you have to prove step by step that this is not harmful to humans before the FDA approves it. Right. What the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, the DSHA basically says, is not anymore, not with herbal supplements. Actually, the shoes on the other foot. The FDA has to prove that these herbs are harmful before they can get them taken off the shelves. Right. And basically, they have to prove that the herb poses a significant health risk or an imminent public health risk. Public safety risk, yeah. And I bet the FDA only gets involved if there are a bunch of cases where this happens. Yeah. I mean, think about it. Extinct. Right? Exactly. It's a really long process. It's a really involved process. And the FDA, like most other federal agencies, is perennially understaffed and underfunded. Right. So it can be very difficult to get something taken off the market, even if it is hurting people. Right. In the meantime, it stays on the market until they can draw that line. Exactly. So there are some limitations to it. To what a dietary supplement herbal manufacturers can say. Right. One thing they can't do is they can't say that their products treat, cure, or mitigate a disease. Right. Now, this is how they market themselves. Correct. Yes. Right. So, for example, somebody who manufactures an herbal supplement with passion flour, they can't say that the product creates anxiety. Right. Instead, they can say something like, it quiet an anxious mind. Right. Which to me sounds a lot like the old 19th century tonic commercials. Exactly. Sonic advertising, like heroin. It quiet the anxious mind kind of thing. You know what I mean? It sounds a lot like that. And it gets the same point across as well. You're basically saying the loophole, anxious, anxiety, same thing, right? Quiet, cures, whatever. There is also one other thing that you can't use ingredients that are already banned. In April 2007, a Chinese product called Seng Zhong Zoo Tong Tan. I believe that's what it's called. I probably just butchered it. It was taken off the market in the US. Because it contained human placenta. So the FDA does have some teeth there. But for the most part, if you and I want to go somewhere and take my herbs, manufacture it, we can sell them to our heart's content, kill a bunch of people, make a lot of money, and get out before the FDA can ever say food, right? Kick back on a beach somewhere. Let's go do it. That's a good life. Yeah. So if you want to find out more about herbal supplements, the FDA, all sorts of other stuff, just go check it all out. Use our handy search bar@howsefworks.com. It's a cornucopia of information. Pharmacopia. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.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?" | |
d661650a-3b0d-11eb-aa42-4fe24701a981 | The Parrot Episode | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-parrot-episode | If you think parrots are simply mimics that fly, you're wrong. Tune in and learn about these colorful friends today. | If you think parrots are simply mimics that fly, you're wrong. Tune in and learn about these colorful friends today. | Tue, 16 Mar 2021 14:11:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=14, tm_min=11, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=75, tm_isdst=0) | 49262829 | 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 a production of iHeartRadio Kalin. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, trillslock Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland, who's bright Plumage is sticking me in the face right now. All right. And that was a great parrot. And this is stuff you should know about parrots, which is a surprisingly interesting topic. Chuck, nice one. Nice pick. All right, that's good. Just the whole time we're going to hammer out like a means of communication just with that sound throughout this episode, okay? Oh, man, that'd be kind of great. You already broke character, Chuck. I know. I think to the relief of every single person listening to you. So you were surprised, huh? Yeah. I know parrots are neat or whatever, and I knew that they were probably one of the smartest animals, or some of them are. Some are just dumb as doorknobs. But there are plenty that are really smart. They make up for the really dumb ones, but I didn't know that they were quite this neat. And also, one of my new favorite things is like, watching little happy birds hop around and sing. And there's a lot of parrots that do that. It's like one of their traits. Like they're really cute kind of animal. I love that. In your mid forty s, you were turned on to the joy of birds chirping and jumping around. I didn't say I was turned on by it. Turned on to it. Oh, got you. There's a big difference between this. Have you ever had any experience with parrots or known bird people? No. So tangentially. Yumi's grandma had a parrot. She passed over a year or so ago, but her parrot is still alive. She had a couple prudle and Brutus, and prudel was fine, but Brutus terrorized Yumi when she was growing up. I mean, like, terrorized her. And they didn't see her for many years. And when I visited and met her grandma and Brutus, brutus at first was kind of like hohum. And then you could tell the moment he recognized you, me. And he lunged at her, he was like, You, I remember you. After all those years, he still just did not like Yummy for some reason. Yeah, I mean, I've got some parrots and bird stuff that I'll pepper throughout when it's applicable, but bird folks, if you're a bird person, my experience has been bird people are just sometimes a little eccentric. Oh, yeah. Bird people are definitely a certain type, just like cat people are a certain type and dog people are a certain type, but there's a lot of cat people and dog people. Sure. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that makes bird people seem eccentric is there's far fewer of them. But one of the things I didn't realize, it could be that could be also like the extensive stacks of paperback fantasy novels that just lined their floors throughout their house. But one of the things that I didn't realize is that birds are the fourth most popular pet in the United States, which makes sense if you think about it, but I never really thought about it. Mine just stops after dogs, which are number one. Yeah. I mean, dogs, cats, what is it? Fish and then birds. That's right. I would expect goats to be somewhere on there, but I think people just love seeing goats and not necessarily owning them. Yeah, sure. But I think a lot of people who own birds come, especially parrots come to feel the same way after they've bought a parrot, as we'll see. Yeah. So should we dig into this thing? I thought we already had. So there are a lot of different kinds of parrots. They're close to 400 species of the order, and I look this up in a couple of places. Citizeormies, what did you get? Yes, I thought you were going to say citizens, but yeah, that's how I would have said it. Okay. Yeah. And we're talking like if you think of a parrot, you probably think of like, oh, it's a macaw or an African gray. But if you've seen a Parakeet or a Laura Kete or a cockatiel or cockatoo. Those are all parrots as well. Yes. So we love birds as well. There's a lot of different kinds of birds that are parrots, and some of them just don't even really look like it. You're like, no, that's an eagle. I think that's a kind of vulture. They're a really varied order, but they all have in common a couple of things that we'll see, one of which is a short beak that's curved usually, which is very powerful. And then they also have a certain kind of toe arrangement called the zygodactyl tow arrangement, which will talk more about in a little bit, but other than that, they are really kind of varied, like I was saying, in size and shape and color and even down to some kinds of species, they can be varied among the male and the female. So much so, I think there's one oh, I can't remember which one it was, but it was a kind of smallish parrot where the males and the females look so totally different color wise that they were thought to be different species for a very long time. That's right. That's the Solomon Island electus. Thank you. Show off. Thank you. Like you said, they vary in size. There are some that are so big, like the Kakapo in New Zealand, that can be like a seven pounder. Did you see any videos of those guys? They're great. They can't even fly, they're so big. No, they bound along their wings. They don't work for flying, but they use them for stability because they mostly climb trees. But, yeah, they're ground dwelling. They look like little furry or feathery mammals, basically, sort of. I don't know why that hasn't been a Disney character yet. I don't either, because they also seem to be very sweet. I saw some New Zealand, I guess, researchers who were tracking them, and I don't even think they put this one cockapoo under. When they took a blood sample, it was just laying in their lap and I think it was just basically like yeah, just hanging out. Go ahead, just take the blood and let me go again. So they're super chill, but yeah, they would make a perfect Disney character, for sure. Yeah. So those are the big daddies. There are ones from New Guinea that are just a few inches, weigh less than an ounce. I think the highest inthmcaw is generally the biggest, just in size. They can be three and a half feet long. They can have four foot wingspans. And I think the kind of trademark characteristic when you think of parrots, though, are the vibrant colors. Some are like the gray. African gray is mainly just gray that has a little bit of red. But when you think of parrots, you think of those really brightly colored blues and greens and reds and little rosy cheeks and stuff like that. Obviously, the reason why parrots have very bright colors is to attract mates. That's basically the reason for anything to have a bright color unless it's showing that it's poisonous. And as far as we've ever found, parrots are not poisonous. But one of the specialties what do you think right there by dawn? One of the specialties of the pigments in parrots. It's apparently not found in other birds, though, Chuck, is that those pigments have antibacterial properties, which I guess keep them from getting like, wing rod or something like that. Yeah, I think it's called Citico. Boy, here we go. Citico falcons. Are those pigments and they're found only in parrots. There aren't even any other birds that have these. Yeah, but I mean, other birds have colors, but they don't have that specific kind of antibacterial agent color pigment. Right? That's right. And you mentioned the toes. That is along with, I think, like owls and woodpeckers, and I think there are some other birds that have these zygodactyl feet, but that means they have the usual four toes. But most birds have three in one arrangement, like three up front, one in the back. Right. In this case, they have two upfront, two in the back. So, Julia helped us put this together. And she basically points out that this means they have two sets of opposable thumbs. So that's why they're really good climbers and they can hold on to a branch, like till the sun comes up dead by dawn style. Exactly. And if you've ever seen a parrot work a nut or a seat or something with the combination of the beak and those four toes, it's pretty dexterous. Yeah, that's also, again, how those cockapos can climb trees without any ability to fly. They can maneuver, they can hang. I believe there's an upside down hanging type of parrot, which I'm not sure why it hangs upside down. Maybe just to show off that it has zygodactyl toes, maybe, but they can do a lot with those things. And yes, in combination with their beak, they're really working it apparently their beak as well. That sharp, short, curved beak that all parrots have is extremely powerful. They move independently of one another, the lower beak and the upper beak, so it can exert a lot of force. And that really helps out because a lot of their food are like really hard nuts and seeds and things like that, but they're nothing in the face of a parrot's beak. Yeah, if you've ever been chomped down on, buy a parrot. It's rough. Yeah, they'll take a chunk of skin out. When I worked in Arizona, that restaurant in Yuma, Juliana's Patio Cafe, it was an outdoor cafe, and they had the owner, Julia had parrots, and I think there were like five of them just kind of behind where you eat on these stands, not even caged. And they were mean. That snakes. Not to her, but if you were not her and you went up and you were like, oh, let me give you a little ear scratch. One of those things could just fly its little head around and chomp down on your finger and it feels like it's in a vise. Yeah, well, you're lucky. They could have taken your finger clean off. Probably. There's anecdotal stories that we are not able to verify, but it's definitely worth mentioning that a large parrot could snap a broomstick with its beak, which is, if you read it, it's really impressive. When you say it out loud, you feel very foolish. A little bit. Sure. I guess it depends on the broom, but it's a really old way. Rotted termite, rotted broomstick. Yeah. Let's just say it's really a lot of force, and my finger can vouch for that. Was that some of the peppering you alluded to earlier? That's one of pepper. One grain of pepper got you. I had a bird that will come up later. I can't wait for that one. Yeah. So, Chuck, you were saying that they wouldn't bite Julia. Juliana. Juliana. Julia. Because she was part of their flock, as we'll see. And it turns out that there are some parrots get along with other species of parrots and even other species of birds and other kinds don't. So much so that when you read like a parrot owner's guide, they're basically like, if you're going to get other birds, do not get this kind with this kind. Ironically, love birds are famously mean to other species of birds, but if you're in their flock, then you're one of them. And that's one thing, that one reason why parrots make such great pets for so many people, is because they imprint with humans really well, and you're just a member of their family, and they are a member of your family. That's just the way it is to the parrot. If you're an outsider interloper. Yeah. They'll take your finger off like it's an old broomstick. So Yuumi was never ingratiated herself? I guess not. Which is surprising because everybody likes Yuumi. I know. Like animals flock to her like Snow White, basically. Yeah. She's got this lamb following around now. I don't know where that thing came from. It is cute. I love it. The laming is coming soon, unfortunately for that. Oh, boy. Well, let's take a little break there then, and we'll come back and talk a little bit about parrots in the wild. What up, Jerry? These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated USbased restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock.com Stuff. That's LifeLock.com Stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity Theft protection starts here. Today's episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family. So they offer advanced whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7, professional monitoring Simply Saves, agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah, and SimpliSafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch and Simply Safe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at SimpliSafe. comStuff go today and claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe. comStuff. Okay. So, Chuck, we're going to talk about parrots in the wild, which is where they used to be more often than not and still are. Like, there's something like about 300 and 5360 known species of parrots, but a lot of them are dying off really quick as we'll talk about. But the thing about parrots we're learning is that they're really resilient. Like they can adapt and find homes and make homes for themselves in new climates. So you'll find them typically in their preferred area around the tropics, around the equator, typically in the southern hemisphere. But you're also going to find them, like, living up in mountain ranges high up on rocky out crops. You'll find them in Chicago's? Hyde park. There's a bunch in Connecticut. They're kind of all over the place. Even though no native species from the United States are still around, there's still plenty of wild feral parrots that live out in the US. Yeah, when I was in Australia, we had a couple of down days and my buddy Scotty, our friend Scotty, came over to join us. And Scotty and I went down to wine country south of Melbourne, which is just some of the most beautiful land I've ever seen in my life. Gorgeous. And we were at a winery overlooking this huge vineyard and then like the sort of woodland jungle, and I saw these huge white birds flying around down there. And we were the only people there. We were there in the off season, so everywhere we went, we were the only two people kind of tasting. And so we got to hang out with the winemakers, which is cool, right? And they said, well, there's a cockatoos. I was just a naive American. I didn't know they just flew around Australia like that. And I said, Just so you know, they sell those in stores for a lot of money in the United States. And I said, It's just crazy to me that they're just flying around. Yes. Apparently there was a time not terribly long ago where you could see beautiful green cockatoos, or parakeets I'm sorry, flying around the United States until we drove them to extinction about 100 or so years ago. Yeah, the Carolina one. Is there a North Carolina parakeet? The Carolina Parakeet, yeah. It was just this gorgeous green, beautiful parakeet that was native to the United States. And I saw something so, you know, passenger pigeons were also famously driven to extinction. The last Carolina parakeet died in the same cage that the last passenger pigeon, Martha died in at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Cincinnati Zoo had the honor of keeping captive the last passenger pigeon and the last Carolina parakeet and killing them. Right. They had this one zookeeper who was in charge of strangling the last one just to get it over with because they couldn't stand the tension any longer. They're like, Just get it over with. Oh, I've got a joke that I'm not going to tell because I would upset bird lovers. Tell me later. I'll tell you later. Okay. So these parents mainly stay up in the trees. Obviously, they do come down if they're going to drink something and sometimes if they need to find something to eat, if they can't get it up there. And they generally do this kind of follow the humans patterns of kind of hanging out and doing the stuff during the day and sleeping at night, unless you're a Cockapo or a night parrot. And they are nocturnal, which is I think they're the only two of the species. What's neat about those cockapos, too, is from being nocturnal, the eyes have migrated from the sides of their heads toward the front of their face, and they've developed this kind of puffy feathers around their eyes. So they're also known as the owl parrot because they've started to kind of resemble the owl, and the owl is typically nocturnal as well. Are you going to get a cockapoo? I think I might, actually. There's only 150 left and I could probably be arrested, but at the very least, I'm going to give it a shot. So they are omnivores and they will generally eat seeds and nuts and plants and fruits and things of insects. But if they need to eat, a parent's going to do what a parent is going to do. This is crazy. And this can cause problems. I think the African gray can feast on corn, which has caused problems with corn crops in New Zealand. This is the crazy part. In the mid 18 hundreds in New Zealand, kees K-E-A-S were discovered to be and this is sort of horrifying eating sheep and attacking sheep in the middle of the night. Yes. Well, I guess it was in the middle of the night because they're not nocturnal, but in my mind, it's a horror movie and it happens in the middle of the night. To me, the middle of the day makes things even more horrific. Sure, bad things aren't supposed to happen in the middle of the day. They're supposed to happen at night in the woods. Good point. Not in the middle of a field in the day. So seeing some parrots attack and eat a sheep in the middle of the day, that's bad news. But those things actually, they look a lot like eagles, more so than parrots to me. So you give them a pass? Yeah, that's fine. What I'd like to see, I'd like to see them all try to carry off a sheep together with teamwork, but I don't think that's how it goes. Well, there's your cartoon. That's like a Ziggy cartoon. I think they put parrot repellent on because back in the day, they would just kill them all and let God sort them out. That's what happened. To the Carolina Parakeet. Yeah, exactly. But eventually they were like, we can't just kill these keys. Like we're a more evolved humankind at this point, and we got to stop this stuff. We got to protect them. So they look for ways to keep from having to do that. And one of them is that parrot repellent on the sheep's bellies, which it's probably like that stuff you tried to use on your fingernails to keep from biting them. I used to coat my fingers in that. But you just slather on a sheep's belly and call it a day. Yeah, it's very bitter. One thing I did want to add, though, when you were talking about their range, and they can end up in weird places. I remember when we would do commercial shoots in Pasadena, California, and we would have the unlucky parrot location, which is basically anywhere in Pasadena on any given day, you could be near a bunch of parrots making a ton of noise and you can't shoot. You know how it is with sound, like you can't pay the guy to turn off his blower or his lawnmower. That guy. Yeah. But you can't yeah, I want 200. Right. You really put me out free reign at the craft services table. But yeah, those Pasadena parrots, they have disrupted many of them. Shoot. Yeah. So you're like, well, wait a minute. There's not native parrots in the United States. How are there a bunch of parrots in the trees in Pasadena? Well, people let their parrots go or people die and their parrots escape or what have you. And like I was saying before, they're really resilient. And once they start forming breeding pairs, even though they have like a really low reproduction rate, as we'll see in a second, they can survive. They can make new niches for themselves, which is pretty cool. But there's a lot in Florida, Texas and California. I think every kind of species that has a population is supported in all three of those states. Right. And the Connecticut one is just that's a very weird thing. Yeah. In Chicago's, Hyde Park, too, it's like the roof caves in on people's houses in the winter. In Chicago, there's so much snow and it's so cold. How are parrots surviving? But apparently they do. It's crazy. Yeah. So they live and this is pretty great. This is where stuff you should know, things intersect, our love of collections and groupings of animals. Sounds Of Assemblage yeah, pandemonium of parrots is what it's called, for good reason, like I said, because they are super noisy and can be aggravating in large numbers when they're out in the wild and they live together, they help each other out, they feed with each other, they look out for each other, they keep track of each other and they communicate with each other. All those squawks and screams that you hear when a pandemonium is gathered is them talking to each other. And they might be saying film crew, or they might be saying snake or monkey. Like, look out. Yeah. I also have the impression from spending hours and hours of watching beautiful parents of all types sing and be happy, that they're just basically sharing how they're feeling at any given point sometimes, too, and that a lot of times it's real positive. They're talking about how great things are, how beautiful the day is. I could be anthropomorphizing, but it really seems that way. They just seem like kind of a happy type of animal. I want to buy into that, too. I'm with you. Just go ahead. It's like, Prove me wrong, I'll give you ten years. And in that ten year span, I'll enjoy these parrots for what I think they're doing. I agree. We all laughed at Yumi early on, and now she's got that lamb following her around. That's right. Like, miracles can happen. We have to get some of that nail biting stuff to slather on the lamb's belly in case it runs into some keys. So they mate and they have little babies. They are generally monogamous, and males and females work together to raise the kid and to care for the little baby. From the moment that it's an egg, they will sit on it for 18 to 30 days and even take turns. I think the mom usually does most of the sitting while the male goes out and gets some food. But the male can also be like, Why not? You won't. You stretch your leg, you stretch your toes. You get Taco Bell this time. Yeah, exactly. But for the most part, the male gets the food, or something like that. But love birds also are, like, famously monogamous, and so much so that when they're separated, when a breeding pair is separated, when they're brought back together, first of all, they'll start to lose energy and get really depressed and sad. And then when they're brought back together, they reform their bond by feeding one another with their beak. It's very cute. Isn't that sweet? Yeah. I kind of have a thing for love birds now. They're just super cute and pretty. You know what birds are not monogamous. Which ones? Casual sex birds. Rob. Low birds. Yeah, but good for them. So, sure. They're just out there doing their thing, not hurting anybody, as long as they're upfront about what they're in there for. Rob Lowe. Is this from his sex scandal from 35 years ago? No, I just think of Rob Lowe as, like, being difficult to pin down and loving life, having a good time, just doing his thing. That's what I think of. He's really worked to change that image over the past three decades. He really has. Not with me, but I recognize what he's been trying to do. Okay, famous lethario. Rob Lowe. Well, I also dated myself because I would say a good third of our listeners are like, who's this rob Low guy. It's like Mad magazine parks and Rec. Oh, yeah, that's right. He was so they might know. To them I was going to say, it's like Mad Magazine making fun of Spiro Agnew when we were little. And we're like, who is the spiro agnew? Right. To us. Rob Lowe is the sax player from St. Almost Fire who made a sex tape to them. He's the happy dad and Parks and Reck guy. I also think of him as literally dude from West Wing. I don't remember what his character's name was. No need to email. I can look it up myself. I never saw that show. Oh, you didn't? It's good. I think you'd like it. All right. Even if you don't like Aaron Sorkin, you'd like West Wing. He's a little wordy for me. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. A little over the top every single second of every single show, but West Wing, it just worked perfectly for him. Yeah. I don't want to knock. Aaron Sorkin. I'll just say he has a fondness for typing. So there was this one Rob Lowe sketch on Saturday Night Live. I know we've talked about before, but remember when Aaron Sorkin was busted with mushrooms in the airport? No. So that news came out on a week when Rob Lowe was hosting Saran Live. So they did one of those famous walk and talk shots from West Wing, and in the background suddenly converts from the West Wing that they're walking through, and now they're being chased in a black and white movie by a giant like iguana. They're still walking, talking about the administration of the president, but they're also kind of jogging, running away, looking behind them at this giant Iguana. Really great stuff. So how many breaks have we taken, Charles? Just one. Do you want to take another one or keep going a little more? I think maybe let's wait 1 minute. Let's talk about their intelligence and altruism, and I think those are two lovely topics. Well, before we do that, I've got one more thing about the mating. So when they reproduce, they'll lay between like two and eight eggs at a time. And the incubation period can be really fast, like 18 days, 30 days. But they also usually only have a couple of chicks survive, and they spend a lot of time and energy raising their young almost to a human like degree, not for 18 years, but for up to like four years in some cases, the offspring, the chicks will grow up with the parents. So they actually have a very low reproductive rate. So it's a big problem when humans come along and kill off parent populations because they are slow to recover, they're slow to reproduce. So just put that little pin in your hat and smoke it. I just can't get that one right these days. So parents are super smart, like we talked about, and there are a couple of really great. Examples of how and how they display this. And one is they can use tools. Like they have seen parrots use sticks to scratch their heads and stuff like that. This one is amazing. They found that cockatoos have been observed using sticks to drum on logs as part of a courtship sort of mating ritual. Because nothing women love more than a drum solo. No, I know. It really just every woman alive thinks a drum solo is the greatest musical thing. You can do that's usually when I go to the bathroom, too, truth be told. Yeah, I mean, it's a hats off, but yeah, it's just kind of whatever. They don't happen much anymore. No, you don't see those. But the one that knocked my socks off, Chuck, was there's. At least the greater vasa parrot, they will use little pebbles or whatever to grind up seashells. And the male does this, and the male will eat the seashell and regurgitate it into like this vomiting calcium rich paste as an offering to pair a female he's trying to make with, which sounds gross and weird until you realize that other birds eat calcium rich shells or chew on them or whatever to strengthen the shells of their own eggs. But parrots are the only known birds to actually use tools to grind the shells up to make them easier to digest. And the males offering it to the woman is basically like, hey, look at how well I'm taking care of you and our kid. I'm regurgitating seashells for you that I'm grinding up that's astounding tool use. Like, you just do not see that elsewhere except in like, maybe primates here and there. Well, I mean, if you want to talk about cool, their altruism is something that you don't see much in the animal kingdom at all. Very few nonhuman species show this trait. And no birds before just a couple of years ago were even on this list. They even tested crows out because they're super smart, I think, in 2015. And they gave them an altruism test and they're like, no, you guys failed the test. But they did this. And this was from just January of last year in Current Biology, ironically, just a couple of months before the coronavirus hit. We don't have anything to talk about this month. Exactly. They're doing some important work and they did this exercise where they got these birds together, these parrots, and they put them in pairs and they basically put a wall between them with a hole, and they were separated. And one of them had a token and one of them had that you would trade for food, but one of them had the food and one of them had the token. So these birds literally figured out how to work together to exchange. Like, here, you take this token because you've got the food, feed yourself. But remember me if the rolls are ever reversed, right, which is a totally different thing. It's reciprocity. So these McCalls showed that or was it the African gray? I think the African gray is the one that passed. Yeah. And they're typically known as possibly the smartest birds of all time. But in addition to here you go. Take this token and get yourself some food. Even though I'm not getting anything back. When the roles were reversed, the birds would do the same thing, so they would get their turn, basically later on. And so cool. Yeah. You have altruism and reciprocity tool use. They're also very famous for mimicry, too, which a lot of birds can mimic sounds. I saw a video of a minor bird in the wild, I guess, being filmed with a camera as well as a video camera, because it made an exact sound of a digital camera taking a picture. It was astounding. It sounded like they dubbed the sound of a camera over this bird. I wonder about that on some of these videos. I hope it was legit. It looked like a legit wildlife video or clip from one. But a lot of birds can do that. But the thing is, other birds can't do what parrots can do. Their mimicry is at a whole different level compared to other birds, and they're basically the only bird we know of that can mimic a human voice. I think that's a great place for Cliffhanger, right? Sure. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk more about mimicry right after this. Word up, jerry 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 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 life Lock.com slash stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. Today's episode of Stuff you should Know is brought to you by SimpliSafe Home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on earth for every family, so they offer advanced, whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7, professional monitoring simply saves agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah, and SimpliSafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch and SimpliSafe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards. From flooding to fires, you can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes@simplisafe.com. Stuff go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe.com stuff. This July on Disney Plus, don't miss a summer of surprises, superheroes, incredible stories, and a visit from the world's most famous mouse with the epic Marvel Studios Doctor Strange and the multiverse of badness new episodes of Marvel Studios Ms. Marvel, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. And there's so much more coming to Disney Plus throughout the month with season three of Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, The Series and Zombies. Three plus don't miss 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, highlighting the breathtaking landscapes and wildlife that make America one of a kind. All these and more are streaming this month on Disney Plus. All right, so we're back, and we're talking about birds vocalizing and mimicking things. They have voices that vary by region, which is really neat. They have different dialects, basically. And if a parent moves to a new area where they have a different kind of dialect, they will adjust what Julia refers to as their accents to fit in, which is really amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. And I was reading up on a study about that, Chuck, and they found that a bird that lives like these dialects will be kind of regional, but some regions butt up against one another. So if you're in a nest that is adjacent to two regions, they'll kind of use it. They'll go back and forth, and they found, like, the differences in the basic structure of the calls are different enough that they're dialectical, but then within these nests, there are different variations, slider variations within the dialect. So they're communicating to some really astounding degrees. And like I was saying, that parrots in particular are the only ones smart enough to mimic humans. And one of the reasons that they do this is they're able to manipulate their tongue, which is one of the things that we do to produce speech. So they're not just mimicking a sound like they're actually forming words very similarly to how humans do. They are also capable of hitting lower pitches that are more in step with the human voice sounds. So it sounds more like a human that they're mimicking. But then also they seem to have an additional layer in their brain and the region of their brain that they use to mimic that other animals don't have, that other birds don't have, which implies that they're just smart enough to do this, too. Yeah. So I had a cockatiel. Oh, they're getting some pepper, everybody. I had a cockatiel when I was a kid. I feel like we had this bird for a few years, but I was definitely in the ten 1112 year old range, and our little gray cockatiel was named Dolly. And I knew that you could teach cockatiels to say things, so my brother and I were all over this. No one else in the family really cared. But we got a record to teach us how to do this, and it involves tons and tons of repetition. You can't just go up to a bird and teach it to say something a couple of times and they'll do it right. It requires a lot of repetition. And so we taught by the end, Dolly could say hello and Hello, Dolly, and Dolly could do the wolf whistle, like when someone walked in the room, dolly learned to do the charge. And then the one I was most proud of is I taught Dolly to do, like, a jungle bird. Wow. And it was my favorite thing that Dolly could do. So Dolly would sit on my shoulder and kind of nibble at my earlobes and watch TV and stuff and peck at my hair. And that was sort of the extent of it. It was a tremendous mess. I guess we can go and talk about that. If you have a bird, it's feathers and poop and seeds everywhere. Yeah, well, because when you have a parrot, you're supposed to give it a lot of time outside of the cage, which we'll talk a little more extensively about that. But yes, they're a big mess, for sure. But Dolly learning to talk was one of the coolest things I did as a kid. And people love to hear parrots say things. If you go and type parrot into YouTube, the third thing that comes down is the next offering is parrot's cursing, because it's just funny. People want to see a parrot. Tell someone to buzz off. Yeah, buzz off. If you're lucky. If they haven't lived in a frat house for a few years, more often than not, they just straight up curse. And every once in a while you'll see a story about some parrots that had to be moved from like, a wildlife preserve because they were cursing at the people who came by to see them or whatever and teaching little kids bad manners. I mean, there are all kinds of videos. It's very fun. Kids, ask your parents if you can watch parrot talking videos, because most of them curse. There are some funny ones, too, with parrots and Alexis talking to Alexa. And I think one of them there was a parrot that the lady, the owner went back and ordered or was checking on things that were ordered because this parrot would order stuff. Oh, yeah. And the parrot kept trying to order a fart. What is alexa, come on. Shopping I don't know. She just said, what's on the shopping list? And Alexa said bird seed fart. Right. That's pretty great. I want to know what Alexa would imagine that to be. Well, I think if you say the burp or fart, they'll do it right? I don't know. I haven't tried that, but I'm going to right after this. Do you really haven't? No, I haven't. I'm very impressed. I'm 44 years old and I've never tried that. All right, well, I'm almost 50. So you'll come back around and think it's funny again. You know it's funny. Chuck, you have mastered one of the, I think, 60 things that the Kamasutra says every person should master before they die, and that is to train a parrot to talk is one of them. Isn't that neat? That's in the Kamasutra. Yeah. I had no idea. I ran across that. So we can't talk about parrots and especially talk about parent intelligence and not talk about Alex the parrot, which who we have talked about before he showed up in our House Zero Works episode, because he's, as far as anyone knows, I think if not the only bird, possibly the only other nonhuman animal who's demonstrated a grasp of the concept of zero. That's a really weird concept that most non humans can't grasp, or possibly any other non humans can't grasp. Alex could, which kind of goes to show you what a smart pair he was. Yeah, I think they figured in the end, alex was about as smart as a five year old person and not from the depth of vocabulary. Alex knew about 100 words, which sounds like a lot compared to Dolly, but I think the Guinness record is a parakeet named Puck who learned about 1700 words and change. So 100 is good. But Alex could understand concepts like bigger and smaller and same and different and would make up his own word combinations. Like, I think the first time Alex ate cake, alex called it yummy bread. Right. Which is really pretty astounding and maybe kind of scary. He supposedly is the first animal to ask an existential question, which he saw himself in the mirror, and he asked what color? And so his handler and researcher Irene Pepperberg, who wrote many papers from the early 2000s about Alex, whose name, it turns out, is an acronym for Avian Language Experiment. A little saddened by that. The robot whose name is like an acronym for something sciency, just kind of dehumanizing. But Alex, he asked what color, and they took it to mean like he was asking about himself. He recognized himself in the mirror. And apparently parrots frequently talk about themselves in third person, like that parakeet Puck, like Ricky Henderson. Right. Who held the record for the most words. He talked about himself in third person. And apparently he once said it's Christmas and that he was happy about it being Christmas, and Puck loved everybody. That's great. Yeah. But I mean, that's pretty intelligent. If this parrot understands that it's Christmas Day and everybody's happy, that he loves everybody. I'm just impressed with parrots. In addition to being cute, they also have brains. Brains and looks. That's right. So I think we got to at least talk about the notion of pirates having parrots. It is not necessarily just a movie trope or a book trope from literature. It makes sense in a way, they may have wanted, when they're out at sea, some companionship. Having a dog or a cat or a goat or a lamb following you around on a ship isn't a great idea. Like a bird kind of makes sense. And they could eat the hardtack and the crackers and sip on the rum. It makes sense to have birds. They were going places where they might have been. I don't know if there's any hard evidence, but nothing about it seems like there's no way that could have been true. What I saw is that that's possibly the case, but that the age of discovery was the second time that Europe fell in love with parrots as pets, and that the initial trend started when Alexander the Great invaded India and took some parrots back to Greece with them, and they ended up spreading to Europe. And actually, the Alexandrian parrot is named after Alexander the Great because it's apparently one of the ones that he brought back with them. And then Paris just, I guess, fell out of fashion. And then when people started going to Brazil and coming back from Brazil, they came back with parrots on their shoulders and the trends started again. I love it. I did mention that they're not the easiest pet to take care of. They are messy, they are demanding, they're pretty needy. They need lots of attention. If they don't get it, they can be kind of disruptive and destructive. Not trying to talk anyone out of getting a bird, but it's a bite off if you've never had one before. Yeah. Even more of a commitment, I would think, than, say, like, getting a dog. Not just because of the enormous amounts of attention that they need from you, but they're really long lived, too. Yeah, that's the deal. Much longer live than a dog or a cat. In the wild, parrots typically live maybe 30 years. I think the cocoa lives possibly 90 years in the wild. But in captivity, parrots really live for a long time, 40, 50, 60 years. There was a major Mitchell's cockatoon named Cookie. That's the oldest living documented parrot in captivity. He lived to 83, I think. Yeah. Like, you often see parrots in people's wills because you have to pass them along to somebody. And for the life of me, I don't know what happened to Dolly. We had Dolly for a few years. It's just kind of one of those things when you're a kid, sometimes you have pets that just go away and your parents are like they're on the farm now. They're like Dolly, who stop asking questions, who stop never speak of Dolly again. Dolly may have gotten out, I don't know, but that happens. I mean, they escape sometimes. I mean, Yummy's, grandma's parent outlived her and they went to live with one of her friends who keeps birds. Yeah, they're really long lived pets. But part of the reason why they think that there are or why they know there are feral parrot populations around the United States is because people just let them go. I had no idea what I was getting into. Just fly free parrot. I'm sorry that we ever met. It's like flushing that baby python down the toilet a little bit, actually. But the thing is, it's good on the one hand, that just doesn't automatically kill the parrot that they can actually they might find, like, a local population that they can join. They might find another one and start a local population as a breeding pair. It's not like a death sentence to pair. It's like you should never just release your pet into the wild. That's just bad juju. But if you do with the parrot, it's not a death sentence, is what I'm saying. One of the bigger problems of that is that you have still placed a demand on the bird market. Yes. And the bird market is not like there's not some nice family in the central rural part of your state that breeds parrots. And that's where all the parrots come from. The parrots that you get typically have been stolen from a nest in Brazil and brought to the United States. I saw something like 8000 parrot chicks a year are removed from nests to feed the demand of the exotic bird market. And a lot of them don't survive. They die on the way. And as I was saying before, the reproductive rate of parrots is low enough that once you get enough chicks removed from their native habitats, they're not getting replaced fast enough. And then that leads to a collapse of the population and it can mean extinction if that happens across a large enough range. Yeah. And there are plenty of countries, including the United States, that have done passed legislation to try and put a dent in, like, this importing and poaching and stuff. But at the beginning of this year, there was a study in global change biology that said that a third apparent species are threatened with extinction. I think 171 of the species are near threatened or critically endangered. The kakapo that you talked about, you mentioned that there are only like 150 of those left. Yeah. I really don't want the kakapo to go extinct. Luckily, they're in New Zealand, and New Zealand loves nature, so they're in a good spot. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Are they trying to breed them at least? I think they're protecting the heck out of them and they're just leaving them to breed amongst themselves. They live on three isolated, remote islands that don't have any introduced predators. So they're in a precarious place, but they're in about as good a place as they could be for the precarious state they're in. Yeah. And it's not just people poaching. It's humans encroaching with developments and less and less natural habitat. It's obviously the repercussions of climate change. When things like the Australian wildfires break out, it's a reduction of habitat and the poaching that's kind of put a real dent in the parrot population. Yeah. So they're saying, well, they've actually identified some hot spots of parrot biodiversity around the world. That said, okay, if these places if the government's in these places move to protect parrots, parrots are going to be okay. So, like the northeastern Andes, the Atlantic forest that stretches from Brazil inland, and Argentina and Paraguay, if these places can protect the parrots, their parrots should be fine. So hopefully they will. And then on the demand side, if Europe and Japan will kind of get over their love of parrots or figure out a different way to get parrots a more sustainable way, then that would have a big effect, too. Are they two of the biggest defenders? From what I saw? Yeah, because that accident us pass cut poaching in half, from what I could tell. So it was like a really big it had a big impact, but Europe and Japan just continued on without that kind of legislation. I think that's great. Well, not great for them, but great for us. Up with parrots, everybody. And if you want to get a little pop of joy out of your day, watch this 1 minute video called Bird Sings in Synchrony With Piano. Incredible. Cute. Three exclamation points. Not incredibly cute. It is one of the sweetest things I've seen in a while. And you'll be like, yeah, Josh is right. Birds can just be happy little souls. Yeah. Or birds cursing. That's fun too. Anything else? Nothing else. Well, that's parrots, everybody. Like I said, go watch some parrot videos. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this plugging another podcast. Oh, nice. We don't often do this, and it's not from professional envy or anything. It's just we would be doing it all the time if we did it too much. Okay. Yeah. Nice one. Hey, guys. My name is Vivikgauer, G-A-U-R. I've been listening to your show for the past six years. I'm a physiotherapist working in the suburbs of Delhi, and part of my job is to provide domicillary care where I have to go see my patients at their houses and therefore need to drive every day. You're one of my favorite podcasts to listen to, and I'll listen to you guys almost every day when I am driving through the chaotic traffic. It gave me something worthwhile to listen to. It's interesting, and I like your humorous conversational style. I wish after Kobe gets over, you would do a live show in New Delhi someday, man. How about that? Yeah, maybe. Think we could draw a crowd? Crowd of one, at least. Yeah, viviq will be there. Yeah. Just want to know that someone is listening to you guys every day from the other side of the globe, and you inspired me to launch my own podcast. Nice. If you would please shout out to Vivikgauer physiotherapist podcast. That is V-I-V-E-K-G-A-U-R physiotherapist podcast. Although it's in English, which is handy in English. You guys will not understand the majority of it. Lol. But keep doing what you're doing best, which is that is Vivique. Thanks a lot, Vivik. And good luck on your podcast. It was very nice of you to plug it. Chuck. Yeah, check it out if he speaks English, and we'll see you in New Delhi Sunday. Don't know when, but someday. Sure. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Viviq did, you can send us an email to 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 the best. Pet Michael calm when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How Air Force One Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-air-force-one-works | As you might imagine, the President of the United States doesn't fly coach. But what exactly does he use when traveling from point A to point B, and how does it actually work? join Josh and Chuck as they demystify Air Force One. | As you might imagine, the President of the United States doesn't fly coach. But what exactly does he use when traveling from point A to point B, and how does it actually work? join Josh and Chuck as they demystify Air Force One. | Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:33:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=17, tm_min=33, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=321, tm_isdst=0) | 30691653 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charlie. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Colonel Chuck, admiral flight coordinator. I'm a potato peeler. Camp counselor. Yes, camp counselor. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. With me, as always. How are you doing, Chuck? Hey. It's November. I know. Happy November. November 1, right? Yeah. Which is the first day of November to get any trick or treaters? No, nothing. I have two sets of steps that lead up to my front door, and apparently kids are fat and lazy these days and diabetic. Did they, like, yell, throw something down here to the street? No, we left after a while. We just don't get anybody who comes to our house. Did you get candy? No, not this year. Well, we had before. We sat there and ended up eating all of it. And no one comes to our house either. Yeah. So that's good at all. Why our neighbors don't produce. It's sort of like as you come around the bend coming from the other way, from the Decatur side, that's sort of where it ends, the trick or treating. Like, the bend in the road approaches Memorial Drive, and people it just gets scary. And there's a bus stop, and people turn their lights off. My neighbors are old. They don't get into it. Got you. I think that's just sort of the demarcation. Did you guys get candy? No. I mean, we never do. So basically it stinks, man. I'm ready for, like, circuit traders. Did you dress up at all well for that stupid show? I did. Oh, yeah, that's right. You dressed up as Paul Stanley in a three piece suit. Looking good. I think if you ask me, we should post that picture. Yeah, I'll post one. Okay, good. Chuck? Yes. You know, Jay Carney is a family friend of my family. I did not know that. Well, he's not. I actually got what I'm about to read off of the White House website. Okay. I couldn't mislead you. I started to, and I just stopped. So far. It's been a typically busy week for President Barack Obama. Monday he went to Las Vegas. Sweet. Delivered some remarks, went to La. Probably pulled a slot or two. Probably. Yeah. You have to if you go to Vegas on your way, everybody's like, Get out of here. Right? Then he went to La. Stayed in La. Overnight. Right about now he is doing the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Should be on tonight. Terrible. Then he goes to San Francisco, Denver, and then he heads back to DC wednesday so that he can meet with the prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Petra necklace. Right. That is a lot of flying. More important than Jay Leno. Yeah. You're a Coco fan, aren't you? Team Coco. Yeah. I mean, even if Connor and Brian didn't exist, I would still think Jayland was bad. Did you ever see Night Shift, I think is what it was called, about the first late night war between Jeo and Dave Letterman. Yeah, that was it was good, real good. Okay, well, aside from that part yes, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of flying and every step of the way, Mr. President, barack Obama is going to be aboard a luxury decked out 747 with a tail number of either 28,000 or 29,000. That's right. You know how I know that? Because it's written right here in this wonderful article. Yes. This article called How Air Force One works on howstep workscom. If you're not familiar, a lot of people think like, this is our job podcasting, but they don't put that together with the site. Yeah, you should visit the site. We work for a website called Howstofworks.com if you know now the mystery solved and How Air Force One Works is on that site. And we said that 375 times, but people still don't get it. It's true. What's your email address? Yeah. So checkers. You want to do some history first? Oh, why not? Before you read this article, have you heard of Air Force One? I had heard of Air Force One. I had not heard of the Guess Where too. No. Let's start it out because the presidential air travel is fairly new, right? Yeah. Up until World War II, it wasn't very practical to fly around, and one might even say dangerous. And you were cut off because mainly because you were cut off from communications telegraph like, no, I want that bill pushed through. Exactly. But in 1943, FDR said, you know what? I want to take my wheelchair up on this Boeing 314 and I want to take a little trip to Casablanca. And that was the first presidential flight. Yeah. And he actually took that flight for practical reasons. It was because the Germans had the Atlantic completely under lockdown. Basically. He didn't want to take a boat in those days. Yeah. He's like, no, I'm not going, so I'll just fly. And it went smashingly. And from that point on yeah. Everybody said, maybe the president should fly. They said, this boating thing stinks. We should fly places much more efficient. Yeah. Even a flying boat wouldn't do. We just want to flying planes, right? Yeah. So coming up next, I've got six planes before the new set. That was number one. Number two was a C 87, a Liberator Express, and it was pretty much a B 24 bomber that was tricked out civilian style. Right there's. Padding on the armrest. Exactly. And that was called the Guessware too. Right. It's the worst plane name ever. Yeah. Well, it's a pretty typical 40s engineer. It's like a colonel. John Paul stat name? Yeah, it's pretty bad. The third plane, while another C 87 crashed and they said, you know what? This might not be the best plane because we don't know exactly why it crashed. We don't want to put the President in there. So then they configured a C 54 skymaster for that same president because he was president for like 60 years. Yeah. And it had sleeping quarters, a radio telephone, retractable elevator for his wheelchair. Very nice. And it was named the Sacred Cow. Better name. Better than the guess. Where Too? Yeah, it's up there. Okay. I mean, it's okay. It definitely reminds me of our agrarian past. Yeah. Am I covering history here? You got the Truman Show next. Took over the sacred cow, replaced it with a DC six called The Independence. Yeah. Now, he was from Missouri, so that makes sense that he would call it the Independence Missouri, and it's the United States. But I also got the impression that he basically it was a garish plane that had an eagle on the front, all sorts of patriotic decorations and nothing else that had been decorated up to that point. It's like the Statue of Liberty threw up on this plane. I haven't seen a picture of it, actually. No. But I could see Truman being like real enthusiastically. Yeah. That there and that there. Go shoot a commenting over there. How about Betty Boop? Up front? So our boys know something. Eisenhower introduced two propeller planes, upgraded the equipment, including for the first time, air to ground telephone and air to ground teletype, which was the first computer. It's not true. No. Teletype is like facts. So it's like the bouncing ball. Yes, I think so. That was the fourth and fifth sets of planes. Right. Hold on. So far a couple of landmarks have happened. Right. They decked it out for Roosevelt. It wasn't just a civilian craft any longer. There was like some fly stuff going on. Yeah. Truman added a couple of other backup planes that were twin planes. Yes. Which is big. Okay, and then now where are we on to now? We're on to Kennedy in. They finally got with the plan, and they got Boeing 707 jumbo jets, and they officially called them Air Force One with their radio call designation. Right. That was Eisenhower. That was Eisenhower, yeah. During Eisenhower's administration, the Air Force adopted the Seconds and started calling them Air Force One. And then when Kennedy took over and everybody was crazy for all things presidential, air Force One caught on it's for the public. Right. Because he probably went on and said Air Force One at some point. But he also redecorated it tastefully in the same way that it's decorated today, which is nice. Yeah. It's timeless because you don't look at it and be like, no, the navy blue. Yeah. It's not the vessel sink of airplanes. Right. Homeowners. Know what I'm talking about. 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 to 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. So Kennedy added a more advanced 707 that could fly a little longer, but it was still a 707 like you said. Redesigned it to probably Jackie's taste. Let's get real. Yeah. And added a twin plane to that fleet in 1972. And that was a very famous plane because that flew him to Dallas and then flew his body back from Dallas. I know the way that it's put in this article is so grim, but just head on. It says that on November 22, 1963, it flew him to Dallas and then brought his body back later that day, which is crazy. You think about him on that flight on the way out there. Exactly. And then on the way back, johnson was sworn in very famously aboard Air Force One. Yes. That photo is very famous. And then the twin 707 flew Nixon to, I guess, your Belinda, California, the day he resigned. Is that where he left? Well, that's where his library is, I believe, is your Belinda. But, Chuck, something else kind of big happened that leads us to a very important fact about Air Force One. Go ahead. The flight crew got word that Ford had been sworn in as President, and they changed the call sign for the flight from Air Force One to SMS special Air Mission Sam $27,000. And the reason they did that is because only the plane that the President of the United States is currently aboard can be called Air Force One. That's right. Nixon was no longer president, so it was no longer Air Force One. So, technically, the big plane that we all think of as Air Force One isn't even Air Force One unless the President is riding in it. Right. But we're going to call it Air Force One because that's what people do. Yeah. We're not jerks, but it's the call sign for airplane, not specifically a plan that was depressing. I wonder if they announced it to Nixon. And by the way, this is no longer Air Force One. This is Sam 27,000, and Nixon just put his head in his hands. Yeah, that was it. I could see that. At least they didn't just crash it, they just jump out. They're like, So long, sucker, good luck. So those are the 707. They kept flying all through Reagan first half of Bush seniors term, and then they were replaced by 747 that are around today. That's right. And the article says that could replace them as early as 2010, which is the 20 year mark. Not so 2017 is when they're looking to replace these now. It's like a Delta flight or something. Yeah. So it's either going to be another 7478 or a 787 Dreamliner. Dude, that is I checked it out. It's pretty amazing. Yes, those are nice. They have a really big bar in it. Yeah, I think that's no, it's the Airbus. That Emirates fly the airbus well, there's different configurations, but if you click Dreamliner Boeing 787 Dreamliner interior, and look at the Google images, it's pretty amazing. And that's just the standard one. The claims typically are outfitted and appointed very nicely. Well, we're there, so let's go. It is appointed nicely. Well, yeah. Tom Harris, who wrote this article, compares it generally to, like, a really nice hotel, a very nice office building, but it's a plane instead. Yeah. And there's also a marine one. We don't want to short change the helicopter cousin of Air Force One, which is the Chinook, which is my favorite helicopter. And it's pretty sweet, too, on the inside. I mean, it's like a smaller, nice apartment, pretty much. And that is obviously that's the helicopter. It's the same designation when the President's on an army plane. That's Army One. The Marines fly the helicopter. So it's Marine One. Right. And right now we've got those identical Boeing 747 200 B, if you want to get specific. Sure. They have a lot like we said, they're decked out differently. We'll get to that in a second. But just being 747, they have some specs that are pretty impressive. Well, they're big. They're three stories. Like all 747. They are as tall as a six story building and as long as a city block. Depends on what city you're in. I think it does. Or what block you're on. Yeah, exactly. Are you in the village? Are you uptown? Right. They each have four General Electric jet engines. Right. Do you want to read the jet engine number or does anyone out there know this? They are GE engines, CF Six, 80 C, two B, one jet engines, which are many engines. Each one produces \u00a356,700 of thrust, which, as we know from the antimatter spacecraft episode, produces 5 million G, which a human can sustain indefinitely. Yeah, we should point that out real quick in show correction. GS measure acceleration. So in theory, you would speed up really fast and then level out, so you wouldn't be experiencing jeez the whole time, like we thought. Erroneously. Nice. Thank you, physics people, for correcting us. The 747 fly up to 700 mph. They go as high as 45,100ft. That's the ceiling maximum. What happens after that? Do they just break apart? Do they disintegrate? I don't think they disintegrate, I just think that's how high they can fly safely. It may do something to your body, I don't know. And then they hold 53,611 gallons of fuel and a fully fueled 747. At least the Air Force 1747 can fly halfway around the world before refueling. We should go ahead and let the cat out of the bag then. Air Force One, however, can fly forever. Yeah, because you can refuel in flight, just like the big bomber planes. And they thought that would be a pretty swell idea in case the S was hitting the fan on the ground, which it did on September 11, 2001. Just keep them up there. Yeah. One of the planes, United 93, that went down in Pennsylvania right. Wasn't that destined for the White House? I think so. And it was pretty hair. Even if it wasn't sure, they had no idea who was doing what or when it was going to get hit. So they said just keep bushing the air. And they did. And they could have for a very long time, not just with fuel but with food as well. Yeah, they have the ability to feed 100 people and I think they have freezers down below that hold as much as 2000 meals. So they could have stayed there for quite a long time. Yeah, 2000 meals. Especially if they started throwing reporters out of the door first to go. That's a bunch of meals right there. That's true. So Chuck, it does not have an escape pod though. Well, we don't know that it does or not. The awesome movie air Force One with Harry Ford. I have not seen it. Is it good? Yeah, I mean, do you want to see your president kicking terrors butt with his hands? Yeah, of course. He's like a former Army Ranger or something in the movie. We never get presents like that anymore. I enjoyed it. So yes, apparently in the Cape, pod factor is in. We don't know if there's one on Air Force One, but there could be. Possibly not, but they're not going to tell you that. So I heard that Tom Clancy received a visit from, I don't know who it was, maybe the NSA, the CIA, somebody, maybe the FBI came to his house and interviewed him because he had hit the nail on the head so closely when he described some classified nuclear sub in The Hunt for Red October. They wanted to know how he knew that what the interior was like. Interesting. So it makes you wonder what he came up with for Air Force One. Well, and that's one of the points of Air Force One is there's a lot of classified stuff. So while we know a lot of the parts no one really knows the exact layout and configuration. I mean, people know, but they're sworn to secrecy. Or have signed on to secrecy. Exactly. So let's talk about what we do. Now, there's 4000 interior space. That's substantial. That's twice the size of my house. And there are three levels, just like on any 747. Sure. But the top level is for communications generally. The mid level is like the living quarters. And most of the bottom level is cargo space and apparently freezers for food. Yeah. Although I did see that. The President's living quarters, bedroom, bathroom, workout room and office. I heard they were under the cockpit. So maybe the cockpits. I think the cockpits are on the third. I mean, they don't have unlimited space. So the coverage room is also the President's dining room. And depending on the time of day, some people may be in there, other people might not be there. Maybe a meal. There may be some pretzels on the table. It depends. It's right up to 70 passengers and 26 crew in total, comfortably. I'm sure they could pack more people in there. Which means they have four leftover meals at every meal. You're right. Well, those add up. Yeah, they do. I'm saying you throw a reporter out, bam. That's three meals a day. Well, what if he's reported at each heavy? Well, yeah. What if he's eating those other four meals? You're right. You know Hunter Thompson? Flew on Air Force One. Really? For fear and loathing on the campaign trail because he was a legit journalist. He was? Well, for Rolling Stone. Yeah, but he got to interview Nixon one on one. But they told him all he could ask him about was football. Did he ask him about football? I'm sure he's probably like that's. Fine with me. Yes. Run diaries out. Yeah. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm going to go see it. I forgot. It's an enjoyable mess. But so was Hunter Thompson. 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. Getting back to Air Force One, the decks you can access up and down with these retractable stairs. And the impression I got is that they're retractable probably so they can seal off the levels. Right. I mean, they don't say that in the article, but wouldn't that be the reason? Yes. I don't know why you didn't just come out and say it, but it's their interior stairs. So if the President needed to go hang out in the cockpit and get away from terrorists sure. He was losing the fist fight, right? I'm sure he could press a button and the stairs just go up and you're stuck on the second level. And there are three exterior entrances as well. But the one we usually see is the photo op, obviously, when they wheel out the rolling staircase to the tarmac. And I think that's the front of the plane. The front middle. In the middle. You know Obama apparently, like in San Francisco, there's a child crying on the tarmac and he went right over to it and grabbed it and calmed it down. It's nice today. Really? And the mother came up and started slapping. I was like, who are you kidding, my child? I'm a Tea Partier. There's a staff area. Josh there are two galleys, which in this case are like seriously fully functioning kitchens, not the coffee pot and the little rolling thing of frozen meals. Like we said, conference and dining room. And the crew can actually ride and sleep there as well. And most of the general space for the reporters and staff is really the nicest first class plane you've ever been on. I know. And that's just where they keep their reporters. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you imagine that the President suite is pretty nice. Have you been on Elvis 747 at Graceland? Yeah. At Lisa Murray? Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Yummy. Set off the alarm, she sat down on the bed. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. The alarm just went beyond she like rolling around like, oh, this is so lovely. No, she was pretending like she was going to sit down and then pass her center of balance and went, oh, God. Didn't fell actually sat down on the bed. That puts her in rare company. She got kicked off. She was already standing up by the time they came. We're like, we don't know what happened. It started going off by itself. That's pretty funny. Yeah. What else? Josh extensive electronics, big time. 85 telephones on board, two way radios, fax, computer, WiFi 19 TVs. Phone system is just like, secure as it is in the White House, apparently, which has to be I like the medical facility, which is very, very creepy. Weird. Let's hear it. So there's an on board medical facility. It has a fold down operating table in case of emergency it has Er equipment, fully stocked pharmacy for long flights, and there's a staff doctor that travels everywhere. Logically with the President, I imagine he's a surgeon. He's probably or she is probably well versed in all fields, wouldn't you think? Like I would want a field medic, a field surgeon on the plane. I'm sure it's not just like a good time doctor or anything like that. I'm sure he probably has all sorts of ghoulish training. Like he can pull a bullet out of your chest, right? Or do open heart surgery on the fly if he needs to. Yeah. Or if the baby you pick up and trying to calm has some sort of poison toxin on its skin. Exactly. Knows how to treat that. That was an anthrax baby, right? Some pretty cool things as far as defense goes. Although we don't know much about it because it's classified stuff. We've reached the point where Tom Harris just started making stuff up. He did? It is a military aircraft and is capable to withstand an attack. That's what they tell you. They won't tell you how. No, but it has a thick shielding. I wonder if it's lead. But it has shielding to protect the wiring inside and the communications equipment from an electromagnetic pulse that a nuclear bomb gives off. All right. It can send out flares, which are pretty cool. Well, that throws off the heat seeking missile. Exactly. It sounds silly until you start thinking about the heat seeker coming at you. And it definitely has an electronic countermeasure which will jam the radar. My feeling is that this bad boy has a 50 cal and some rockets that can pop out of different places. I'm just guessing. I have no idea if anyone from Homeland Security is listening. If I was the President, I would want some munitions aboard. I would, too. And I bet there are. But that's just a guess, right? And it can switch like an oil slick after it so that any planes on it, like trails spin out. It is a military operation. Every time this thing goes up in the air, by classification, they send out a crew at Andrews in Maryland. They check out the runway, like every inch of that thing. Before every flight, they send out a plane ahead of time that carries all a cargo plane that carries all the motorcade. The motorcade cars, SUVs. It's pretty cool. And if you are a plain junkie, that is a C 141 Starlifter cargo plane that carries the motorcade. I bet it carries a lot of cars. And if you are trying to fly into Andrews Air Force Base at the time when they're starting to prepare for Air Force One to take off or for Marine One to even show up, they're going to shoot you down. They're authorized to shoot on site. That's right. They're not going to mess around with that. What else, Josh? Oh, the football is always on board yeah. That is the briefcase that famously holds the nuclear codes. And an Air Force officer guards this football during the flight so the president, he can eat without it being handcuffed to his arm and then passes it on to an army officer once they reach the ground. Passes off the football. That's right. And then lastly, that crew. So first of all, the crew on board, it has two crews that have the flight crew and the steward crew. And they quite an honor. Well, yeah, they also screen these people. It's not just like you've been really good, so here's your assignment. Exactly. They also have to go through your background and your family's background, like you undergo some pretty serious background checks because you're on board the flight with the president and he's pretty vulnerable, including by not just anthrax baby, but poison food attack. And where do they get this food? They get it from a local market that's picked at random, that has no idea that these people are coming or who they are because they just wear like Dockers and maybe like a Members Only jacket. Right. That's what they wear to go shopping for the food. And they mix it up like you said, so they never know where the food is coming from. And like I said, it's an honor. It's a rare privilege. I love how in the article it says every president since Truman has formed close relationships and connections with the flight crew. I wonder before that where they just ignored. Right. But apparently Harry Truman ushered in chumming up with these people because confused from Missouri. He's from Missouri. And when you get the president on board Air Force One, that is when you're going to find a more relaxed, more human president, especially if you have a good flight doctor. That's right. The end. You get any more? No. At Air Force One, remember? We work for a website called Howstuffworkscom. And every single article, with the exception of what, maybe one or two, every single episode that we record has been based on an article on the site. And if you want to read more about Air Force One, especially if you like your houseworks articles to be filled with conjecture, you're going to love this one. Just type in Air Force One and the Handy search bar@howstuffworks.com that's going to bring up the article. And I said handy and search bar, which means it's going to be a particularly good listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is going to be I'm going to call this berenice follow up. We did our now annual reading. You got to do it twice for it to be annual. Yeah. First it's just inaugural. People say first annual though, that's good. It's just not right. So are now second annual Halloween reading where we read royalty free works of literature that are creepy people. Like this one? Yeah, I think so. I thought we'd get some like well, I didn't like that one. Not one person has said it. Not so far, at least. So this year we read Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe and we had a couple of follow ups. You remember at the end, we sort of tried to figure out what happened. Yes. Sean writes in I'm sure you've gotten a few of these. As I read the story, berenice had a kind of epilepsy that left her comatose and in a death like state from this quote, trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution. Makes sense, of course, when you're reading this, sometimes it escapes you because you're trying to read it. Well, right. So everyone did think she was dead and she was buried. He didn't hallucinate anything in his mania. He dug her up, ripped out her teeth and then that act woke her from her trance. Hence the screaming. That wounded but alive baroness and the blood all over our narrator pro. She didn't wake up buried alive to die a slow, suffocating death con. Definitely no more steak dinners in her future. That's from Sean. And then the second one. I have to say, the protagonist loved her enough as a friend. You'd have cut her steak or chewed it up and spit it in her mouth. This is from Julie. And Julie, remember, I didn't have the French translation and we had quite a few people send it in. But hers was the best version, I thought. Just finished listening to Bernice. Thanks for keeping up the creepy short story tradition. I have to admit, I was more than a little excited to hear that you didn't know the meaning of the French phrases because I can finally use my random French degree. Here's a translation of Madame Maizelle Saul. It had been well said that all her steps were feelings. And to berenice I more seriously believed that all her teeth were ideas. The ideas. So here's what Julie thinks it means. Mademoiselle Saul was a famous French ballet dancer in the 1730s. Someone, perhaps her great admirer, Voltaire you've heard of him probably described her graceful ballet as creating feelings with every step. Egaeus was so overwhelmed with all the imaginative thoughts that's the protagonist yeah, which were provoked by her teeth. That he felt like each tooth was the source of a new idea. I think she's right on the money. Personally, I think Eddie was showing off and probably pretty tripped out. But that's part of his charm. And that is from Julie. That's nice. Those are two, like, top not seller fan mails. They weren't even fan mails. Those were listener males. That's right. Yeah. There are no fans. They're just smart. If you're a smart person who wants to tell us something you think we'd like to know, we like to know just about anything. So that's cool. Send it in. Any thoughts you have, any rambling? Although we did get one recently. Did you notice that? I can't remember what it was about, but it was a rambling. Yes. I don't remember what it was, but it was probably from a smart person, because it was the stuff you should know. Listening. That's right. You can tweet to us at syskast. You can go under facebook. Comstuffyshootnow. And you can also send us a good old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.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? 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. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
ede2969a-6ff2-4512-8a9c-ae76014d9ee0 | Selects: What happens to abandoned mines? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-what-happens-to-abandoned-mines | Did you know there are as many as 500,000 abandoned mines in the US, but the federal government knows where only 30,000 of them are? Learn about how these places go from money pit to death trap when mine companies simply walk away, in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Did you know there are as many as 500,000 abandoned mines in the US, but the federal government knows where only 30,000 of them are? Learn about how these places go from money pit to death trap when mine companies simply walk away, in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 16 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=106, tm_isdst=0) | 26816354 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. Chuck here in podcast time. It's August 23, 2012 because we are in the Wayback Machine, taking you back for our Saturday Selects episode all about abandoned minds. And to tell you the truth, you guys, I picked this one because I didn't remember doing it, which means I have to listen to it again to make sure it's good. And I'm going to learn it all over again along with you. So check out this episode from August 2012. What happens to abandoned minds? 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 this makes it so much I just had some of my notes mixed up. Like Criminal Records was stuffed in the middle of this one. Wouldn't that be funny if I was talking about abandoned minds and then just like, a robot was like and if you have a DUI, you can call your local police shop and get that expunged. Yeah, I think that's bad advice. Well, now, I'm just saying do not ever call the police unless it's an emergency. You're right. Chuck? Yes. How are you doing? Good. Three today. Yeah. Day before holiday even. In fact, the office is closed right now and we're still working. I know. It's like crickets outside. Yeah. And someone threw a spear at me when I stuck my head out to go to the bathroom. Good. That was his assignment. Yeah. So, Chuck yes. If I may take it down notch or two. Okay. Have you ever heard of a guy named Taylor Crane? No. Taylor is a kid who was 16 years old when he died. Okay. He was on a tour of Mexico with his parents. New Mexico or Mexico? Mexico. Old Mexico. And he was on a tour. I didn't realize he's existed, but of abandoned haciendas and mines. So it's basically like an urban exploration tour of old Mexico. Got you. And they were at an old mine site. The tour group was and Taylor was apparently playing tag and jumped up on a low wall. And apparently on the other side of that was a thousand foot mine shaft, which fell into a thousand feet, 10ft across, wide open, 1000ft down. They had a lot of trouble getting to them to recover him because there's so much lead and arsenic at the bottom that it was really difficult to breathe, to get down there, to get them. Wow. So you think, like, wow. It's really crazy that Mexico has these open minds. Mind blowing as it is. Mexico is not the only place. As a matter of fact, here in the States, we have something on the scale of 500,000 abandoned minds. Abandoned mines. Probably two of the most dangerous words you can put together. And they're all over the place. The US. Is lousy with them. Yeah. About 30 people die in the United States every year from accidents involving abandoned mines. And I did a little looking. Yeah, I did, too. Apparently, they include quarries. Yeah. And most of these are drownings because the core either has water or an abandoned mine shaft. They'll pump out water to work in it, and then when they're done, it fills back up with water. So some say crazy scuba divers will try and scuba dive these things. My dad was actually certified in an old marble quarry in Toledo. Really? And to be certified, you had to go down to a school bus at the bottom of this corey wow. You had to dive down, go into the school bus, and grab something from it. It was, like, right inside and then bring it back up. And they'd be like, okay. You're certified. Your dad did that? Yeah. That's pretty awesome. I'm trying to picture that. I can't imagine anything more creepy than having to go into a school bus at the bottom of a filled quarry. No, I'm just trying to picture your dad, like, all scuba diving and buzz cut and more like a big watch and everything. Yeah. I guess anytime you're older and you meet someone's father when they're a little older, it's hard to imagine them as young because I didn't know him back then. Yeah. But I picture him on the couch. Oh, no. He carried a spear gun everywhere he went with them. Did he really? That's awesome. All right. So, sadly, like I said, about 30 people die each year. Many of them are drownings. I think number two on the list is ATV accidents, which doesn't surprise me because too long in the ATV on some random thinking you're in the middle of nowhere place and all of a sudden the bottom falls out, literally. Yeah. Those were the top two far and away that I came across, too. But since 2001, apparently 227 people have died in the United States because of accidents involving abandoned mines. I saw one in 2008. These two guys were trying to get a former gold mine going again because they thought there was still gold down there and they were pumping out water with some sort of machine with a generator. And they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Yes. That's another I think it's way down on the list. It's like a distant third. Yeah. But I think it's being overcome, unable to breathe as fixation. That's the word I'm looking for. By bringing in your own thing or just by the toxic chemicals down there. Toxic chemicals or carbon monoxide or oxygen depletion in general from people either trying to get old ones started up or more likely, adventuring abandoned mind. Let's go ahead and give a tip to people because we like to encourage the urban explorers, which we've done a podcast on that. But, man, you don't need to be hanging around abandoned mines. No. They're very dangerous. Yes. I mean, that's just so mind bogglingly dangerous. Yeah. Just resist the urge. I have that urge, too, because I love the urban exploration. If I saw a hole in the ground, I would want to go check it out. Right. But it's not a good place to be, not a good thing to do. So what's crazy is we said up to 500,000 abandoned minds, and these are just the mines, not mine features. So say every mine has several mine features, say an added, which is a vertical shaft. I'm sorry, a horizontal shaft. You've got a vertical shaft like the one that poor Taylor Crane fell into. You have all these different mind features on up to 500,000 mines. And the crazy thing is, as of February 2011, the Bureau of Land Management, which is tasked with finding these abandoned mines, has only found about 31,000 of them. That means that there's possibly 469,000 abandoned mines in the United States that no one has on any map. True, but on the good side, they're trying to find them now. In 2008, they only had 18,000 of them. So in that span of three years, they found another 13,000. I had 12,000 in 2008. Really? Yeah. Well, even better than yeah, and I think 25% of those have been remediated, have pending reclamation or they say aren't a danger. They say that's just the physical dangers. Yeah, there's two kinds. There's physical dangers and environmental dangers. And I guess it's of the ones they found, they said 20% to 30% have physical hazards, and five to 10% have environmental hazards. Yeah. Okay. Which it's not a ton, but 20% is pretty dangerous. Well, a physical hazard is insidious for just the local people who are walking around it. Sure. Like falling in. Yeah. Or maybe caving in. And by the way, I found out that any mine feature that is like a hole in the ground or even, like, if there's a depression in the ground because of mine collapse, some they're called glory holes. Did you know that? That was almost a spit take, wasn't it? Yeah, that's not true. I swear to God it is. Wow. I saw a sign today of an abandoned mine called the Glory Hole Mine. Well, that's quite a name. Yeah. Good for them. Mine tailings you talk about. And this is some of the environmental hazards. And these can actually be physical hazards, too, if you're living nearby. These are the remnants of what was going on there, of the mineral. And often it can be very toxic, and then that can either be harmful to you, or it can run off into the water and be harmful to people downriver. That was my point, is things like addicts and other mine features, they're dangerous if you're walking around the mine. Environmental hazards of a mine can be very far reaching, because in very much the same way that acid rain is produced from, like, smokestacks, these mines can produce acid rain, and they can also produce acid groundwater when sulfide, minerals, and oxygen combined with water produces acidic groundwater that can pollute an entire water system downstream. And then also chuck there's. Mercury tailings are a big problem, especially with gold mine. Oh, I'm sure. So if you take mercury and take gold and put them together, mercury absorbs the gold and you get a rainbow. Right? Exactly. A deadly rainbow. And it makes what's called an amalgam. And then later on you can take little gold flex or whatever, and now they're like highly portable, stable little things of mercury. And then you take them somewhere else and you can burn the mercury off, and the mercury will vaporize, and just the gold is left. Well, the problem is that mercury then immediately contaminates wherever you just burned it off. And there's the atmosphere and everything. But those kind of tailings are especially problematic in old gold mines, too. Does that end up in gold slogger bottles? Probably. Is that where they get it? I don't know. I hope they're not putting mercury, formerly mercury, gold amalgam, in the goldslog. No, the people at Goldslog wouldn't do that. So, Josh, if this is such a problem, why wouldn't these companies clean up their mind sites? Seems like a no brainer to me. You there, you do the work, you close it down, you clean it up, make sure it's safe for everybody. That's how you do it now. Yes. Supposedly it was not the case until 1977, for about 200 years. Crazy people mind even more than that. People mind in the United States, Willynilly, however they want it. And they would say, well, this mine is used up. I don't need it any longer. I'm walking away. Well, the quick answer to my question, which I will know that I had answered, no, it's money. That's the real reason, because it's really expensive to clean up your mind site if you're a mining operation and you can create, what, 1977, you can just fold up shop and leave. Why would you spend money to clean it up if you were a company without an ethical compass and a moral compass? Because it's going to hit your bottom line. So screw it. Let's just leave it. I can't help but feel like you set me up by asking me that question and expecting the short answer, because I've never given a short answer. Well, that is the short answer. 2006 congressional testimony said it would cost $72 billion to clean up only the hard rock mines, like at the Hard Rock cafes. $72 billion. Well, the bureau of Land Management, which we said is responsible for finding these mines and for reclaiming them. Basically, they divide mines that they have to deal with into three categories. There's hard rock, which is like gold, silver, minerals, iron, maybe. I don't think they deal with iron. And then there's coal mines and then uranium mines. Got you. Well, I saw on the east coast they had a map of where a lot of these abandoned mines are, and there's a lot of them on the East Coast. And there were, I think, a lot of the coal mines. Oh, yeah. Like, there's centralia Pennsylvania, which we talked about before. It's an abandoned town with a coal seam burning underneath. Oh, yeah, that's right. Creepy. So they abandoned the mines. Over time, land records and lease records were lost, basically. It's like a reverse foreclosure. Yeah, pretty much. And so in the end, no one's on the hook. No one knows many times who these mines originally, like, who was responsible for this to begin with. And even if they do know, the mine owners can be like, do you have documentation that's on that mine? Yeah. And the government goes, no. And the mine owner says, see you the other little loophole. You wrote this, right, that you pointed out, which was if you have gone through bankruptcy, then you can't be held liable. That is no longer true. Oh, is that not true? Yeah, I was happy to find that. Good. You now have to post a bond. Basically as a mining company. From what I understand. From research I did very recently. That you have to post a bond. Kind of like a fidelity bond. That is money you pay in upfront that you get back if your mining operation successfully reclaims the land. If you don't reclaim it. If reclamation isn't like the end of your mind or you go bankrupt. That money is still there to pay for reclamation. So you're going to correct the article? I think I should. People need to know that. Here's a little thing, too, called the Clean Water Act, which obviously you're going to be violating that if you're letting your toxins from your mind leak out into the groundwater. Big penalties. But as you pointed out that in 2006, there was legislation to exempt people from prosecution who were actually trying to clean up their minds. I want to go clean up my mind. And we're going to exempt you as long as you weren't the people who started the mind to begin with. I guess. Exempt from the Clean Water Act. Yes. From polluting, because accidentally polluting with tailings. In a lot of cases, just removing them, some is going to slip into the watershed. And if it's from, say, a uranium mine, well, it's radioactive and your water is radioactive and you have to pay a huge fine. Or is it better to leave it, I wonder? It's better to not get any into the watershed. Well, but can you clean it up without doing that? Yes. I feel like what the government has been doing, the Bureau of Land Management does, and they have a division called the Abandoned Mine Lands. Yeah. They basically just build a structure around it, kind of like what they did with Chernobyl, but on a much smaller scale, where it's basically like, this is going to stay here for a little while. Right. We'll just put this around it until it's not radioactive any longer. Okay. That's the impression I have, what they're doing, at least with radioactive stuff. Well, that legislation did not pass, though. No, it didn't. Which seems like it would discourage people from trying to clean these things up, right? Yeah. But I also read testimony from this group called Earthworks, and they were lobbying against that loophole, saying it was overly broad. Really? That basically like if you just picked up a little bit of litter, whatever, you were automatically exempt from the Clean Water Act. Got you. So it could be used to nefarious ends by amoral people. Well, you mentioned the abandoned mine lands program. Under the Bureau of Land Management, they get funding roughly in the neighborhood of twelve to $15 million a year. And we said earlier it takes 70 billion to clean up, I think, just a hard rock site. So they're doing the best they can. Over an eight year period, they cleaned up more than 3000 mines, which is awesome. But when you've got potentially 500,000 out there, it's a little scary to think about. So to remediate a mine, you have to address the physical stuff and the environmental stuff. You have to take care of the tailings piles. You have to prevent any more acid groundwater from being produced. You have to disassemble and carry off any old machinery, any old buildings maybe. And you have to cover up entrances. But covering up a mine shaft, a glory hole, as it's called in the industry, is not quite as cut and dry as you think. You just put a huge heavy metal slab over it. Sure. Problem is, when you build a mine, in a lot of cases you've disturbed bat population when you abandon the mine. You basically are leaving this bat population with an awesome little place to live. Yeah, a playground, if you will. Exactly. Now, bats are really essential to our comfort and happiness. And the average bat can kill something like 600 mosquitoes an hour when it really wants to, if it's feeling frisky. So we want to keep bats around. They're already being decimated by white nose fungus, right? Yeah. So people who are reclaiming abandoned minds have figured out that there are ways that you can keep humans out, but let bats in and out. And so they put on like bat couples, vertical shafts, which is basically just like a little roof that has slats to let the bats fly in and out. Yeah, that makes sense. And a back gate is virtually the same thing, except it goes into like an added bat gate. Yeah. Bat couple of I think it's a great idea because then you're not going to find a kid down in there. No, you're not disturbing the population of the bat unless the kid is the size of a bat. And even still, why is he not like bat boy? That's his problem. Well, bat boy is fine, yeah. So the EPA started something called the Super Fund, which basically means mining companies now pay into this huge bank account to cover costs of future cleanups. But that's not enough to meet the need. So taxpayers end up paying for the discrepancies that don't mind my tax money going toward that. So apparently nowadays, since 1977, part of the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund is that if you were a mining company, you're paying a tax basically for every ton of surface coal that you mine and every ton of underground coal. You're paying $31.5 for surface coal and 13.5 a ton for underground mine stuff. And all of that goes into the Super Fund to reclaim it. That's not bad. Well, this October, I think it's going to go down to $12 and $28. Really? Times are tough all over for everybody. Yeah, they are. In 1986, Josh, as you point out, the Department of Interior created an award for mining excellence. It's like Yard of the month for abandoned Mine and reclamating. I think it's called the mining award. And all joking aside, it's very cool that they do this, because a lot of people are more responsible these days with their mining operations. They're not all bad. Mining is a vital thing. We're not trying to poopoo that. I know we did, like with the mountaintop removal coal mining, we came down pretty hard. But a lot of miners these days are pretty responsible, and they are reclaiming this land and going back in and planning vegetation and trying to preserve old buildings and make those into live work space condos exactly what they're doing. Yeah. So that's great. Keep it up is what I say. I agree. And be careful out there. ATV people in rock. Cory swimmers. Yeah. If you see a mine, stay away. I believe that's the name of the program. Oh, really? Yeah. Stay Away. Yeah. It's like those cartoony posters with exclamation points and stuff like that. PSAs. That's what they're called. I think if you do see a mind, go on the Internet and look up reporting abandoned minds, and you will find a way to do it, and that will be helpful. You'll save some money, save some taxpayer money if you report of mine yourself. Agreed. If you want to know more about abandoned minds and reclamation and all that stuff, you can type it into the search bar@howstoughforks.com. And I said search bars means it's time for that's. Right, josh this closes out the trilogy. I'll go and start out with Donna Fessler. My husband always wants to call my beef vegetable soup a stew, but it is broth based. I don't argue. And basically she's asking about this. My recommendation, Donna, is to go check out the podcast. Judge John Hodgman. I was going to say the same because he has a full podcast on, I believe, chili Chowders, Stews and Soups and the Differences. Right. The first one wasn't it? It was pretty early on. Judge John will break it all down for you. That's plugged, Chuck. Thank you. Ryan Taylor question what time is it? A, Hammer time, b, time to make the donuts or C, b, time to make the donuts. We got one from Jeremy Glover. Did either of you grow up watching Andy Griffith show? I think he means the Andy Griffith show. Yeah, I certainly did. I did, too. In reruns. Yeah, same here. Is there anybody who is alive today they didn't grow up watching it? Yeah, well, he's asking that because Andy Griffith died today. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know he's still alive. He was till today. Wow. He had quite a run. Yeah, he was 86 years old. Good full life as sheriff. Andy Taylor and Matlock and was that it? Those are his two big characters. Dennis have a third. Those were the two big ones. Was there any like, the landlord on Three th Company for a little while? No, I don't think so. Tanya Chavez, it is my anniversary. Can you do a quick shout out to my very patient husband, Abe Franklin? It'd be a fun surprise. All right. Tania. I think it's Tania. Happy anniversary to you and Abe. Happy anniversary, Tanya. Tania and Abe. Oh, here's a good one. Brandon Nichols. Who would you most like to punch in the face? That's sort of like the Fight Club question. Who would you fight? Who would I most like to punch in the face? Boy, that'd be a good one. I think myself many times. Yeah, that's very much like Fight Club. Actually, I got someone else, but I can't say I think you know who it is. Oh, yeah. I like to punch him in the face. Yeah. You got anyone? I'm not saying anything. That was kind of a cop out. Yeah. Vitali says, would you rather fight 100 ducksized horses or one horse sized duck? I love these questions. One horse size duck. I would go for the one horses duck because you get like a sharpened stick in its neck. It's over and done with. It's kind of like that garage full of guided missiles up in space. You take one out, you take ten out. If you got like 100 duck sized horses coming at you, they're going to get the best of you. Yeah. Plus that's just creepy, man. Can you imagine 100, 1ft tall horses coming after you? I find the horse size duck creepier. I don't mind that. That's some good eating, too. Maya mia, mia mia. Ball canal says Maya. Maya says how is Atlanta really quality of life? Would you recommend it? I would. I love Atlanta. I'm from here and I moved back here for a reason. Josh. Do you like Atlanta? Sure, atlanta is great. Atlanta's great. Robert Casey is Jerry as smoking hot as we think she is? And more, my friend. That's all I'm going to say about that. Have you ever gotten a threatening listener mail from Nathaniel Yeagerger. No, nothing threatening. I have. Really? Yeah. Like physically threatened. No menacing. How about that? I've gotten a couple of little crazy ones, but never menacing. Care to share? No. Okay. I don't want to send anybody off. How about one more? Okay. Let's see. Why is Cilantro so divisive from Heidi Wells? Good question. Heidi Wells. That is a good one. Cilantro the herb also known as coriander or Chinese celery, I believe, in some quarters. Or Cilantro. Yeah, that's pretty good. Thank you. Is divisive because it strikes different people's tongues differently. It's really big time, right? Some people. Cilantro is a glorious herb, including me. And me. I love Cilantro. To other people, it tastes very much like soap. Yeah, my friend says that. And there is actually, if you're interested, a video on WebMD that addresses this question. And if you watch very closely, the filmmaker, who is a friend of mine, who I know through Yumi, put in a moment where he takes a thing with Paul Molive and puts it over a taco. And it happens just for a second, but it's pretty brilliant. Once you it was just funny looking. Yes. It's like, did you just put soap on a taco? Yeah. There you go. Well, here's what I have to say. I feel sorry for people who have that taste reaction. Oh, I do too. Because Cilantro, to me, is one of the great things on food. And some drinks. Yes. I put a little Cilantro margaritas from time to time. So good. It's really nice. And a couple of slices of jalapeno. Yeah. All right. I'm hungry and thirsty. I am too, man. Let's give you some guacamole. If you have questions for Chuck and I, you can tweet to us at syscapodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. Stuffycheanow is a production of iheartrad Radio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
What's the deal with Voodoo? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/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. | Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:40:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=19, tm_min=40, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=187, tm_isdst=0) | 31384786 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How do you like your chair? I hate this chair. Dude. Do you realize that in, like, 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. Are you ready? Okay. 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 1791, a group of slave leaders and maroon leaders and maroons were runaway slaves. Right. We'd 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 Boise men. 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 steak 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 it all. And by 18 of four, Haiti was a free republic. Awesome. Yeah. 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 Hollywoodized fictionalized and fear based, based on this kind of collective, white, distant memory of, well, this is what voodoo is. It's babies and pale on stakes is what happens when you let people practice voodoo. Right, yeah. Chuck, actually, that slave revolt, a successful slave rebellion is what Pat Robertson was talking about essentially 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. Voodoo is 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. Right now. Okay. 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. But Voodoo is an actual religion. There is one God. It's very 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. No, it's a normal tradition. And it's a very subjective religion, too. Right. It's very personal, and it covers your day to day life, and it also has a different impact on every person. Right? Yes, it does. So, like I said, there's one supreme God, and depending on where you are, it'd be a different name. If you're talking Haitian Voodoo, we're basically going to cover, like, African and Haitian in parts, I would say, won'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 god. 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 were 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, 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. And so 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, they're not gods. They're 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 a 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, 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 bo in African tradition. Right? Yeah. African voodoo. Yeah. That's the dark side of African voodoo. It's called Bo. Right. And voodoo practitioners, the voodoo priest is called a hogan, right? Yeah. An African Voodoo priest. Right? Yeah. And an African and Haitian Voodoo priestess is called a mamba, right? Yes, mamba. So the mamba and the hogun 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 hanky. 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 Bo. 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. 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 caye, 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 practitioner of Judaism or if you're just like born Jewish, but yeah, it's about double. Wow. It ranks it's also an official religion in Benin. Yeah. 60% of the people of that country follow Voodoo. 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, the supreme God. Right. They're the medium. Right. One of the other founding tenants 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. 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. 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. 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, right. You can take any object and consecrate it, and it becomes a ritual sacred object, right? Yeah. 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 bo, but it's definitely not like you see in the movies, right, or The Brady Bunch during yeah. 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? Yeah. 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 with the low end. So people can be possessed. Right? Right. And actually, Papa Leagueba is also one of the black men at the crossroad who bears a striking resemblance to our friend Mashamon. Really? Yeah. Interesting. 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 sounds sort of 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 all slaves, forced conversion. So what they did was, in order to keep practicing voodoo, they incorporated and this is where 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. So even today, there are a lot of the loa. Well, there's 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. No, 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 tenets, 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 it 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. Now, 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 the 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 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 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. Oh, 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, it's throat, it's slick. 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. Yum. And then people will either take a sip or they'll make a cross on the 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 like westerner nurse 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. There's I know there's a dance called the Dance of the Hooded Egun Gun. And apparently what happens is when someone is like the spirit overtakes them and they're 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 if while you're possessed you are impervious to pain, you can't be injured. 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, 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 those 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 not 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 now. It'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 bloodletting people. Right. 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 hudu became popular. Right. In the 19th century, there were two women named Marie Laveau, and one was 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. The mom 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 hudu, and voodoo became very powerful. And Hudoo is a mix of Bo with black magic, with voodoo. Right. Or in the voodoo tradition, I guess. Right. So now we have voodoo. 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. 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 zombieists transmit HTLV three lav during voodooistic rituals. So basically, do necrophiliac who are into zombie ism 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. Voodoo. 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, 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 were 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. 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? Yeah, sure. 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 bo. Right? Yeah, exactly. 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, like, spiritual possession and a couple of the other things, like, you know, it's not so different than other religions when you look at it. And I think Buddhists, 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 position happening in the Buddhist tradition. Right. Oh, really? Yeah, that's where I heard it. Yeah. All right. 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. 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 a thing on NPR today where one guy went down and spent some time with the voodoo practitioners, and I think Haiti Davis. No, maybe his Iroglass people are crazy. It's more Woody Allen than Iron 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 Baptists and Pentecostal believe that the spirit can overtake you 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 hangups. Lots of hang ups. Yeah. 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 surfing the rainbow. Great movie. But again, that was Wade Davis, the anthropologist, and he's done a lot. Oh, that's who that was. Yeah. Well, it 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. Yes, good point. And then, of course, live and let die. We like to talk about Bond. Love that one. There's some voodoo in that. Best Bond ever. Roger Moore. 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 all right, well, if you want to learn more about James Bond and voodoo, you can type James Bond and Voodoo into the handysearchbar athousoforks.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 stopped 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, Momdu. Habib. Who is very prominent in the Australian media for being an Australian citizen. Held at gitmo or gitmo. Gitmo. Gitmo. All right. Because guantanamo. 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, like, 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 imprisoned 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 Oz. However, judging from the times I have met him, the experience will never leave him. In regards to the I forgot all about it, but you want to come over for a bobby for a slab of be for a stubby? In regards to the perception that Obama is better in terms of this stuff, it is unfortunately not the case. What say that Gitmo has been replaced by Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan prison even further from the public eyes. Keep up the great work, guys. I hope this finds you in good health. There is no way to end that softly. It's going to stop here. And keep up 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. 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. 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 in the voodoo at 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready or used. You." | ||
How the Hells Angels Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-hells-angels-work | In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the notorious Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, more commonly referred to as the Hells Angels. | In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the notorious Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, more commonly referred to as the Hells Angels. | Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:16:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=18, tm_min=16, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=344, tm_isdst=0) | 33310739 | 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. Hey, and welcome to the podcast room, vroom, etc. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That may have been the most realistic HarleyDavidson impression made by human mouth. Never. Thanks. Broom. Broom, et cetera. Yeah, I was practicing that. It's good. So, Chuck, how are you doing? I'm good, dude. About to start the old Thanksgiving breaks vacation. I know. This is the last thing we have to do and then a week off. Yeah, but this will probably come out after Thanksgiving and people will be like, what? Yeah. Weird. Weird, indeed. Hey, can I take you back in time? We don't have to go to the Way back machine. I'm just going to paint a picture for you. Okay. All right. Yeah. So a balmy Saturday night, April 27, 2002. Okay. Do you know where you were? I was living in Los Angeles. Okay. So it probably wasn't balmy for me. Okay. It's probably clear and cool. All right, well, not too far away from where you were, in a town called Laughlin, Nevada. Oh, yes. There is a Harris Casino. And on that night, a couple of guys who are there for the Laughlin River Run. It's a motorcycle run. Sure. Ride, right? Guy named Jeff King and Walter Boost. Two buddies, just normal guys, right. We're walking into the casino, the Harris at Laughlin, right? And this burly guy pushed past him and said that they better get the blank out of the way because trouble is about to happen. Sure enough, within two minutes, king and Boost here, two shots fired and then another shot, and then all holy hell breaks loose in the middle of this Harris Casino. Yeah, they remained after given the warning, I take it. Yeah, they did. I would have been so gone. They actually did remain because one of them testified later on that a guy pushed past him going the other way out of the casino, holding a long knife with blood all over it. So this casino erupts into a melee, and what had happened was the Mongols Motorcycle Club you might call them a biker gang. That's what some people might say. Ran into the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Yes. And again, all hell broke loose and melee started two Hell's Angels died and one Mongol died, just like the old days. Have you seen the security video of it? No, it's not Steve. Oh. You know what I did back when it happened? I think they go absolutely crazy. But that's kind of what happens when the Hell's Angels encounter another rival group they're not too fond of. Yeah, especially the Mongols. From what I've read, apparently there are ten of me. Sure. So we're not going to talk about the Mongols today and maybe another podcast in the works with respect to the Mongols, we don't know within them. Seriously? We're total squares. We have no affiliation whatsoever. No, but we do have an article on the site here@howstuffworks.com called how the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Works. Chuck and I kind of cooled it up by calling this podcast how the Hell's Angels Work. Right. Yeah. And that's what generally most people think of them as the Hells Angels, but that is in fact their full name, and that's what's adorned on their jackets and such. Nicely done. And by the way, I think 42 Hells Angels stood trial for that melee. Really? And all but six head charges dropped in a plea bargain. The government was trying to go after these guys and go after them and go after them, which we'll find out later is a real pattern. Right. And couldn't get anything to stick. And I think the most any of the six guys who actually did plea got like, 30 months, something like that. Bad casino behavior. Pretty much hard. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They didn't kiss the dice before you roll them. Right. So, Chuck, let's talk about the Hells Angels, man. All right, let's do it. Vroom, vroom, et cetera. The Hells Angels. Josh little history. They were started in the Fontana San Bernardino area of California, which, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but the Hell's Angels referred to that chapter as Birdu Burdeu. And Burdeu is still around. Yeah, they still remain. Although they said, I think I read that most of those original Birdu members did migrate north to Oakland, which is why a lot of people think that it started in Oakland, which is not true. False. Yes. So Burdeu was the first chapter. Burdeu who started it? The best we can tell, a guy named Auto Friedley. Yeah, that's how I pronounce it. In the late 19 40. 19 48. Yeah. And actually he was with another biker gang called the Pissed Off Bastards, and they gotten into a war with another name so much more. It is pretty honest. They got in a war with another biker gang, and I guess once the war was over, Freedley said, I'm out. I'm going to go start my own thing. Right. Maybe that could be disappointing. The pissed off bastards. But right after World War II, right? These guys must have been disenchanted servicemen who couldn't fit back into society. miscreate pilots, right? Yeah. Wasn't there, like, a bomber squadron called the hells angels? Yeah, josh, that is one of the most common misconceptions is that the held angels were, in fact, ex servicemen, outlaw pilots from world war II, miscreant drinkers who didn't say answer to anybody, even in the army. Right. Not true. No, because we read it on the hills angels website. Yeah. If you go onto the hills angels website, one guy from the charleston, south carolina chapter and another guy from one of the english chapters got together and did some serious, extensive research, trying to find out if there was a connection between this bomber group. And at no point do they say, we're not miscreant drunks, but these guys weren't. It's kind of a disservice to these actually really highly decorated and very successful bomber squadron servicemen, and they couldn't have operated. They were miscreant and been successful if they were drunk and miscreant. No, and they were highly successful. The closest they found, from what I can understand is that a guy named average arvid olsen was actually in a third pursuit group called the hells angels, and he was friends with some of the founding members of the birdu chapter. Right. But he was never a hells angel himself, and that's the closest they could find for a link between the two. They share a name, and that's it. That's it. From what we can tell. Yeah. So false. False, false, false. So, chuck, we've got the founding in 1948, but the houses, angels, I just kind of rode a little under the radar until 1957. Right? Yes. When that oakland chapter was founded. Yeah. That's when they really started rolling. Right. Thanks to a guy named sonny barger. Yes. Ralph sunny barger. He, I believe, founded the oakland chapter, and he wrote a bunch of books that were really successful that kind of peeled back the curtain behind the hells angels. I was reading one of them on google books today. It's called hell's angel the life and times of sunny barger, I think. And it's an autobiography. Cool. Because he kept using the word I, and it was by him. It's your giveaway for an autobiography, usually. And his heyday was a very cool dude, it sounds like. It sounds like. Let me also add a caveat to that. I'm also aware that he was also a major drug trafficker who engaged in violence and toward women, towards squares like you and me. Chuck did all manner of bad things. Sure. But he's still kind of a cool dude, right? Yeah. We'll talk about that, too, a little bit later about the hell's angels and whether or not they want to run afoul of the law or ride for charity and stuff like that. Well, what are we going to talk about now? Right now we're going to talk about let's talk about their colors and their insignia and all that stuff. Okay, ma'am. They call it their colors, much like a military people call their uniform their colors sometimes. Right. And red and white are the actual colors of the letters. It's red letters on a white field. Yes, absolutely. And then the thing at the top, the top patch that actually says Hell's Angels call it the Top Rocker. Top Rocker, right. And then the Bottom Rocker is the name of the city that their chapters in their chapter location. Right. And then in the middle is what? The middle is the Deathhead is what it's called. And that is copywritten as death head. It is. And as is their name. And that was designed by the San Francisco chapter president, Frank Saddlecadillacc. Here's an interesting fact for you. Did you know that the hells Angels motorcycle club is a California corporation? Really? They're incorporated? Yeah, they do. They do. Jealously guard their copyrighted materials, their images, all that stuff. Yeah, they sued Disney. They sued Disney a couple of years ago for that movie Wild Hogs about all the middle aged bikers, martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and Travolta and William Macy. Just terrible. I'm sure I would have sued, too. I can't believe you saw it. No, I didn't see it. Are you kidding me? I saw that they sued. Yeah. So what did they sue over? These guys weren't supposed to be held angels, were they? I think so. They sued because they said they used the Hells Angels logo and everything without their permission. I don't know if they were specifically antagonists. Were Hells Angels or something, maybe, but all I know is they sued and I couldn't find as usual, you could never find out what happens with the lawsuit? No, it's probably some deal. Yeah, but yeah, they sued because like you said, they zealously guard their name and they ride Harley Davidsons, but apparently are not required to do so. No, but they almost exclusively ride Harley. I can't imagine if you wheel up on a Honda that they're going to come on in. Yeah, come on in, brother. We'll jump in prospect. They also apparently a typical member drives about 20,000 miles a year. Really? Yeah. Rides. We will get smacked down with square that you drive a motorcycle. Yeah. So, Chuck, we talked about the patches and you've seen guys wearing them here there, right? Well, yeah, there's different patches. Like if you're the president of your chapter, you'll have a little patch like the boy scouts sort of. Yeah. And there's all sorts there's all sorts of other patches and insignia sure. That no one outside of the club, gang, whatever knows the meaning of. Oh, really? Yeah. I know the AF FA is a common one, but we do know the meaning of that because it's one of the slogans which is angels forever. Forever angels. Nice. And then you'll also see 81 a lot of times. Yeah. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet and A is the first letter. So 81 H a Hells Angels. Yes. And they'll say, call it like Local 81. Sometimes it sounds for, like, a union. And apparently they also refer to themselves as one percenters. I heard about that, too. Yeah. 1% of the outlaw bikers giving 99% of respectable bikers a bad name. Yes. Pretty cool. Yeah, I told you. So, Chuck, how do you become a member? Well, Josh, like I said, you need to own a working motorcycle. That's probably first. And have a driver's license. And have a driver's license. It's funny that those are rules, but it makes sense. Also, you can't ever have applied to be a police officer or prison guard. I got another one. You cannot be a child molester. Hells Angels don't like child molesters. I know. They really don't. Good for them. Because you know what? I don't either. The Hell's Angels have a long standing hatred of the cops. And with good cause. Sure. Pigs, as they call them. Sure. Hunter Thompson, our shared hero, wrote about the Hells Angels. And we can talk about that a little more in depth. But he said that he was talking about how the average houses angel views the establishment or the law. Right. And he said he knows that somewhere behind the moat the main cop has scrawled his name on a blackboard in the big briefing room with a notation beside it. Get this boy. Give him no peace. He's incorrigible like an egg sucking dog. So apparently, that's how Hell's Angels tend to view the cops. Yeah. Why couldn't we get Johnny Depp to have read that wouldn't have been great. Maybe. No, that would have been great. So, back to membership. If you want to be a member. Takes a little while. Sometimes it can take a year or more yeah. To become a full patch member, as they say. So you start out as a hang around? Yeah, that's what it is. You just hang around them. But you're invited to hang around. Like, you can't just hang around and be a hang around. They'll say, what are you doing here at Square? Get out of here. Drive your motorcycle on out of here. Or they'll hit you over the head with a tire iron right when you drive up in your Volvo. Hang around. Yeah. So, yeah, you're invited to hang around. And you can attend some events, evidently, as a hangaround. Then you are made an associate. If you do a good job as a hangaround. How do you do a good job as a hangaround? I would guess this is just a guess, but if I was a Hell's Angel, I would say that you don't cause a lot of trouble. You're fun to be around. You bring chicks to the party. Sure. That probably didn't hurt. No. Okay, so after the hangaround, you become an associate, and then what? You become a prospect. And this is apparently full acknowledgment that you are in the pipeline for official membership consideration. Yeah. Do you remember when we did our Fight Clubs podcast, and we talked about how fight clubs, especially in California, are often used to jump in prospects in the gang. Yeah, sure. These will be the people who are on their last night, right? And they get thrown into, like, a cage match with a bunch of other people. Yeah. And I imagine it gets pretty ugly. Yeah. No, thank you, is what I say. And actually, if you're in a prospect at this point, you can participate in the club activities, but you cannot vote. You don't have voting privileges yet. That seems funny, doesn't it? That they vote? Yeah. It's democracy. Yes. And Josh. What's after that? After that, my friend, you are a Full patch member. Yes. You are allowed to wear the Death's Head logo. You can wear your top and lower rocker. You get your jacket. Apparently, this is one of those things that it may or may not be lower. Who knows? Apparently, during initiation, there is a bucket filled with feces and urine passed around and dumped on the person, and they're never allowed to wash their colors. So that's on their jacket forever. Well, that's not fun. No, it's not. And I don't think that this is correct. Apparently our buddy Hunter T wrote that. Oh, really? And you get in trouble. He didn't get in trouble. He got away with murder. Apparently not literally. No. Okay, but Sonny Barger said that's just not true. Okay, that doesn't sound like you'd be right. It seems like they would not want to desecrate their colors. That would be gross. Yeah, that's just a thought. All right, I'll give some advice, if that's what you're doing. Guys, knock it off. You should respect your own color advice for the Hells Angels from Chuck Bryant. The end. So now you are a Full Patch member. You're in the Hells Angels, and you're a member for life. That's why they say Angels forever. Forever angels. There is no retirement. No, there's not. And even if you're not allowed to associate with the Hells Angels anymore because of your terms of parole sure. You're still considered a Hells Angel, right? Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk a little more about Hunter t, okay? He literally wrote the book on Hells Angels. Yes. In the mid 60s, early mid 60s. He wrote an article in 65 in the Nation, and then that article got book published, sniffing around, saying, you should write a book on this. Sunny Barger also read that article. He liked it, and he said it was a little exaggerated, but he liked Thompson's writing style, of course. So when Thompson started hanging around some of the bars that the Oakland chapter hung out at I think it was Oakland, they finally introduced him to Sunny Barger. Right. And Barger said, you know what? Fine. You can hang out with us in return for two cakes of beer. Which, by the way, Hunter Thompson never paid up on the year it went south, and Hunter spent the next year hanging out with the Hell's Angels. Apparently, he helped them unload shipments of meth, like, plane loads of meth. He went on a gun run with them at least once. Right. When they got into it with the cops, he apparently jumped into his car and pulled the trunk hatch down on him. And Sonny Barger said that was it. He was like, after that, I never looked at Hunter Hops in the same way again. He figured out he was a coward. Right. But he was also kind of a skinny guy in a literary type. Yeah. I don't think he ever claimed to be wise with the fisticuffs, which is why he carried guns. Right. And then finally this whole thing ends, this whole association ends when Hunter gets the crap kicked out of him by the Hells Angels. Some of which he considered friends. Right. Yeah. Well, actually, what I read was that he later said the ones who actually did the beating were the ones he wasn't hanging around with the most. Got you. And they were sort of on the fringe there, you know. What happened? Well, I couldn't find I heard that he made a remark at a party. He did. And I couldn't find what that remark was. Hell's angel by the name of Junkie george had his dog Hippie Rob. No. Okay. No, this is not hippy, Rob. Although I could see Hippie Rob knowing Junkie George. Sure. Anyway, Junkie George had his dog with him, and his dog bit him, and Junkie George kicked his dog, and Hunter Thompson walked up to him and said, only punk slapped their old ladies and kicked their dogs. And Junkie Church did not like that one bit. That's what started it. Yes. So he put the SmackDown on Hunter Thompson. A bunch of other guys jumped in, and Hunter Thompson drove himself to the police station. The police turned him away, and he drove himself to the hospital where he was treated. And he never hung out with the Hell's Angels again. That was in. But he did publish the book. Hells Angels the strange and terrible saga of the outlaw motorcycle gangs. Right. And apparently a lot of it was exaggerated. But this is where Sonny Barger said he wrote the book for law enforcement. Right? Like, law enforcement all read it and they're like, oh, well, sure. This is what we're dealing with, and a lot of it was exaggerated. Well, gang rape was in there, and I don't know if that was exaggerated or not. He said he witnessed gang rape on more than one occasion and that they used it as a form of punishment. Yeah. And he said that they admitted that it was a form of punishment. The Hills Angels did. Yeah. So I will say allegedly here, but it was in the book. Thompson apparently also lent his notes to another journalist, at least equally good by the name of Tom Wolf yes. Of the right stuff fame as well as the electric koolaid acid test. Yes. The hell's angels factor hugely in the electric kool aid acid test, which is actually about the merry pranksters. Right. And I think in 1965, the hells angels went to the Berkeley Oakland border and beat the tar out of some lefty anti war protesters college students. Right. Beat them up and then vowed to break up any anti war demonstration they ever came across. So Hunter apparently took Allen Ginsburg, the poet, and Ken Kesey, the leader of the Mary pranksters, and introduced him to Sonny Barger, then went off his own way. And that meeting kind of made peace between the hippies and the hells angels. Well, they took action together famously. Yeah. And I think Ginsburg even wrote a poem about the hells angels. Yeah. I couldn't find it, though. Okay. But I would like to see it at some point. You didn't dream that. Yeah, man, it was a beautiful poem. Now, he really did write a poem, though. Okay. It's funny thing about Alan Ginsburg hanging out with the helps Angels. I know. It's really weird. Especially, like, the head houses angel. Yeah. But yeah, sonny Barger said that he loved acid, and it was the one thing that his people in the hippies had in common are one of the main things. And they did plenty of the acid test at the Honda and did all sorts of crazy stuff with the pranksters. Sure. Yeah. Those are the days, huh? Those were the days. And actually, let me say another thing about law enforcement. Apparently, when Hunter Thompson was hanging out with the hell's angels, their influence and their membership was drastically on the Wayne. Oh, really? And then a guy named Thomas Lynch, who was the attorney general for California at the time, he issues a report on the hells angels. And it is ridiculous and bloated and exaggerated. Right. But apparently it just blew up the Hills angel street cred. And all of a sudden, they have more members than ever after that report. So sometimes it works against you when you try and quash something. Yes. So I guess we should talk about some of the good they do and some of the bad they've done, because there's divided opinion. The hells angels, they raise money for charity. They're famous for their work with the toys for tots. They do charity rides and stuff like that. Over the years, I think they've cleaned up their act a lot, probably now compared to what it was like in the 60s. But they've had some scrapes with the law many times along the way, notably at Altamont speedway. That was a big one. Yeah. We can't talk about the hells angels without talking about this. This was the Altamont free concert, and it was famously recorded in the concert film Gimme shelter. It was apparently the day the 60s died. Is that what they say. Yeah. Is that what that stupid song is about? From that guy? American Pie? Yeah. He's not talking about that. No, it's about the death of Buddy Holly. That's the day the music died. Either way, screw him. I hate that song. Anyone who can listen still sit down and listen to that song all the way through, right in. And I've got a prize for you. You're a special person. We're going to send you information. The Hell's Angel. So back to Altamont. It was a free concert there, and a bunch of bands played jefferson Airplane, the Rolling Stones, the Dead was supposed to play. They helicoptered in, and then by that time, things had gone south. Well, yeah, the Stone's helicoptered in, too. And what happened was the Stones hired the Hells Angels, although there's been back and forth over the years that whether or not they were hired for the show by the organizers, or whether the Stone specifically hired them as their personal security. And he said, she said type of deal, with the Stone saying, we did not hire them specifically, and the Hell's Angel saying, yes, you did. You said, you'd give us $500 worth of beer, we would be your bodyguards. So they show up, they park their bikes between the audience and the stage. Stones go on. And actually, before this happened, the violence has been escalating at this show, free show in the Altima. It was not good. There were, I think, two or three deaths and numerous fights and beatings, breaking out. And one of the Hell's Angels smacked down marty Bailey of Jefferson Airplane knocked him unconscious. And the Grateful Dead see this and they're like, we are out of here. This is not our scene, and we're not going to play. And we're leaving. And they got back on their little helicopter and left. Have you seen that footage? Yeah. Gimme Shelter is great. If you guys haven't seen that, you should definitely watch it. So back to the stones. Stones takes stage. Things start to devolve into violence, and a guy named Meredith Hunter pulls a gun pointed at the stage. You can see all this in the film. And he gets jumped and stabbed to death by Alan Pasaro, a Hills Angel, famously. And the concert stopped and the Stones had a pretty awful time with the PR, obviously, about this. And apparently the Hells Angels were exposed for plotting to kill McJagger, for criticizing them after that. Yeah, true. And Psaro actually got off Scot Freed, because the film clearly showed that guy had a gun and he did pull it. Who's he aiming at? They don't know. They said it was toward the stage. And you can't really tell from the footage, from what I remember, but the reports were that he was going to kill the Rolling Stones, which I didn't know that was going to happen back then. So the Hells Angels already had a pretty rough reputation this just cements it, right? Yeah, big time. So they just kind of go balls out, which is a motorcycle term and not a vulgar expression, by the way. We learned we did learn that throughout the 70s, they own the market on methamphetamines. Yeah. Apparently just the birdie chapter alone. This is a law enforcement estimate from 1979, right after they staged a raid on that chapter's clubhouse, where Sonny Barger was. Right. That this chapter alone controlled five meth labs that could make $160,000 worth of pills a day. Wow. And this is 1979, man. Yeah. That's crazy. So they don't call it, like, biker speed for nothing. It was because the bikers, specifically the Hells angels, cornered the market on methamphetamine in the 70s. They also allegedly sold cocaine, heroin, pretty much anything. Sure. Prostitution was a big one, apparently. Yes. And over the years, they've been indicted and accused and booked for everything from rape to murder. Sonny Barger himself was in federal prison for four years for conspiring to blow up arrival gangs clubhouse. I don't know what the gang was. Probably the Mongols is my guess. Yeah. They run afoul of the law quite a bit over the years. They definitely do. But if you'll notice, Sonny Barger got four years in federal pen. Right. You never hear about a hell's angel being put to death by God. You would hear about it if it happened. Yeah, I would imagine. You would never hear about them getting life imprisonment. So you start to get the impression after everything you hear about the Hells angels, but in these piddly convictions that are slapped against them sure. That maybe they are right in thinking that law enforcement and the establishment has it out for them. I think they definitely have it out for them. And they probably have participated in illegal activities throughout the years. But it's a big organization, and like you said, if there's a small handful of actual convictions compared to their vast history, that's not too bad. Not saying they're great guys or anything, but it's not like they've been run up on, like you said, murder charges, like, all over the place. Right. Although this week, they were in the news. The Vegas cops rated six hells angels locations in Las Vegas, and they seized records and knives and evidence because last year, there was a brawl, once again, between the Mongols and the Hells angels, and I think two people were stabbed. Allow me to interrupt. Okay. If we have anything to impart in this podcast, if you ever find yourself in the same room, same building, the same parking lot, same town as a bunch of Mongols and a bunch of hells Angels. Yeah. Get out. Do you know what happened in Vegas, though? It's actually kind of funny. Two people were stabbed, so it's not funny, but they both show up. They were double booked at a wedding chapel, a mongol wedding and a hells angels wedding. Were. Both booked at the same wedding chapel at the same time. Well, not good. No. And I'm sure the person who booked that didn't wasn't brought up on charges or anything. No. When in fact, they're probably the ones that originally are to blame. They sat back and went, Whoa. Yes, exactly. Right. So, Chuck, what started out in Purdue and then blew up in Oakland has grown into, like, a worldwide organization, whether or not it's an outlawed biker gang or whatever. They have legitimate chapters in how many countries? 29 countries. How many chapters? More than 100. Yeah. In all sorts of places, too, I think. In 1984, they had their first South American chapter open in Rio. Crazy. Now they have them in Greece, Russia, Czech Republic, Wales. Luxembourg. Luxembourg. The Luxembourg Els Angels. Yes. Apparently the ones in Europe are going nuts these days. There's a huge turf war that's been ongoing in Scandinavia. Australia is having real problems with them, too. And there's things like rocket launchers showing up, grenades being used, like in these gang wars. Yes. That's not like the old days with knives and fists. A rocket launcher? Yeah, that's a different deal. I told you I was square. The first chapter outside the US. Was in New Zealand in 1961, and little known fact, George Harrison of the Beatles, God rest his soul, is allegedly responsible for bringing the House Angels to England. Yeah, he invited a couple Via, a couple of dudes that he met in San Francisco, invited them over to England, they come over and hang out, and boom, a London Hells Angels chapter pops up afterward. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. Or is it? I don't know. And right now, Poland and Iceland are currently seeking chapters. So good luck to Iceland is what I say. Go, Poland. Yes. All right. Good luck with that. So that's the Hell's Angels. I'm quite sure that there's a lot you could even say, a hell of a lot more information out there that will never find out. Because again, Chuck and I are square. Who will never get to hang out with the Hells Angel. Ever. Never. Mainly because we don't want to get beat up. Right. I'm not a big fan of throwing punches or taking them on the chin. Just not me. No. I'm a fan of running away. If you want to learn a little more about the Hells Angels, you can type that into the handy search bar. Howstepworks.com. You might also want to go on to the Houses Angels Motor Club website. It's pretty interesting. It's got links to other chapters, too. And also, congratulations to the Birdie chapter on their 60th anniversary, which is and since I said the Birdie chapter, I guess that means it's time for listener mate. Yes, indeed. Josh, I have a couple of corrections here for a change that we're going to acknowledge. What do you mean for a change? Well, we haven't written corrections in a while. First off. I want to say that Bernie Gets bernard Gets is not a serial killer. I mistakenly said that. Breed killer, right? He didn't kill anyone. He shot some guys in New York. No one died, and he was not even convicted of attempted murder or anything, and he's still alive and living in New York. And I feel like a big jerk because I got him confused with Charles Bronson in Death wish I was Dead wrong and a man enough to admit it. I'm sorry, Bernard Gets, you're not a serial killer, obviously, so I apologize for that. Okay. We had angry people right in about that. Dude, that one lady, man. It's like Bernie gets his sister or something. I think she was she was scary. But I do feel bad because that's not right. Okay, we have a quick correction. Remember the Tolinet Indians that we were trying to pronounce? Apparently it's pronounced Clinket. And we had people ride in from Alaska. Matthew, actually, Matthew's from Seattle, Washington, he wrote in and said it's pronounced Clinkett. Clinket. So there you have that. Thanks, Matthew. And then finally we have another correction. Remember when I said about the Amish not being able to listen to us Rum Springy? And then if they actually wrote in, there would be liars. Not true. Because of what rum Springer yes. We had a Farmer John of New York write in and said that. We had a few people write in on this. Every Amish teenager, nearly every Amish teenager goes on Rum Spring, where they effectively leave the community and live with us regular English folks, Americans, for a period of time. And they are free to indulge in the things that American kids indulge in drugs, drinking, smoking, whatever, if they want. And podcast gambling. Podcast listening is definitely one. So evidently we could very well have been heard by an Amish person. Here's my argument to that. Okay. Okay. So they go on Rum Springer to decide whether they want to live with the English or stay in Amish. Sure. During this period, in my opinion, they're in some sort of middle ground between the two, so they're technically not Amish. So if one of them on Run Spring, I heard this. Got you. Send it in. I'd be like, Dude, you haven't made your decision yet. I don't want to hear it from you. Or what if they heard our podcast and were so taken with it they refused to go back to the Amish lifestyle? Or if they heard it and hated it so much, they went screaming back to mom? Paul, more likely. So. Thank you. Farmer John in New York. He says, PS. I am not Amish, but I'm a lowly cal farmer. Although Rum Spring, it would be pretty sweet. That's what he says. Yeah. So I encourage John just go on his own rum springer. I went on my own rum springer. I'm still on mine. Well, if you have a story about your own personal rum spring. Whether you were Amish or not, you can send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houstofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog 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 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." | ||
43f692f2-53a3-11e8-bdec-6f3ef79157cb | 1-800-PODCAST | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/1-800-podcast | Chuck and Josh dive into the wacky world of 800 and 900 phone numbers. | Chuck and Josh dive into the wacky world of 800 and 900 phone numbers. | Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:09:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=14, tm_min=9, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=233, tm_isdst=0) | 40055183 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody, its us and we're here to talk to you about get this, our book. We have a Stuffy Should Know book coming out this November and you're going to love it and you can preorder it now. That's right. It's called Stuff you should know. An incomplete pendium of mostly interesting things. And it's been a lot of fun to work on and we're really, I mean, genuinely excited about how this thing has come together. Yes, it's 26 chunky, hairy chapters that are just going to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we are indeed proud of this book. It is truly indubitably. The first Stuff You Should Know book, and it's coming out this November and you can order it now preorder everywhere you get books. So do that and we thank you in advance. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Thank you for calling 1800 Podcast. Go ahead, call her. Oh, that would be great, Chuck. I need to get that. We need to get that before we release this episode because somebody, maybe a resporg person, is going to snag that and we'll have to pay through the nose for it. I thought there were so many very interesting things about this very seemingly mundane topic. Oh, yeah. I just think it's interesting that 800 numbers seem like something that would have gone the way of 900 numbers, but they're still around in the days where the Internet is thriving and the Yellow Pages, do they still have Yellow pages? Yeah, I don't know. I think I remember this one comedian years ago was talking about the phone books when people are still getting phone books, right? And the joke was something about dropping out. Let me drop off four pound, very small portion of the Internet on your front porch. But then they just stopped doing that altogether. Yeah, I know that they were doing it as recently as a few years back because they would get dropped off once in a while at the mailboxes, at our condo within the last ten years, for sure. Five years maybe, I think is the last time I saw one. So maybe they stopped because I haven't seen it in a little while. But yes. So toll free numbers, 800 numbers, they persist. They do and they really do. So this How Stuff Works article, I think the last number they had was from 2008 and it said that there were 24 million working toll free phone numbers in North America. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about free phone numbers apparently in the United States. We call it toll free numbers everywhere else in the world called the English speaking world. At least it's free phone numbers. One word. So there were 24 million in 2008. But get this. Since the advent of 800 numbers, they've released 123-4567 different prefixes of toll free numbers, everything from 808-8877 all the way down to eight three. Three is where we're at now. And I did a little math. I'm kind of proud of myself for this one, Chuck, so bear with me for a second. For a seven digit number, you have 9 million total possible combinations because it starts technically with 1 million and goes up to 9,999,999%. So you have 9 million total combinations in there. So each of those prefixes allows for 9 million combinations. So there's at least there's seven prefixes. That means that there's at least 54 million plus toll free numbers in use in America today to justify that many prefixes. You know what I can't wait for? What that? Mass person to write in and correct you do it. No, Josh, you forgot about blank. I will argue with you all day long. I got this right. I got it right for once. Lots of toll free numbers. And like you said, they go down to eight three three. Now I think eventually they're going to get 822-880-8789 involved, never eight one one or eight nine nine. Apparently, yes. Supposedly someone found an ancient text in Aramaic that predicted that if eight one one were ever instituted, that's when the universe ends. Can't do it. No. So when you dial a number, what this is all about, and actually two things, what it used to be about was largely for when calls cost money to make long distance. It was a way to route that charge back to the person you're calling. Yeah, it was an automatic collect call. That's right. So if they advertise it as toll free, you don't have to pay a toll on it. We're going to eat that cost. And you'll know it because it's an 800 number. Then over the years, it became more and more of a sort of just if you want to be a legitimate business, and especially a regional business or national or international business, then you kind of had to have an 800 number, even once toll's phone charges and things. And long distance kind of became a thing of the past. It just became sort of a calling card, for lack of a better word, as, hey, we're a legit big company. We've got an 800 number. Exactly. We're the third largest maker of bunk and trundle beds. Here's our 800 number. And in the old days, I mentioned the Yellow Pages, where you would advertise. It's so quaint to think about now. Oh, man. It is where you would advertise in this big yellow book about your business and let your fingers do the walking. But back then, it was also 800 numbers were away that you could save money by not having to advertise in the Yellow Pages because you've got 1800. House painter, right. Or this article, this house Stuff Works article sites a construction company called Asphalt Sources Inc. Which got, I guess, a Catchy 800 number and downsized their Yellow Pages ad and saved more than $27,000 by doing so. And to be honest, it probably didn't hurt that they were also cited in How Stuff Works article about toll free numbers. Yeah, that was clunky, but definitely an example of how things used to be. Yeah, but that's the point of 800 numbers. And that's also, from what I can tell, the reason that they still persist today is that if you have a Catchy 800 number, like you said, it makes you seem like a player as far as business goes. But also, it's a way to advertise. Like, I haven't seen The Empire Today ad in three to five years, but I can tell you that the number is still 805. Eight eight. 2300 Empire today. Do you remember that one? Yeah. What about cars for kids? I don't remember that. 1877 Cars for Kids. I've never heard that one. Really? But I would probably remember that one. Yeah. And we'll get to that in a little more depth. Those are called vanity numbers. Sure. But yeah, and there are statistics, and they are pretty stark in how much people remember that compared to just some regular old number. Right. So there's reasons for 800 numbers and the fact that they're still around, there's reasons for that, too. But they started all the way back in 1967, and it's like you said, it was a way to make it easy for people to place collect calls, which was there were two ways to make a long distance call. Either you paid for it yourself, it showed up on your phone bill, or you could call the person you were calling collect, which meant that you dialed the operator, you said you wanted to place a collect call. Great. The operator called that number for you and said, hey, I've got Josh and Chuck on the line. Will you accept the charges? Is what they asked. And the other person would inevitably say no and hang up. If it had been somebody else, they might have said yes. And then that person who was receiving the call, they would be billed for that. That takes a lot of time and effort for a phone call or for a phone company's operators to do that. So the whole point of 800 numbers was to automate the process, to take the operator out of it. And so the person would say, I'm receiving these calls at this number. Go ahead and bill me for them, just without even asking. Yeah. And I think that story illustrates why I believe my theory is correct, that Gen X is the greatest generation. So great, man, because we saw those early days that now feel like we were in the 1920s with stuff like this and three TV channels growing up, or three major networks, rather. Sure. Yeah. But we're also young enough to where the technological boom didn't confuse us. Right. Or pass us by. Or pass us by. And we could dip our toe into both. We could grow up on 70s music and also go to an EDM concert. Right. Without, like, being weird. Yeah. I think you're right, Chuck. We might be the greatest generation ever. We're the perfect generation. Perfect. That's right. I guess greatest Generation has taken. Yeah. Of course. In 67, it started, like you said, and the very first business to have an 800 number, apparently was a company that just hosted numbers for other companies, mainly like car rentals and hotels and stuff like that. I think they were like a call center. Yeah. And so they went out of business, and then all those businesses that were using them said, oh, well, we got to get 800 numbers now ourselves. Right. But the thing is, at and T was the only one with 800 numbers because back in the day, at and T, also known as Mabel, basically had a monopoly as far as telephones were concerned in the United States legally. Yeah. And so if you wanted an 800 number, you went to at and T, you got your 800 number, and then you paid through the nose for it. They would charge many, many times more than they would have charged the caller had the caller just been billed themselves for placing this long distance call just for this toll free service. And that's just the way it was until I believe it was 1984, when trustbuster Ronald Reagan saw to it that my bell was broken up into all the regional bells. Yeah. So then, of course, when that happened, that opened up the world of competition in the telephone industry in the United States kind of for the first time. And then, of course, what happens is the cost to get an 800 number goes way, way down. You can get a lot more businesses getting them. And then it just sort of became the standard for any business that wanted to be, even like I said, a regional business. There was also a really big innovation that gets overlooked, too, that was actually created by a guy named Roy Weber, who was an at and T engineer. And Roy Weber basically figured out how to use 800 numbers, not as phone numbers that were connected to a certain point in the telephone system, but as basically a code that could be translated at a database into instructions or like, hey, here's this number they put in. What are the instructions for this? And in doing so, he figured out how to make toll free numbers go from regional to truly national. Because up until 1980, you had to have a regional toll free number for each region. And if you were a national company like, say, Hertz or something like that, you had a dozen or more toll free numbers that you had to manage. Thanks to Roy Webber, who patented this, but at and T owns the patent, so he saw jack from it. Besides the salary, this changed everything and made it a truly national thing to where one single 800 number could serve the entire country for a business. And it made the whole thing a lot technically smoother, too, from what I understand. Yeah. That was sort of one of two big things that happened. The other one was when a law was passed that said you can port your phone number between carriers. So if you're with one carrier and you're not too happy back in the old days, pre 94, that meant you had to change your telephone number. And that was no good for a business that was trying to grow or a business that was already big, especially. And so that 94 law guaranteed that portability you could take your phone number with you. And that was a really big kind of sea change in the industry. Yes. You could pick up your phone number and carry it across land to the next body of water. That's right. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's do that. Okay, Chuck. So we're at 1994, when we can pull our phone numbers. Yeah. And that was kind of the last big change. That's when things started growing so much that they had to I think in 96, they introduced 898. It seems like every couple of years they started introducing new what are they called? Prefixes. Yeah. Prefix exchanges. Yeah. So we're down to 833, right? I think that's where we are currently. I've never seen that, though, have you? I have. Not that I've ever noticed. But now I don't even pay attention. I don't call anything. I just go online. If I have to call, I'll call, but I don't like it at all. And most of the time when I do, I'm just looking it up on my phone and clicking, like the call thing. I very rarely type in a number anymore. And yet, bizarrely, 800 numbers haven't gone anywhere. And again, apparently it's because of the whole marketing thing, which is why they're still around today. Yeah. And then what other kind of connection to the information age. The age of the Internet and computers and all that stuff that 800 numbers have. Is that there is a period from about 2000 and 789. Maybe up until about 2014. Where the concept of. Say. Like a provider paying for your data. When you went on to a certain website. Say they had a website where they wanted to teach you all about their new phones or something like that. You wouldn't be using any data while you were on that site. And they originally called it 1800 data. Interesting. And then they dropped that around 2015, and that was that. So here's something that I found that is so boring, that I found so weirdly fascinating, and that is the notion of the responsible organization. Maybe it's because it's the name, it just sounds really weird. It sounds like a Scientology subsection or something. The Rest.org. Yeah. So when you call a well, first of all, these numbers, all these 800 numbers are housed in a database called the 800 Service Management System, the SMS 800. And they know every single exchange of the 800 variation and if it's available, if it's being used and how to route them. And if you want one of these, you have to contact something called a Responsible Organization. And that's just not a descriptor like, alright, I'll contact UNICEF because they're pretty responsible. Pretty responsible. It's called a responsible organization. It's basically like a domain name registrar for telephone for 800 numbers. And it could be a company that does this, or you could be a human being at home in your basement that has set yourself up to be a Rest.org. Yeah, you just have to be certified by the FCC. I'm not sure how, I didn't get to see how, but once you are certified, then you have access to this database and you can legally say no, this number is now taken by this person. I think you just have to get a loan, right? Who cares? They're watching you. And if you help an old lady or a man across the street in front of the FCC building in DC, they take notice. Yeah, sure. Your response to all this, one big test. But the rest.org I think what bothers me is that stupid abbreviation for it. Rest.org. Yeah, Rest Borg. And the O was capitalized, even though it's one word as an abbreviation. But the point is it can be anybody. At first it was just phone companies that were able to do that and then it kind of became more democratized in the nineties. And from that point at the moment it became democratized, it became corrupt almost immediately. Yeah, I mean corrupt in the sense that I think some narrowed you well, some nonresponsible people say, hey, this would be a pretty easy way to take advantage of people by acting as a middleman and charging someone $50 to say I can find them a toll free number. Here you go, here's your number. Right. Which that in and of itself there's no problem with that. And apparently the FCC doesn't have any problems with that if you set yourself up as a service. Well, if you're really doing it, yes. So if you say, okay, you can come to my website and you can look up a number and I will try to find it for you and if it's available I will get it for you and I'm going to charge you a fee for that. There's nothing wrong with that, morally, legally or otherwise. The problem comes in where some of these restaurants say, yes, it's $50 to search and then, oh yeah, this number that ends in paying P-A-I-N that's going to cost you an extra grand. That totally flies in the face of the FCC rules surrounding phone numbers of any kind, including toll free numbers, which is that they're meant to be totally neutral. You're not supposed to be able to profit off of a phone number whatsoever. You can profit off of, like, the search and all that stuff, but a particular phone number is supposed to be doled out on a first come, first serve service basis with $0 attached to it whatsoever, and that's just not how it works. Yeah, so you can't Goo someone doctor pain once, 1800 or TPain. TPain tooth pain. No, just t pain. Your dentist can't get that one. No, because tpain's got it. Well, they might get it, but they can't pay extra for it. It's first come, first served, always. You are only allowed to subscribe to the amount of toll free numbers that you actually intend to use. So you can't just go get lock up a bunch, kind of like you can do with domain names, actually, now that think about it. Yeah, you can't do that with 800 numbers. Can't do it. You also, to prevent this kind of hoarding, they mandate that you allocate that reserve number within eight months. So I guess it's got to be in use within eight months. They have terms for this. Actually, brokering is selling and profiting from numbers. There's Hoarding and then there's warehousing. Warehousing is where you take numbers even though there's no one that you're directly getting it for. And then Hoarding is getting a bunch of numbers, sitting on them and selling them. And this is a big no no. But for a very long time, it seemed to the FCC and the people running the FCC that it was not worth enforcing until, I guess it got kind of Wild Westy. And there was a company called it Connections that was fine $3.7 million. They sound so sketchy already. Oh, yeah. These are all like spam kings who came up with a sideline of selling telephone numbers. And their whole thing is, no, they're just performing a service. And then when the FCC says, well, then why isn't your service the same regardless of any number? They say, well, this is all just supply and demand. Well, there's not supposed to be any supply and demand. It's supposed to be first come, first serve. And apparently they just look the other way until, I believe, 2017, when the It connect or connection company got hit with that fine. Those types of places discuss me more than just about anything. Yes, it's the ones that you know what I'm talking about, like the people that are just looking for the loopholes to exploit so they can rip someone off. Yeah, the kind of people who carry, like, a neck brace in their back seat at all times in case they get rear end or like IP trolls. And I mean, we can't go down that road too much, but the podcast industry kind of went through a pretty famous situation like that a few years ago and I don't know, man, people that just go out and do some hard work yeah. Stop stock speculating, don't look for the angle right, to get rich. Yeah. Because you're not creating anything, you're just sucking the life out of it. Oh God, it's just so upsetting. Like you said, the FCC wasn't paying a lot of attention, so these things have been sold on ebay at big fat price tags and beyond. Just the FCC not paying attention is apparently there's restoratives. It's just hard to keep track. And they can be disorganized. There's no real system to get it all cleaned up. And so inadvertently this can happen, too. Yeah, there was one famous case, though, too, that went to circuit court, I think maybe, I don't remember, but there was a Mercedes dealer in Minneapolis, in St. Paul who had since the Mercedes, and it went to his Pure Gold. Yeah, he said that he cites that as reviving this kind of a hohum Mercedes dealership, that phone number. So he wasn't about to give it up. When Mercedes came around and said, hey, we want that for our national customer service, he said no, and they sued him for it. They basically tried to get them on copyright infringement. And I guess the judge or the jury found like, no, you can't. Like, a toll free number is not copyright infringement. And so, Mercedes, to this day, you have to call 804 F-O-R Mercedes. Which does the other thing, Chuck, you know my famous dislike of acronyms that don't include a word, a toll free phone number that includes letters that go beyond the number of possible numbers you can use. That really bugs me, too, I think, because it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I figured out what was going on. Yeah. Like, I would type the whole thing out and be like it would connect and I'd be like, I'm not done dialing yet. I bet it was satisfying for that judge to be able to shoot down a big corporation like that under the prior settled law of you snooze, you lose. Sorry, Mercedes. Yeah, just because you're huge. Sorry. Finders keepers. And you snooze, you lose. Man. Wouldn't court be like kids? Court? Yeah. Why isn't that a show? Captain Kangaroo? Court? No, come on. So I think it's high time, Chuck, since we were talking about the 800 Mercedes case, the very famous legal case in the United States, we talk about vanity numbers, because that is as vanity a number as there ever has been. The singer vanity could have a phone number and it still wouldn't be more of a vanity number than 800 Mercedes. Yeah, we mentioned it earlier. These are pretty tremendous advertising perks for a company. If you land on 800 flowers or 1800 go FedX, you've struck gold. Because that will stick in someone's head. They have done studies over the years. There was one where they showed an 84% improvement in recall over numeric phone numbers from, like, a TV ad or a billboard. And if you're listening to the radio, it goes from 72% recall to 5% recall. If it's got a catchy little jingly, especially when there's a song attached to it. A toll free vanity number. Yeah, that's a huge difference. Absolutely true. I can't imagine how much money FTD has gotten from that 1800 Flowers phone number. Is that theirs? Yeah, I think their website is 1800 FLOWERS.COM. They got in there early, I guess. All these yeah, all these generic ones. Yeah. They know how to work the system and push people around better than Mercedes lawyers do. Yeah. They send in the guy with a little winged hat and loincloth. What? Start shoving people around. Wasn't that FTD? Oh, yeah. I was like describing Hermes. You're like, Why do I have a video camera on me? Right, yeah. No, it totally was. Is that Hermes? Hermes are mercury, I think. So. I mentioned those good generic ones. It is great if you have 1800 Flowers, of course, but they interviewed someone for this House Stuff Works article who knows a lot about this stuff. Quimby. And they say and Quimby says, yeah, you know, these generic ones are fine, but they're all taken. What you really want these days is to get in there and actually try and say something about your company as well. Right. So instead of 1800 car loans, it's 1800 quick Loan or 1800 Fast Closer. That, to me, would be a red flag to stay away from that mortgage company. You think fast Closer? Yeah. 1800 Fast Closer. Yeah. And you'll note that it doesn't have to be seven digits. It can be over seven digits, obviously. Which drives me baddie. Why? Just because the extra number yeah. It's missing the mark. Anybody can do 12312 three. So that would be 1800 Fast CLO. Yeah, just go with that and then make it part of your ad that this is silent. Or 1800 Quick Loan would be 1800 KWI kikoa. Yes, I would remember that. I feel like we should get an 800 number now. I had the same thought, actually. Did you really? Yeah. What do we do with it? 800 podcast is actually perfect. What do we do with it? I don't know. We could leave messages on it once in a while. Or secret instructions. We could do a 900 number. Yeah. Make some cash and we'll talk about that right after this. So, Chuck, you're right, a 900 number makes way more sense because we could be rolling in it if it were 1990. Yeah. I think younger listeners might not fully appreciate the fact that there was a point in time. How many years did this? Less than ten, even. Yeah. It was the heyday was basically 87 to I think about 93. 90. So people figured out what a rip off it was. Yeah, about six years. There was a time, a six year period in this country where you could set up a 900 number. It could be anything. It was basically an audio message of some kind. And people would pay a ton of money to call in to hear about the Kiss Army, or to hear about Tiffany the singer, or Grandpa Munster, or the Psychic Hotline, or the Ford sexy roommates like you name it. Yeah, a lot of them, especially were what would they call them? Phone sex. Phone sex, that's right. But a lot of them weren't. No. There was this idea that so early on a lot of them were and then it spread out into more and more ideas, but it was stuck. It was kind of saddled with that idea that it was all just phone sex lines. Unfairly, but that was the reputation it had. But yeah, you could do anything. And the whole thing started very simply and primitively, I believe, with it wasn't the first one. NASA wasn't the first one, but NASA had one of the first successful ones, which I just love. Yes, 82. It was called Dial a Shuttle. And at 1900 909 NASA, you could listen to conversations between ground control and the astronauts on the space shuttle, which is a huge frequent. There was like a million people called in 1982 alone, and every single one of those people were paying, from what I saw, a minimum of $2 a minute. When you call the 900 number, $2 was the base that I think your phone company was going to charge for the service. And then whatever extra beyond $2 it was, was what the entrepreneur, the 900 number information provider, was charging. So if you pay 295 a minute for every minute of content that you sat there and listened to on your phone, you were paying that person who is just some schmo who had somebody record some stuff for a 900 number. They were getting a dollar a minute for every single person that called in. And very quickly, from when this started in 1987, when at and T started a program that said you can provide your own content and get your own 900 number, it made a lot of people very rich, like, very quickly. Yeah, it was a way to make a lot of dough fast, I think. There was this one meeting, I was about to call it a famous meeting. It wasn't famous at all. It was Appalachian. Yeah. It was this meeting that they referenced in this article, at least. Where did you get this? Price? Nomics, man. God bless them. This is by Sean Raviv. Yeah, it was a good article. It's very cool. The rise and fall of the 900 number. But this was a telecom strategist named Bruce Kushnick who helped Sprint start their own 900 service in the late eighty s. And he said that he. Remembers a meeting where they had 25 or so of the first developers that did this in a room and said, Raise your hand if you're a millionaire. And like, almost everyone raise their hand. And they had to know that it was a short window, I think, which is probably why they weren't just like, yeah, I'll just do this one number. They were like, It's a gold mine out there for probably five years. Yeah. And if you were, like, a celebrity, like Hulk Hogan or really any WWF wrestler, glow Wrestler or New Kids on the Block or DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, some guy would come up to you and say, hey, I've got this business idea for you, and we're going to charge 395 and we're going to split a dollar 95. All you have to do is read this five minute script once a week or once every two weeks or something like that, and then that's it. We're going to split this money. And it made a bunch of money. It was really popular for a very brief time. And the reason why it was popular was because it was, as Sean Ravi puts it, it was like a proto Internet, except rather than everything being free and then advertising driven, where you get the content free, but you're subjected to ads. Sounds vaguely familiar. For some reason. You paid for this free content. Yeah, but it had such a range. Like, you were talking about everything from DJ Jazzy Jeff doing something to vote for Miss America or some legitimate things. And I don't know how good or legit it was, but you can get tax help or insurance advice or whatever. Right. Or tech support to play Wheel of Fortune, like interactive Wheel of Fortune or farm commodity prices. It was just all over the map. People realized we can get information to people and charge a lot of money for it. And especially if there are children involved, you can basically trick them into running up a huge bill that their parents are going to have to pay. Yeah, man. That Santa one. Do you remember that? I remember, man, totally. So there was the Santa line. Chuck, you got to tell them about the Santa line. Well, the Santa why? Because I called it. Yeah. This was a Santa Claus hotline that asked kids to hold up their phone to the screen. And when they did that, there was a tone, a program tone that automatically dialed the number that I guess your phone would hear. And then all of a sudden, this kid was hooked up to a Santa Claus hotline where it was probably I mean, what do you think it was probably just some Santa Claus saying that he was working very hard on everyone's gifts to be a good boy. Yeah, for minutes and minutes and minutes for 295 or more a minute. So the kid didn't even dial the number. Like the ad dialed it for them with the tones. Yeah. And one of the big fraudulent things about a lot of these and some of them are legit they might have been dumb, but they weren't, like, literally ripping you off by causing these long delays. Right. But a lot of them would do these long delays. And I don't know about the Santa one, but I could totally see what's your name, son? Well, let me see what I've got for you. And then for the next ten minutes well, it's not this one. Let me look in this other room over here. Could you spell your name again? Yeah. And, like, a kid would sit there for 30 minutes waiting to see what Santa had for him. Yeah, it was pretty perennial, the headlines or articles about some family that got hit with, like, a $10,000 phone bill or something like that. There was one girl who famously called the two Cory's hotline 216 Times. Yeah, that commercials on YouTube. Yeah. Actually, there's a BuzzFeed article called 30 of the Weirdest 900 Numbers from the they mentioned one that I hadn't heard of before that I'm not convinced isn't Internet meme, like, a fake Internet meme? But is the crying number where this ad mentions it's like, why are all these people crying? To find out, call this number. And these people are having this kind of cathartic sobbing cry on the phone. And it looks real, but it's so tantalizingly wrong that it isn't quite 90s. It's way more of the 21st century, and, like, the idea of it interesting than that. So I'm not sure it's real. I couldn't find anything about it either, other than there's this ad that exists. There was nobody on the Internet who's like, I called this, and yes, this is totally real. Yeah, the price and I'm excellent. Another one. And I think these were pretty common, too. And this is just the worst when you're preying on someone that needs work. When you would call a 900 number for driver jobs at $20 a call, but what they didn't tell you was there was only, like, two or three positions. So they get all these people calling in at $20 a pop for the same three positions. Right. Just so mean. There was also a hotline that you could call a 900 number that charge you $25 to learn how to set up your own $900 hotline. Yeah, that would not make sense. That one might have paid off. And then the phone sex, that was a big, big thing, and I never called any of those. But in the Robert Altman movie Shortcuts Jennifer, jason Lee was a phone sex operator. Yeah, that's right. There's some very funny scenes of her, like, with a baby in one arm and a cigarette and doing her ironing and house cleaning while she was talking dirty. I was trying to remember what movie it was. It was Shortcuts. I was thinking isn't punch drunk love? Yeah, there's a sex line subplot in that one, too. Who's the love interest in that? In Punch Trunk love. The love interest is Emily Watson. Okay. Yeah. She was the one who's doing the phone text line, and then Philip Seymour Hoffman was, like, the owner of it. No, I don't think she worked for him. Philip Seymour Hoffman was he was blackmailing Adam Sandler. That's why I finally saw uncut gems. Man Jesus. Oh, yeah. Did you like it or hate it? I hated it. Did you really? I hated it more than I've hated any movie in a while. It's possible those brothers listen to this, and I know clearly they worked very hard on it and they must be very proud of it, but I hate that movie. Oh, man. It was my favorite movie of the year. You're crazy. I'm not crazy. It's a lot of people's favorite movie. Wow. No, I'm just saying, Chuck, I'm surprised that you think it was the I loved it. Okay, wow. Well, we disagree on that one. No, I mean, it's a divisive movie. I haven't met many people we've done a lot of stuff on that on Movie Crush, and I haven't talked to many people who are like, I don't know, I could take or leave it. It was all right. Most people are like, I loved it. And I loved that those guys bring that kind of intensity and stress to a film. And some people are just like it was almost exclusively the ending for me. The very, very end. Yeah. Oh, I love the ending. No, you don't get to do that. That's against all the rules, man. Oh, gosh. I thought it was so great. And I liked good time. I thought that was a cool movie. Yeah, but no. Good time, followed the rules. This one didn't follow the rules. And I hate that movie for it. I loved it. Well, since we started talking about movies, I guess that's it for toll free and 900 numbers. Yeah, I don't have anything else. It's pretty. Think about that. They're both sort of relics, but 800 numbers survived and 900 numbers. Are there any anymore? I don't know. We're going to find out. If there are, we might set one up. Let's look into all right. Okay. Nine, seven, six evil. So ours could go to charity or something. Sure. Half of it. So I guess then what? Chuck is time for listener mail. It is. This is Wasp related. The band. Oh, if only. Hey, Josh, chuck and Jerry or whoever is producing that's. What it's come to? I've been a listener for seven or eight years, ever since I got an internship that put me in a car 4 hours a day, five days a week. Your recent story about Wasp reminds me of my own childhood experience with the Wasp. I was around six or seven. I was swinging at my neighbor's house when all of a sudden, my butt started to hurt, like, really bad. So I did what was natural. Ran home screaming for my mom. Not sure where she was, but my dad was upstairs and asked what was wrong, and I just said, My butt really hurts, and he sort of laughed, but he could tell I was in serious pain. So he told me to drop my shorts, and he gasped. He said it was really red and there was a wasp still in his underwear, still stinging me. Oh, no. I guess he killed it. I don't remember that part. Just being in the tub afterwards. And you mentioned a Wasp can sing up to ten times. We counted 13 stings on my left butt cheek. Oh, my gosh. And that is from Michael Brown in Portland, Oregon. Man, Michael, glad you made it through that one. I wonder how you feel about wasps even after our episode on it. Do you imagine being a little kid and running home with a wasp in your underwear? No, I can't imagine being a Wasp in some little kids underwear while they're running home, either. Yeah, because you know that's not going to come to a good end. You might as well tell us things and you can. I feel bath coming. Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Michael. If you want to get in touch with us, like Michael did, to let us know some horrible, traumatic thing that happened to you when you were a kid, we'd love that stuff. You can send it in an email to stuff podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of IoT I Heart Radio is how Stuff works. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
42301c86-53a3-11e8-bdec-470ffa8f1700 | A Brief Overview of Punk Rock | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/a-brief-overview-of-punk-rock | Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now. | Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now. | Tue, 27 Aug 2019 13:24:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=13, tm_min=24, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=239, tm_isdst=0) | 49991760 | 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. 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. Hello, Maine in Greater New England. Hello. We're coming to see you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would love to see you there. Yes, we'll be at the State Theater on August 30 and if you're interested, you can get tickets and information@sysklive.com. Throw some lobster at us. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. thrashcore. I'm already regretting that. There's Chuck Bryan over there. Charles w. Chuck Bryan. There's Jerry, Jerome, Roland. And like I said, I'm Josh. Mrs. W. Shannon. Hey, ho. Let's go. Exactly. I want to issue a COA off the top here to fans of punk music. Get ready to be mad at us. Yeah. Please don't beat us up, though. Yeah. Here's the thing. Punk, it's like the hip hop episode. It's not just music. It's a culture. It's a movement. And there are so many tentacles, alternative tentacles, so many subgenres. The more I started getting into it, I was like, why are we even doing this in a single episode? I had the same feeling, because it can only disappoint. But we're doing it now. There's a lot of people out there who don't know squat about punk who are going to be like, cool, I'm punk now. I get it. And the people who are punk now are going to love us for it. Well, I mean, there are certainly podcasts, I'm sure, that are dedicated to the history of punk right now. I know. And the thing is, with a big distinction here between the hip hop episode and this episode, is that the hip hop episode doesn't beat you up if you show up to their shows and you're not wearing the right thing. That's true. Punk's kind of protective of punk. Which makes sense because it's pretty punk, right? Like you can't allow for commercialization of punk or else it stops being punk. So by definition it has to be vigilantly, defended and protected. But the irony of the whole thing is when you do that, you actually strangle it from becoming anything ever and you kind of kill punk. Strangling it in the cradle, the end. Yeah. And I listen to a lot of music while researching this and there's just so many things that could possibly fall under the banner of punk and probably so many real punk fans that will fight you on any of them. If you say like the Talking Heads were punk or television was punk. Not really. But were they new wave? I don't know. Yes, the New York Dolls. I was listening to them proto punk. When you listen to them, though, they sound like sort of like dressed up rock and roll, like Rocky Horror Picture Show style. Right. But make no bones about it. The New York Dolls were a direct predecessor of Punk. Yeah, but then I started listening to things I never listened to growing up at all. Like I was in a punk kid, right, but I saw all the jackets with Minor Threat and Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys on them and I started listening to that stuff today and I liked a lot of it. Oh, it's good music. And some of it I didn't quite love. Okay, which one? I think my deal is I like vocals and vocalists and punk is not known for that. No, but stuff like that had a really unique bent and wasn't just screaming. I liked a lot more. So you like the misfits a lot. I like the misfits I like the damned. I like the circle jerks. They're great. Did not like the germs. I was never into the Germs. What about The Cramps? Didn't listen to the Cramps yet. They're like rockabilly punk. I'll probably like it. Yeah, but stuff that had a little more melody, little more vocal styling, I liked much more than The Germs. Which Derby Crash. Just screaming things that you can hardly understand. Right. Didn't love Black Flag. What? Little lies to listen to, like the Henry Rollins Black Flag. I listened to a little bit of both. Okay. But it's all very interesting to me and I did the music for sure. Yeah, it's hard not to in some way, shape or form like punk when you hear it, right, it just gets under your skin just too easily really quickly and you might not even realize your head is kind of nodding and your knees shaking or whatever. That's right. But no matter who you are, punk can get to you like that. Now, whether you're like, I'm going to start buying punk records and get a mohawk or something like that, that's maybe a couple of steps down the road. Most people probably wouldn't, but I think everybody can appreciate punk on some level, especially, to me, the greatest punk band of all time, and what I would argue would be the first punk band is the Ramones. Right. If you like melody and you like singing, but you also like punk, they've got everything you need. Yeah. And if you like songs that are 95 seconds long, sure. Well, that was a big thing. Like, punk grew out of this idea that Led Zeppelin had eleven minute songs they were playing on the radio, and guys like the Ramones were like, Shut up. So they purposely and deliberately went the opposite way and they started making songs that were sometimes less than a minute. Like one of the greatest punk songs of all time, in my opinion. Circle Jerks Wasted is like 52 seconds long. Get in, get out. It's all you need. He gets the point across. He talks about all the drugs he's on. He talks about all the stuff he does when he's on drugs, all in less than a minute. Yes, but I think you bring up an important point, is punk was a reaction. It was a reaction to the Bloated money and the Bloated song links and the arena rock cucumber in the pants, hard Rock Mckeezemo getting the ladies. Like this great quote from one of the Ramones. These are kids on the outside. And he said, Johnny Ramone in 1976. And Rolling Stone said they got together because none of them could get girls. They all found solace in each other. And he said girls always wanted to go with guys who had Corvettes, so we had nothing to do but climb on rooftops and sniff glue. The Ramones in a nutshell. But if you look at 77, like, the albums that came out in 1977, you've got the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and stuff like that, but you've got Eric Clapton, Slow Hand, Fleetwood, Max Rumors. Okay, not bad. Point of no return from Kansas. The stranger from Billy Joel. Which one was that? It was one of the great ones, but they all work great. Asia from Steely Dan. Okay. And these are like, the big chart toppers. And so punk came along and was just like, no, screw all that. To heck with you guys. Yeah, that's what it says. So it was an ethos and a spirit even as much as it was music. Yeah. And I think one of the other things I commonly ran across in researching this was that it was not just kind of like, rock sucks because it's getting so eleven minutes long per song, and there's lots of guitar solos and stuff like that, but also that it was hopelessly commercialized. And so punk was like, there's nothing inherently wrong with rock. It's just gone on this path that it's been on for so long that it's just become, I think, like you said, Bloated, let's take rock back and scrape away all the bloat and just get back to the core and the point of it originally, which was rebellion. That was what punk was built on in the late seventy s and The Ramones again, I will go to my grave saying they were officially the first punk band that ever existed. But there was music that led up to that immediately before it and even a decade or so before it that really laid the foundation in the groundwork for bands like The Ramone and the Punk. That the punk music that took off right afterward. Yeah. And you also got to remember that coming into the early 70s where some of these proto punk bands started. This was coming off of the late sixty s and the hippie movement and Nixon and Vietnam. So all that proved a failure. Yeah. And Flower power and peace and love and all that stuff. There's still crowds who sells the Nash and hanging around, but there's also a younger generation that thumb their nose or more specifically their middle finger at that whole generation. And that's what sort of birthed the punk movement and their protopunk movement at least. Right. So I saw the earliest proto punk band I could find that you could trace a direct line to is actually from Peru. Okay. They were around in 19 starting in 1964, Los Saicos. And if you go listen to a Losing Those song, it's quite clear that this was proto punk. Did it have the speed a little bit? Yes. I think that's a bit of the distinction. Like there was that whole nuggets era garage rock of the 60s. Sure, you can hear a little bit of that, but it still didn't have that chugga speed that punk rock would be known for. Yes, it did. It did. Yeah. Like another proto punk band that's more garage rock. But kind of some of the sentiments they came up with, the Chocolate Watch band sure. Anthem called I'm not like Everybody Else and it's like real kind of groovy, but if you listen to the words it's like this guy is talking about being a punk. Right, but it's long before punk. But their musically they were not punk at all. Losing US was punk. Like their sound is definitely punk and they were around the same time. Yeah. The specifics of what you're doing musically on a guitar with punk, this is important, is the downstroke. So it's hard to talk about it without showing you. But if you're playing like an Eric Clapton rhythm part, it's like you're stroking down and up in if you're playing punk, you're just going down. That nice. That's a really great impression. And The Ramones made a career out of two or three chords, played fast, playing that same rhythm and downstroke over and over and over like I'm convinced you just did a two second snippet of a Misfit song. I could hear it like plain as day. It's great though. I was listening to stuff today I was like, Man, I really like a lot of this, and I missed out, so I see myself diving into it again, or diving in for the first time, rather. You totally should. I mean, I know about The Clash and The Ramones and stuff like that, for sure. But as, you know, a whole world, there is a whole world. And then the thing about punk is the more like you find, oh, I like this band. And then it turns out this guy was used to be in this other band. Yeah. They're from the same scene as this other band. It just keeps going and going and going. Yeah, because one of the three lines of punk is that anybody could be in a punk band. It was super Democratized, and the DIY ethos was basically the foundation of punk music. All right, well, let's take a break. Okay. We'll go back in time a little bit and talk about New York and London, and then we'll get to that. What I think is kind of the coolest part of this whole thing is that DIY aesthetic. Okay. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so I mentioned London and New York. I sourced this from a bunch of articles. I can't remember if this was the Pitchfork one or not, but the headline of this part is the Tale of Two Cities, new York and London. But La. Would come along a bit later with its own scene. And also, London gets mentioned here at the expense of Manchester, which I would say is like, that's ground zero next to New York. Right. Also ground zero, which doesn't get nearly enough press, is Australia. Oh, yeah. These things were going on in parallel all over the world. That's really interesting to think this stuff is happening almost independently of one another. It was. Because it's not like someone in australia heard someone on the Internet in 1974. Right. But there were a couple of bands, one called Cheap Nasties on the Western, I think, in Perth, and then the Saints, probably the biggest punk band to come out of Australia. This is at the same time that CBGB and The Stooges were, like, getting big. It's crazy. Yeah. So The Stooges would technically qualify as protopunk, too. Right. But they came from Michigan, along with MC Five. Right. And Death is an even earlier proto punk band than The Stooches. That documentary is great. Actually, I haven't seen that one. Yeah, there's one on Death. It's just called, like, a band called Death, right? Yeah. They're amazing. Yeah. And they were, I think, three African American brothers from Detroit just killing it in 1971 form, like, a punk band. Yes. And this is before the Stooges. I think this is before MC. Five before bad brains. That's for sure. For sure. So all of these bands are starting to kind of lay the groundwork and then it's almost like it just kind of ignites, like we're saying, in different parts of the world virtually at the same time. Which I just find endlessly fascinating. Yeah. And I think that's what really lends a lot of credence to the fact that it was a movement, it was a feeling people were rebelling against more than anything, which can happen parallel in different parts of the country and world. If there's anything that can bring the whole world together, it's disdain for hippies. They really bring that out in everybody. Did you see the Tarantino movie yet? Once upon a time, yes. There's a lot of anti hippies. It was pretty funny. Yeah, a little. Some of them are beaten to death, literally. Well, I just mean all the DiCaprio stuff was really funny. How did the hippies but Tarantino really pointed out the Manson family has been celebrated in romanticized, at least in some weird ways. Yeah. And they should not be. And this is why I think he did a really good job of doing that. So sorry. We're talking about the Stooges and MCfive in Michigan. In New York City is where things really crystallized with the club Cvgb, owned by Hilly. Crystal. Crystal. No, this is Crystal. Is it Crystal? I think so. Like Billy Crystal. Right, by Hilly. And originally that stands for country, bluegrass and blues. And that was what it was supposed to be when it opened in 1973. Yeah. But then in about two years, the Ramones started playing there. Talking Head started playing there in 1975. Blondie television, I think. Television. Television. I'm okay with them. I don't love them. I don't hate them. But they were essential to that scene happening, for sure. And a lot of people kind of overlooked them, I think. It's like one of the foundation bands for punk. Yes. Which is, like I mentioned earlier, it's such different kinds of music. I love talking heads and television and blondie and the go GOs. And they were all in that early scene. But I don't think that's anything like the Misfits of the Damned or the Ramones. No. But the Misfits and the Ramones both started their careers at CBGB. Yeah. So it was like the place where punk began in the United States. Yes, but also at Max's Kansas City. In New York legendary club. This is where, like, Patty Smith is hanging out, the Velvet Underground is hanging out again. They're not punk at all, but they were in that scene. Right. And one thing that we're kind of not really mentioning that is a common thread to all these bands. Not necessarily music, but heroin was a huge thread. They shared their deep love of heroin in common and that definitely bound them together at CBGB. For sure. And that was a huge factor on the early punk scene, was heroin. That's right. If you remember, back just a few years ago for OxyContin, turned everybody into junkies in the world. Heroin was not a big drug at all. And back then especially, it was like you were a total burnout if you were doing heroin. Like, it was not done. So the fact that these people were like, shooting heroin in the clubs, that was another kind of badge that they took on that separated them from everybody else. Even their preference of drugs was super hardcore. Yeah, for sure. Another interesting thing happened early on in 1977, when these two scenes sort of exported one of their early big bands to play in the other city. In 1977, the damned played in the United States. And less than a year before that, the Ramones had gone to the UK to play shows in London. And that was a big deal because all of a sudden, you had these two different scenes swapping bands. Of course, it wasn't anything they planned, but they got a taste of New York City and London with The Ramones in a big, big way. Right. And the same can be said in New York City with the Dams. Very British. And then a month before The Ramones played in London in Manchester on June 4, 1976, the Six Pistols had their first show. And a lot of people point to this as this is when UK punk happened, right? It was this one show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, which is like a hall. It might as well be a VFW, basically. And that's where the Sex Pistols have their first show. But some of the people who were there were so influential, including a 17 year old Morrissey who went to cover the thing for New Music Express, that it just spread out like a germ. It was the single point that UK punk spread out from. And this was June of 1976, and within six months, the major record labels were lining up to sign any and every punk act they could get their hands on six months. So not only did it spread and grow in parallel around the world at the same time when it hit the scene, it's hard to overstate how quickly it just blew up. Like, just from nothing to it in six months. Yeah. If there's one thing I don't know about the music industry today, but previous to digital content, the music industry was always there waiting to commodify the next big thing. Yeah. And they did it to punk big time. Yeah. So let's talk about this DIY thing for a little bit. It was really cool, this article about these DIY origins in punk music. What happened was when punk started coming around in the mid nineteen s, seventy s, this coincided with a big shift in equipment and recording gear and modernizing recording gear among the big labels. Yeah, sure. And so all of a sudden there was all of these rooms and this gear that you could either rent cheap or buy cheap. Yeah. They're old stuff that they didn't need anymore. Yeah. And so the punk came along and started using it. And the very first punk labels were self started, miles Copeland started Step Forward, bob Lass started Fast Product, and of course, very famously, Tony Wilson started Factory Records. Yes, dude. Which, by the way, see 24 Hours Party people if you never have everybody. It's amazing. I see that again. I saw it once when it came out. Yeah, it's a good movie, but it follows this progression of punk into new wave, into the 80s. It just does it in a spectacularly great way because it's Steve Coogan who's great at everything. So good. But people trace the punk on record or on recorded tape, rather right to the very first single, they claim. Very first punk single, November 76, the Dams New Rose, which I thought that was weird because the Ramones released their album before then, but maybe because the Ramones were on a label when they released their album, they're saying, like, this is the first DIY. Maybe. When was the Ramone's first album? I think like the full year before 75. I'm pretty sure. If not at least 76 then, but I'm pretty sure 75. Well, the Buzzcocks put out an EP and I listened to a lot of that today. I enjoyed that. Yes. Spiral Scratch was this EP was apparently the first British Homemade record and that was a really big deal. This is a 1977 they sold out a thousand copies that they printed, then they went on to sell another 16,000. And the influence on Spiral Scratch really spread out and told everyone because they printed it was very cool. They printed on the little record jacket, like how much it cost, how they produced it and what the money was all about for \u00a3153, basically saying, go do this right and here's how to do it. Yeah. That kind of set the tone for other records like other punk bands released their own records also included instructions on the sleeve that the record came in and the whole DIY record release thing that the Buzzcox kicked off. Other people started to find other ways to kind of make it so punk could exist outside of the influence of the record companies. Like, people would release records in Ziploc baggies. That was the record sleeve that your record came in. People loved it. You don't need this expensive sleeve for the thing to come in. Like, you can just pop it in a Ziploc bag and sell it. It's very punk. It's super punk. And then also, if you can form a band, it was put like this. Like the Sex Pistol showed that anybody could be in a punk band. Yeah, you didn't even need to be very talented, right? You didn't even need to know how to play an instrument. And you could be in a punk band. And the Buzzcox came along and showed that anybody could press a record. But there's still one very essential ingredient missing and that was distribution. And like you said, mail order made up for a lot of the Buzzcox EP sales. But they realized that there were more people out there who wanted the stuff but didn't have a way to get to it. So what was called the Cartel was formed which is a group of independent record stores around the UK that would basically serve as a distribution network for these DIY punk records. It's so cool. It is. Not only that, but zines were very important early on and really kind of a lot of music genres. Zines were really big, which are these fanmade magazines. Yeah. Maybe with, like, photocopy. Not even photocopy, like mimeograph stuff. Yeah. And you would just print out your Zen. And some of these zines got to be pretty big. And they would attach distribution to these zines sometimes and sneak 45. Not sneaking, but pack of 45 in the Zen. And that's how you could release your stuff. And it was just this. Again, it sounds so trite to say very punk rock attitude, but that's exactly what it was. The way they were doing things was all under the radar, all on their own. And that changed pretty quickly. It did it's because the big players came in, they smelled money, they smelled something new, the next big thing. And they started signing everybody they could, left and right. And these punks were going like, no, Bollocks, I don't want your money. They're like, what if we pay you in heroin? They said, oh, okay. Yeah. Now you put it that way, you could buy drugs with money, right? So again, within six months of what most people point to as the source of UK punk, that one specific show by the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols were so new, sid Vicious wasn't even in the band. He was still Susie and the Banshee's drummer. So this is how young this stuff was. Within six months, they were signed on to a major record label. The Clash was signed on to a major record label. The fall, the jam, the stranglers. Everybody got signed in this feeding frenzy where everyone who had a punk band could get a record deal with a major label. Six months after the Sex Pistols had their first show. Yeah, Generation X with a young Billy Idol, which I did ever do. That dancing with myself was originally a Generation X song. I didn't know that either. They released it, then he rereleased it as a solo artist, like, a year later. Wow. And it became a much bigger hit. Sure, they were like, thanks a lot, but yeah, text Pistols went with EMI, The Stranglers at UA, the Clash signed to CBS, the Jam went to Polydore. Generation X and stiff little fingers went to Chrysalis and even the buzzcocks. They were very quick to hop on that train, too, with United Artists, which actually, that's not too bad. You could have signed with worse because United Artists was started by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and DW Griffith so that artists could have more control and ownership over their work. Yeah, I mean, it was a movie company and I guess they dabbled in records. So one of three things happened, basically, to the little DIY small label movement. You either got pilfered they use one example in Belfast, the Good Vibrations label. Four of its first six bands were stolen away or signed away, I guess. So you either got pilfered and then just shut down and gave up, or you grew and got bigger to where you were like Rough Trade and Factory Records. Those all became bigger independent labels. Yeah, rough Trade is still around, I checked. They have state of the art cutting edge plans, which is great, or they stayed small and just kept going. Right. They went punk and went back underground. Yeah. They didn't all go away. They didn't all say, we're all getting pilfered, so we're just going to shut down. They would just find more underground bands and go deeper and deeper and deeper. But then something happened in February of 1979 that a lot of people point to, just as they point to that first Sex Pistol show as the beginning of punk in the UK. They point to the death of Sid Vicious as the end of punk, at least the first wave of punk. His death from a heroin overdose is widely pointed to as the death of punk. Which is a really dumb thing to say because punk very clearly went on. But I think people are saying, sorry, I guess it's not entirely dumb now that I say it out loud, but what people are saying is that punk transformed into something else and that punk, really, as it originally existed, was only around for about two, three years, maybe four or five of you, I'm sure. There are some people at a bar right now that are just saying that over and over again. Right. Punk only lasted three years. Okay, well, I agree with you, drunk person in this sense. But it's not like punk went away. It transformed and became something else. And so what it transitioned into is commonly called hardcore. Hardcore punk, where stuff just got faster, louder, a little angrier, and it just went in a different direction. Predominantly in the United States. Yeah, there were a couple of scenes. The La. Scene had already sort of been born by the late 70s, if you haven't seen it. The great documentary from Penelope Spirits, the Decline of Western Civilization, released in 81, but filmed over, I think, 78, 79, 80 maybe, covered the La. Scene. And that's the Germs. And I think Blondie and the Go guys and stuff like that. Blonde jerks have like, one of New York the best sets ever in The Decline of Western Civilization. Yes, very good. And the Germs, too. That's where I was watching some of that today. And that's when I knew I didn't like the germs. Right. But Pat Smear, of course. The Foo Fighters. He was in the Germs. He likes money. And also, if you're like who's? Penelope Spirits. You may be familiar with her work if you've seen the movie Wayne's World. That's right. Or the movie Black Sheep. The Chris Farley David Spade movie. Or the decline of Western civilization. I think she'd ended up doing like three or four of those. Right? At least three, because I know she did one metal. The second one was metal, which is good, too. Those are the only two I saw. Did you ever see that documentary about heavy metal? Parking lot? Yes. Where everybody is smoking PCP at a Judas Priest concert. Yeah, it's pretty great. Did you know early 80s metalhead smoked PCP? No, I didn't until that documentary. It was quite a surprise. I was scared of all those people. Well, they're kind of scary because they were all on PCP. Especially when you're like eight or ten. They're very scary. So American. We're talking about the punk bands releasing their own albums. This started happening on the west coast. They started forming their own labels, even to release their albums and sign other, like, bands, like SST. Very famous punk label was started from the original guy from Black Flag, right? Yes. What's his name? Greg. G-I-N-N either Gin or gin gigan. I'm sorry, punkers. I know you're mad at me right now, but I don't know this. Yeah, I think he was like the founder of Black Flag. Okay. Jello biafra. Of course. Dead Kennedys. Right. He formed alternative tentacles with East Bay ray. Yeah, in 1979. And 79 was a big year because that's the same year that a band called Bad Brains came out in Washington, DC. Which I didn't love. Did you see the Dave Gold documentary series? No. I can't remember what it was called, but he did this, like, ten part documentary series where he would do the music of a different city, and it was really good, except for the last 15 minutes of it. He would get the Foo Fighters together in a studio and they would play, like, some of those songs. And if you're really into the Foo Fighters, I imagine you loved it all. Not into the Foo Fighters, so I would just stop it there. But he does Seattle. But what got me on this was one of the most interesting episodes was the Washington DC episode. Sure. Because I didn't know it was such a hardcore scene. When people talk about hardcore, they're like, well, DC is kind of the cradle of it. And Bad Brains, which my friend Jason Jenkins in college introduced me to. And that's when it was, like, really fast, had a little metal edge. But Bad Brains was also started out as, like, jazz fusion and had reggae roots. Also African American guys. Four of them. Yeah. And really good stuff. Yeah. So you've got, at the same time, La and DC as the new seats of punk music in the US. Yes. Punk hardcore. And it's going, like, way more hardcore, way more masculine, way more macho than the UK went. The UK went a different route. They went way more political, way more like Class Struggle. And there's definitely lots of political threads that American punk music went through. But I think the UK went to it earlier. Like, Crass is a great punk band from the UK. Yeah. They're kind of like they're just great. Check them out. But they were doing anarchy stuff in the 70s. Yeah. The Clash certainly is notable for their political statements. Very political. And then you've got, like, the six Sex Pistols talking about anarchy in the UK. They didn't really mean it. They were just saying something. Right. But there were a lot of politically motivated bands in the UK in the early 70s that didn't pick up until later in the 80s in the US. Yeah, because Ramon certainly weren't political. They were not political. But the other thing, the other differentiation I saw between UK and US punk was that UK punk didn't take itself quite as seriously as the US. Started to in the late seventies, early eighty s. And that this guy I read. I think a Guardian article traced it back to a love of glam rock. That glam rock really led to punk, especially in the UK. And if you're into glam rock, you just can't quite take anything fully seriously, including punk music. And the US. Even though punk came out of the New York Dolls in part, which was definitely glam rock, it just didn't have that through thread. So it did get taken way more seriously. And that was a big part of hardcore and what differentiated it from the earlier punk taking things really seriously and it being a little more political than ever before and angsty against things like the boredom of suburban life. Yeah. I think punk is just as important for things that it inspired that happened afterward as it was the actual movement itself. Because you can point to stuff in Minneapolis like Husky Do or bands like The Minutemen, who I loved, and they had a very punk sound to them and maybe are even considered punk. Probably post punk. Post punk. I think many men are considered punk, but who scored you would definitely be postponed post punk, for sure. And stuff like Sonic Youth, which I would call them post punk, too. Postpunk straddling into the early Grunge, though, too. Well, yeah, it's easy sometimes to trace that through line and sometimes it's really difficult. But we want to we want to be able to say, like, I know it went from Bad Brains to Huskyou to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, Four Degrees of Nirvana and Green Days, and they're going, what about us? Right. Exactly. But you can't but at the same time, you also can't discount the effects that these later bands got from the are listening to the earlier bands that came before him. There's undoubtedly an influence, just not quite as crisp and clean as we like to make it. Yeah. And it's even argued in one of these articles that the Birth of Hardcore came about because, like, you kind of teased earlier on because punk flouts the rules and norms of rock and roll, then they form their own rules and norms. Right. And we're really pretty serious about it. And so hardcore came along because they didn't quite fit in with the true punk aesthetic. Right. They took punk even further because punk was being commodified and commercialized otherwise. That's right. Which would make it kind of easier to break from, especially if you just go slightly angrier and faster and louder. Right. But you also can look at stuff like talking about tracing the through line if you want to think about early Manchester and stuff like Joy Division that goes to New Order, that goes to Orchestral Maneuvers in The Dark and Simple Minds and all of a sudden it's a John Hughes soundtrack. Sure. And then it's like, what is punk about anything? And that like sort of softer new Wave. But at the same time you can also say, well, New Order was just straight up new wave, but then New Wave caught on and got commercialized and commodified and then you end up having a John Hughes soundtrack because the record label got a hold of the new wave bank. Right. So that's kind of like the story with music as somebody comes up with something raw and organic and rebellious. Everybody loves it, the big guys come along, get their hands on it, co opt it, commodify it, commercialize it, ruin it, and then some thread kind of jumps off of that and it starts something else. And the whole thing always it just continues on and continues on, except until the mid 2000s when music died forever and ever and ever. All right, well, let's take another break here, and we'll talk a little bit about the end of punk. But before that, maybe we'll hit on the fashion of punk. Oh, boy. 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 fourweek 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. Okay, Chuck, we're talking fashion of punk. Yeah. Every genre has its own look. I cannot remember what it had to have been the safety pin short stuff where we talked about Richard Hall being considered the guy who started the safety pin as a fashion statement. I think so. Pretty sure. But it was Richard Hall. He was the guitarist for television. Yeah. And he was, like, the first guy with the mohawk, like the Elmer's glue kind of mohawk and safety pins holding his shirt together, which is I mean, that's quintessential punk. But at the same time, dressing like a Ramone is quintessential punk, too, with, like, the jeans with the knees in it. Black jeans. Doc Martins or converse low tops. Or Converse high tops. Sure. Black biker jacket. Yes. The New York dolls were very famous for wearing the jean jackets. Super, super small. The jokes in this article that they could barely fit in them. Right. They also wore super tight lycra shiny pants and stuff, too. Yeah, but they were glam. Right, but it was really those black ripped jeans, and this was a time where that wasn't, like, the cool thing to wear. If you didn't walk around with holes. Now it's become a recurring thing in fashion to have holes in your jeans being cool. Right. At the time, it was not cool. It meant that you were poor. Exactly. Man, this was like somebody in this article, I think, from Pitchfork said, dee dee Ramone had holes in the knees of his jeans, not because it was cool, but because he didn't have any money for some new jeans and those jeans just had holes in them. So that's what he wore. Now you pay like 100 or $200 for jeans that have pre ripped holes that are just right. That's a perfect example of the commoditization of punk. Yeah, for sure. In La. They have their own fashion scene going on because it's La. And they don't have harsh winters and cold, rainy weather. So they went to the thrift stores and bought things and cut them up. And that's where you never saw a shirt on a punk in the La. Scene that didn't have like, the neck cut out or the sleeves cut off. Or in the case of the Gogos, in their earlier punk days wearing literal trash bags as fashion. Very funny. And blondie too. Sure. They all had a very specific aesthetic in Los Angeles. Yeah, it's interesting that the Gogo started on the punk scene when they were, I think, to the casual music fan known very much for just sort of a bubblegum sing along pop hits that they had just lovable as all get out. As all get out. Great songs. Amberlynn and Carlyle too. Like her solo stuff is yeah, just kiss everybody. You couldn't see that. But that's what I get. But it's that whole pop punk thing which is kind of where it started to go bad. You could make the case that started in the beginning of 1977 when all those first record labels came in. It started to go bad then. But hardcore, this is my reading of this, and I'm not a punk or even music historian by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gathered from this research is that early punk got co opted and commodified by the record labels immediately. Hardcore grew out of that. Hardcore is way harder to commodify because it's much more raw, it's much less melodic, it's much more in your face and angry than the original. And it's also jealously guarded and defended by the fans. Where at the beginning of the show we're saying, please don't beat us up. Like, if you go to a hardcore show and they think you're opposer, you may get beaten up. If this is the 80s or the don't know if they still do it today. I remember feeling that threat. Oh, yeah, it was on me. But real the punks at the school, he didn't want to cross them. It was part of being a punk is like you beat somebody up to basically defend punk dump. Right. To keep it from getting commodified. Square. Get away from me. Seeing kids, like wear thrasher tshirts today and they have no idea what thrasher is. Yeah, if you did that with punk in the would get beaten up. Maybe even at school. Definitely at a punk show. And so in doing so, they were able to defend hardcore from commoditization because they kept it their own violently. Right. But at the same time, it's kind of like how a language evolves. The more people speak it and the more free and easy the rules on it are by putting these very tight restrictions on what's punk and what's not punk and who's allowed to come to a punk show, which is super ironic for punks to do, to come up with all these rules and regulations, right. They kept it from evolving. Definitely kept it underground and it's still around today, but it's the same thing over and over again because it wasn't allowed to grow and evolve, because the fans have kept it, at least in America, have kept it underground purposely, deliberately and violently. So punks kill punk. Kind of. They would argue, no, punk is still around. I go see punk shows all the time and don't come to it because you're opposer and we'll beat you up. So they're still punk. But as far as, like, you and I walking around are concerned, punk is dead as a doorknow. For now. Yeah, for now. Well, I mean, I remember when we did our UK tour, I remember seeing a group of punks in Manchester that looked like they stepped right out of 1981 with the full spiked mohawks and the leather studded leather collars and I was scared of them then. Were you? A little bit. You're like, Those are bad because they're going to try to get me to smile. I'm in town to do a podcast. Right. Well, what's funny is that fashion that you're talking about, that quintessential punk fashion, that was a commodification immediately too. The Sex Pistols manager used to be the manager of the New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren, and he owned a shop in a BDSM fashion shop with Vivian Westwood in London. And he basically used the Sex Pistols to promote the fashion he was selling at his shop to make it fashionable so he could sell more clothes. This is the manager of the first UK punk band ever. Well, and he had put them together, right? It's not like essentially the six Pistols all got together because they were mates. Like they were formed by a manager. Yes, by this guy Malcolm. They were the monkeys, kind of. They were the monkeys of punk. They were the punky. So many people are mad at us right now, for sure, but it's true. I mean, go look up your history if you're mad. Punks are going to beat us up next time we go on tour. Some 13 year old just looked down at their shirt and went, that's what the Sex Pistols are. I have no idea. Well, it's funny though, you talk about the pins and it was all homemade stuff, like, I remember it being a very I mean, I was certainly way to square, but I remember seeing the punks in my school doing stuff to their clothes during class and at lunch and thinking it was the coolest thing. Whether it was Black Sharpie doing the Dead Kennedys or the anarchy symbol. Well, the Dead Kennedys did have the coolest symbol. Right. That was pretty cool. Or just fraying their jackets or adding safety pins. It was all created out of that homemade aesthetic, right. Sort of like the music. And it appealed to me, but I was afraid of it. And now that's why I'm just now starting to listen to some of this music. Are you going to turn all punk now? Maybe. Okay. That would be one of the biggest surprises you've ever laid on me, man. But pop punk we should talk a little bit about. They call it bittersweet in this article in the sense that you could get tons of money and be super famous, but bitter because it spawned a genre that I think a lot of true punks really loathe. I think true punks like a square more than they like a Blink 182 fan indubitably and that whole scene, the Vans Warped Tour and Rancid and Offspring and Green Day and all these groups was a part of a big second wave of these kids who grew up definitely listening to that stuff and I guess feeling like they were a part of it. I'm sure Green Day really feels like they're a punk band and part of the punk movement. Whereas I remember the first time I heard Green Day thinking these are guys pretending to be a punk band. Which is a really crappy thing to say. But I mean, it's totally understandable how you would think that, but it is punk in some way, shape or form. It's punk. The stuff they're talking about is pretty punk. But punk bands don't release acoustic songs. Well, that's the first album. Okay. Dookie, right? Is what we're talking about, I guess. Was that the first one? I think so. I just remember hearing it and going like, why is that guy trying to sound British? Well, that's pretty punk, actually. Yeah, for sure. An American kid trying to sound british. Well, I guess so. Yeah. I would guess you're right, though. They're on Broadway, for God's sake. Well, yeah, there was a brief shining moment where you could have conceivably called them a punk band. Here's the thing, though, man. People like money. Yeah, but that's been a through not just in the punk scene, but it's just the music in general. Although hats off to the punk culture for keeping it at bay better than anybody ever has. Any other genre I would like to hear, I'm sure there are people listening that know of punk bands that did stick their middle finger up to the money and say, no, I can tell you one. Fugazi. Well, I love fugazi. So fugazi DC, I guess. Hardcore. Hardcore. And I think they formed discord records. If not, they're a big act on discord Records and they have done this whole DIY thing like from the get go, they've issued the major labels, as far as I know, their whole career. And they were extremely successful despite that. Yeah. I saw them in Athens once. Oh, yeah? What do you think? That was great. I think they got together in the 87 ish, and this was more like 92. Okay. Well, they were still huge and probably bigger. That was when they were at their height, I would guess is 90 degrees. Yeah. I mean, technically, I don't know about how it performed on the literal charts, but they had that one song that had a big MTV hit, waiting Room. Yeah, it's a good song. It's a really good song. Yeah. So I just want to give some shouts out. Anybody who's like, this is really interesting. I want to know more. Go. Listen to the cramps. I would recommend the cramps. Listen to Crass. Go watch the decline of western civilization. Definitely check out the circle jerks. Who else? Chuck. I'm going to say for my picks, bad Brains and the Damned. Okay. For sure. I'm going to toss Gigi Allen out there, although he kind of transcends everything. Just punk. And you're sending me some. I didn't catch any of the names, but she said there's a big punk scene in Japan still. And that was another thing, too. Somebody said punk's not dying. It's just coming up in other places. Right. Like in Islamic countries. There's a big punk movement. I saw Mexico has got a big one right now. Apparently Japan has it. And then there's the whole is good riot girl feminist punk. Man, if that's not punk, I don't know why. The eastern block. Punk. Riot girls. Right? I love it. Yeah. So punk is still alive. Punk not dead. Punk's not dead. Punk's not dead. Okay. If you want to know more about punk music, go listen to that stuff we just told you to go listen to. And since I said that's, time for Listening mail. If you want to learn more about punk music, you can probably go to literally any other place other than this episode and learn more about punk music. If you want to know more about punk music, go to your local library and read up. It's fundamental. All right, guys, I'm going to call this poop no poop on that short stuff about the guy who didn't eat for a year. We talked about the fact that he didn't poop that much, and she said this is the norm for people with a colostomy or ileostomy. I had a temporary ileostomy, an ostomy connected to the ilium instead of the colon. Due to crohn's complications. My colon was completely separate from the rest of my digestive system during this time and basically sat dormant while food exited into an ostomy pouch. No food means no poop, but the body still produces the normal gut stuff like mucus and cells and needs to evacuate on occasion, which I think that's what we talked about. For people with years of bowel issues such as pain and running to the bathroom every 30 minutes, this can be a literal lifesaver. Anyway, my colon is currently now reattached to the rest of my intestine, and my crohn's is in remission. I had no idea. So this person had a colostomy and it was reversed? Yes. I had no idea they could do that. Yeah. We should do something on crohn's. Sure. And just tie all the stuff together. Okay. I just wanted to give you a little perspective on the topic. Actually, ostomy's would be an interesting topic for you to tackle. For sure. Thanks for doing the best podcast around. According to my podcast app, I've listened to over 400 episodes. Yikes. Well, Sonya, in Canada, you have another, what, 700 and 5800. What are we up to now? What number of episodes? 850. We're up to, like, 1200. Well, she's listening to 400. Okay. So just do a little math. Okay, hold on. I can do this. So another like, 800 or so? Yeah, I would say so. All right, well, you're a third of the way there. Keep at it. Yeah, roughly. Yeah, you got it. A third. You guys should have just seen Chuck, like, look up into the air from the side of the she said, we'd love to see you come out to the prairie provinces. I know in Canada we do Toronto and Vancouver, but there's a lot of country in the middle there that we should probably go to at some point. In the US, we call them flyover states. In Canada, they call it prairie country. Right. Well, if you want to get in touch with this, like did sonya, thanks again, Sonia. You can go on to Stuffyoushouldnow.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show, summer School's Out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good, it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena 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." | |
How Health Care in the United States Works Right Now | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-health-care-in-the-united-states-works-right-n | The United States is abuzz with talk of health care reform, but why does the system need repairs in the first place? Josh and Chuck explore how the current American health care system works (and doesn't) in this episode, the first in a four-part series. | The United States is abuzz with talk of health care reform, but why does the system need repairs in the first place? Josh and Chuck explore how the current American health care system works (and doesn't) in this episode, the first in a four-part series. | Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:52:22 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=18, tm_min=52, tm_sec=22, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=258, tm_isdst=0) | 29847405 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is my Mr. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you doing, Chuck? Well, good. Well, that's a good word. It is for this show. This is stuff you should know. And actually, this is a special edition of Stuff You Should Know indeed. Part one of a four part series. Yes. Should I break it? Healthcare reform. Everyone seems to be really confused about what lies ahead in the United States and our health care system. It's so confusing, Chuck, that I'm not even certain if healthcare is spelled as one word or two. I don't even know. That's pretty much the level that we're at in understanding no idea of health care, let alone healthcare reform. Right. So we're trying to figure this out. And along with you guys, maybe you can learn something here. Yeah. So I guess let's kick it off. Let's get this ball rolling. Yeah. We're not going to talk about future plans. We're going to talk about how it is today. Yeah. Well, in this podcast right. In this edition, part one of four. Part one of four? Yeah. It's about the current health care system in the United States. Chuck, have you ever gone without health insurance? Oh, yeah. How long? Oh, man. I seem to think that after my parents I think this is the familiar story for everyone. Sure. Some time around after college, until I got my first real job, which was at least seven or eight years later. Yeah, I think I did a decade. Same story. And the parents are always on you like, oh, you know, if you had an accident. And I was like, I'm invincible. Yes, exactly. And luckily, it worked out. Same here. I don't think it works out quite so well for everybody, but sadly, you and I are lead charmed lives. I guess we'll get to the uninsured soon enough. So, Chuck, let's go back to the beginning. 1920s in Texas. A guy named Justin Kimball founded a company named Blue Cross. Still around today, as I understand. We understand because they have a floor right below us, I believe. That's right. That's where I've heard that name before. We share building. So he started an insurance program plan where women contributed. I think teachers specifically contributed $0.50 out of every paycheck toward their eventual maternity needs. Right. So when they went to the hospital to have a baby, they were already prepaid. It's not really insurance prepaid plan. Great idea. But there was something that came out of it that really gave birth to the insurance industry in the US. If you'll forgive the metaphor. Sure. Not all of these teachers had kids, so you could actually make money selling premiums, selling policies to people, because not everybody's going to get cancer. Right. And that's how the whole system still works today. It's a gamble. Ned Flanders once said on the Simpsons Actually, it wasn't Ned. Maud Flanders was explaining Ned's position that they don't have any kind of insurance because Ned considers it a form of gambling. And it really is. On one side, you, the insured, are betting that at some point in time, some injury or illness is going to befall you. That's going to cost more to treat than you've put in monthly payments toward your policy. I love it. It is total gambling. The insurance company, on the other hand, is betting that you will be hit by a bus and die immediately. Something along those lines where you're not going to need any kind of care. Right. Or that you just lead a healthy life and nothing happens to you, which is clearly not going to happen. I think the hit by the bus scenario, is that the absolute best that can happen for an insurance company? Yes, but so, yeah, it's a form of gambling and you're going head to head with the insurance company and sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. Right. But for the most part, it's a pretty good system, basically speaking. Yeah. And you pay for peace of mind a lot of times, is what a lot of people say. You sound like a show. I sound like I'm selling it. Yes, exactly. I believe that was from Barton Fink. Yeah. John Goodman said that he sells peace of mind. Nice. Well, Chuck, let's fast forward a little bit. By the 1940s, companies had already begun offering employer space. Yeah. Insurance plan. Yeah. It's a great incentive to get the best and the brightest. Definitely. And actually still is because of this business, which is a sector of US. Society. Right. Obviously part of the economy, which is what I wanted to say. But business is a sector, just like population is the sector, governments, the sector, that kind of thing. Business said, we're going to take the burden of healthcare on our shoulders. Yeah. Sort of. In 1943, the IRS supported this and encouraged it with a ruling that said employers can pay for these programs, these plans for their employees out of pretax dollars, which makes the whole thing really attractive. And all of a sudden, the US. Has what amounts to a state sanctioned employer healthcare system. Right. Which still thrives today, which is good. Same pre tax dollars, same deal with IRS. The chances are good that if you have insurance in the US. You have it through an employer. Yeah. Most people have insurance through their company and their employer. Not as many people have the more expensive and harder to get individual insurance. Yeah. I think 56% get it through their employer and 30% get it through the government run program. Medicaid or Medicare. Right. Medicaid. Medicare were created in, I think, 1965 by the Johnson administration. LGJ and S chip is the other big one for children. State run like Medicaid. Medicare is for the elderly and the chronically disabled and people with kidney failure. Renal failure. Yeah. Medicaid, as I said, it's state run, is for other people with disabilities, poor, they can't afford it. And pregnant women. Right. And then s chip is for kids. Yes. And that covers uninsured children under the age of 19 whose families earn up to 36,200 per year. Look at you with the stats. I've got a lot of stats. I was going to say, I sense that that's the first of many. Right. And then actually, there was one more that I don't know if you knew about the high risk health insurance pools. And these are people that have pre existing conditions that normally would not be able to get insurance at all. And what they do is they group these people together. Same concept as an employee based deal. Those are the ones you see on little $0.99 signs on the side of the road, like need insurance kind of thing. You just get lumped together. Right. So, yeah, you just pointed out one type of insurance, which is group insurance. Most employer plans, probably all employer plans are group insurance. Yeah. And it works because it is a group. And these are good because you usually don't have to fill out the big questionnaire about your eating habits and your smoking habits. There's no physical exam. Exactly. And pretty much anybody who wants to take part can contribute and be insured. Right. Any employee, I should say, and usually their family, kids, that kind of thing. Sure. A very small portion of the US population has individual plans. And one of the reasons why is because you have to go through a rigorous screening process. It's not cheap. If you are found to have a pre existing condition, you can be denied insurance very easily, I imagine. Pretty heartbreaking. And, yeah, it's really expensive. It's an expensive proposition whether you're an employer or an individual and increasingly an employee. Right. So we'll get to that in a minute. What are some of the types of insurance plans that are out there in the US today? There's pretty much two umbrellas. Right. As far as models go. I would say so I think you're talking about the FFS, the fee for service model, and then the managed care model, which is so well, I know which under the managed care is when you hear about HMOs and PPOs and POS and those are all managed care. Yeah. I guess the main characteristic of fee for service is and this is the original model for insurance, the indemnity insurance is you pay your monthly premium and you're insured. You come down with a cold, you go to the doctor, the doctor cures you, gives you a Coke and says, Drink this and you'll be fine. Right. And smoke the cigarette. Right. And you pay the doctor, you file some paperwork, your insurance company reimburses you and you go along your merry way, continuing paying your monthly premiums again. Right. This kind of old school model like what our grandparents probably had, right. And then I think in the HMOs came about, managed care became much more popular than the FFS model. And actually there's some plans that kind of combine the two. But with managed care, with fee for service, the emphasis is on treatment. Right. With managed care, there's more emphasis on prevention, supposedly. And that's one of the big sticking points with this whole mess that we have in this country, is a lot of doctors and a lot of managed care still don't practice enough preventative care, they say. Right. So at the center of the managed care model is a primary physician who's supposed to know, you, know your family, know your history, know that you eat more donuts than you should, know that you lied on your insurance form when you said you don't smoke. Right. And is saying you're going to get diabetes, you're going to get lung cancer, somebody who knows you, who you've seen and you can trust right. To kind of guide and manage your health. Right. They're kind of a dying breed, too, sadly. Definitely. And there's a good reason why. Chuck, you read that CNN article? Yeah, that was distressing, actually. It was an editorial by Dr. Vince Harris, I believe. Yes. And he basically gave a rundown of why the primary care physician is becoming a dinosaur. Right. Yeah. It was pretty depressing, actually. So he was saying that for every several thousand dollars, he saves the healthcare industry by using his medical training to actually make diagnosis rather than really expensive screenings like treatment as opposed to procedure. He said that for every several thousand dollars he saves the industry, he makes $50, $75. I know primary care physicians are not making a lot of money. What's more, there's a lot of issues surrounding malpractice. Right. On one hand, you can say, well, the very fact that there's malpractice lawsuits out there, and they often add up to astronomical amounts of money being paid out to people who are found to have been the victim of malpractice. Right. Doctors are a little nervous about relying on their medical training to make a diagnosis when there's an MRI machine in the next room that they can just say, this is going to solve it one way or another. I'll know for a fact. And then at the very least, even if I missed it, I could say, well, the MRI manufacturer screwed up. Right. There's a lot of passing the buck because of that, supposedly. But there's another way of looking at that. Correct. Well, medical malpractice is you hear a lot about doctors saying, that's driving us out of business. We can't afford the premiums. We have too many patients we have to squeeze in patients that come in for because they're worried. I know cybercondria feeds into it. People read on the Internet, I've got reflux. I need to get endoscopy and they go in there and demand one, which I mean, really? You're right. You're a patient and you want to make sure that you have a healthy body. It's tricky business, though. It is, because what did you call it? Cyrcondria. Yeah. Excellent. It's an argument that's often used against pharmaceutical companies advertising on television. Right. You get the impression that they are educating the consumer to say, hey, here's the words you use when you talk to your doctor to get our pill. How much of an effect has that had on over prescription? I'm sure a bunch. And there's so much information out there now that's the first thing I do. I diagnose myself on the Internet all the time and I know a lot of people. Do you really? Oh yeah, man. What do you have? I got reflux, big time. You're not much of a complainer, Chuck. Shut up. No, really. I had no idea you had reflux. I got bad reflux, dude. Let's take it back to can we talk about malpractice again real quick? Because I do have a study. Please. So you hear a lot about how those costs are driving doctors out of business. And I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm just going to throw the study out. The Americans for Insurance Reform, they are a coalition made up of Consumer federation of America, ConsumerWatchdog.org, and 100 other public interest groups. They released a study this week, actually, that found that malpractice premiums are down and at the lowest they've been in 30 years. Malpractice claims are down 45% since 2000. And in states where the states have limited the consumers ability to sue for malpractice, premiums are about the same as in other states. Really? So I'm not saying they're not paying a lot and then it's not putting a dent. But they do say that malpractice claims only constitute one fifth of 1% of annual healthcare costs in the United States. So that's kind of an obsolete argument these days. Well, it may be a little overblown. I mean, of course, tell the doctor that has to pay a lot of money, but from what I read, it's not the central problem like some people say, like it needs reform, it needs to be controlled by the government. Who knows? Okay. I'm just here to report the facts, and you did an excellent job of it. Thank you. Let's go back to talking about where you get your insurance, right? Yes. We talked about employer based plans. We talked about people who get their insurance individually. Right. People who get it from the state. And then there's another group known as the uninsured. Yes. And this is where it gets really hinky. The number of the Uninsured is kind of all over the map right now. Oh, yeah. And also it's one of the central foci of the insurance or healthcare reform debate. Well, I have 45, actually, as far as August 2009, census bureau figures 45.6 million uninsured Americans. Right. If you are a person who believes that healthcare is a human right, you think that these people should be covered in some form or fashion. Right. Right. And they're really nitpicking this number because this number, the number of uninsured, is largely what a lot of the financing is going to be based on. Yeah. We're trying to project, like, a decade into the future, and if they don't get that number right, the money doesn't work out, then that's when you're really screwed. Well, sure. You were saying that not everybody is on the same page with who the uninsured or how many there are. There's a guy named Michael D. Tanner of the Cato Institute, and he pointed out that our favorite tank tank. Right. Actually, I'm more of a Brookings Institute fan. Oh, man. Cato is pretty good. I used to be all about cato. I was. I'm still am. But I like Brookings these days. You've changed. So Taylor points out that about 12 million of the 45.6 million people who are uninsured in the US. Are eligible for Medicaid or S Chip. They just haven't signed up. True. Well, maybe true. It's a really good point. Yeah. He also points out that if they ever go in for treatment, that should pop up in whatever patient data that the administrator takes in, and they'll be automatically enrolled in whatever program suits them. Right. So that takes care of 12,000,001 of the ones I don't necessarily agree with. And I think people who think that health care is a universal human right would disagree with very much is he points out that about 10 million of these people who are uninsured in America aren't Americans. Right. It depends on when you start looking these numbers. I started looking around. People are throwing all numbers around. Everybody's got a number. It's because it's hard to count and account for these people. Yeah. Generally, illegal immigrants aren't going to step forward and say, count me on your report. Right. So that's one reason. But Tanner also makes one last point, that you and I are kind of anomalies chuck, and having gone several years without insurance when we were younger men, right. About 50% of the uninsured in the US. Go six months or less without insurance. So really, this 45.6 million Americans, even if the number remains the same, who makes up this population is changing constantly. Right. It's a snapshot, basically. That's all as one person put it in one of the articles you sent me. So yeah, exactly how many uninsured people there are and who they are is kind of a big part of this debate about whether health care needs reform. Actually, let me correct myself. I haven't run across anybody who says that healthcare doesn't need reforming of you. No. Everybody agrees that there is something wrong with it, that it's broken. And the World Health Organization would probably agree with. Well, hold on. First, let's talk about some of the different arguments. There are some people who say that public health care is nothing more than just a weak part of the American welfare state. And why should my taxes pay for some other guy's health insurance when I'm paying through the nose, right? You could say that competition might ease this. Giving people vouchers to go buy their own insurance might make them a little more penny wise with how they spend their money. Really? Ultimately, what seems to be agreed upon by everybody is that the American healthcare system is too expensive for what it provides. Big time. So let's talk about this. You mentioned the World Health Organization. This was huge. And still the study was from 2000, and it remains a real piece of ammunition that's used many different ways in the debate on healthcare reform. Yeah, it was a groundbreaking study. And like you said, we are the most expensive. We spend more money on healthcare than anyone in the world. In 2008, we spent 16.6% of our GDP on healthcare. Not just government spending, but just across the board, 16.6% of the market value of the United States. And that year was spent just on healthcare. That's more than defense, buddy. I know. We were in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. If you give me a number like that, I would say in response, Josh, that of the 191 countries say study, then that probably means that we're at the top of the list. Then, for what you get for your dollar, you would think we should be, since we have the most expensive and technologically sophisticated healthcare system in the world, top ten. I would say top 20 at least. You would think where we should be. Yeah. But I'm going to give you some leeway and say top ten. Okay. What is it really? Where did we run? 37 37th in the world out of 191 countries? Yes. You know who is just above us? Costa Rica. Awesome. You know who is just below us? Who? Slovenia. Wow. Yeah. That's where the US. Ranks. Nothing against Slovenia, right? But, yeah, since we have the most expensive healthcare system in the entire world, on the planet, we should, by proxy, have the best healthcare system, is rated by the World Health Organization. You want to hear something else chilling? I do. Americans life expectancy is lower than Canada. Half of the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico and Cuba, Chile. All of Western Europe. Some of Eastern Europe israel, Jordan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Our life expectancy is lower than all of those countries. Wow. And I'm not necessarily saying that definitely means that their healthcare system is so much better, but it probably lends itself to that argument. I know. The study, or the article you're referring to, Chuck, and it references a study from the New England Journal of Medicine from about ten years ago that showed that the average black man in Harlem was less likely to reach age 65 than a man in Bangladesh. That is messed up. That's not supposed to be. No, not when you're spinning the and we're not saying because America is so much better. It's because we spend the kind of money we spend, right. Expect better results. That's one thing that a lot of people have agreed up. The other point to this is, by the way, we spent $2.4 trillion in 2008 on healthcare, right? Healthcare spending and costs continue to increase, but as someone else pointed out in 1996, our mortality rate flattened. It hasn't gotten better since then. Right. So in short, the US is not getting enough bang for its buck as far as its healthcare system. We're not getting healthier, but we're certainly spending more money. What's going on? Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons. I know one thing a lot of people point at is the aging baby boomers and out the age where they need a lot of care. In the hospitals and by doctors, there are fewer and fewer doctors and nurses, so they're not getting as good a care. And there's more. I think they just call the medical errors in the article I read because of understaffing, that's one reason what you're talking about could actually be considered symptoms. And we should probably say, just for COA, that if you put Gerry and Matt in here, you would get a totally different podcast with all the same research. Right. There are so many ways of looking at this issue that all you and I can do here, Chuck, is try to get to the central focus of it without leaning into partisan politics or anything like that. It seems to me, from what I saw come up time and time again from sources on both the left and the right, pro business, pro labor, is that the American healthcare system is too sophisticated, it's too advanced interesting. And patients have too much access to it. Too much, you could say, frivolous access to it. So the MRI scan we are talking about, right. The one demand. Right. The patient demands it because that money that goes toward your employer based insurance policy comes out of your paycheck. Yeah. Right. So right there, this is money you haven't even seen. It comes out before it hit your paycheck, direct deposited into your account. Right. Secondly, it's relatively cheap. And when you go to the doctor, you're not actually shelling out money. No. You're copay. Right. So you have no real incentive to be cheap. What was the Simpsons episode you're talking about? Do you remember the one where Homer and Lisa go into isolation tanks? Right. Which, by the way, I did recently, and it was cool. I know. And Homer's isolation tank is repossessed while he's in there. And one of the laborers who's repossessing this thing tells the other one to lift with his knees and the other guy goes, Screw it, I've got health insurance. Right? And that's kind of the attitude some people take as, I'm paying for this, I'm going to get my money's worth out of it. Exactly. So I got some heartburn. I'm going to go demand the camera down the throat instead of trying to treat it and see if not eat chocolate and red wine right before that's. The other thing that it portrays is that we aren't taking responsibility for our own health as Americans. We don't. And that's where it has to start, buddy. Definitely. And part of that is putting that focus back on prevention again rather than treatment. Because consider this. If you have an advanced disease, how much more rigorous is your treatment going to be? How many more doctor's visits does that entail? How many more scans does that MRI scans does that entail? How much more medication? Right. And don't get me started on the pharmaceutical companies. Yeah, that's a different podcast. How much more time and effort and just cost is it going to take to treat an advanced stage disease? Then it's going to be to prevent it or treat it early on, exactly like when they recommend, I think 40 or so for women to start getting your mammogram and for men to get the old, how's your father treatment from your doctor? These kinds of things. People are dead. People avoid this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you have like you said, holy cow, I've got a tumor that's in an advanced stage because I haven't taken care of myself and I haven't done the regular checkups like I need to. And they cost a lot more. So this infrastructure that we're talking about, the health system infrastructure, right. It keeps growing and growing. It costs a lot to manufacture an MRI machine, and I keep using that, but it's just such an easy example. Yes. And as a result of just not just the MRI machine, but all of these different external factors and possibly corporate greed, from 2004 to 2009, the average cost on healthcare premiums increased four times faster than the average wage in the US. I know. So all of a sudden, health care is just getting more and more and more expensive. And not just for you or me, Chuck. Our premium from 1999 to 2009, the employee contribution went from an average of that's just our contribution. This isn't including employers contributions, which is affecting their bottom line. And as healthcare costs rise, they're losing a competitive edge in the global market, in an increasingly globalized world. And all businesses have budgets. They work on budgets that also might affect the raise you might or might not get because of the budget and how much they're having to spend. I know my father in law has a small business, and he has a really small business. Like, he only has a handful of employees, but he has a health insurance program. And one of the ladies that works with him is one of these people that does not take care of herself. She has like three or four surgeries a year, and it's driving him out of business. Dude, this one lady. Yeah. And let me tell you something else, buddy. The World Health Organization estimates that between 19% and 24% of the total dollar spent on healthcare here spent on administrative costs. Well, administrative costs, yeah. And another reason that it's so expensive is there's been a big shift, I don't know if you've noticed, in for profit hospitals, as opposed to the old nonprofit model, the community model. And that's kind of helped drive up prices, too, so they say. Well, sure. Not only that, but the uninsured drive up prices. Medicare are notoriously terrible. On paying out billing to physicians, hospitals have started to use something called balance billing, where they start billing patients for procedures they didn't know they weren't covered for, and the insurance companies refusing to pay. And all of a sudden, you've got a collection agent all over you because the hospital didn't say, oh, by the way, this doctor right here you're about to see is out of your network, so you're going to have to pay for them out of pocket. We have big problems here. Yeah, no kidding. So, Chuck, how do we solve this? I have no idea. Other people do. Thank heavens for that. Well, one of those people is a man named Mr. Barack Obama. You may know him as President Obama. Sure. He's got a plan for healthcare reform. And we're going to cover that in the next installment of the podcast. Barack Obama's health care reform plan. Soup to nuts. Yes. But again, this is kind of a weighty topic, and we're going to need some help. So we're going to recruit Molly Edmunds. Right. Molly Edmunds, a stuffed mom, never told you, popular sister podcast. Right. And our healthcare writer. Well, yeah, she's been completely submerged in healthcare for the last three weeks. Health in general. She's our health writer. She is. But she's been studiously studying healthcare reform. So she's going to come in for the next few podcasts to help us sort through things. We can rely on her a little bit. And we also spoke to Dr. Michael Rosen, who is the chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic and more famously known as co author of the Owner's Manual series of books with Doctor. We got him on the phone. Yeah, he was awesome. So it's going to be like a whiz bang, super big healthcare reform podcast. And hopefully by the end, you will know as much as Molly Edmunds, which is substantial. So stay tuned for the second episode, which will be out in a week. And in the meanwhile, you can go to housetuffworks.com, type in healthcare in our handy search bar, and you're going to find a slew of really thoroughly researched and well written articles. By Molly Edmonds. And if you want to send us an email about healthcare or anything else, you can shoot that to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs 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. 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://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215462473221sysk-trolley-problem.mp3 | How Trolley Problems Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-trolley-problems-work | The trolley problem is an ethical dilemma that proposes a difficult decision about choosing whether a group of strangers lives or dies. Learn more about ethics and the nature of sacrifice in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | The trolley problem is an ethical dilemma that proposes a difficult decision about choosing whether a group of strangers lives or dies. Learn more about ethics and the nature of sacrifice in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Tue, 06 May 2008 18:25:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=18, tm_min=25, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=127, tm_isdst=0) | 5569117 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at How Stuff Workscom. And with me, as always, is my trusty editor, Chris Paulette, and his fantastic goatee. Chris, today I want to talk about how the trolley problem works. Very cool article that I wrote and you edited. So do you want to give some background on the trolley problem? What is it? Well, it's every San Francisco's worst nightmare. Imagine, if you will, there's an out of control trolley speeding down the tracks. And if nothing stops it, then it's going to go out of control. It's going to flip and kill the people on board. Five people, right. Well, that's five or 15. Hey, it could be fully loaded, who knows? But the problem is, these people are going to die unless you do something to stop it. But it's speeding trolley. What are you going to do? Until you notice that the track has a switch in it and that you could actually switch the track with this lever that you happen to be standing next to? Well, that's great, right? You're going to switch it to another track. You're going to save the lives of people in the trolley because it's going to give them a chance to slow down and stop, except there's somebody on that other track. And if you pull that switch and save the lives of all the people on the trolley, then it will kill this other man. So it's an ethical dilemma. What do you do? It is an ethical dilemma. There's a second part. What's the second part? Well, the second part is this. There is no switch. There's just one track with an out of control trolley and several people on it who are going to die unless you do something. Next to you stands a person, probably not a diminutive person. It would have to be somebody big enough to stop a trolley. But if you push them in front of the trolley onto the tracks, then you could stop the trolley by slowing it down. But obviously the trolley would run over this person and kill them. That is the door nail. So what do you do? Do you sacrifice one life for many? That is an excellent question. And it's one that's been plaguing people since it was first produced in the 60s. This philosophical problem. It shows the distinction between allowing to die, which is pulling that lever and sending the man on the auxiliary track to his death, and actually actively killing somebody, which is pushing the less than diminutive man in front of the trolley. What would you do, Chris? You personally, would you pull the lever? It's one of those situations where you never know what you're really going to do until you're actually thrust in that situation. And it's easy to say one way or the other based on I've got all the time in the world to make the decision. If I'm sitting right here, right now, I would say, yes, I would sacrifice one person's life for the people on the trolley. But there's always the option of standing there horrified and watching it all happen and then realizing afterwards that would you late. Would you push the man in front of the trolley? That is much tougher, because then I would actively be killing somebody to save the lives of someone else. I saw another article, since this has been published, that suggested there are many ethical dilemmas like this. It's funny how the study of these kinds of questions has exploded in colleges and universities. And I saw this additional one where what would happen if you had a trap door and you could drop the person to his death instead of actually pushing him on the tracks? I don't know if I could actually kill somebody to save the lives of someone else. If it was an act of saving a group of people and it was a passive thing, it'd be much easier than if it was active. Your responses actually pretty much fall in step with the majority of people. Most people answer that they would pull the lever, ergo they are okay with dispatching someone to their death as long as they don't have to get their hands dirty. Most people draw the line at pushing the large man in front of the trolley, and I can understand that. But what that talks about, what that discloses, is our society's view of utilitarianism. Now, doesn't it make sense that under any circumstance you push one man to his death to save five or 15, you've saved four more than you've taken. It just makes sense. But we draw the line at that. And we've used that kind of philosophical view to develop rules in our society. Take for example, transplant patients. If you have somebody who likes to beat up kittens and they have a bunch of great organs, why don't we just kill those people, take their organs and deliver them to five people who don't beat up kittens? It's these kind of dilemmas that we're faced with every day. And thank God for philosophy is all I have to say. Read how the trolley problem works on how stuff works.com. For more on this and thousands of other top six, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
a64a7490-5462-11e8-b449-573015912ab4 | How the Pony Express Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-pony-express-worked | For as long a shadow as it casts across the history of the Old West, the Pony Express was a failed business venture, doomed from the start, that only lasted 18 months. But since the last rider headed out with his bag of mail, its legend has only grown. | For as long a shadow as it casts across the history of the Old West, the Pony Express was a failed business venture, doomed from the start, that only lasted 18 months. But since the last rider headed out with his bag of mail, its legend has only grown. | Tue, 31 Jul 2018 13:14:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=13, tm_min=14, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=212, tm_isdst=0) | 42754795 | 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. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And we're bringing you all the news fast as lightning in this episode on Phony Express. Hey, you resurrected the don't be Dumb Josh for a moment. Then you're also resurrected you're also standing on your head in your chair. This is like the end of primal fear, man. The don't be Dumb Josh never went away. There's nothing but the don't be dumb, Josh. I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody just now. Yeah, I probably did, but come on, it was the 80s. Yes. There was a bit of a discussion about the Movie Crush Facebook page about me spoiling things that are old movies. Jaws like the shark dies. A bunch of people came to my defense. They're like, there's a limit on spoilers. Like, if you're talking about a ten year old and older movie, come on. Who was it that chose Jaws? Was it Roman? Yeah, Roman Mars. He's got great taste. Man, I watched that movie twice in the last two weeks. The first time it was on mute, and I was still engrossed by it. Then I recently watched it from start to finish for the first time in well over a decade, and I was like, oh, my God. Perfect. Movie good. It is basically perfect. Everything about it, it's just enjoyable. It's beautifully shot. The characters are great. It's just wonderful. Here's the swimming with bow legged women. Oh, yeah, man, he's quite a character. Robert Shaw is so good in that movie. And Dreyfus, man. Yeah, all of them. It's just so great. Yeah. Even Roy Scheider. Yes. My favorite moment in that whole movie, I think, well, gosh, there's so many, but don't spoil it. That real moment, like Spielberg peppers in these moments, it just makes it such a richer film. Like when he's sitting there with his kid before Dreyfus comes over for dinner that night, he just has that moment with his son where he asked him for a kiss, and it's just leaving in just little tidbits like that make the movie so much more rich. Yeah. Love it. That's our Spielberg. I have a question for you. Has there ever been more attention paid to an utter failure of a business that was only open for about 19 months than the Pony Express. Trying to think it's really remarkable. Yeah. It's like the New Coke of mail service, because when you said this topic, I was like, oh, hot diggity dog, this is going to be great. And it's an interesting story, but it's like, wow, the Pony Express was a big fat failure. Yeah. Really? One of the articles were working from was called the Pony Express writers of Destiny in parentheses. Couldn't resist that. Christopher Corbett and he basically makes the case that the most interesting thing about the Pony Express is the fact that we remember it at all. That's the real story behind it, because for sure, it was a big stinking failure. Business wise, it was a success as an actual mail service, but as a business, it was terrible. The timing was terrible. The whole structure of it was just a bad idea. It was just dumb. But as far as the service goes, if you're looking at the very definition of the word service, it was invaluable for a lot of people. Yeah. So just to set the table real quick, if you don't know what we're talking about, the Pony Express was a delivery, a mail delivery system, transcontinental Telegram, when it only went how far east did that go at the time? St. Joe, Missouri. Okay. Saint Joe, Missouri. And then it went west as far as Sacramento. Sacramento. And the idea was to join those two lines so you would have a true transcontinental telegraph service. But before that happened, there were three entrepreneurs who said, we can close this gap because it takes weeks or months to get mail from east to west these days, and we can do that. We want to be able to do that in like a week to ten days. Yeah. Which was enormously ambitious, because if you sent mail overland right. Between Missouri and California, maybe 25 days was a good thing to expect for the mail to get there. Right. That's Missouri. That's one way. Okay. Yeah. If you wanted to send it by ship months. Couple of months before the person ever got the mail. Yeah. Because you got to dig a river from Missouri to Sacramento, you got to flood it, and then you got to run the ship down that channel, and then when you get to the other side, you have to drain it and fill it back in, start over the next time. It was a terrible idea back when America was full of just complete idiots, but nowadays we know what we're doing. We've got the Internet and Twitter and all that stuff. Right. So there was this idea where if you were in California, which by this time was a state, and the reason California was a state before so much of the other parts of the country is because of the Gold Rush of 1849. Brought a lot of people out west, and they started to build and create these cities in california was a state. So you had Americans living in a state that was geographically isolated from the rest of the country. So they wanted news, they wanted newspapers, they wanted news of America back east. They wanted all this stuff. And again, the telegraph lines weren't connected, so they set up this mail service to run in between them. Fast as lightning. And fast as lightning was about ten days, like you said, and the whole route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento took them about 1800 miles, which is a really long way. But the way that they did it, Chuck, in just ten days, was through a stroke of genius. Is that where I come in? I just set you up. Yeah. They don't have great records, and we'll get into that, but as far as we can tell and there's a boy, there's a lot of misinformation out there from over the years, legend and lore and tall tales, but they had about 80 horseback riders, wiry young men who they compared to, like, a modern day jockey. These were little guys, and by all accounts, they could haul butt on horses, though they had about 80 of these dudes, and they had about four or 500 horses and several dozen, what they called way stations, or these stations in between, where you would ride, ride, ride, ride, ride to a station, either switch riders or switch horses or both and get a fresh horse. Or if you were worn out, you would hand the mail off, and we'll get to how that worked as well. Okay. And then they would go and it was just a point to point thing where you would just move this mail as fast as you could ride a horse? Basically, yes. And so the horses would last for ten to 15 miles, depending on how rough the terrain was in between waste stations. And then at the next waste station, the rider would jump from one horse to another horse with this mail bag called the Mochi A, which could hold about \u00a320 of mail, and would ride on to the next weigh station and switch horses again. The horses would go ten to 15 miles, and the riders would go about 75 miles from what I've seen, yeah. And this whole operation was from a business called the Central Overland, California, and Pikes Peak Express Company that was run by three gentlemen, russell's, Majors and Wadel. William Hepburn Russell, Alexander Majors and William Bradford Wadel, who had already been in the freight hauling business for military outpost, which you would think would be a great money making venture. But apparently when they started the pony Express, all accounts say that their business probably wasn't doing very well when they even started. Right. So they said, well, let's see, what is a money pit? We can sink our remaining money into what makes no sense financially. They said. Oh, the Pony Express. Yeah, because there's a lot of reasons why it failed, which we'll get to. But you said that they held up to \u00a320 of mail in these saddle bags. Again, by all accounts, they rarely had that much mail. Sometimes they would have eight or ten letters, and that's just not if you're in the shipping business. You're not maximizing your load. No, I did some a little bit of math. I wasn't hard, but I'm still proud of it. Okay, so they charged $5 per half gram yeah, at first. And so the Mochilla could hold \u00a320. So \u00a320 times 32 is $5, $640. And in today's money, that's about $16,640. Not bad. It's not too bad. But apparently it was way more to maintain this line than that. And like you said, plenty of these things only had a couple of dozen letters in them at any given time. And the people who would use the Pony Express would write these letters on tissue paper to cut down on costs because they charge by the half gram. Yeah. And it was generally not just regular American people. Apparently it was mostly like government and military and just generally people couldn't afford to send a letter by Pony Express. Right. Newspapers would send cables to other newspapers. Like you said, government, although the government never officially granted a contract to the Central Overland, they would use them, but there was no official contract. And I get the impression that had they ever landed a government contract, they might have actually made money, although I don't think it would have ultimately kept them from their fate. But the fact that they didn't have a wide customer base, they didn't have a government contract, and then this is just such an expensive venture, and they couldn't possibly make their money back from it. I don't know if we've gotten the point across yet or not. This is a terrible business venture. Yeah. And what made matters worse, I mean, they were likely doomed. Maybe we should hold off the final nail in the cough until later. Okay. Even though it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention. But one thing that hurt them along the way for sure was the Pyramid Lake War or the Paiute War. Yeah. I even looked it up. That's what Emma saying says it was. That was in Nevada and Utah mainly. And that was a war that took a great toll on especially these waste stations. And if you are a waste station, dude, you've fared much worse than Pony Express riders as far as activity and attack from Native Americans, because you are a sitting duck, basically, in a station that seems to be no more than just like four walls and a dirt floor and maybe a horse canal and a thing to put water in. Yeah. On the open prairie. Yeah. You're sitting out there. Yeah. And during the Pyramid Lake War, hostilities between the Paiut and Shoshoni, who banded together with the Pyramid Lake tribe, those three groups rose up together against the settlers, the Euro American settlers who have been coming out there and just basically encroaching on their land. The thing that the straw that broke the camel's back was a pair of brothers, Euroamerican brothers, kidnapped a couple of piyu, I think twelve year old girls and raped them and kept them hidden at one of these little towns, these little frontier towns. And the Paiut Indians got wind of this and went and found them, killed a couple of the people, burned the town down and then started going from town to town, but also waste station to waste station, just like massacring people there, burning down waste stations, just basically like torching all these places. Right. And at first the cavalry was called in and grossly underestimated what the Piyu and Shoshoni and Pyramid Group was capable of and just got whoops, basically. And then the further reinforcements that got called in were basically able to bring it to a standoff. But this whole thing just raised tensions from simmering below the surface to an outright, what you would call a war between these tribes and the Americans who were pressing into their land. So from that moment on, it got way more difficult and scarier to be a Pony Express rider. And as per Pony Express history, this happened like ten weeks after the first rider disembarked. Yes. Not only did it cost them men, but it cost them about 75 grand. And this is an $18.60 it's like two something million today. Yeah, I mean, that was a huge loss. So they started they ramped up their operation to try and make up for that, and all of a sudden they were delivering twice a week instead of once a week. And they eventually tried to lower their prices, too, but none of it worked. And financially it was a mess. Like I said earlier, they didn't really keep a lot of records. They either didn't keep them or they may have destroyed them. That's what I think to avoid creditors because these guys were not the greatest well, I don't know if they weren't the greatest businessman, but they surely didn't fare well in this case. Well, one of them was supposedly an outright con man. Russell oh, yeah, yeah. He was the spokesperson for this business venture and he was good at that, but he was not a great stand up guy as far as business is concerned. So the image that you get in your head of Pony Express are these guys riding full bore on these horses, being chased by Native Americans and desperados apparently many of the books over the years, even ones that sound super official, a lot of times we're just made up stories and we'll talk a little bit about who finally got in touch with a lot of these riders. But apparently when they were officially on record, they didn't talk a lot about fighting the Native Americans or anyone. They talked about the weather stinking about being ripped off and not being paid. Sort of like normal business complaints. And it wasn't like the thing that you see at the Wells Fargo bank. Like, yeah, we rode horses fast, but it kind of sucked. Right. But the thing is, this is a legend in its own time, is how I've seen it put. We'll talk about that after a break. How about that? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? 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 fourweek trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So, Chuck, we said that the pony express was a legend in some time, and that's absolutely true. Again, in part of William Russell's superior spokespersonship, I think is a word. Newspapers wrote about it in Sacramento. They called it our friend the pony. I think they weren't referring to drugs. I think they were talking about the pony express. But people love the pony express. It was just hugely innovative. And the idea that these guys were out there riding as fast as they can for scores of miles with bandits on their tails just to bring us the mail, people fell in love with this thing, even though at the end of the day, the thing lasted, like, 18 months. Like the pony express, it was huge legend that we think of. It was an 18 month business venture that ultimately failed, right? Yes. But it was a legend. And one of the reasons it was alleged is because there were real deal exploits going on on the trail. There were some writers who were just amazing. Like, one guy was called what was pony Bob's last name? Haslam. Right. Pony Bob Haslam. He was one of the writers for the pony express who, ironically, wasn't as legendary as he should have been because he was the actual real deal. But he ended up being forgotten because I get the impression he wasn't much of a self promoter. Yeah, he made a legendary documented journey of 380 miles without relief at one point where he basically road and road and road, went to his station to switch riders. And the guy there was like, I'm not going. There's Indians out there trying to kill me. And so he was like, all right, I'm going to keep going. And he kept going and delivered the mail and eventually made his way back. And it ended up being a 380 miles round trip. And like I said, there's not a lot of great documentation. But even though he's been lost to history, he was very well documented as an expert rider. Yeah, he definitely was. There was another one called Billy Fisher who had a pretty interesting claim to fame. He was out riding on the trail, and it was during a snowstorm. So this is another thing, too. You said that the riders complained about things like the terrible weather. Sure. They were carrying mail from Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California. Some tough weather, especially, say, like in January, you're going to run into some terrible snowstorms. Right. And Billy Fisher found himself in one of these snowstorms, and he just dismounted. He's like, I just got to go over here and go to sleep for a little while in a blizzard. And he started to fall asleep, and he woke up to something licking his face. And it was a jack rabbit who had basically licked his face until he woke up. I didn't know they licked. I think this may have been his spirit animal, actually. And the rabbit startled Billy Fisher, and Billy Fisher startled the rabbit, and the rabbit ran off, but it woke Billy Fisher up. And he said, if that rabbit hadn't licked my face and woke me up, I never would have woken up. I would have just frozen to death out there in this blizzard. But he was woken up enough and realized the gravity of the situation after they got back on his horse and kept rioting to safety. Sounds like legend. Yeah. And to top it off, his great great grandson is William Fisher, who was one of the US. Astronauts who flew to space shuttle. How about that? So legend and these stories are like, going around and being circulated in newspapers and among people while the Pony Express is going on. Yeah. I mean, there were some very bad, not exploitative, sensationalist books written over the years. And then there was also a couple of real legitimate dudes. Captain Sir Richard Burton, the famous British explorer, and one Samuel Clemens. 25 year old future Mark Twain. They both individually kind of spent some time out there documenting the Pony Express. And it seems like Burton didn't have a good time out there. He didn't like the west. No, he didn't. He always complained about the flies and the fleas and just the filth and just the people. He just was not a fan. But he still gave a fairly accurate account of the day to day of a Pony Express writer. Clemens mr. Future mark Twain seemed to have a good time and in his true fashion, wrote some of the really flowery eyewitness testimony about seeing these horsemen coming across the tundra or the plains. It's pretty cool. You're going to read that? No, it's too long. Well, everybody go read that. It's in Roughing It, which is his book about traveling the US. And he surfs in it. Did you know that? I didn't. He goes to Hawaii and tries surfing when they used to surf on, like, ten foot long wooden boards, head clean off. Go read that quote in your best Hal Holbrook impression. Really good way to do it. I'm more a Val Kilmer Mark Twain guy. That's right. I forgot he did that. Everyone did. Chuck man so you had Mark Twain and Captain Sir Richard Burton providing contemporary accounts, but that is virtually it. Right. Again, this is a failed business venture. Let's go ahead and tell them what happened. Why it was failed business venture, chuck Why ultimately died. Well, they finally hooked up, the two they finally closed that gap on the telegraph. They're like, well, we can go coast to coast now. So you're sort of immediately, literally immediately out of business. Yeah. Like two days later, they closed. The first rider headed out on April 3, 1860, and it was October 26, 1861, where the last one headed out from St. Jose. And some people will say, well, it didn't actually stop in October. It was actually November, because those mochillas didn't end up in Sacramento until November. That's fine. Whatever. It was like, 18 months, 70 something weeks of operation, and people loved it at the time. But as with most things, once the new, better, greater thing came along, the telegram, they forgot about it pretty quick. And we really, honestly would not have any recollection of the Pony Express. It would be a footnote to a footnote in history if it weren't for one guy named Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually is the reason why we all remember the Pony Express. He had a soft spot in his heart for not just the Pony Express itself, but one of the founders. I think it was Alexander Majors. Right. Yeah, I think so. He gave him a job when he was a kid. Gave him a job when he was a kid. And while Bill would go on or Buffalo Bill would go on to say, well, I was actually a Pony Express writer, all historical evidence suggests that that is not actually the case. But he definitely did work for Alexander Majors, who was one of the owners of the Pony Express as a horseback messenger, just not a Pony Express writer. Which, if you're talking about Pony Express legend, that's a major distinction. Yeah. And Buffalo Bill would also go on to say, she's a great big fat girl. Sorry, is he called Buffalo bill. Yeah. Okay. For some reason, I thought it was like a playoff of Buffalo Bill, like Buffalo Bob or something like that. No, it was Buffalo Bill because he skinned his victims. I remember. Should we take a break? Jeez, okay, sure. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about Buffalo Bill 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 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, so Buffalo Bills, Wild West. I always want to say wild west extravaganza. You can call it that, but it was really buffalo Bills wild west. That was the name of his big show that he took all over the country, delighting people with sharp shooting and horseback riding and all sorts of cool stuff. Enchanting America with the old west. Not just America. The world. Well, yeah, and that's a solid point. I mean, he went all over Europe. And this article points out that's why to this day, you can go to, like, a pony express themed club in Germany, because back then he performed in front of queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm and the pope in Rome, and basically, he always seemed to have at least one reported or purported pony express rider in the show. It was like one of the main segments of his show. Yeah. So at one point, he did have who was the guy? Bronco Charlie Miller. No. Well, he had him. Oh, pony Bob haslam yeah, pony Bob worked for him for a little while, and he is a definite legit writer. The other guy, what's his name? Bronco Billy. Bronco Charlie Miller? No, that was Clint Eastwood. Bronco Charlie Miller claimed to have been a pony express writer. A lot of men claim to have been over the years that were not. And they traced his timeline back, and he would have been ten or eleven, which is really stretching. It is possible because they did go as low as like 13 and 14, but it was never super confirmed that this guy actually rode for the Pony Express. But it kind of doesn't matter because apparently everyone loved him. Yeah. So the reason why it's stretching it, but still in the realm of possibility is because when William Russell would talk about the Pony Express, and his company would say, like, these men have to take an oath not to drink or fight, how much still happened? Of course. Yeah. We have like 80 people in the saddle, and in reality, they were all drunk around, like, at all the way stations and on the trail. And the impression is that if you needed a rider and there was somebody who said, I'll go. You're a Pony Express rider. Right, then. So the idea that an eleven year old kid said, I'll go, and they said, all right, fine, go, that could have possibly happened. So it's possible Bronco Charlie Miller did bribe, but like you said, he was just such a great old west archetype. It's like a relic. Yeah, they were like, whatever, we'll believe anything you say. Yeah. So through the years, like we said, a lot of bad information, a lot of legend, everything from movies like a Paramount film called The Pony Express. Charlton Hesson is Buffalo Bill. In the movie, Buffalo Bill teams up with Wild Bill Hickok to start the Pony Express, and as this author said, there is not a shard of fact in the entire film. I don't know if you meant shred. Shred. Shard. Shard. All right, he could have said shred, though. It works. And then this, if you read this, it sounds super cool, like a notice in the St. Louis in San Francisco newspaper that said, wanted young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18, must be expert writers willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred wages $25 per week. And that seems like, man, what a great job. Listing for the Pony Express. Orphans preferred. That was written in the 20th century by a journalist in the Sunset magazine. So that probably wasn't even true. No, again, it was forgotten, I think Alexander Majors wrote his memoirs. Remember, he was one of the three guys who own the Pony Express. He wrote his memoirs like 30, 40 years after the Pony Express'last ride, and by this time most people had forgotten it. And again, it was Buffalo Bill who came along, actually paid a visit to Alexander Majors, and found him in a fairly sorry state. He was very broke, he was in poor health, and said, you gave me my first job when I was eleven, after my father died, and I want to repay you by taking care of you. So he put him in a show. He let him stay at his old Scouts Rest ranch in Nebraska, just basically took care of them. But he also was like, we've got to publish this book. So he got Rand. McNally to actually publish this book about his life as old west freight legend guy, including the pony express. And that was some of the earliest documentation about it. But it also kicked off like, this history of terrible documentation of just surrounding the whole thing with tall tales and embellishments, and it just very quickly became very tough to root fact from fiction. Even today, even at some of these places that are like, this museum is, a pony expressway station may not be the case. They're not entirely certain what the trail was any longer. They think that there are some pristine segments that aren't covered over by tracks of some sort that they're actually like, this is the course that the pony express took, but they're not 100% sure. It just got lost the time. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned that buffalo Bill, that job he got, was as a horseback delivery writer for the initial freight company, but he never rode for the pony express. Did he outright claim to or just kind of let people know? No. In the notes for the buffalo Bills wild west show, it talked about how he was, and then it would say, you should buy his autobiography. It shows even more. And then they would talk in depth about how he rode for the ponyx was for sure if you were from the old west at this time, you were basically expected to just lie constantly about some of the things you've done, not just with Buffalo Bill, while Bill Hickok said the same thing. He works for the pony Express, too, and he did. But he was one of those guys who ran a way station intended to the horses. Lame. Well, he was bigger and older, so he couldn't ride. It wasn't his fault. He was a victim of circumstances. Yeah. There was a series of last living pony express writers throughout the years. Various newspapers, even sometimes multiple times in the same newspaper over the years, would print articles claiming that the last pony express writer has just died. So we don't know if any of them were or not or if they were the last or not. And it finally took a woman named a poet, apparently not a very good one, named Mabel Loving, who said, why doesn't someone actually write letters and get in touch with some of these people and get the true dirt? And she did that. She apparently wrote letters and had some correspondence with the surviving pony express writers as an amateur poet and said it was right before world war I. Apparently that is some of the only real documentation we have from some of the real writers that she eventually published in something called the pony express rides on exclamation point, which apparently you can still buy if you have a lot of money. Yeah, it's like a collectible, I'm sure. Yeah, I think. And supposedly the printers lost a couple of the chapters, so like, even if you buy a copy, it's not in its intact form because nobody took it very seriously. I think probably because of the exclamation point, it's never a good idea. No. Have you got anything else? Well, I mean, I guess the post script is after this telegraph, like I said, two days after it was hooked up, they realized that they were done for because they were already in bad financial straits. So Waddell went home to Missouri. He was broke and in debt. He sold his home to his son for a dollar and still lived there. And apparently he died in April of 1872, never worked again. Russell, who was only 48, went to New York, failed as a stockbroker. Apparently no one trusted him. He filed for bankruptcy in 1865, and this was just five years after it shut down. Sold off his assets to pay his creditors, went back to Missouri finally because of poor health, and died in 1872. And then Majors lived the longest. And we know his story. Like you said, Buffalo Bill helped him publish his book. Right? And if Bronco Charlie Miller really was a Pony Express rider, he definitely, by far was the last one to die. He died at 105, and years before that, at age 82, he rode from New York to California on horseback to bring attention back to the Pony Express and the glory of it. Wow. Pony Express. So, final facts. They ended up losing about 200 grand in that day's money, which is millions of dollars now. Right. The personal best delivery time, apparently, was when they carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address. They got it to California in seven days, 17 hours. Not bad. And in the end, they delivered about 35,000 pieces of mail over that 18 or 19 months. And I think wasn't only one mail shipment that didn't only one failed to make it. That's what I understand. Yeah, it's a pretty good track record for a failed business. It's not bad at all. They wrote a combined half a million miles in that time. Pretty great. And again. That's the Pony Express. Totally different than what you thought about, but also sort of the same. I just didn't know that it was such a flop. Got you. Just bad timing. Terrible timing, man. Well, if you want to know more about the Pony Express, get on out there on the trail, you farm it and check it out yourself. And since I said farm and it's time for listener mail oh, no, it's not. Oh, boy. It's time for administrative details. All right. Okay. For the uninitiated, this is where Josh and I and Jerry, by way of our voices, thank you for the nice things that you have sent us in the mail. Thank you. Gifts, tokens, crafts, books, postcards, letters. Yeah, by the way, booze, I didn't log all the postcards and letters. That can be tough. It can be tough. How about a blanket thank you to everyone who sent us postcards and letters. Thank you. All right. Dan Kent. Thank you big time for sending us pliny to Elder beer and T shirts. Yes. Thanks to the Bar Fight Supply company for all the awesome leather goods, including the moleskin holder, which I use a lot. Yeah. The business card holders, all that jam. Thank you very much, guy. Kelly Sumsky of two little LS. She sent us a painted rock in memory of the wizard, my cat who passed. That is very sweet. It was very sweet and very sad to get, but in a good way. Yeah. Bittersweet. Chris Walzack sent us beer from Hamburg, New York and IPA. Thank you, Chris. Andy Kruger. You sent me a Wean T shirt that I wear all the time, including on stage in Atlanta. I saw it myself. ANadine coffee. They sent us some coffee from Milwaukee. Thanks, ANadine. Jeremiah and Mason Brandrick. Oh, I remember this. They sent us the F Five IPA, which is a beer I had when I spent some time in Tulsa. I think it's Tulsa beer and some beer Stein Bear shirts. Right. Soaked in cologne. Seemingly soaked in cologne. They're like, Here, you look like you smell. We're going to make you pretty. It was interesting. Julie send us handmade personalized Christmas ornaments, which it's been a while since we did this. Sure. For Jerry. Yummy. Emily and the kids. Yeah. Very nice. Those are great. Actually, that was on my tree. Kaylee Hamar sent my dog Nico some pet treats. Nice pet treater. Very nice. Lindsay Lunstrom sent us some wonderful bottle cap key chains. Those are awesome. Yeah, there's a SYSK one. And don't be dumb. One last chance. Garage mama. Jerry, Red Dragon. And she's out of etsy. And Facebook at Red Dragon Handcraft. Check them out. You're going to love them. Yeah, it's good stuff. Becca sent me a library copy of my children's book that I was so fond of as a kid, the Great Christmas Kidnapping Paper. I'm really excited to read this to my daughter, Becca. So thank you so much for sending that. Kelly Butler Olson sent Murdered by Death, a copy of Murder by Death, arguably one of the greatest spoof movies of all time. One of my favorites. So thank you, Kelly. K-V-O. Yes. Taylor Stonehalker sent a lovely Christmas card and handmade caramel, which were delicious. And Nick Stiglik sent us some street waffles, those amazing things that you put over your coffee to heat up. Yeah, we got more than one Stripe waffle, so if you also sent Stroop waffles, many thanks and just send them again. Nathan for Lazo. He's actually Australian. He's an artist, and he sent us these are great. A variety of BOOKMARKS magnets, coloring books, all their animals with their bodies made of flowers and plants. Yeah, it's amazing. It's really nice. You should check this out. It's online at Marini for Lazo. Dot au Mariniferlazzoau. And a portion of these sales go to wildlife conservation. So gorgeous and well funded. Speaking of gorgeous, Aden Dale sent us metal sculpture orchids and you can find them at Aiden, A-I-D-E-N. Dale. Dale.com. Thank you, Aiden. Just a few more here, folks. Elias Pagco sent honey from their three colony apiary. That's pretty great. Thanks, Elias. Elias, that was awesome. Robin sent us beer and mead from Wisconsin and it was well appreciated and didn't last very long. Robin, thank you. No, we did not drink Wisconsinly. Robin, that was great. That's a T shirt. I didn't make it up. Bonnie Bowden sent us Moldoramas Guitars, which I think it got from Third Man Records in Nashville. And I think she also sent the Willis Tower one, which I was like, what the heck is the Willis Tower? And I was like, oh, that's the Sears Tower. Well, and we got actually more than one person sent us mold aromas. Yeah, like Luke and David Shirzko, father and son. They sent us elephant moldoramas. From where, Chuck? Toledo Zoo Bam, which has probably the largest selection of molaramas outside of the Chicago land area. That's right. You grew up right there in the gorilla cage. That's right. Nathan says, this is Ban CD EP. Missouri Loves Company. Or Missouri or Missouri. Missouri Loves Company. Philip La Palm. Great name. Sent Robert Shaw Jaws Christmas card to Chuck. That's right. And then finally, just a couple of weeks ago, I got sent some guitar picks from Forever Pick. And apparently these picks have better sustain and better performance, and I have not yet plucked with them. But I can't wait to use my Forever picks. That is fantastic. Do you have some more? Yeah, we've got just a couple more. Chuck, if you'll bear with me. Take his home, brother. Josh Jones sent us catfish head vodka. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot. Josh doug sent us an amazing poster congratulating us for 1000 episodes. And Olaf and Millie, the shop dog, sent us the amazing Railroad Spike bottle openers. Remember those? Oh, yeah. You can go to churchmouseforge.com. And dude, I want to say Ian Newton, who founded the Baltimore Whiskey Company, ian has been sending us stuff like the Shot Tower Gin, kind of like a multi gym that I love. Yeah. Sent that bourbon that you love. Just has been sending us some pretty great stuff. So first of all, Ian, thank you. Second of all, Ian, keep it coming. And third, everybody else who's not Ian, go check out Baltimore Whiskey Company stuff. The Baltimore Spirits Company, they have just amazing booze that's locally made in Baltimore. And you can tell it's like craft distilled stuff. You're going to love it. Delish. So thank you to everybody who sent us anything ever. And if you send us something in between the last administrative details in this one, and we didn't say your name, first of all, we apologize. Secondly, get in touch with us and let us know, because we do want to thank you. And it's just an oversight. We're not actually mad at you. Okay? Please do. And I have even more I want to thank Doug Sacherie. I know how to pronounce the name. Now, I don't know if you guys remember or not, but I mispronounced Tony Kacheri's seasoning, Creole seasoning. It turns out it's Tony Sacheries. And Doug let me know by sending me tons of Tony Saturday's products, and they're awesome. So thank you, Doug. I also want to thank another Doug, doug Dixon, the CEO of Joel Cola, who sent us some Jolt Cola care packages. And then every once in a while, people bring us stuff to our live shows. So thank you to Ron from Dundee, Michigan, for giving me the complete DVD set of Thunder the Barbarian, which I've never seen all the way through because of swimming lessons, and a very nice person gave us Gooey Cakes at the St. Louis Show. Our friend Dale from Australia sent us a care package of Australian candy to acclimate us to Australian candy for our Australia tour. And then John from Capastrano Beach, who sent us a giant puzzle wheel that I have yet to begin to even try to figure out. So thank you, John, for this madness. If you want to get in touch with us, whether to send us something or just to say hi, you can go onto our website, stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com, check out our Tshirtstar at teublic teethpublic. Comstuffychildnow. And you can just send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
a66103ea-5462-11e8-b449-e7d37563f548 | Ballpoint pens? Heck yes, ballpoint pens! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/ballpoint-pens-heck-yes-ballpoint-pens | Get ready, folks. The ballpoint pen is far more interesting than you could ever imagine. For real. Brilliant in its simplicity. Took the world by storm. We love our ballpoint pens and you should too. Listen in today! | Get ready, folks. The ballpoint pen is far more interesting than you could ever imagine. For real. Brilliant in its simplicity. Took the world by storm. We love our ballpoint pens and you should too. Listen in today! | Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:54:41 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=13, tm_min=54, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=233, tm_isdst=0) | 46832001 | 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. It's just the two of us today, and both of us are totally astounded that you press play on an episode called How Ballpoint Pens Work or something to that effect. Yeah. And when I found this, I was like, no. But then I started reading it and it was far more interesting than I thought. I loved ones like this, where I'm just like, this sounds so dull that I wanted to actually pop my eyes out with it by a ballpoint pen, not listen to anything. Yes. But no, it turns out to be interesting. Like grass. Remember our episode on grass? Who could forget the great debate over whether you should flood your lawn with a quarter inch of water or not? Yeah. Answer you should not. So, Chuck yes. To begin, I have a question for you. Okay. Have you ever seen a ballpoint pen? They have them that's become one of your great long time running jokes. I don't know what you mean. Chuck, have you ever breathed air? Yeah, I was using my black Bick ballpoint pen. Yeah, I remember today. I remember because blue pins are for dopes. You, my friend, are out of your mind. You like blue pins? Blue pen is the only way to go, my friend. And as a matter of fact, the pilot G 2.7 millimeter pen ink gel pen in blue is the only way to go. That's my favorite pen on the entire planet. Well, I will say today I'm using the standard BIC black, like the one that in elementary school you could take apart and make into great spit ball shooter. Oh, yeah, that was an off label prescription for that. Yeah, it's the clear one. Not the white plastic case, but the clear case or the clear pin body. And I do love that pin, but I know the pin that you speak of, and I do love it because there's nothing like a pen that just takes to the paper perfectly. It's magical. That's what gel ink pens do. They're beautiful things. And the reason I like blue and it comes in black, if that's your thing, I'm not going to hate on it. But when you underline something printed out, like our notes, and then you go back over it with highlighter like I do, the blue really stands out. The black just kind of like, blends in with the printed out words. All right, well, here's what I used to do. And you probably remember the days when I would be looking at my highlighted text with red ink things written down because the red really popped, but then I just sort of got tired of it and I'm just a black ink guy. You're sticking and picking. I'm sticking and picking. You're picking and sticking. That's what I mean. So should we talk about writing over the years. We should is anyone listening still? If you are, we're going to continue on just in case. So let's start by writing over this, because this is pretty interesting, right? Yeah. Tuktuk. That's where we should start. Took. And we should shout out to Mary Bellis, who wrote a thought co little brief thing called A Brief History of Writing that kind of ran down some points that we'll cover. But she points out to she doesn't call him Tuktuk, but that's really what she means. That's because I've trademarked it. Sure. Took started writing with basically sharpened stones by carving things on the sides of cave walls. Sure. Easy peasy. That was probably our first writing implement. Yeah. Like, no ink by this point, as with the Greeks, when they started writing, they had a little stylus made of bone or metal or something, and they would mark things on waxcoated tablets, and it would take always it seems like it's the Chinese who come up with the great innovations in ancient times. And still, who knows? We're not allowed to read Chinese websites, though. No, we're banned. But they invented and really crafted Indian inc. Yes. Which is a pretty clever little mixture. Soot, specifically, from pine smoke. Bellas says it's pretty on the nose, if you ask me. And then some oil, lamp oil. And then you take a donkey and squeeze gelatin from it, which I'm wondering, does that mean that you have to kill the poor donkey, or can you just come up and milk of gelatin? I think the donkey loves that. Well, I wonder, because I think gelatin is actually made from hooves. I think you're right. And usually if you start making things from hooves, the animal the hoof used to be attached to is no longer with us, probably. So it's a sad way to make ink. But that's how they made ink for thousands of years, actually. Yeah. There was a philosopher, a Chinese philosopher named Tian Chu, and his ink was the one that really sort of became the go to inc for many years. Yes. He called it chewing. He called it what? Chewing. Really? No. Okay. No, I'm making stuff up at this point. All right. I can't tell he had the idea this was, I think, back around 2700 BC. That he started mixing natural dyes and things from berries, different kinds of plants, to make different colored ink. So ink went from just black to colored, and as a result, they started attaching different meanings to these different colored inks. Yeah. He admitted the four color pen. Yeah, I remember that. Oh, I forgot all about this. Didn't they go up to, like, eight colors, too? Yeah, they got pretty out of hand. And the thing that stunk about those is they never wrote really well. No, they definitely didn't. The gimmick was more that you could write at all in different colors in the same pen. You know, they were for elementary school kids. So one of the things that happened as the writing implements and I hadn't really realized this, but as our writing implements became more and more refined, just better and better. And part of that was not just like the implement, but also the types of ink we were using and how they were delivered. And then the paper, whatever substance we were putting them onto. The original things, which started out as basically drawings on cave walls got more and more refined and actually grew more and more abstract. And they became our system of alphabets letters. And at first, from what we know, the first alphabet ever created was created in ancient Greece, classical Greece, by a scholar named Cadmus. And all of the original written alphabets that were invented were all uppercase. Nothing but upper case. So everybody's just shouting to one another yeah. At all times, constantly. Right. And I didn't know this, but there's another word for uppercase and lowercase. It's magicual and minuscule. Or the actual technical terms for uppercase and lowercase. And the story goes that the reason they're called uppercase and lowercase is that in the days of type set printing you would keep your magicial letters in a different drawer, usually higher up, out of reach, because you didn't use them as often than you would the minuscule letters. You keep those in the lower case. And that's where the term comes from, from what I understand. Very interesting. I thought so too. Maybe the fact of the podcast, I don't know. We'll have to just keep going and find out. Has nothing to do with pins. The Romans actually created a read pin, and this makes a lot of sense. It would use stems from marsh grasses, like bamboo type of stuff. Which made perfect sense because it's hollowed out already. All you do is sharpen the end of it to come to a point like a little NIB. Then put the ink in there and you've got a very rudimentary pin which worked pretty well for them. Yeah. Apparently these things were so tight that you had to squeeze them to squeeze the ink out of the end so it wouldn't just dribble out constantly. Although I'm sure it still would. It's not a perfect system. It isn't a perfect system. And there's still room for improvement. And that came in 700 Ce, right about 1300 or so years ago when somebody thought to use a quill from a bird feathered animal. Yeah, and that was a big one. It says in here that the longest period in history, as far as writing implements goes, was the quill pen. Yeah. Pretty amazing. 1000 years. Yeah. I hadn't really thought about that. Yeah, they basically got to the quill pin and we're like, until somebody invents a ballpoint pen this bird feather is about the best thing going. Yeah. So you could use a bird feather as a quill pan for about a week before it would get gummed up and you'd have to have another one. And they actually figured out that the bird from the feather from a living bird plucked in the spring provided the optimal quills. And even more than that, depending on whether you're right handed or left handed, you wanted to pluck the feather from the left or the right wing. Yeah. Because if you're right handed and you're writing with a quill from a right wing, then that guy's going to be tickling your nose every time. And it may be fun for a little while, but what you really want is a feather from the left wing. And that way, if you're right handed in that way, that feather swoops to the outside of your face. Yes. Having the wrong feather quill would have just been another excuse not to balance your checkbook. Yeah. And these things lasted for about a week. You needed a special knife to sharpen them. It took a long time to get it kind of prepared. And they were, like I said, about a week old, and they were done, so they were fairly disposable. But they still held down the fort until early fountain pens for over 1000 years. Yeah. And fountain pens are their own thing, surely. You know, or remember from time to time, we'll get like a letter from somebody who's like a fountain pen enthusiast. It's like a whole thing. You remember that? Yeah. Or you get a graduation gift. It's like a nice fountain pen. And you're like, Jeez, really? But no, I'm saying you and I have gotten letters from fans to write these beautiful letters out in fountain pens. I think at least one person has sent us an actual really good fountain pen. And I've never caught the bug. But there's a subculture of people out there so into fountain pens that they express that by writing letters to one another using fountain pens. Obviously, it's really cool. Like, you'd never take into it, I am a ballpoint man through and through, but I get it. Sure, it's cool. It's classy. You're not going to yuck their yum, in other words. No. I don't have very nice penmanship anymore either. So I kind of tie those things together. Like, if you're writing a letter and a fountain pen, you don't write like I do, because that would just be dumb. Right. I write like a serial killer in an insane asylum holding a crane with a fist. That's how I write. Should we take a break and jump over to the ballpoint? Yeah, let's. All right. So a ballpoint penn. You say that word over and over and you never really stop to think about what that means. But in the end of that little pin and it's impossible to not just sort of obsess over this after you've maybe listened this episode or researched it like we did. But when I was writing today, I was just constantly thinking about that little ball that haunted you how undersung it is. Okay. I thought you're just like you felt like it was eavesdropping on you. You could feel it like the atoms in your hand or something weird like that. No, just thinking of the simple genius of this invention. At the end of that pin, there's a little, small, tiny rotating ball. A lot of times it's steel or brass, maybe tungsten carbide. And it was revolutionary and completely different than anything that came before it. Yeah. And to go back to the fountain pen, to kind of put a button on that, like yes, fountain pens are pretty awesome. And when you master using a fountain pen, you probably do like it. But if you were just an average mo who's like, look, just give me a writing implement, I want to write something down. I'm not getting any jollies from this. Looking at it from that perspective. The ballpoint pen is an improvement in a number of ways over the fountain pen. Specifically, one of the ways that it's an improvement is that you can use it up in an airplane much more easily. Yeah. There were problems with the ink at high altitudes in fountain pens. Yeah. And just problems with the ink at any altitude. It doesn't flow super evenly if you have a really nice pen and know how to use it. But like, a cheap fountain pen was no good. The ink is very slow to dry and smudgy. It would clog a lot. And once it's kind of clogged and gummy, then either have to be really good at cleaning it or it's just junk. Yes. So one of the ways that the ink comes out of a fountain pen is through air, through capillary action and air. And so since you have air in a fountain pen, that means that since ink dries in the presence of air, which is what you want when it touches the paper, it'll also dry inside the pen, which is how it gets gunked up, like you were talking about. Yeah. But in an airplane too, when you take a fountain pen that's been down on planet Earth for a while, that air that's in the fountain pen gets trapped in the air. So when you take it up in an airplane in a pressurized cabin, it's still like the cabin is pressurized, but it's still much less pressure than it is at sea level, which is where the pen just was. And because of this, the higher pressure air inside the pen wants to move to where it's lower pressure. Higher pressure always moves to lower pressure. I think unless there's some random exception, I'm not thinking of that we're going to get 1000 emails about. But high pressure stuff wants to move to low pressure stuff so that high pressure air tries to move out of the fountain pen and as it does, it pushes the ink out. So fountain pens tend to flood on planes, which again, is not that big of a problem these days. But if this is the 1940s and you were a pilot for the Royal Air Force or navigator or something, it was a big problem. Yeah, for sure. Which is one of the reasons why ball points came along. Yeah. And the ballpoint idea had been around since the 1800s, but it never really took like, they could never figure out how to make a good working pin that actually was able to go to market. I didn't see that. It's been around since the 1800, the original idea for the ballpoint pin. Yeah. But they could never fashion a pin that really worked. Well, yeah, I would think also it would really depend on the technology of the inc. For sure. I think that was a big part of it. Okay. But it would take a journalist, a Hungarian journalist named Laslow Bureau, to take a tour of a newspaper facility when he was like, Wait a minute, these newspapers are coming out and they're being stacked on each other right after printing, and it's not smudging around like my dumb old India ink does. And he said, Why don't we use that kind of ink, put it in a pen, and not only that, why don't we take a pin that has a little tiny metal ball at the end that rotates? It also seals that tube so the ink doesn't come flowing out. It does double duty. Double duty. And then the rotation is what draws that ink out. That and a little gravitational pull. And I think I might be on to something here. Yeah, and he definitely was. And this article hilariously says that he vowed to make a pen that used fast drying ink, because at the time, that was a real problem. Like, the ink that you had in a pen to keep it from drying out in the pen had to be super watery. Right? Yeah. So the idea of making a pen that wasn't a fountain pen that used fast drying ink, that was quite a vow. I'm sure the person giving him the newspaper tour is like, Are you sure? Yeah, he said, I just vowed it. I'm going to do it. Yeah, he did. He got together. Luckily, he had a brother, George, who was a chemist. Yeah, that was very helpful. In June 1943, he got that patent with the European Patent Office, made bureau pins. It was the first ballpoint pen to be brought to market. And the British government you were talking about the Air Force. Their Royal Air Force went crazy for it, so they just bought the rights. Okay. So I couldn't find that anywhere else. Oh, really? I saw that the Royal Air Force ordered 30,000 of these, but not that they bought the rights. Well, let's say this. They either bought the rights or all but bought the rights of being their number one customer. Right. I like how you married the two facts. Yeah. Not only did they write well at high altitudes, but they were just sturdy, and it was a pin that you could take into battle with you. Yeah. So it wouldn't flood, as they call it, at high altitudes. And, yeah, it was a pretty durable pain. And so Bureau, he patented it with his brother george founded the Bureau pen company. Right. And I think that's so cute. He named it after himself, even though he and his brother did it, and he very easily bureau was his last name. I'm sorry. Yeah. He could have named it Delaslo. Right. That's what I thought he'd done. His last name is Bureau. Okay. So that makes way more sense. I thought he'd been like, George, thank you, but I'm naming this pen after myself. But it was a pretty big hit. I don't think it was a commercial success right away, but that big order or the purchase by the Royal Air Force definitely helped the bureau company establish itself almost simultaneously. Well, a year or two later, there was a guy in America named Milton Reynolds, and he said, I just found some of these bureau pens on a business trip, I think in, like, Argentina or somewhere. And he said, I'm going to totally rip this off. And he did, and he founded a company and created the Reynolds pen in 1945, which is basically the bureau pen. Yeah. And these were really successful. I saw an article says $10, but I found an article from the New York Times from the 1940s that talked about at Gimbal's in New York, you could buy one for 1250, which was super expensive. 1250 is expensive for a single pin today. Sure. Like a ballpoint pen. You got to be a real jerk to pay 1250 for a pen these days with this economy. But this little article said that people all but trampled one another to get a hold of these pins. Gimbals ordered 50,000 of them and sold 30,000 of them in week one. Eventually, there will be a lot of lawsuits back and forth about the patent. Basically, those never went anywhere, because what they were essentially saying is the idea for the ball bearing, which is kind of what makes us all possible, has been around for so long that no one can really claim this to the point where, like, you can sue one another. Oh, that's how I could not find how Reynolds got away with it. My idea was that they had just filed the patent. Georgia and Laslow filed the patent in Europe, and Reynolds is doing it here in the US. But I didn't realize that there was actually a patent battle. Yeah, and then there was a battle. Like Faber came on board. I mean, everybody started making pins like crazy. All of a sudden, favor then eventually sued Reynolds because they just sued them for a shoddy product. Really? I'm not sure how that quite works, because it wasn't like they were a consumer. They get that off of the market. But they were kind of right. I don't know if they won that lawsuit, but a lot of these returns pins were returned. The initial rental pins were returned because they didn't work. But children with burns on their arms because the pens are suddenly caught fire. He made almost $6 million in 1940, $5 in the first six months of his company, jeez. So he was set. So. By the way, Chuck, I'm on the West Egg inflation calculator. Oh, yeah, you have it apt. $12. I should just have it as, like, an app in my brain. That is the first thing I'll do when we start adding apps to our brains. But the twelve point 55 would be $173.16 last year. Yeah. That is a little crazy for a brand new pen. A ballpoint pen. If people have been living with fountain pens and they were sick of them, the idea of something that improved on that much, I could see running in droves to Gimbals being like, you're going to go out of business eventually, and Macy's will stick around. So tell me all your pen. They also did. It was a lot of advertising hullabaloo, like, they called them the pin of the atomic era, and sort of all that futuristic stuff that people went wild for. Healthy glow. But as far as my own bikini, this was a revolution, because, like we said, 1250 is a lot of dough. Back then, in 1945, a Frenchman named Marcel would it be Bich? I think it's beach. Is it beach? That's why I dropped the HS, so people could pronounce it. Yeah. He developed a process for making these things really cheap per unit, and all of a sudden, you could get a pin for 29, $35 to he called it the Big pin. And that really changed thing, because ten years later, he came to the United States, and everyone was like, man, we've been buying all these credit expensive pins for 1250. Yeah. Mr. Big comes along. These aren't great early on, but they only cost $25. Yeah. So these big pens, they made quite a splash. And one of the ways that they did was the lower prices. Not only offered these pens for much lower prices than the other pens, they created competition among all the ballpoint pen manufacturers. And all of a sudden, you could get a ball point pen for, like, $0.10 when three years before, you would have paid 1250. And it really changed the industry. And as it just kept going and going, and manufacturing got better and better, so did two did these highly disposable cheap ballpoint pens thanks to Bick? Yes. Have you ever taken a good look at the Bick logo? It's freaky, man. It's a little school kid with a ball head, right? Yeah. Ballpoint head. Yeah. And there's like a light reflecting off of the sphere of the ball, but it also just kind of looks like a cyclops. And he's holding a pen behind his back, too. What are you going to do with that pen, kid? I wonder if that's how young Marcel Bick saw himself. Maybe so. I don't know. He was into Dada art. So let's talk about the design of these things, the brilliant simplicity of the ballpoint. Penn design. Like we mentioned, that the little ball there is a buffer between the paper and the ink it rolls around. It fits very tightly in this socket, but not so tightly that it can't roll, because there's nothing more annoying than a ball that's stuck in place, which happens from time to time. Major pen is toast. Probably. Probably so. But this little socket, like I'm glad this article pointed this out. It's really small and it might be hard to sort of imagine it, but if you get in a time machine and go to your dad's bathroom in 1983, you might find a deodorant called a rollon deodorant ban. Ban. Roll on. And it's the same exact thing, same technology, and that you have a ball keeping that fluid inside and the reservoir from leaking out. And then as it rolls around your disgusting armpit, some of that juice goes on to your disgusting skin. Yeah. And burns a whole clear through it. Yes. Roll on. Yeah. Did you? No, I was never into rolling because it burns a hole in your skin. Did you spray ever? No, I don't think I ever had any spray. No. I've always been like a solid stick dude. I can't even use, like, the Speed stick stuff. That's like the gel. Yeah, it's got to be like solid white stick. Yeah, if it's not white grape. But I mean, it can't be like gel. It has to be solid like that. Yeah. See, I can only use the unscented gel stuff. I can't find unscented sticks anymore. I used to use sugar because that was the only unscented stick you could find. I used men and unscented gel. Wow. I might have to give that a try because it's been a while since I really gave my underarms a chemical burn. But all that stuff is not supposed to be great for you. No, I know. Emily gives me the natural stuff. And you know what that means? It means Chuck stinks. Toms makes this great one, I think. Apricot scented. It's wonderful. Not bad. Yummy uses it sometimes. You use it? I've used it before. But it's hard to find the unscented natural stuff. Yeah, that's true. And then I don't know, man. I need a little extra now. Same here, man. I need powerful chemicals to overcome the stink from my underarms. I use Axe because I'm in 8th grade, but it's the only stuff that's like a good solid stick that works with a minimum amount of application. Do you really? Yeah. Isn't that the stuff that just stinks to high heavens? Well, I mean, if you really slather it on or you use the body spray, it's going to smell, but it has a scent to it. Yes. I'm using black sugar right now. We've either gotten three new sponsors or ensured that we will never be sponsored by Deodorant. We're doing a lot of buzz marketing right now, it's true. But anyway, roll on. Any perspirant technology and ballpoint pen technology are the exact same. I think that's the point we're trying to make. Exactly. So with this ballpoint pen ball, it's extraordinarily small. Like on my pilot, G two, since I use a zero seven millimeter, the ball is so small that it makes a line that's just seven tenths of a millimeter wide. Yeah, that's what that means. I never knew that. It's a very, very tiny, tiny little ball. Like when you look at the end of a pen, you don't really see the ball. The ball in the ballpoint. It's that small. You have to really look. And that's a zero seven. Yeah. You ever use a zero one? No, I haven't. I'm not crazy. Come on. I don't want to line that unless it's like something super specific I'm trying to do. I like a nice zero five. Yeah, I've tried zero five. I like it a little thicker than that. So I go with the seven. It's not like I'll never use a zero five, but zero seven is my favorite, for sure. Blue 7.1 would be if you're doing like, cross hatching on an illustration or something. I could see it for that. I don't even know what that means. When you make the lines for Shading on the drawing, that's cross hatch. Okay, so I want everyone to go to YouTube and type in closeup of a ballpoint pen. And somebody went to the trouble of doing like, an extreme close up. It must be through some sort of microscope video camera of a ballpoint pen making a mark on a piece of paper. And it's really fascinating. Interesting. So what you're talking about getting back to the way that these work, the ball holds the ink above it, keeps it from spilling out, also keeps it from drying out. But when pressure is applied to the ball by pressing the pen to the paper or whatever you're writing on, it releases the ball or spins the ball so that the backside of the ball that's covered in ink spreads across the paper. And that same part of the ball that just spread ink on the paper rolls back up into the socket where there's more ink to be spread onto it. And for this process to be continued on again and again wherever you're rolling the ball on the paper. Because when you're writing, what you're doing is rolling a tiny ball with ink on it all over a paper. I love it. That's it. That's a ballpoint pen. All right, well, let's take another break here and we will talk more about. Ink and space pins right after this. Chuck, let's talk ink, baby. All right. You're a blue man? Yes. I go to black. That means I like iron and you like carbon, basically. So when you're talking ink and a ballpoint pen, you've got a pigment or some sort of a dye that's dispersed in a liquid called a vehicle. So it's not like you can just take a bunch of pigment and throw it in a pin. It needs to be it needs to have some juice that it's mixed with. Right. And that's called the vehicle. Yeah. And it can be any number of things. I actually found this really confusing, and I looked all over the Internet and just got even more confused. But tannins, which I thought were pigments, apparently are vehicles and something you want to look for in a vehicle. Like a tannin, which is like something you would get from fermenting leaves or something. Like there's a lot of tannins in your kombucha or your wine. Right. Those tannins basically adhere. They carry the ink from the writing instrument to the paper. And as the ink dries, the tannins bind the ink to the paper, making a permanent mark. That's what you're looking for. So you've got your pigment, you've got your dye, you have your agent, whatever it is that's coloring the ink, it can be anything from an inorganic chemical like cadmium, or it could be carbon, or it can be iron, and it would be dissolved in that vehicle tannins. And then you might also add additives, which are things that create other properties of ink that you're looking for. Like, they use gum arabic to kind of increase the viscosity of the ink and to make it so that once it dries, it doesn't crack as much. It stays kind of bendy on the paper. Yeah. And these vehicles. So does that mean if you have a vehicle, a plant based vehicle, it's like linseed oil. Does that mean linseed oil is a tannin? That's what I'm saying. There's not a lot of specific information that explains this out there. I don't know. In other words, are we going to have to do a show on tenants? As tenants? Please say no. No. Okay, good. We're going to stick by this. But like you were talking about the organic pigments you mentioned earlier, I'm a carbon man. You're an iron man. The carbon is the black, the iron is the blue. Other inorganic compounds, like chromium is where you get your yellow greens and oranges, or maybe cadmium red and yellow. It kind of just depends. So the thing that what you're looking for, though, if it's a pigment, it won't dissolve in water, but it will dissolve in some other stuff, like maybe alcohol or something like that. Agents will dissolve in solvents, like alcohol, but also water. And then you have lacquers, where you actually take the coloring agent and marry it to powdered aluminum. And that's lacquer. So those are, like, the three color ways of delivering colors that you can use with this vehicle. Whatever it is that you can dissolve the coloring agent in that will deliver this coloring agent from the pen to the paper. That's what you want. So maybe the tannin is an additive, or maybe the tannin just pulls dual duty and it will deliver that stuff and dissolve something like iron salts in it and bind to the paper as well. Who knows? We'll never know. We're going to die not knowing. The beauty of this show is someone smarter than us will clear up what tannins are. I hope so, because I really looked this up, man. I looked at it, I think a UK chemical Society's blog post on inks, and they didn't explain it very well. I just don't get it. Well, regardless of what a tannin is or is not, what you're doing with a ballpoint pen, and the ink is a lot of R and D goes into that dance between thick and thin because you want it to be thick, but you also want it to dry quickly, and you want it to work with you can't be so thick that it doesn't respond to gravity. Right. Because that's not a pin anymore. No, it's really not. And the reason why you can't write upside down is because it responds to gravity. If you're laying in your bed as a 14 year old writing a love letter. Holding the pad above your head. Staring at the ceiling. If you think about that pin rolling around that ink. There's an air pocket in that cartridge. And it's going to reverse itself. And that air is going to be at the top. And you're not going to be able to write very long upside down. Right, exactly. And, yeah, you might be able to make a mark for just a moment, and then it just turns into a scratch, and what you've just done is used up whatever ink was on that rollerball for a second, and then now there's no more ink, which is I never really thought about it, but yes, of course. That's why you can't write upside down with a ballpoint pen. Yes, but we got space pins, and they're pressurized, and that's kind of pretty cool. Do you have one of these? No. Have you? Yeah, I got one as a gift once. Oh, boy. So do you remember our space race episode? I do. I cannot for the life of me remember, Chuck, if we continued this legend or debunked it. Do you? I don't know if we even mentioned it. I am almost certain we talked about it. Oh, really? Sorry. Yeah. Hopefully we said that it was apocryphal. But there's this legend from the space race that the American space agency NASA spent years and years trying to figure out how to get a pen into space because they wanted for the astronauts something to be able to write within space, but because of zero gravity, because you need gravity with a ballpoint pen. If it's in zero gravity or microgravity, that ink ain't going to flow downward. No. And you got a problem. So NASA spent so much money on funding and years of research trying to come up with a pen, and one day, some American astronauts were talking to some of their Soviet counterparts, and we're telling them how much trouble NASA was having. And the cosmonauts said, well, we just use pencils. They went and the NASA astronauts were like, NASA looked stupid, and the Soviets look good. And America just did a big face palm bunk. It's totally bunk. 100% bunk, because the Russians used our pens. Right? They did. And initially, everybody used pencils, but there was something where you can find, like, a kernel of truth to that. Like, there's always a kernel of truth on any urban legend. And this one is NASA spent a lot of money on some mechanical pencils. Not years of research or anything like that, but I think back in the early 60s, they ordered, like, 40 mechanical pencils from a company out of Houston that charged them the modern equivalent of $1,000 each. And the public found out about this and was not very happy. Right? Yeah. So there was a big to do about how to replace these pencils because they didn't want to use regular pencils because the Apollo One launch had gone horribly, or I think a test had gone horribly, and some of the astronauts had burned to death in the capsule. They didn't want anything that could burn aboard their capsules. Right. But now mechanical pencils were out, so they needed some sort of replacement. Well, they didn't spend any money on looking for a new pen or any years of research, because in 1965, they were approached by a guy named Paul C. Fisher, and he said, I got a pen for you. It's called a space pen. Have a look. And they went, It's almost as if you have made this just for us, because you even called it the space pen. And did he actually name it the Fisher Space pen? He named it the AG Seven antigravity space pen. Yeah. Like I said, at the onset of this little part, these were pressurized, and that kind of solved all the problems. They're pressurized to the reservoir, that is, to about \u00a340 per square inch. And there's also a special ink. It's what you would call a viscoel elastic ink. And they like our own article to, like, a thick rubber cement. And it actually still needs that ball, though that ball point in this case is necessary to liquefy it and kind of get that action going. And they say you can even write underwater, which I'm not sure how that would come into play, but maybe it's just a fun little advertising point. Yeah, but the fact that it's pressurized overcomes micro gravity so it actually works. And it will work here on Earth upside down, too. Yeah. And there's also no hole in these reservoirs like there are regular fountain pens. So not only are you not wasting any ink, but there's no chance of leakage. Yeah, they're very widely touted is lasting 100 years because the air is not going to get in and dry them out. You remember the erasable pin? I do, man, I totally forgotten about those until this article came along. Yeah, and I'm sure you do too. Remember when they came on the market? It was the early 1980s, and all of a sudden you could have a little eraser mate. Like the paper mate became the eraser mate. And you could write stuff in pen and as long as you got back to it within and chances are it was usually right away, but supposedly about 10 hours is how much time you had to go in there and erase the ink. And you could erase it like 90% of the way. Yeah, it was definitely not a perfect thing. But pencils are sort of the same. Well, they're sort of the same way. Yeah, I guess so. Well, I mean, it kind of depends. You can definitely erase a pencil better, but it depends on the kind of paper, whether or not you want to leave no trace that anything had been written. Right. But it's definitely better than pens. So the trick with erasable pens, the way that they are erasable is that they weren't actually using ink, so there wasn't something to bind them to the paper. I mean, there was, but it took a very long time to be bound, about 10 hours. And the ink that they used was actually liquid rubber cement. And so when you would write in this liquid rubber cement, you had that set amount of time before it really bound and you could conceivably erase it. So I totally forgot about that. But it said it's not made from dyes. How did they color it, do you know? I don't know. I would say that it was probably one of the top ten wonders of modern chemistry. Yeah, I'll buy that. Okay. Why not? Somebody's got to. There's still out there, too. I don't think people are as knocked out by them as they used to be. It's not the 80s. Everybody was really coked up back then and it was really easy to impress people. Yes. Including me as a twelve year old. You were cooked up as a twelve year old? No, of course not. I've got one last one. Have you heard of rollerball pens? Yes. What are those? It's basically like my pilot. It's considered an ink gel pen, but you could also make the case that it's a rollerball pen. But a rollerball pen, it sounds like something different. It's actually just a type of ballpoint pen. The difference between a rollerball and a ballpoint pen is the ink. So a rollerball pen has slightly more liquid ink, whereas a ballpoint pens ink is going to actually be paste. That kind of like that space pen is activated and liquefied a little more when the ball starts rolling on it. But they're both ballpoint pens. Okay. It's just the ink inside that differentiates the two. Well, I do like those. My God, I cannot believe we got as much out of this episode as we did. And sometimes it's the paper, too, that you're writing on. Like, have you ever gone to sign for a check at a restaurant and it's the smoothest, most, like, wonderful writing experience of your life? I don't even know what it's made out of. But that kind of shiny receipt paper in some restaurants, like Golden Corral combined. Yeah, combined with the kind of spongy check book. What do you call those things? Carbon paper. No. Well, yeah, but I'm talking about the thing they deliver your check in, the little I don't know what that's called. I'll bet there's a name for it. But the little pad, like writing on a piece of bare paper on a wood table is not nearly as pleasurable as if there's a stack of paper. No, certainly not. So there's something to that combination of all those things with the right check from the right restaurant. The golden girl. The little checkbook, though, it can't be too puffy, or else then you risk poking through the paper if your pen is sharp. Agreed. So since I don't know the name of what they deliver the check in, the little booklet, I will say that the little things on the ends of the shoe lace are called agilets, just in case anyone out there didn't know that one. And if you go to some farm to table hipster restaurant, they may deliver your check in a clamshell. I've not seen that one. Oh, people get all cutesy with it. Here. We're going to deliver your check in an old 18th century wooden clothes pin and clip it to your tie and pinch your cheeks. Yeah, just give me the check. Clip it to your tie. I'm not wearing a tie. You will be. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about ballpoint pens, there's nothing left to know. So just go out, find your favorite, buy a few of them, and use them happily and in good health. Or maybe give fountain pens to try and see if that's your thing. Sure. And since I said, if that's your thing, I think I said something like that. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Colorado SAR. Follow up. Search and research. Search and rescue. That's what we do. Search and research. True. Repeat and repeat. Hey, guys. Colorado's population has been growing by roughly 17% every decade, which is pretty amazing, actually. When we were out there for those shows, I remember Denver Rights talking about the population boom of the past, like 20 years. That's me talking, by the way. Okay. He said there are a lot of new residents now wanting to experience our awesome mountains. That, combined with the health renaissance across the country, has created a lot of interest in 14 Ers. And he goes on to explain as follows colorado has 58 peaks that are over 14,000ft. So that's what he's talking about. The fourteenrs. Some of them are easy and only a few miles with the trailhead already at 11,000ft. Others are brutal hikes of 20 plus miles, extremely loose rock, ropeless climbing and death if you fall. Sometimes it's really easy to research information on the routes. But in spite of all this information out there, the allure of the mountain calls and many people head out unprepared every year, people are rescued or died due to dumb mistakes that many websites will blatantly tell you not to make and teach you how to avoid because of the easy availability of information. And I think there's like 14 or.com or something is what he recommended. There is a healthy debate taking place among the hiking community as to whether or not Colorado should begin charging for search and rescue. Your podcast hit the nail on the head with the pros and cons. Thought you might be interested in a little insight. Capital Peak is the deadliest and most dangerous of the 50 814 Ers and has killed six people in the past year alone. However, five of them made an obvious mistake by taking what they thought was a shortcut that doesn't exist. Oh, God. Yeah, man. I'm planning on attempting it in two weeks as I have done 38 of the 58 peaks. That is from Tyler Nest Par, and he went to Mike, two of the Denver shows. Oh, nice. Tyler, thanks a lot for coming out. I hope you liked it. Yes. Be safe out there, dude. For sure. Yeah. Actually, as a matter of fact, drop us a line after you're done to let us know you made it back safe and we'll tell everybody. Okay? Yeah, it sounds like Tyler is doing it right. Okay. But just in case, you know, agree. Thanks again, Tyler, for getting in touch. If you want to be like Tyler, well, then, by goodness, go to our website, stuffysheno.com, look up all of our social media links, or do it the oldfashioned way and send us an email to stuff podcasts@housetofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.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." | |
428665a0-53a3-11e8-bdec-b71bd04ce24e | Where Did Trick-Or-Treating Come From? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/where-did-trick-or-treating-come-from | We aren’t exactly sure who invented trick-or-treating – kids who realized they could extort adults for candy, or adults who bought off kids in exchange for laying off pranks? The bigger question is: Will trick-or-treating survive the 21st century? | We aren’t exactly sure who invented trick-or-treating – kids who realized they could extort adults for candy, or adults who bought off kids in exchange for laying off pranks? The bigger question is: Will trick-or-treating survive the 21st century? | Tue, 29 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=302, tm_isdst=0) | 48841546 | audio/mpeg | "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 and serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate cover goodness with real time data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your City Advantage Platinum Select card so you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. 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. Debbie. Chuck Bryan over there. There's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know right before Halloween edition about trick or treat. Like a little kid every Halloween. I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah. Do you get trick or treaters? No, not really. No. Kind of life, hashtag, etc. But yeah. And I've told my story before, but I'll just briefly summarize again that my house is after a big curve in the road and people seem to just stop at that curve in the road. Well, they don't want to come up on old man Brian's house. No. You know the old dead oak tree with a big hole in it that Boo Radley hides figures and is kind of off putting it right on your property. And I think in my neighborhood, too, they literally close off the cops close off two blocks. There's just this big square of streets and that's the official sanctioned no stress area where the parents all just walk around and get drunk and all the kids just run around and don't have to worry about cars. Right. So everyone in my neighborhood is congregated there and you're outside of that. And I'm outside the comfort zone. Yes, which I kind of miss. I like trickortreaters coming to my house. I guess I could maybe try and move a few houses in, which I'm not going to do. We could casually move the roadblocks a little further back to include your house. Well, they're actual police cars with police officers. I can't move them some points, but I could put signs that like, this way for the best yet. And then you're like, only two more houses, right? Or like leave a trail of candy because I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, we rented a house that got a lot of trick or treaters, and I loved it. Man, I scared it the heck out of those kids. Oh, really? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Like, I really got that was my first big adult giving out candy night. Like, the first time I've ever been able to do that. Because you didn't have kids yet. So we weren't out trick or treating and really punched the music out, like, the psycho theme and scary John Carpenter stuff. Sure. I really enjoyed it. Did you, like, do anything to overtly scare them? Oh, yes. I was dressed up as a very scary person, and I would jump out and scare them over and over and over. Did you really jump out? Good for you, Chuck. Or I would stand, like, Emily would be giving out candy, and I would just be in the darkened house, like, 8ft behind her, just standing there motionless. That's always a nice but the point is, I sort of feel like we're missing out. Like, we certainly enjoy taking our daughter out, but I really wish we had kids that came by. Yeah, I wish you did, too. Too bad. A stupid house right there near the main road. So close, yet so far away. So far away. And that's your forever house, too. Yeah. No trigger treaters ever again for you walked in there. But what we could do is we could go to a friend's house, and that's jump on their coattails. You can't sit on their couch. You have to take your shoes off in their house. You can't be comfortable. We've long talked, me and my friend Eddie and Alison. They have a good backyard. It's about doing, like, a haunted trail one year that if you come trick or treating, you got to go through the trail first. It sounds like a lot of work. It is. And it would be fun. No, I mean for the kids who have to go through the trail. Right. You got to earn that free candy. Earn that Reese's Pieces. So we just hit upon, like, 15 different themes in this episode. If you'll agree. Did you agree? Yes. So we're talking about trick or treating here, and if you look at the thing on its face, just the words trick or treat. There seems to be some sort of option here. You can do one or the other. There used to be, give me a treat or you get a trick, basically, was the equation. Yeah. They should just change the name now to just Treat night. Treat night. Right? Exactly. We aren't 100% sure on where trigger treating came from, but what we do know is that it was originated in America in the 20th century and that there was this brief golden age where it lived up to its name. Trick or treat. There was an offer to not get pranked or tricked and if you didn't take the people up on the offer, the kids up on the offer by giving them candy, you got pranked. That was the equation. It was in the name. Everybody knew the score. And then it slowly kind of moved over to what we understand today, where the police set up roadblocks and everything is safe these kids these days. And it's just kind of just like you said, just the treat side of the equation. Yeah. I was, of course, kidding, but we'll get to it. There are people that really do decry this new generation of children who just expect handouts and that it leads to the idea of the welfare state. Right. And all this other garbage that I have no patience for. Sure, because it's just a fun thing for kids. Yeah. Or do you think they should be earning the stuff? No, I don't feel that way. I think it'll come through loud and clear as we do the episode. All right, well, we should jump back a little bit to the origins of Halloween. We've gone over this before and episodes passed, but we all know it originally started as a pagan harvest, or not just one, but pagan harvest festivals in general among the Celts over in the UK. Yes. And that evolved into Halloween. But it had nothing to do with trick or treating at the time. No, it wasn't. Around again. Trick or treating is 100% American invention. That's right. With Halloween in particular, you've got all these different components for the modern Halloween. For trick or treating. Yes. You have going from house to house. You have getting to said house and asking for a treat, basically sanctioned begging. Got your costume, costume, dressing up, got being outside, kind of parading around all of these things, find their origin in the Celtic, and I think specifically Gaelic harvest festivals that introduce the dark half of the year. That's right. And in particular, there was Salwen, which forever I've always said Sam hain because that's how it's spelled. Now, you said salin, right when we did our Halloween episode, didn't you? Probably, yeah. By the way, speaking of salin or Sam hain, you realize that I went to New York and saw The Misfits on Saturday. Oh, yeah. How was that? I mean, it was great. Colossally. Amazing. This is the original Misfits, right? The original Misfits. Glenn Danzik, Gerry Only Doyle, Wolfgang von Frankenstein, who actually specifically invited us to this stuff, you should know. Listener, right? Yes. To this show. And it was that's amazing. Knock your socks off. Didn't the Damned play as well? The Damned open and then rancid and then the Misfits just tore the roof off the soccer. When I saw you were going, I looked up some YouTube clips of this tour and it looked pretty amazing. It was amazing. And I think Glenn Dansi said that was their last one ever. Oh, really? And so we got to see it. Wow. Yeah. You mean I went had a great time. Amazing. So big, big. Thanks to Doyle, Wolfgang von Frankenstein, for the invite. The stage set up looks great. It was just a really cool show. And they played almost everything. Yeah, it was just a really good show. That's fantastic. So, anyway, back to Saturday. Yeah. I mean, that's a perfect time to mention that show, though. It all worked out. It did. Halloween was the night considered when the veil between the living and the dead was the shortest. And so that's when Halloween formed. Right. So people would dress up in modern day Ireland, scotland, I believe, wales, man. They would dress up like demons or fairies or supernatural characters who were because this veil was so thin between the living and the dead or the supernatural, they could cross over. These creatures could cross over and communicate. So if you dressed up like them, maybe they would be confused and think you're one of them and leave you alone. That's right. So now we've got the costume thing going, right? That's right. And part of that was the community getting together, getting drunk on probably high octane meat and stuff like that. And they would parade through the town. They sell Halloween parades all over the place. Here in Atlanta, we have one of the best and little Five Points Halloween parade. Fantastic. When you think about the Halloween parade at your town, that is centuries, millennia old. That tradition is. Yeah. So we have those two things going on and then the one missing piece is knock, knock. Hey, give me candy. Right. But this we have the origins of which came and it's still not Halloween. It took American kids to put all this stuff together, but the European tradition of souling, which was when kids on Halloween would go from house to house and pray for the souls of the departed. And in exchange you would get a soul cake. Yeah. Which I looked up. They look pretty good. What is it? Just a little bit good. It looks like a muffin top. Like top of the muffin to you. It looks really good. Soul cakes or mumming. And this sounds fantastic. I wish kids still had to do this stuff. You would have to perform a short musical number or some kind of performance to get a treat of some kind. Maybe a little spare change. Right. So in that sense, you have going to house to house and getting something from the owners of the house, like a treat or something like that. That's right. But there was a reason for that. Praying for the soul of their departed loved one, doing a little dance number, something like that. The prank part. The prank part of the equation that also existed before trick or treating, too. And in fact, that was kind of the origin of the biggest tradition of Halloween itself, was pranking. Yeah. And that came from Ireland. Is that right? Yes. Supposedly, in the 1880s, they would just run around doing pranks, and then they would blame those fairies or demons on Saoin for the mischief. That it wasn't us, it was the fairy on Sam Hein. Right. That's how it's spelled. Yeah. That's a confounding pronunciation. It is, but there you have it. That's right. And then pranks back then. And of course, we're pretty low key, ding dong ditch, stuff like that. Moving the neighbor's furniture to the roof. I saw that. Yeah. Like flower pot in the chimney. Sure. But it would also get way worse than that. Yes. I looked up Mischief Night. We never did that in Georgia. No. Or Devil's Night. It was also called yes, which is the night before Halloween when all these pranks would happen. Region to region is called different. Apparently in New Jersey it's Mischief Night. Cabbage night or something. Well in Camden, New Jersey. It's Mischief night. Other parts of New Jersey call it cabbage night. Cincinnati calls it damage night. That's pretty overt. That's a punk band name right there. Damage Night. Yeah, totally. That's Insurance Deductible Night. I don't know why Ohio is so highly represented here. Beggars Night is something else they called it in Ohio. Check. Because there's nothing else to do in Ohio but sit around and wait for that night for Halloween. Other names. Doorbell night, trick night, corn night, tiktek night, goosey night. And then in Canada, gate night or Matt night. If you're in Quebec, M-A-T they would steal the gate off your fence or the mat from your doorstep and really remove it. Yeah. Okay. So they're pretty on the nose, especially Damaged Night. But Devil's Night in Detroit, it became legendary over about a 20 year period in the through the mid ninety s I saw before. They finally got a little bit of a could put a dent in it by forming Angels Night. Yeah. They kind of rebranded it. Well, not rebranded. The Angels were volunteers who would walk around to keep kids from setting everything on fire. Okay. Because that's what they did on Devil's Night. It was a night of arson. I thought that it ran its course because they burned all the buildings down in Detroit. There was nothing else left. It was a real problem, though. I looked into it and hundreds of kids in 1994, I think there were, like, 315 kids arrested on Devil's Night fires and other stuff. In 1984, the peak of Devil's Night in Detroit, there were 810 cases of arson in one night in Detroit. Yeah. They would just set the city on fire. And I'm sure some of these were bags of poop on a doorstep. Right. Which I think we can all agree is harmless fun. It is. Unless you're the steppy. I never did any of this stuff. I never rolled a house. Oh, you didn't know. That was fun. I'm so mad. I was so busy being good. Never too late, buddy. I know. I should roll a house or fork a yard. I don't know what that is. The plastic forks just basically get like 2000 plastic forks and stick them in the yard. Oh, really? Yes. I've never heard of that one. You never did that? I'll really chew up a lawnmower. I never egged a house because I always heard that really damages paint. Yes, we did have the Junior senior egg fight every year. That was kind of fun. Well, there you go. You got something. We get together in a field and throw eggs at each other. Aside from wasting a lot of pressure. Resource with eggs. Yes, but also toilet paper. You really should roll somebody's house at least. It's great. Is it? Yeah. All right, I'm going to roll your condo. I remember when I was a kid, actually, my friend and I rolled the neighbor's house. But we had to be in early, so we were doing it basically in broad daylight. It was dusk at best and a cop drove by, which never happened in our neighborhood, ever. The cops just weren't needed. Right. I think we talked about in the free range episodes, parents episode, you could just do whatever and we had to knock out of the house of the neighborhood house we just rolled to let us in to hide from the cop. She went out and told the cop like, it's fine, don't worry about it. We rolled her house and had to get safe harbor from her. Yeah, and you can't really clean up a rolled house, can you? You can if they come tell your parents what you did. How do you do the rain? Makes it way worse. Yeah, but I mean, you can't climb up there, can you? Write? Some of it's inevitably stuck up there, but you can pull it down as gingerly as you can to get as much as you can. But now some are going to be left over. All right, I'm going to roll a house. Okay. Just know whose house you're rolling. Like you don't want to get shot at or anything. I don't see that anymore either. I don't live in the suburbs. Maybe it's a little more prone to happen there, but it seems like a lost art. It very well, maybe I don't know anybody who rolls. I just assumed it was because we'd outgrown it. Emily called it TP in a house. Yes. That's Ohio. Yeah, TP. All right, let's take a break. We barely talked about this. I think we're one page in. Good. That's great. All right. 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. 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 Baratoon 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 start off, you should let it know. All right, so to recap, Chuck, we have the costumes in play now. We have being out on Halloween night, sometimes parading, drunkenly community. We have going from house to house. And we have the prank factor. That's right. All of these things are out there floating around, have been out there for centuries, millennia by the time America is born and makes it to the 20th century. And at some point, some kids said, we think, hey, you know what? We can pull all this together and turn it into something really amazing and peculiar and unique called trick or treating. That's right. You found a great piece from a sociologist named Samira Kawash great name, called Gangsters Pranksters and Trick or Treating, 1930 to 1960. And is this that pure period that you're talking about, where she thinks that American kids just created this thing? Yeah, there's two historical views because we don't know where it came from. One historical view, and I think this is what Cowash believes, too, is that it was actually kids who figured this out, which is great, who said we can extort adults to not prank them if they give us treats. Right. And that it was a genuinely invention of kids. They made it up. Right. And there's some evidence for that kind of thing. A lot of, like, the early newspaper accounts of it kind of call the kids gangsters and say they're extorting people. It's also possible that was written super tongue in cheek right. And that was kind of dry and lost to the ages. The other historical view is that the kids were out pranking and doing the pranks, and it was the adults that introduced treats into the equation to buy them off. Okay. Yeah. To keep them from pranking. Right. Los Angeles, possibly is the point of origin. And this one, wealthy kids, I guess that makes sense, that this would be the idea of kids of privilege. Sure. Like, come around, give me stuff. But apparently in Los Angeles, kids in the wealthy parts of town would dress up and their parents would take them around from house to house. And this is that pre 1930 period, though. Yeah. They think sometime in the if you think about it, that really resembles what we do today. Yeah. But in between that origin and where we've arrived today, there was this pure period, 1930 to 1960. Some people might even take it a little further beyond that, where the kids seem to have run the show. And there really was both sides of the equation, a trick or a treat. Right. But that term actually was in 1927 in an article. Right. It's not the first time they found the two words in print together, I guess three words. That was in an article about a town called Blackie in Alberta, Canada. And it seems like all of it was sort of on the West Coast early on. Yes. And again, I think possibly it did originate in Los Angeles or it may have originated in multiple towns on the West Coast roughly at the same time. But we're thinking twenties because in 1919 there was a book by Ruth Edna called Ruth and the Kelly called The Book of Halloween. And it didn't mention any kind of trick or treating in there. No. And it's like an exhaustive comprehensive homemaker overview. It would have been in there. Right. For sure. And you got to think like, poor Ruth and Kelly's, like, gosh, if I just waited like, two years to put this book out, they're going to come up with something brand new with Halloween. I know. Two years after I come up with this book, I wrote the book on it. Right. Not quite. Now it's out of date, but they did find mentions of it in newspapers out west. Portland, Washington, reno, Nevada. Nevada, helena, Montana. Yeah. And you can kind of track its progress from the dates from Westpor articles. Right. Yeah. So there's those two sides. One say that it was kids who came up with it on their own. Perhaps they were introduced with the idea of going from house to house to get treats in Los Angeles. But then they said, well, we're also doing these prankings. Maybe we can say, hey, we won't prank you if you give us a treat. There's that view. The other view, again, is that it was adults who said, whoa, kids, we don't want you setting fires any longer derailing street cars because every once in a while, somebody would die. People would get shot at by angry neighbors. Sometimes somebody would be in one of those buildings that they set on fire, and they die. People would die in a building that kids set on fire as a Halloween prank. So for the most part, though, it was just kind of tolerated as one night a year when the kids basically had power and were allowed to run the show. So this idea, this other historical view that adults finally said, hey, we're not going to just say you can't do pranking. That would probably be a bad thing, but why don't we just start having parties on Halloween night while you're out pranking? And there'll be cider and donuts, and you can come inside and bob for apples and maybe do that instead of running around pranking the neighborhood. And once you did do that, you went from and this is Samir Kawash putting it like, under the rules of society, you went from this powerful kid who could levy a prank on you if he or she wanted to, to a house guest of the adult who now had you in and had given you donuts insider. Are you really going to set their house on fire as a prank after that? Of course not. You're not going to. So in this sense, trick or treating was something the adults introduced to keep kids from carrying out these pranks. Yeah, and it was by the time World War II came around, it was a big thing in the 1940s. But of course, with the sugar rationing and just the fact that there was World War II going on, it put a dent in it for a little while, but it came back bigger than it ever had been after the war. And I mean, seriously, it came very close to dying out going on World War II. Yeah, it was pretty new. It hadn't gained that much traction. There were a lot of cranks and grumps who are not happy about this kind of thing. I'm curious, what else had died in the war and never came back? There's got to be lots of little things. That's a great question when you look it up. But there were a couple of big pop culture sort of tent poles that helped Halloween along. Charles Schultz's Peanuts. Of course, it wasn't the Great Pumpkin Trolley Brown yet. That was the Think. Yeah. But in 1951, he had a four day comic strip run around Halloween where the Peanuts gang got already and got their costumes going, and that really brought it to the forefront. And then Donald Duck, it was a cartoon Donald Duck trickortreat a year after that, that had Donald working with his nephews or trying to prank his nephews while they were trickortreating and working with the witch. And then the candy companies get involved. There was also a very famous costume company called ben Cooper costumes. Yeah, they're the ones the cheap yes. Plastic mask, like a vinyl spot. That's right. But they had this really great talent of identifying what was going to be like, a pop culture phenomenon before it ever blew up. Cheap. But they were also making these things, like, ten months before they really had to have foresight, and they were really good at it. But the fact that you could get cheap, amazing costumes that the little kids all wanted of their favorite characters, that definitely helped things along, too. Yeah. It's hard to overstate, like, how big of a deal it was to a kid to be the certain whatever they wanted to be. I think it's still that way. I'm sure it is. But now it's a lot easier, I think, to buy costumes. Right. I think when you and I were kids, there was a lot of fashioning costumes. When you didn't have the ability to be like the Alien from Alien, it was a lot harder to put together these elaborate costumes. But once you got your heart set on it, you like, you had to sure. I'm going to tell you my best costume, and you tell me yours. Okay? Okay. My mom made one from scratch. Clown is a clown costume. But the big kicker was that it was an upside down clown walking on his hands. So my feet were the clown's hands. His head is, like, dangling between my legs. I've got his legs sticking up off of my shoulders. And I don't remember my head must have been covered up like I was in his butt or something like that. Right. But it was an upside down walking clown. Greatest costume ever. Really? Yeah. You got any pictures somewhere? Yeah. Okay. I did a lot of funny ones. Like my brother and I were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker when I was really little. Nice. But then I got into, like I was always wanting to do, like, funny characters. I like Ed Grimly one year. The Saturday Night Live character. I did. Ed Grimly one year. That's a good one. And I don't know, I felt like I was always trying to make people laugh. I never did scary stuff. Right. Until little kids started coming around and trick or treating at your house. Yes. Then you started to scare more like movie characters. Like, even into my adult years, I would try and find some cool movie character, like Hi from Raising Arizona. I did one year. It's almost a Grimly. Same hair. No, not same at all, actually. And then one year, I did a great I actually won a contest in New Jersey one year when I was Hardy Kushner and I shaved my head. I did the whole thing. Wow. I had literature. I passed out. Well, made the whole deal. You just ended up joining a local chapter for a little while. Fine. Really got into the role. But it's been a. Few years since I've dressed up. Yeah, same here. Because I just oh, that's not true. I haven't been to a Halloween party in probably five years. Right. What were you last year? I was Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. So you were you but with a tie. Right, exactly. And like, a giant inflatable brick cell phone and yummy. Was a specific Michael Jackson. A moment of Michael Jackson's history where he's holding blanket over the balcony. Sure. And Momo was blanket. You could see it on Instagram. That's great. I have to check that out. All right. So the candy company started getting involved. That's where I left off. Yeah. And the costume company, they knew it was gold for them. Mars Incorporated, in the early 1950s were doing ad campaigns on TV and in newspapers and on the radio and stuff about trickortreat. It became a thing with UNICEF. They had a trick or treat for UNICEF campaign back then? I think they still might, you know you know what I'm talking about? The little boxes. I think that holds change. Yes. And they would just give them the little kids, and while they were out trick or treating, they'd also ask for change for UNICEF right. To help needy kids overseas. And that actually went a really long way to legitimizing trick or treating. Yeah, they're doing a lot these days, too. For kids, special needs kids. It's taken this long to finally get the word out. Like the blue pumpkins. Have you heard of those? No. If you trick or treat with a blue pumpkin, that means that you have some sort of special need where you may not be able to walk to a front door and say, trickortreat. I'm dressed as Michigan J. Bullfrog. What? That would be a great costume. It would be. But did you pull that off of yeah. Wow. Nice. He's been on my mind lately, I guess, so people know, like, oh, you've got a blue pumpkin. So I shouldn't say, like, Come on, kid, why don't you tell me what your costume is? And it's good, though it's ironic that it's taken this long to get parents on board to the fact that some kids need different kinds of treatment. I don't know if ironic is the best word, as much as disappointing is. Yes, you're probably right. Should we take another break? Oh, my God. We're going to have to take three more. No, we're not. Okay, yes, we will, then. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes. LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft. A dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thieves have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock.com stuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the awardwinning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in is host Baratunde 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. No. All right, so I think basically what we were saying when we left off and sorry about the nostalgia here, everybody, but, I mean, come on. You get us in a room around Halloween, it's going to happen. So by the early fifties, trickortreating was huge and established. And so if 1930 and 1960 was the heyday, the golden age of trick or treating, 59 was the salad days of the heyday. Right. And when did people start complaining about it? The 70s? No. 80s? No. 90s? Far back as the really? Yeah, because those newspaper articles that you can track the progress of Halloween, more often than not, they were like old cranks complaining about how they didn't want to have to give tricks or treats or whatever. Little kids. Right. Don't you blackmail me. Yeah, exactly. What are we teaching our kids? And there's actually, if you kind of scratch beneath the surface of trick or treating, at first, it appears to be kind of a weird power struggle between kids and adults, and it definitely is that. Yeah. But there's also another power struggle going on between adults of two different minds, ones who are like, you are over parenting by being upset about this. This is just one night a year. It's good for kids. And other people are saying, like, this is terrible for kids. Allowing them to go from house to house to beg is just a bad idea. Unsafe is another way to put it, too. So there's like a struggle, weirdly over trick or treating, and it has to do with underparenting and over parenting. And that conversation about the whole thing, I have seen parents ruin kids experiences, whether it's like an Easter egg hunt or trick or treating. I've seen this in action. Because they're too involved. Yeah, I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's just how involved are you in your kids trick or treating? For a very brief period, there was very little involvement in kids trick or treating. And a lot of people say that's actually really good for kids in this other way that we've kind of started to evolve or is not. Yeah. I don't remember my parents taking me around trick or treating. I'm sure that happened maybe when I was really little. And we certainly would have had to go somewhere else because I lived on the dirt road with no neighbors or very few of them. But all my memories stem from being like, probably ten to 15 and being completely on my own with my friends. Ten to 1510 years old, but to 15, that's pretty late. What, to trick or treat? Oh, yeah. Now we trick or treated up until probably like the 9th or 10th grade. Well, we'll get to it, but in some places you get to get arrested for that. When did you stop? You'd still trick or treat if they would let you? I think I stopped around 13. Maybe 15 was too late. Maybe 13 or 14, you're fine. No, 15 is great. Go with God. No, but you're probably right now to look back. Maybe I went to Halloween parties, but maybe there's kind of an unofficial official again, in some places, cut off after twelve. Really? Done. Yeah. Because 13, you're a teenager now, and that's not kid stuff, as we'll see. Allegedly, trick or treating is a transition from kidhood to adulthood, and by the time you're 13, you've made that transition. That's in your past. It's sad, but I don't know why I'm talking like Christopher walking all of a sudden, but I am. Yes. Maybe I wasn't going that late, but I definitely remember going by myself at a certain point. But now with my neighborhood, it's just I see mostly parents not involved at all. They're there kind of like if your child is two or three, helping them walk to the door and stuff. Sure. But otherwise we're just drinking and the kids are doing their thing. So let's talk about this then. Let's skip toward the end and we'll jump back. Okay. All right. There is this debate over whether it's better to just kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best and let your kids go out and trick or treat on their own. Whether that's good or whether we need to the world is just too unsafe for that. And we need to much more manage kids trick or treating than just letting them go out on their own. It depends on where you are. That's the big divide. Yes. And one of my personal heroes, the world's worst mom, Lenoore Skinazi, who came up with the free range kids blog, right. And the whole movement, frankly, she makes this really great point that when we let kids trick or treat, we let them confront danger, like, on their own. And it's real. It's just a thin the narrowest margin of danger. I mean, people always talk about the worst things that could happen on Halloween, when a kid's out trigger tree, getting hit by a car, getting kidnapped by a stranger, getting, like, an apple with a razor blade in it. Yes. Just stuff that happens, and it can happen. It's true, but it happens. So infrequently that the chances are it's not going to happen. And you're actually better off just letting the kid roll the dice. Because as Lenore skin, as he puts it, when you go trick or treating, you're transitioning from being a kid to a grown up. And you're doing this quite literally. You go with your parents first, and they kind of teach you the rules of the road, like, just take one piece of candy, or that house over there has their lights off, so leave them alone. They don't want to have anything to do with this. And then after that, you let them go on their own. Right. And they kind of take the ball and roll with it. And she says that when they're out trick or treating, kids dress like grown ups. They take to the streets at night, they encounter the scariest possible locals, which is in goblin, and then, yes, they're doing it at the scariest possible time, night. And the whole thing is dress rehearsal for adulthood, and that's the benefit of trick or treating. I don't quite get that. That is the same as adulthood. Like you and I all the time walking around night fighting goblins and whatever. Right? Exactly. Where would we have been without trick or treating to prepare us for fighting goblins? All right, but just confronting fears on their own without their parents managing their world for them so that they can handle themselves, have the confidence to know they can handle themselves, and I guess feel good about having confronted their fears and gotten candy in return. Let's not forget about that. Now, on the other hand, it's just, take the candy. It's fine, right? Mommy and Daddy made it perfect for you. All you have to do is go get the canyon. You're in a perfect bubble, and everything's fine. Yeah. So I kind of tend to fall on Lenorskin as he's side on that. Well, should we talk a little bit about the, you know, whether or not there have been all these real horror stories over the years and whether or not any of those are true? As far as the razor blade and the apple and stuff like that, hypodermic needles and candy, this stuff doesn't happen. No. The thing to point out, and I know we've talked about it before, is that it was an urban legend that came true right there. Was one case, and this is actually kind of funny if you asked me. In 1959, there was a dentist in California named William Shine who took aloe laxative pills and disguised them as candy and gave out 450 of them to kids. And they were all pooping. I guess. So. I think a few of them did. Poop Nobody got injured, though, right? Now you're not going to get injured from a laxative. You could poop over. Poop over. Poop. Yeah, but this is when I think this real story got out. And then all of a sudden it gets morphed into needles and razor blades or poison or candy laced with heroin and stuff like that. Well, that did happen. Well, yeah, but that's the thing. Like, the examples that are listed are reverse engineered, almost. Right. So there was a little boy in Texas who died from eating a cyanide laced pixie stick, right. In Texas, and I can't remember what year, 74. And it turned out that it was his dad, that his dad was the scum of the earth, who had taken out insurance policies on his own children. Good Lord. And then gave them spiked Halloween candy to make it look like some mad poisoner had killed his kids so he could collect insurance. And one of his kids did die. But it wasn't just some random Halloween poisoner. That guy didn't really exist at the time. Yeah, 1970 in Detroit was the heroin incident. This kid overdose, these kids ate their uncle's stash is what really happened. And then that uncle was like, oh, crap, right, let me sprinkle the heroin on the candy and cook up the story and maybe cook up some heroin since I'm cooking to try and get out of this. So again, it really happened. But not in the way that you think. No. The thing that got everybody so that William Shine guy, who I just think is a skull for that because he scared the pants off of America's parents. He basically said, hey, you know how you're letting your kids run free? Something really bad could happen to him. And I just showed you how. And from the next year on, the parents were anxiously involved in Halloween like they never have been before. Sure, because of Williamshine. But the thing that really killed Halloween, or at least cemented, I think the anxieties and the heads of parents in America is that tylenol poisoner. Oh, sure. Canceled Halloween. 1982. Did it really? Almost. Drove Ben Cooper Costumes out of business. Candy sales went down 50%. Trick or treated in 1982. Well, your parents didn't love you. I think I did, too. I would remember not trick or treating one year. Yeah, because that would have been eleven. That's prime time. Apparently those are the retirement years. But all of this stuff added a veneer of fear and anxiety on trick or treating for parents. Not for kids necessarily, but for parents. And it drew them into what was possibly just a kid run activity because of fear, probably irrational fear. And now you have to this day, the FDA sending out guidelines around Halloween saying, don't let your kids eat any candy until they bring it home. Right. Which is just torture, and you have to inspect it. And if you see any pinholes or tears or anything that looks weird, just throw it away. Some hospitals say, bring your kids candy, and we'll x ray to see if there's any razor blades or needles in it or something like that. This is the kind of terror that ironically is overlaid on Halloween. It's like fun terror. Has actual real terror on top of it, which makes it less fun. We don't inspect candy. Oh, you don't? You roll the dice, huh? Yeah. That's great. I don't know anyone who does. Really? Oh, man. I was raised like that. You inspected candy? Oh, yeah. My parents were serious about it. We never did. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's that thing of, like, if you're the because it doesn't happen right now. I'm heartened to hear that. Yes, because when we did our free range kids episode, I remember thinking, like, what's going on now? Kids are treated like this. They're not being poisoned by Halloween candy. It's just not happening. Right. Plus, in our neighborhood, with the sanctioned closure, all the candy is people aren't buying their own candy. It's like the neighborhood buys all the candy and they congregate it in these couple of blocks. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there could be a madman living among us. It happens. But that's like being scared to walk out your front door for fear of being murdered. Right. Chuck, you just can't live that way. You can't live that way. Yumi told me a story about villages in Japan, have a festival or two every year. The whole community comes out. It's like a big deal. And there was one village, a little tiny town, where this one woman just, I guess, went mad and poisoned the curry that she brought to the village thing and killed a bunch of townspeople. It happens. It does happen. But you're right, you can't not eat the curry just because of the small chance that some mad person has poisoned it. Yeah. The way I look at it is, if that's what happens, then that's your number's up. Your number's up, and you're a story in the newspaper to scare other people. Sure. You get to be immortalized on stuff you should know. Is trick or treat going away, Josh? I don't know, Chuck. I say no. Okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that, because again, I'm living hashtag condo life. I'm out of the action. Yeah. I mean, the last bit of this article you sent talked about it going away, potentially, but I just don't think that's ever, ever going to happen. So what are your arguments for it going away that it might. My arguments or your arguments? These are my observations. Your observations. One of the big ones is that fear among parents that helicopter parenting has not been good for trick or treating. Okay, okay, but think about it. That's a real struggle going on right now over parenting versus under parenting. Which one is going to win out? Right. Okay. Another one. Is there's a perception that trick or treating is dying out, which is kind of funny. Is there? Yes, because people are moving back into towns and gentrifying those towns like we talked about in the historic District episode and as they're doing that, trick or treating was never huge in the city. And so people who are raised in the suburbs and we're used to it, are moving into the city and there's no trick or treating going on anymore. So I guess trick or treating is dying because that's what I'm seeing. I beg to differ with that, too. Okay, but you don't live in the city city. You live in a neighborhood. Yeah, but that's all Atlanta is. It's a bunch of neighborhoods. Okay, you mean I don't live downtown? Maybe these people live in Des Moines. I don't know. No one lives in downtown Atlanta. No, it's true. Although it has gotten cooler than it was like a decade ago. Sure, but I beg to differ that trick or treating doesn't go on in the cities. I think there are apartment buildings in New York where people trick or treat, like just because it's not the picket fence suburban neighborhood. Sure, I think trick or treating goes on everywhere. But this author, that's my house, Julie Beck, who wrote in the Atlantic, she put it really well that basically the suburbs and trickortreating just go hand in hand. Sure. Like the suburbs are set up for trick or treating. You got houses that are close together, super safe yes. Where people who live there are just well enough off to buy enough candy for the whole neighborhood. They all have kids, they know each other enough that you're not embarrassed for your kid to go up and trick or treat there and you know that this candy is not going to be poisoned in the city, you're much more isolated from one another even though you're living on top of one another. Yeah. And I think maybe if we're talking about like areas where there are poor kids and where poverty is run rampant, then maybe there's less traditional trick or treating. But there are programs and parties and things they try to do for those kids, too. Okay, so those very things may end up being what kills trick or treating, I should say the purest version of trick or treating. You can also just make the case, well, that's what it's evolving into and just go with it. I think it will probably be both. But you're talking about the big Halloween parties, community parties, trunk or treating, trunk or cheating or what was it called? Halloween tailgating. Halloween tailgating. Trunk or cheating. This is the idea that you and we had this at our school. We had the Halloween festival, but that did not replace trick or treating. Okay. This replaces trick or treating for a lot of children. Yeah. So you go out and you get in a big church parking lot, essentially, and you have bob and for apples and the dunk tank. This is different. This is a little different than that. Well, I mean, I've seen these in person. Okay, but that's a Halloween festival you're talking about. No, I'm talking about instead of trick or treating, okay? It's a big party where they have candy and they have activities and games and stuff. So you're going from car to car getting candy, like the cars or houses? No, not necessarily. But they're giving out candy. You're not talking about trunk or treating. It feels very NIT picky to me. No, but it's not. And here's why. I'm not talking about a Halloween festival, though. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. But you're not talking about trunk or cheating either. You mean you walk 5ft to a car and they give you candy than 5ft to another car, maybe even less than five, and they say, don't play any games, don't bob for apples or don't do anything else, all you're doing is walking the car. I'm not saying that they don't have bobbing for apples, but the purpose of trunk or treating is to basically set up a safe ring of cars where the kids are literally pinned in. The kids who used to be the ones who were running the show are now penned in by the anxious adults. Cars handing out candy rather than going to houses, walking around a church parking lot for trunk or treating instead of trick or treating. Yes. These are not the kids who could pull off. That's not going to replace trick or treat. But the kids in the Goonies were able to pull off because they had freedom and spark that kids who trunk or treat are being denied. Right. Let me go back to my friend Leonor Skinazi. She says the trunk or treating is just another adult led activity, one that reinforces the community killing idea that kids aren't ever safe outside the home, school, or supervised program. And that is most definitely the message that kids get when they're drunk or treating. Yeah, I think that is not going to kill trick or treating or take over trick or treating. We'll see. Chuck, I hope you're right, because one thing I have not seen since I've lived in Atlanta is any big trunk or treating activities. Well, that's because you live in Atlanta. All you have to do is go out to the suburbs, and they're everywhere. But the suburbs are made for trick or treating. They're out in the neighborhoods. I got to end on a quote I ran across a website, I guess. A church website that's talking about trunk or treating. It's awesome. This quote, it says that the scariest part about the night, this is a trunk or treating night isn't the costumes. It's the possibility that you could miss out on the chance to use trunk or treat to build relationships and reach these kids with the gospel. Well, yeah, that's the opposite of what Halloween is all about. That's right. You got anything else? It's about arson, right? 810 cases of it. Sorry, I'm one of those curmudgeons, it turns out. One more thing. Yes? If you like Halloween, go onto our old stuffy Chanel website and search halloween and creepy and you're going to find some amazing slideshows we put together over the years. That's right. I remember that. One of my favorite is cute and cruddy Halloween costumes. Vintage Halloween costumes that were really creepy. Best jack lanterns, all sorts of great stuff. Remember those days where we count page views and get excited about that? Yeah. This one felt like a bit of a tirade. Yeah. Was it? I don't think so. Okay, good. Well, if you want to know more about Halloween, get out there and trick or treat. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is a follow up on paraphilia that we wanted to read for the last few weeks. Just now getting to it. Hey, guys. Long time listener, first time writer. I've had this episode pop up a few times. It's just been on my mind. I'm an RN with MSN and have background in neurophysiology who enjoys studying abnormal Psych. I understand you were doing a show on psychological term. On a psychological term. But you may have ended up painting wrong ideas onto certain practices, specifically SNM and cross dressing. From what I've come to know, it's extremely rare that people practice these primarily for sexual gratification. Of course, these practices are adult in nature, but most regard it as an emotional practice or exploration of self. For example, shabari or rope bondage takes hundreds of hours of practice to perform and those that partake describe a meditation like state as a result. But most would say it's SNM. Most crossdressers describe the long process of becoming female as cathartic and selfaffirming. Although be it temporary simplifying crossdressers to those who walk around in high heels to reach completion. Well, imagine saying that about a trans woman. Of course, if you were doing these practices for sexual gratification, all the power to you. I suggest you look into Kink culture as an episode. It's where a wide range of people congregate and share their interest in a community that is founded of respect and consent. There are meetups and presentations on practices so that others can learn proper technique. The most that practice would like to keep their privacy. And that is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous. That was a good correction email. That's right. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us like Anonymous did to set us straight. We love that kind of thing. You can join us@stuffysheanow.com and check out our social links there. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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. 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. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-09-14-sysk-secret-service-final.mp3 | How the Secret Service Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-secret-service-works | The U.S. Secret Service began after a mandate from President Lincoln called for a service to combat counterfeiters. Since then, they have become more well known as the agency that guards and protects the president and the first family, along with that of | The U.S. Secret Service began after a mandate from President Lincoln called for a service to combat counterfeiters. Since then, they have become more well known as the agency that guards and protects the president and the first family, along with that of | Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:01:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=1, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=257, tm_isdst=0) | 51612187 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry Rowland. And that makes this stuff you should know. Continuing law enforcement. Saga this has got to be it. You say that every time. I don't think this is it. Well, this is one of my picks, and I stressed up until like, an hour ago that we had done this, even though I looked like 20 times. Yeah, I thought that, too, when I first saw it. But the article is so new. There's no way we did and then I think what it was, Chuck, was probably the counterfeiting episode. Yeah, I bet that one really crossed over a lot. I think you're right. We did do a good one for everybody who's not familiar on counterfeiting. I don't remember exactly when, but go check it out, because it was good. And the reason why the two things would have crossed over is because when most people think of Chuck, the Secret Service, which we're talking about today, they think of big dudes in suits, dark suits, sunglasses, get the wire in their ear. Every once in a while, they put their finger in the ear to look cool. I thought that's just if they had earwax building up, maybe so that's the other and that they're usually running alongside the President as he or eventually she is driving down the road. Right, yeah, sure. But the Secret Service is test with doing way more than that. And that's actually protecting the President or the Vice President or the First Lady or certain other people that's actually secondary to their main role. And that role actually came decades after the Secret Service was first established. Yeah. I mean, I think secondary I took issue in the article when I read that, but I think secondary in terms of allocated personnel. Right. But for sure, primary and importance. Yeah, for sure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think protecting the President's life is more important than catching counterfeiters. Right. But a much smaller allocation of people are actually on that protection force. Yeah. And I think I get the impression that that's the Glamorous assignment. Oh, yeah, baby. Protecting the President specifically is probably pretty plumb. But again, that's not what the bulk of people in the Secret Service are doing at any given point in time. All right, so should we go back in time a bit? Yeah. To the close of the Civil War. Of the American Civil War. Specifically. And this was in 1865, and very with a great deal of heaping irony. I did not know this. This may be the fact of the show. President Abraham Lincoln officially signed the legislation to create the Secret Service the evening that he was killed. Dead. Yes. That day. Right. He signed it and then went to the Ford Theater, I believe. Yeah. So ironic in one sense that obviously you can't look at that and say it has no irony whatsoever. But not ironic when you look at what he was signing at the time, which was not, hey, we need somebody to protect presidents, because that didn't come along until 1894, just less than 30 years later. Is that right? Yeah, informal protection started with Grover Cleveland, but after McKinley's assassination, 19 one was when they said, hey, maybe we need to really just codify this agency. And I'll tell you about irony. It turns out that when McKinley was assassinated, there were three Secret Service agents flanking him at the time. Yeah, I read up about that one. That's one I wasn't too familiar with. I wasn't either, but it was pretty fascinating. Anarchist, right? Say it again. It was an anarchist. Correct? Yeah, an anarchist in Buffalo, New York, who said who came for the assassination and stayed for the hot wings. I also read about Garfield. Garfield didn't get any mention in here. He definitely served to make the Secret Service kind of become part of presidential protection, in that he was the second of three sitting presidents to be assassinated, technically while the Secret Service was in existence. So when the assassination plot against Grover Cleveland was uncovered, they were like, all right, we really need to do something about this. Yeah, I think we should cover assassination and assassination attempts in full, because they're just far more than I thought. Once I was looking into this, I forgot that Clinton had a couple of not so serious attempts. The one guy that shot at the White House and then the other dude tried to fly stole a Cessna. I remember that. And tried to fly it into the White House. I forgot about that. And both of them, by all accounts, were assassination attempts. I would call them clumsy, but yeah, they've been a lot more than I thought. So maybe we should just knock that out one day. Let's do it. I can't believe we haven't already. No, it's bizarre. But today, if we're talking Secret Service, just by the numbers, about 6500 people work there. About 3200 of those are special agents. Another 1300 are what's called Uniform Division officers. And then a couple of thousand plus and change of admin types, tech support, just people who keep the agency running. Yeah. And apparently there have been women there since 1971, which I thought was somewhat progressive. And then as of today, there is the first outsider in the 100 year history, or no, in about 100 years. I guess there have been outsiders previously, but the first non Secret Service agent to rise to director level has been appointed by Trump. Actually a guy named Tex. Yeah. Texas'general. Former Marine Corps. General Randolph. Texas, is it ALS? ALS ales? Alice. Alice is another way to say it. And you mentioned women. And of course, very famously, julia Pearson briefly led the agency when Obama was in there. But as we'll see later on. There were quite a number of kind of things that happened in a row that were very embarrassing for the Secret Service agency. So was she forced out or resigned or kind of what's the difference? I think what's the difference is the impression I have. Okay. So I think her tenure kind of coincided she kind of takes the brunt, from what I understand, of the blame for something that was part of a culture that has long been around part of your Secret Service. And apparently one of the big problems is that it is a thoroughly understaffed executive branch agency. Yes. Like the people who are tasked with protecting the president and the president's family and the vice president, the vice president's family. They are thoroughly overworked, and they also have a long standing party culture, too. And as a result, you have a lot of burnout and very low morale, apparently. Chuck, there was a survey done of 305 federal agencies in 2016, and the Secret Service rated dead last for employee satisfaction. Yeah, that says it all. They're not somewhere in the middle. They were number 305. Right. So apparently at the time of the survey, they were operating with 500 fewer people than they were authorized to hire. So it's clearly an overworked department. Yes, very much so. Apparently they've added several people. Several hundred? Yeah. Like seven, I think 700 people. Yeah. Seven or 800 people in 2017. And I think that's partially because they just were woefully understaffed and partially because the current president has more family than past presidents, for sure. More adult children and their kids and more travel going on to weekend places all over the country. So that's just going to require more staffing. Right. Which is probably good. They needed to hire up anyway. So you want to talk history, Chuck, to do the Service? I know we kind of went back to 1865, so let's stay there. We've been doing all this from 1865 the whole time, it turns out. That's right. So the reason why the Secret Service was initially created was to combat counterfeiting. Right. And I think we did. In our counterfeiting episode, there was just a ton of counterfeit bank notes in circulation in the States at the time, because if you were a banker, if you were just some guy who had a bunch of money and could gain the trust of people, you could issue your own currency there for a while. So it was really easy to print money at the time. Yeah. This stat here is hard to believe, but 30% to 50% of all the money was fake. All the money. That's just ridiculous. Yeah. So Lincoln knew that was a problem, started up the Service in 1865, and just a couple of years after that, said, you know what? Why don't we expand your duties to, like, fraud, smuggling, mail robbery and stuff like that, and we'll stick around for some of the older stuff, but since then it's just sort of been expanded. It seems like a lot to me to include other things, but I don't know how the government runs sometimes as far as like, well, we need someone to monitor phishing scams online. So it seems like the Secret Service is kind of like, let's just give it to them. But I'm sure that's not correct. I thought the designation of stuff was pretty odd as well, for sure. But that is kind of how it's gone. As long as it has to do with law enforcement, the Secret Service feels pretty good about giving a crack at it. Yeah, for sure. So besides the counterfeiting and all that stuff today, not only do they have to protect the President and vice President, they have to protect their families, all the former presidents. Right. And they're a lot more living former presidents now, which is another reason they need more people. Medical science is false. All the spouses, all the children under 16, when you're a candidate running for president, like a major one, I doubt if well, I'm not going to make fun of anyone on the campaign trail for the fact I don't know if Jeb Bush had a detail or actually, he may have. Jeb Bush is probably born with the detail. Yeah, because he's linked twice over to the presidency. Yeah, but not where it counted. And then all the spouses, foreign heads of state while they visit, and basically, from what I gather, they can be assigned to protect anyone at any time if someone thinks it's necessary. So I think you're right about that last part, that if a president says, hey, I want you guys to protect this person while they're here, that's fine. But from what I saw, I think it was a New York Times rundown based on budgets. They seem to say no. It's basically like the Secret Service protects the President, the vice president, their families, former presidents, that kind of thing. Like a foreign head of state would be covered by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Department. And there's a ton of other federal security agencies that are running around Washington that people confuse for the Secret Service because the Secret Service, their mission is actually pretty narrow as far as protection goes. Yeah. And I imagine they all are in touch with one another, too, just to make sure everyone's butts are covered. They're probably like, hey, how far can you pee? Oh, no, let's see how far you can pee. Or they like, we got a lot of dignitaries coming in and he has got over a Secret Service and all we have left is Ronnie. And you don't want Ronnie guarding anybody? No, he's good with fishing scams and that's it. So the other thing that kind of surprised me is big events. There are these things called National Special Security events and they're under Department of Homeland Security now. So this can cover things like the Super Bowl. If there are enough important people at an event like this, then the Secret Service might be there. Yeah. Which I mean makes sense. And I'm sure, like, local law enforcement just loves the Secret Service coming in and bossing them around. Oh, sure, yeah. But they do because it's the Super Bowl, aka the big game. That's right. And then you were saying also it seemed like give it to the Secret Service. Whenever you look at their history. A couple of good examples of that are the treasury police. Yeah. The revenuers basically got folded into the Secret Service and I think 1937, and they took over the White House police force in 1930. So there's a lot of law enforcement underneath the title of Secret Service. Yeah. Another thing that I'd never even heard of. Electronic Crimes Task Forces. Yeah, I think that's kind of new. Yeah, the Ectfs, and this is after 911 and the Patriot Act. And they said, hey, you know what? We need to create these Ectfs, basically to prevent attacks on America through cyber crime. I think they're about 39 of them all over America and Europe, working together with other countries, other Financial Crimes Task Forces. And this is stuff that doesn't get any of the glory. No, it's all supposed to be pretty it's just kind of hush to begin with, I think, unless it goes wrong. Right. But I looked into it. They seemed to kind of focus on forensics, like going over computers or devices for evidence or whatever. Okay. They investigate data breaches and network intrusions. They do cyber intelligence, so I guess they gather intelligence from networks, but also from some of those devices they're doing forensic work on. It's probably some of the more important work being done, to be honest. It really is. They're basically tasked with guarding the financial sector of the US. And I assume probably some of foreign countries, especially in Europe, too. But then they're also doing real, like, low level stuff, too, like credit card theft, identity theft. So they're basically any crime that can be done using a computer or computer network, they seem to be fighting with the Ectfs. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, let's do that. And we're going to talk a little bit about the sexiest assignment of them all, the PPD. All right, Chuck, you said we would hear about the sexiest position of the mall. What is that? The PPD, the Presidential Protection Division. So this is the one that everyone thinks of as Secret Service when you see Ronald Reagan being covered up and shoved in the back of a limo. Or when Jerry Ford moved to Springfield. Yeah, or like you mentioned, jogging alongside the limousine. Or jogging alongside a tubby bloat. Bill Clinton. Yeah. Or riding horseback alongside Ronald Reagan. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot. He used to do that sometimes. That's one of the things this article points out is you got to take up the hobbies of the president. And Clinton very famously trotted along various wooded paths, and then Reagan would have the Secret Service roundup union organizers, and then he'd ride over them with his horse. Well, apparently there's a lot of horseback riding that goes on, but Reagan's was pretty intense. Like, he was a real horse guy. The guy was a cowboy. The movie cowboy come to life. Yeah. So apparently you had to really learn to ride if you were on Reagan's team. I got you. It's not just, like, trotting along like Clinton probably like to do, right? Yeah. Do you remember that Saturday Night Live when Clinton was first elected, and it was Phil Hartman playing him? He was out jogging, and he kept stopping into McDonald's on his jogging. That's a big joke. But wouldn't you, like, as a Secret Service agent, want to just be like, you know, it'd be a lot safer and easier for everybody if you just hit the treadmill yeah, right. And watch television sure. As your main hobby. Right. Well, I think that's kind of going on now. Yeah, I guess so. All right. So this is the one that you talked about having a really high burnout rate, because it's well, first of all, there's the stress of I can die and am willing to die on my job. Yeah. And apparently there's, like, this did you hear that there's a myth that they have to take an oath to take a bullet for the president? I had never heard that is specifically an oath. Right. And I was glad to know that that was true or untrue. Right. It was untrue. Yes. There is no such out. Right. No. Apparently, if you are a Secret Service agent, you just know that might be part of the job, and when you show up that day, you're willing to do it, correct? Supposedly. But beyond all the stresses of dying on the job like that, the schedule itself is just really tough. And I've seen a lot of different breakdowns of the on and off schedules. So I don't know if this one is the gospel truth, but the one in our article at least says two weeks of a day shift, two weeks of a midnight shift, two weeks of an evening shift, and then two weeks of training. So I guess training is just continuous. Yeah. What's weird, though, is I had seen at least back in the Was code for fill out these forms that say, you did all this physical fitness. So if there was two weeks of training, it seems like that's almost like I don't know if it is anymore, but that would have been like a two week break, which, frankly, I don't really blame them for that kind of schedule. Yeah. They undergo the same training regimen as Major League Baseball umpires. But the thing is, Chuck, is it's like if you're tasked with protecting the President. Everyone knows, any organizational psychologist, anybody can tell you that when you do different shift work, you're going to mentally suffer profoundly. Right? Sure. So why are we putting the people who are protecting the President and the First Lady and the Vice President, why are we putting them through that kind of mental torture? It doesn't make any sense. Is it really just a staffing thing? Well, I mean, what's the answer then? Someone's got to take the midnight shift. Sure. But that person should be like, you got the midnight shift for a year. Yeah. So your sleep pattern can change. And then when you rotate out to the day shift or the morning shift or whatever, you might have a two week transition period. Who knows? Maybe you get two weeks off or something in between. I don't know. But there's got to be a better way than this. This just is. Grueling well, I do know, too, that permanent midnight shifts can lead to weirdness. Oh, yeah. Like that's what they did with Ronnie. Right. That's why Ronnie is so unreliable, because on the fourth month of his midnight shift, things got strange. Yeah. He got kind of pasty I shouldn't have said Ronnie, because now everyone's going to think I'm thinking Reagan. No, everybody knows we call him. So if you are on that detail of the sitting President, like you're the cream of the crop of the PPD yes. Which is kind of a double edged sword, because you want somebody with a lot of experience who's proven himself or herself over the years, but at the same time, you're also starting to run up against age and slower reflexes. If you look at some of the agents who are around the President, you're going to see somebody who's probably in their forty s, if not over 40 years. And if you could have a guy or girl who's like 27, 30 even, they're probably going to be faster on the draw than that 40 year old, 45 year old. But they also might notice certain things that the 45 year old would right. Because they're on Snapchat. Exactly. They're like, lol president just fell over for some reason. BRB he needs help. You can still be on the PPD, though, and not actually be on the detail of protecting the President in that moment. Like if you can be on the PPD and be on the assessment team. Well, first of all, anyone who's ever made a threat on the President in any way, whether it's Twitter or like a letter that shows up at the White House, they are thoroughly investigated in person. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh, I didn't realize that. And any kind of advance work they have to do, like if the President is traveling, which happens all the time, there's always some sort of advanced intelligence going on about where the President is going, the town, if they're visiting a restaurant, if they're staying in a hotel, all kinds of background checks are going on with every employee that works there. Yeah. And if the President follows a bit of a pattern, like going to the same place, like a winter White House or a Western White House or something like that, that place is covered. It's checked out. It's probably guarded all the time. So they'll do advance once and then maybe update it here or there. But what poses the real headache and nightmare for the Secret Service is when they're going to places they haven't been before or haven't been in a while, and so they've got to do all of this incredible analysis and planning. They've got to figure out, okay, well, this is the route the President is going to take through the hotel, and then if this happens, then here's the escape route. If an incident happens in the next quarter, here's the escape route. There are two alternate routes to the original route. And look, there's a pretty good place for a sniper to be, so we need to keep our eyes up there. If there's a fire, we need to leave here. That's just, like, one place. And then, as you said, they also do background checks, too, so that any employee, apparently, who has any kind of criminal record at, say, like a hotel that the President is going to be staying in, they're not allowed to work while the President's there, which is like, half the staff of every hotel. I would guess that could be kind of problematic for some hotels. Not to say that they're staff of criminals, but at the very least, drug offenders. Well, it said even, like, yeah, minor stuff. They're going to say, you tell Ronnie to stay home, and the manager will be like, I thought Ronnie was with you, and then Ronnie's like, Press Enter, and the financial system collapses. The President, if they stay in a hotel, they will own three floors of that hotel in full. The one the President is on, the one above it, and the one below it. And apparently, I read one little insider thing on when the President stays at a hotel that they normally don't. It's just a nightmare for the hotel in every way and for the people who are staying there, especially if it was sudden. Yes. Because you don't have a reservation there anymore. True. Like, TS. Sorry. What else could you do? You could be on the video department of the PPD, because they film all this stuff. PPD, AV Club, basically every motorcade is filmed or videoed. Obviously, I say filmed because I'm old, right? Anytime the President is traveling like that, all this stuff is on tape. Again, not on tape. It's all on real. The real because there's a Prude or film. You need to have this stuff in case of an attack or an assassination attempt, so you can rewind and watch the crowd. Right. It's just handy but it's kind of reactive, whereas, like, the advanced people are proactive in trying to prevent an incident from ever taking place. Right? Yeah. Did you mention the details that are specific to people who are permanently guarded? No. So if you're a Secret Service agent, you might be assigned to, like, a field office, and if the President comes to your state, you might be called up to go work what's called a standing position, which is literally just standing around. Right. So if it's a hotel room, this article uses a pretty good example. If it's a hotel that the President is staying at, the advanced team who goes right before the President arrives with the President, will say, cleared a stairwell, checked it for anything, cleared it. And then you come in and you stand there and make sure nothing changes to that stairwell. No one else comes in, no one drops anything off. There's nothing like that. That's your job, right. Then that's probably a pretty common assignment for somebody who works protection in the Secret Service, right? Yes. But if you are protecting, say, the First Lady, you're going to be part of a detail that is a crew of people whose job it is to protect the First Lady. And they get to be pretty close, apparently, or it can happen, I guess. You mean emotionally? Yeah. Romantically? No, emotionally. Surprised that hadn't been a romcom yet. It's like Three Company, but in the White House. But it's funny you mentioned that stairway detail. Like, that's literally the worst job you can get as a PA. On a film set. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's called lock up, where you're, like, three blocks away just saying, no, sorry, you can't go around this corner. Right. And there's always a guy like me who's like, you can't legally keep me from walking on the sidewalk. Public sidewalk, jerk. I was the worst lock up guy when I was a PA because I would always just be like, all right, you're totally right. I choked. You looked them through again. I'm like, Dude, what am I going to do, like, physically restrain somebody? I always felt so bad when we were shooting our TV show, when people were redirected from their normal path. Well, look at the bright side. You didn't have to feel bad for too long. No, that's true. There's also the food detail even in the White House with the very much trusted White House cooking staff. There's someone in the kitchen from Secret Service watching over that stuff. Yeah. Making sure Sven didn't have any kind of break and is now trying to poison the President. Correct. Apparently, if you want to order a pizza, though, it's the President, literally. I don't want the White House pizza. I want the pizza from whatever. Right. You can do that. But they say that they send it to a different address. They send it to the Naval Observatory, usually. Oh, yeah. Just to kind of throw them off descent. Seems smart, but certainly not foolproof. No, especially now that you just told everybody. I guess it couldn't poison every pizza going to the Naval Observatory, though, because they would be outed, I don't know, like some evil organization like Spectre probably could. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Is that a good point? I think so. Okay. This is a pretty expensive process, too. In 2017, the fiscal year, that is $750,000,000 on just protective operations, which is about half of its overall budget. Yeah, it's worth it, obviously. But that's a lot of dough going toward the very smallest thing that you do when half your money is spent on that, then you're going to run out of money. Right? Yeah. And they did, actually. The fiscal year goes we're recording actually, before the end of the 2017 fiscal year, but the Secret Service said we're going to run out of money, like, right around the end of the fiscal year, and we still have three more months of operations that we have to do. So what do you want to do? Sure. And apparently there was also I was reading in the Washington Post about a dispute over money, about actually terms of a lease when the Secret Service tried to rent out office space in the headquarters in Trump Tower that the Trump Organization said you should go find office space elsewhere because they couldn't come to terms on a lease somehow. And so the Secret Service moved down to a trailer on the sidewalk in front of Trump Towers wow. Which I guess they found out that they burned through all their money and they were like, you guys go to a trailer on the sidewalk? Yeah. That's probably the most expensive property in the world that has a trailer on their front lawn. Yeah, it's pretty funny. And we should mention we joked about the dark glasses. Those actually do serve a function. They're not just trying to look cool. They're trying to keep their eyes hidden for what they're looking at. Yeah. You know, what was that one agent's name? In Taxi Driver? No. In the line of fire. No, it has nothing to do with Secret Service. Matrix. The Matrix. Smith, right. Oh, the main bad guy. I think so. I thought he did a good job rocking the glasses and everything. Literally had nothing to do with anything with him looking cool in glasses. Right. Okay. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do. I think I just threw us off we probably should. And regroup learning stuff with all right, Chuck, we talked a little bit about other stuff that the Secret Service gets down on. Counterfeiting mail fraud. Those are some throwbacks, but then they've got the whole new cyber crime thing with, like, fishing and stuff like that. Yeah, but they also have to combat this crime. They've accrued some pretty cool stuff over the years, not the least of which is an. Ink Library. Yeah. This, I think, is, for me, the coolest part of the show. So this article says 9500 types of inc. I saw 11,400. That's believable. Yeah. So the idea is they literally have collected since the 1920s what they think is every kind of ink and every kind of pen that has ever been made. Yeah, that's the goal, at least. So they can use that. I think when Big makes a new pin, they will send them their ink and stuff. Otherwise they have to collect it. And this is too I didn't like, you know, if they ever get a letter about any kind of crime that is under their purview, they have a database to compare it to. Right. And not just with things like ransom notes and threatening letters. Apparently they'll use that kind of stuff for if somebody's forged a baseball signed by Bay Bruce or something like that. Interesting. If it's like a really high profile crime that has to do with ink, they'll freelance for somebody interesting. Yeah. And they use gas chromatography. It's not just like this one looks black, this one's black. I figured out who did it, but apparently if you're a field agent going around the world, the ink library guys will ask you to grab some pens while you're in Cartagena. Oh, really? Yeah, it's like a standing request. They also have an information database for handwriting, too. The forensic information system for handwriting database or fish. Yeah. Decent acronym. Yes, but it breaks our one rule of acronym, which is just kind of forgetting about another word. So it looks cooler, right? Yeah. Then Fish. Right? Exactly. Or it could be the Fish database, I guess. That's true. So this is basically just a handwriting database. And I imagine there's a lot of overlap here with FBI and CIA, don't you think? What else? They added providing evidence and assistance to missing and exploited children. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. And their big bag, though, was really counterfeiting and bank fraud. In 2016, they executed more than 2100 arrests for stuff like that. Right. And they recover a lot of money every year, too, right? Yeah. There was one bus in 2016 in Lima, Peru, where they recovered like 3 million in counterfeit US dollars and 50,000 counterfeit euros. Not bad. Which I think was their biggest single bus to date. It's a lot of moolah. It is a lot of fake Moolah. So what if Josh wants to be in the Secret Service? I don't think that's going to work out for me. Well, it's too late. You have to be between 21 and 37. You have to do a PP screen. Yeah. They don't want you to have any visible tattoos or piercings, which I imagine that's probably getting harder and harder these days. Yeah, it's probably not a good look to have, like, the presidential detail guy having those big earring gauges. Right. So what? Those are called gauge yeah, one of the big two inches. Can you fit a hot dog to it? Yes, I can. You're hired. No tattoos or piercings. What else? You got to pass that polygraph. You got to take a physical. Got to get that Secret Service top security clearance. It can take nine months to get that. Yeah, and I looked into that. Depending on what level of security you're looking for, it says nine months here, but I thought they could do it in, like, 60 days, but depending on how thorough they go, they're either going to go back five years or ten years into your past. Wow. They're going to interview your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, your pastor, whoever, and they're going to ask them all sorts of personal questions, like, is this guy a freak? You know what I mean? Like a freak freak. Does he like to get wasted? Does he love America? What country does he like as much if not more than America? Just stuff like that. Seriously. They're going to look into what your foreign preferences are. You know Ronnie, he was always going on about Spain. Yeah. Couldn't get enough. That explains it. His whole catchphrase was olay. So if you go through all that, you take a written test, you have an interview. If you pass all that junk, then you are sent to lovely Glencoe, Georgia, right here in our home state, to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for ten weeks of training. This is down near the Georgia coast where it's hot and humid and muggy. Yeah. But if you want some good shrimp, it's a good place to train. I imagine. So ten weeks of hardcore training, then an 18 week course at a place called the James S. Roley center in Beltsville, Maryland. Basically CampX. Yeah. Kind of the Special Agent basic training center. Yeah, that's the one where it's probably I mean, they teach you how to shoot guns. I'm sure you already know it at this point. Sure. I doubt if it's like I never held one of these. What does this trigger do? Emergency medicine. That's a big one. I saw that they travel with the President with a full supply of the President's blood. Wow. Which makes sense. I never thought about that. Like, as many leaders are in the President right then. I don't know. I mean, it said I would guess they said they're trained in what's called ten minute medicine, which is they never want to have the President more than ten minutes away from a trauma center. And not only that, when the President is traveling, they have an agent at the nearest hospital already who has gone through the operating room and emergency staff. Oh, yeah. So they have these bags of blood if a transfusion is needed, and basically in just that ten minutes, they need to be able to keep the President alive. Yes. Which was a big deal when Reagan was shot. Yeah. You want to talk about that. Yeah, he was shot in the chest. It was bad. Yeah. By John Hinckley Jr. Right. Yeah. Or as our articles, just as a crazed assassin. Yes. I thought that was really weird. Like, maybe the author was like, I'm not putting his name in print. I'm not giving him any press. It definitely seemed weird to not say who it was. And Hinckley was trying to impress Jody Foster so that she would fall in love with them and they could move into the White House, if I remember correctly. Right. Yeah. You had to get Reagan out of the way, and Reagan was coming out of the Washington Hilton Hotel. He just given a speech. This is in, I think, january 1981. It was early in 1981, and Hinckley walked up and just shot them at least twice, I think. Got him once in the shoulder and then once in the chest. It might be confusing with another assassination. We definitely got him in the chest, like you said, and there was this agent named Jerry Parr who was, I think, like, 50 at the time, and he immediately I think he threw his coat over Reagan, through Reagan, into the limo, landed on him, and shut the door and told the limo driver to drive. And Reagan was like, I think you broke one of my ribs throwing me into the limo. Did you know that? And he said, that's the bullet, sir. Right. Yeah. That's when Par was like, oh, you got hit. So we told the limo to go to the hospital instead of the White House. Yeah. I think he had blood coming out of his mouth, which was the surefire telltale sign that there was a lung punctured. Right. Apparently when you're bleeding from the mouth. And so he knew, no, we need to go straight to the hospital and not to whatever medical staff we have at the White House. Yeah. Saved his life. He did. He actually became convinced, from what I saw, that he had been chosen by God to save Reagan's life, and he became, like, a pastor after that. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Well, speaking of limos, the driver of that limo is trained I mean, the presidential limo is bulletproof, flat tire proof, as bomb proof as it can be. And the driver is trained. It's like a trained stunt driver. Right. And it's a Secret Service driver. Right? Yeah. And they need to be able to they're trained to do those, like, super cool looking 180 moves to get the heck out of there, to drive backwards at high speeds. Right. And all the other stuff that you see stuntmen stunt drivers do, these Secret Service limo drivers can do. So on the other end of the spectrum, speaking of limo drivers from the Secret Service, is JFK's assassination. I read this, and this article didn't even mention that. Right. It's like, in the Secret Service, successes and failures that's not mentioned it's a failure. Yeah. Not even mentioned at all. So I read this article on it from Vanity Fair that was called could the Secret Service Have Saved JFK? Go read it. Totally worthwhile read. Yeah, but apparently the Secret Service guy, not all of them, but a handful of them, were out partying, like, all night the night before, into the morning, and showed up after three, four, maybe 5 hours of sleep, in some cases ready for duty. And if you look at it through that lens, apparently you can see how it looks a lot like being hungover and maybe even still a little drunk. Definitely affected their responses. And one of the guys was the limo driver, who really took it personally immediately that he had failed. But he did. He didn't swerve, he didn't speed up, he just tapped the brake a little bit. And actually, if anything, gave Lee Harvey Oswald a clear second fatal shot. Oh, wow. And they think that it was because of the culture of, like, drinking and partying that was just endemic at the time, and that it actually led to JFK's. Potentially his life could have been saved, is what the article says. Obviously, he could have died from the neck wound, but they didn't do enough in retrospect to protect against that second fatal shot. That definitely did it. Wow. Yeah. It's worth reading, ma'am. Well, I mean, you talk about the party atmosphere, and I think early on, some listers might have thought you were kidding around, but that's really the case, apparently. And it probably has a lot to do with just how understaffed and overworked they are that they kind of unwind. They have been known to unwind in pretty epic fashion. And recently, in the last five or six years, there have been some pretty high profile blemishes on the agency. One in 2012 when a bunch of agents, 175 of them, went to Columbia before Obama visit, and twelve of them were caught taking prostitutes back to their hotel. And apparently the same kind of thing happened the year before in El Salvador. And then wasn't there another kind of big party bust or something? Yeah, Amsterdam. Oh, right, of course. Yeah. There were. Three agents were found passed out drunk, one of them in the hallway of the hotel that the president was staying at, the floor below. And they got sent home and put on leave for that. And it came right on the heels about two years later after the first scandal in 2012. And that was on the heels of Oscar Ortega Hernandez shooting at the White House in 2011, while he did that. Yeah, well, I mean, he claimed he was jesus, I hadn't had a chance to look up on that one, and I just didn't know what his motive was. Yeah, I mean, by all accounts, I think he was mentally ill. Sure, he made a video for Oprah Winfrey and sent it to her claiming he was Jesus. And it's funny, if you look at the guy, he looks like Jesus. Oh, really? Well, I mean, whatever your conception of Jesus is. I don't know, but the kind of the classic Jesus figure that you see a lot, the guy kind of looked a lot like him. Got you like, more than you do, let's say. I could see that most people do look more like Jesus than me, but he fired a semiautomatic weapon rifle at the White House, quite a few shots, and this was just kind of bungled. The investigation was bungled. They had no clue what was happening or what was going on. It took four full days to realize that he actually hit the White House. And that's when a housekeeper said, there's broken glass and cement on the floor in here. I remember, Michelle Obama was really upset. I can imagine that this happened. They weren't home at the time, but I think one of the daughters was. And this is after the same thing had happened in the Clinton administration. Yeah, I don't remember that at all. The Clinton one? Yeah. That was another guy that just shot at the White House? Basically. Yeah, I think he did it from the street, but this guy actually got through. Wait, was this one from the street too? I think it was from the fence. Okay. But no, the guy that got through was a guy with a knife. Yes. Made it through several lines of security through the fence, and made it all the way to the North Portico, which is basically the front door of the White House. Right. With a knife. Before he finally apprehended, he said he was caught sprinting toward the front door with a knife. And again, the capital or the White House police are part of the Secret Service, too. And these are the people who look like paramilitary police officers patrolling the White House. They're part of the Secret Service police. There were a bunch of controversies that rocked the place, which is why some people are like, it might be good that this Marine Corps colonel who has no connection to the Secret Service is coming in, maybe bring in a fresh perspective. Yeah, because I guess there was a study that found that it was an insular culture that has historically been resistant to change as a congressional investigation. So who knows? Yeah, but they've done a lot of good, too. Agreed. I don't want to just end on the controversy, but, man, there's been some doozy. You got anything else? Yeah, I got just a couple of more little things. If you look up, like, coolest Secret Service secrets, there's just an abundance of articles, from mental Floss to Breeder's Digest, and I compiled a couple of these, and we've gone over most of them, but this one I thought was neat. Secret Service isn't actually in the Oval Office. Most times, like, inside the room, they're right outside, but they have installed weight sensitive pressure pads throughout the Oval Office so they know where the President is at all times. Oh, wow. That sounds like it's made up, but it's supposedly true. I could see that when the President delivers the State of the Union, they hold one member of the Cabinet behind hidden at Mount Weather in case someone bombs the entire thing. That's like that show Designated Survivor that I've never seen. I never what is that? It's like not Keeners Keeper Sutherland show where he's, like, a Cabinet member. I think that very thing happened, and there was a bombing and it killed everybody, and now he's President. That's all I know. What else? The headquarters of Secret Service in Washington, DC. Does not have trash cans anywhere near it on the sidewalk. Okay. Because you put a bomb in there. Apparently, Reagan carried a gun, his own gun, I believe. That right. He carried a 38 in his briefcase. And apparently Vice President Bush didn't even know about it. Wow. Really? That's what it says. He found out the hard way, and then when he crossed Ronnie on some policy yeah. President Ronnie. Not. Oh, yeah, the gipper. Yeah, not Secret Service, Ronnie. When he crossed the Gipper. And then finally, apparently, the code word for when there's a big private investigation going on at the White House, they're renovating a room. So the First Family gets out of the House and they don't really know what's going on. And so it said over the years, whenever you hear, like, Clinton obama renovated the Treaty Room, clinton renovated room, bush renovated the Briefing Room, clinton was the Music Room. Apparently, those are all private investigations going on. I don't understand. Well, I guess they need to set up shop in the White House and to even not alert the First Family that that's going on, they'll renovate unquote a room. Got you. Wow. That sounds a little hinky to me, though. It does. I would guess that the President is apprised of just about everything that's going on, including investigations. Yeah, there may be some more clarity on that that someone will know and email us about. Where did that come from? Reader's Digest? No, I think that one well, that was HuffPo. Oh, was it a bunch of comedies? Yes. Really? They'll say anything to make the President look bad. Yeah. People don't take it seriously. Okay. You got anything else now? No, sir. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about the Secret Service, go check out this article on how stuff works. And since I say, go check it out, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one of two on Satanism that we're going to read. I wanted to thank you guys for the Satanism episode. I myself am a Satanist and a member of the Satanic temple. I appreciate you voicing my faith in objective and fair manner, but I do take issue with you calling us hippies? Heal your summation. The various Tst programs and that's the Satanic church or a temple to accurately represent much of what we strive to do. But I wish you taking the time to go over our core beliefs like you did the Church of Satan. And then he sent them to me. So I'll just read them and he said, here's a fiverr for each of you. I wish one should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit. Should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body is inviolable subject to one's own will alone. The freedoms of others should be respected including the freedom to offend. A belief should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should never care to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. That's a good one. Yeah. People are fallible if we make a mistake. We should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm. And finally, every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. Pretty good one. Yeah. So he said the takeaway, basically, is what we try and reflect is a focus on scientific inquiry, nobility in action and thoughts and respect for oneself and others. And he closes out by saying, Hail Satan. And his name is Calebuta. Sorry, but I thought it was Caleb. Tarantula. That's what I thought. It's a great name for a statement. Yeah. Like Peter Grim Moore. If you want to get in touch with us, like Caleb did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark and at Sysskpodcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck at Charleswchuckbryant on Facebook.com or at facebook. Comstnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the webstepiesto.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun 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 pool site, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. It download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
Octopus, Octopi, Octopod, Octopuses | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/octopus-octopi-octopod-octopuses | Whatever you call them, octopuses are amazing creatures. In this episode, octopus enthusiasts Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the unusual anatomy, unique abilities and fascinating habits of octopi. | Whatever you call them, octopuses are amazing creatures. In this episode, octopus enthusiasts Josh and Chuck take a closer look at the unusual anatomy, unique abilities and fascinating habits of octopi. | Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:55:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=17, tm_min=55, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=264, tm_isdst=0) | 35484821 | 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. Charles W. Chuckle. Ryan is seated across from me. And that would make this stuff you should know. Yes. How are you doing? I'm feeling a little rough, my friend. Are you all right? You look Tab white. You know Timmy, my hazardous waste buddy? He turned 40 yesterday. Oh, really? So we went out at a nice dinner and then went out afterwards. Italian? Yeah, Italian. Can you create a little hazardous waste of our own? That is gross. It is. Well, I'm glad you made it in. I'm here, man. I'm ready. You're sitting upright, as I said, in seating it across for me. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you a story. Chuck. Please try not to fall asleep. Okay. There's an octopus that you probably have never heard of because he got almost no press coverage whatsoever, but his name is Paul. I've heard of him. You have? Yeah, the World Cup octopus. Okay, well, I forget you do lots of research. Most people haven't heard of this octopus. Right. His name is Paul, and he lives in the Sea Life Center in Germany at German town that I am not familiar with. Right. And he had a tendency, believe it or not, to pick the winner of the eight final World Cup matches in 2010. Yes. Whatever flag you picked up or something. No. They would present him with two boxes with muscle in each box, and on one box, it would have, like, who's playing who? Right. And he ate the muscle out of the right box. Every single time in my mind's eye, he weighed a little flag. I just totally created that. Or he sucked it up in his beak. Right. Because octopi have beaks. And I'm going to say octopi. I think probably most of this podcast, but I'm going to go with octopuses. Octopuses is a way to go. You could also say octopods. There are at least three plural forms of octopus. Wow. So you could say cactuses, I guess. Cactopods, maybe. Yeah. I don't think the pods would transfer over because octopi are cephalopods. Right. Which means headfoot. It means headfoot literally means headfooted. And that means when you look at an octopus and all you see is a head and arms, and that's why they get that name. Right. And it turns out that the area of its eyes are not its head. Chuck oh, really? As far as I understand what's that the big part that you would think is its head, it's mantle. Okay. We're getting ahead of ourselves. So you want to classify this thing a little better? Yes. We're going to classify it as the phylum mollusca with snails and slugs and clams and things like that. And in the class of cephalopata, which, along with their buddies, the squid and nautilus and things like that. But they don't have an outer shell like a lot of mollusks do. No. Or an inner shell, which apparently squid have as well. And we'll get to that, though, and why but what they lack in shellness yeah. They make up for spunk and pluckiness, because they are probably the most interesting mollusc of all. Dude, octopuses are extremely fascinating, and that's why I picked them. We don't do like and this one is on cats. I mean, I love cats, but cats are not fascinating. Cat lovers are going to hate you. But octopuses are definitely fascinating. Endlessly, to me, at least. And since you mentioned the mail, I guess we should talk about that. Well, yeah. If you look at an octopus, you see the eyes, and the right behind the eyes, it looks like it's head. Now, the eyes are actually attached to the head, and what's behind it is called the mantle. Yeah. And the mantle is where all of its internal organs are stuffed into. Right. Everything is in that bulbous sack, the anus, the gonad, the posterior salivary glands. Just giggled when he said anus and gonad. She always does. Good Lord. Sometimes I'll just walk past her in the hall and just be like, anus go NAD and start tutoring. So everything's up in there, right? Yeah. Digestive gland. Right. The anus, the gonad. Right. She's still laughing. And the mantle is like an extremely strong muscle, and part of the reason for that is to protect all those organs, obviously. And it also helps with respiration. And there's also a funnel this is awesome, too, that we will get to later. Yeah, it's going to come up here and there. Keep an eye out for funnel. If this were Pewee's Playhouse, that would be the secret word of the day. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, let's just make it that. Okay. And also they call that a siphon. And then, like you said, we'll explain what that does. But we should talk about we should just go ahead and lead off, I think, with the most fascinating part of an octopus to me, is the camouflaging abilities. Yeah. I was going to say blood is blue. You know what? Go ahead and say that. That's good. That's pretty cool. Yes. Blue blood. All right. Well, your blood is red, as is mine. Yes. As all of our listeners, because we're American. That's right. And we're not wealthy, but octopi apparently are because they have blue blood. Right. And the reason our blood's red is because we have an iron containing protein called hemoglobin that binds oxygen together in a bloodstream for more efficient delivery. Right. Octopi have blue blood because they have a protein in their blood called hemocyanin. And cyan is another name for blue. There you go. And their blood is blue because hemocyanin is copper based, right? Yeah, it's a copper based protein. And I guess that makes the diff it's us in the color. It makes all the diffs. But that's really interesting because you pointed out something that has to do with one of their most fascinating features. That because they have low oxygen levels, they have three hearts. Yes. To pump blood to the gills. Right? Yeah. And then one handles the rest of the body. That's right. That's so awesome. It is. Nature finds a way, always. I guess we'll put another heart. Yeah. 600 million years, we're going to view three hearts. So that is awesome. But back to what we were saying, which I think is the mine is awesome as yours. The color changing. Well, it's not mine. The color changing camouflaging ability of the octopus. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube and type in octopus color change. Dude, it's unbelievable. There's one, it's like 15 seconds long. Where the beginning of the shot? You literally are going like, all right, where's the octopus? Well, and then it's part of this reef. It shoots off, changes color in, like, under a second, which it can do, and then attaches to another reef and boom, it's that color and looks exactly like that wreath. Wow. It's mind blowing. Yeah. And we have no idea how it knows what color to change to. Right now. We don't know how it knows, but we know how it does. Right? Exactly. It's through chromatophores, right? Yeah. That's the secret. Okay. So chromatophores are little cells that have, like, three pigment sacs in each, very tiny pigment sacks that, depending on the muscles surrounding the cell, whatever color needs to be featured is expanded or contracted. So the other two will be hidden while one is expanded. And that's a cell. As I said, it's very tiny. And the octopus's skin is covered tens of thousands of them. Right. And each one is controlled by a different nerve. Right? Yeah. And the way they put it in the article to understand how that works is pretty good. I think Jennifer Horton did a great job. It's like if you color a section of rubber band and then you stretch it out, in an instant, it's going to look completely different color wise, that contracts, and it's going to be a very deep color spreads over a larger surface area, too. Yeah. But since each crematophores is controlled by its own nerve, it's a nervous system, right? No, the nervous system controls each one independently. Okay, got you. So it's like the nervous system is going okay, you're going to end in this cremetaforce. Right. And tens of thousands of them. So you have all these mind boggling different combinations. So the color change can be very it's not just like, okay, I'm going to be blue now. Right. It's like, I'm going to be speckled like this coral reef that you were just talking about. Yeah. I'm going to look exactly like whatever I'm next to or a sandy bottom. And it also doesn't hurt that they have what are they called? The little mirror like reflective iridophores. Yes. Yeah. They mirror the surrounding environment, so that helps. And then for the texture, they have projections called papilla on their skin, and they can actually change textures to blend in as well, which is these videos on YouTube. Dude, it's insane. It doesn't look like nature should be able to do what these things do in a second. Right. And it's really awesome. At least one researcher said that chameleons camouflage hum drum by comparison. Yes. Have you seen, though, that one chameleon on YouTube with the different colored sunglasses? Is that real? I think it is. I got the impression that that was Photoshopped or something. I didn't know that they could change that quickly. But they still got nothing on these octopuses. Okay. So even if it were Photoshopped, they still aren't as good as an octopus. No, not by a long time. Check those out. It's awesome. So, Chuck, well, the main reason why they can change colors, not so they can be on YouTube. Right. It's so they can evade predators. Right? Yeah. And hunt better and hide sure. For prey and stuff like that. But I guess one of the characteristics they're most famous for evading predators is their ink. Right? Yeah. Octopus can blow a bunch of ink in your face. Yeah. And you mentioned the siphon funnel earlier. They use that in conjunction with the ink sac. So they'll spit out some ink, which itself would be just like a very concentrated ink blob. Yeah. It could be like little globule. Yeah, they'll do that sometimes, I think. Why, did they do that, too? Decoy. Yeah, decoy. But if they want to evade something, if they're in a major threat mode, they'll squirt out some of the ink and then shoot out a big puff of water from their funnel that they're holding, and all of a sudden, that creates the big, like, James Bond oil slick. Probably would be more like a cloud. The departure horizon. Oil slick, water horizon. It was all octopus. The ink, though, also contains trio, sinai, and that impairs taste and smell. So that not only if your predator like your shark, let's say, not only can you not see remember the things in the nose of the shark? Sure. Yeah. That'll affect that. And they'll just get all wacky and they won't know what to do. They start swimming around in circles and smoking cigarettes frantically. I get a little upset with that, especially with the kind of nervous system that octopuses have to have for each chromatophore. It'd be controlled by its own nerve ending to be able to release ink, that kind of stuff. This process that an octopus goes through, it shows that they do have a big central nervous system. Oh, yeah. But they also have a pretty decent sized brain as well. Right? Yeah. And before we move on from the disguising thing that the brown octopus, we should point out, can also contort its shape to look like other things. Right. And they think that it chooses what to look like? Depends on what's going on. I think the example in the article was damsel fish. Yeah. Confronted by damsel fish, they'll all of a sudden be like form of sea snake because damsel fish is afraid of the sea snake. Right. And the octopus will look like a sea snake. It's crazy. Yes. Have you seen the sea snake video? No. Did you watch any white snake videos today? No. I love white snake, though. So an octopus brain is, proportionately speaking, in some cases, as big as a mammal or a birds. Birds don't have the smallest brains. Well, it's definitely the most evolved of the cephalopods. For sure. Yes. Smart stuff. A lot, from what we can tell. It is. And again, the nerve endings that we were talking about, the central nervous system, I keep wanting to say nerve endings. The central nervous system is separate from the brain, right? Yeah. That's what they've learned through studies show that what may happen is they operate independently, so the brain will send the order out to do something and then just kind of take it off the list. And then each arm has its own nervous system and it will decide how to accomplish that task. Right. Apparently, three fifths of the nerves in the octopus's body is in its arms and its tentacles. And there are eight independent nerve systems. Chuck, tell them how they figured out that arms have their own nervous system. Mean. It sounds very mean. What they did was they severed the nerves in the arms from the other nerves in the bodies and brain and then they tickled it and then they found out with some delight, I would imagine, that. Look, they're still ticklish. Right. Even though their brain doesn't know this is going on. So that's how they proved it. And these researchers were pretty, I guess, a little intrepid because the arms are very powerful, it's almost all muscle, and since they don't have any bone in them and there's tons of muscle and nerve endings in them, they can do just about anything, including go semi rigid and bend at a spot. Like we can bend our arms like elbow. Yeah. Crazy. It is very crazy. They were talking about in here, wrestling sharks. And if you want to also delight yourself, go to YouTube and type in shark battles. Octopus. And this octopus is like camouflaged, and this shark swims by like a decent sized shark and all of a sudden this octopus just like leaps and wraps this thing up and the shark cannot get free. You see this like, massive, strong, shark like wrestling and the octopus will not let it free. Octopus have a feature that we're going to get to in a minute that I find as unsettling as anything. Which one? The beak. Oh, yeah. But first, let's talk about the eyes while we're on the basic physiology of it. Right. Yeah. They're kind of like our eyes. Right. They're actually better than our eyes. They have eight layers of films that make up, like, their corny, I guess, or what would be our corny. And they're huge, too, because they need to capture more light because it's dark down there. Sure. But actually, camera manufacturers figured out that they could basically replicate an octopus eye cornea for camera lenses. And that actually led to a huge decrease in the cost of cameras. Really? Yeah, because before you had to have eight different lenses because lenses blurred. So you had to have eight different lenses to kind of work out that blur. But that's pretty big camera. And they figured out, after replicating octopus's eyes that they could do it for a lot cheaper. So bye bye, octo lens. No, hello, octo lens. They still use eight? Well, no, it's now as an octopus islands, so it's goodbye octo lens. Hello October. Exactly. The other thing, too, Josh, I found remarkable is you always see octopus is kind of like monkeying their way along the bottom very slowly. They can jet like 25 miles an hour if they need to, which is 40 km/hour. That's really fast. It is. And again, remember we were talking about the siphon? That's how they do it. They suck in a bunch of water into the mantle, seal it off and then blow it out the siphon. And they can angle it and steer themselves that way. Right. Yeah. That's crazy. At the very least, they can shoot in the opposite direction at up to 25 miles an hour through water, by the way. Yeah. This isn't through the air? No, they don't shoot out of the water. Wouldn't that be a weird world if you just looked out in the ocean? They're occupied, just jumping out. I remember the first time I saw the shark breach on the Discovery Channel. It was like mind blowing for me when the shark leaps from the water, completely out of the water. The great white. I have not seen that. Yeah, it was one of the money shots for planet Earth that caught it on the super slow mo camera. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Cool. So should we talk about where they hang out their life? Basically. Their little solitary octopus life. Yeah. And I didn't realize this, although now that I learned it, it makes sense. Octopuses live on their own. They pretty much only are around other living octopuses when they mate. Even that's kind of a let down. Yeah, but yeah, and they live by themselves in dens. Wherever they happen to be living right then is called their den. And that can be anything from beneath some rocks to an old jar or something that made it down to the bottom of the ocean floor. If it's a small one, obviously. Right. But they can squeeze in to some pretty tight areas because, again, they have no bones, but they change location, like, every couple of weeks. And no one's ever been able to figure out why they do that. Yeah. For some reason, that struck me as sad. But I don't know, I just picture, like, the lonely octopus. Lonely, paranoid octopus. Yeah. Getting sick of his den and, like, moving every two weeks. But maybe he just wants to change the scenery. Who knows? And octopi generally walk, right? Yeah. They use their suckers. Everyone knows about the suckers on the underside of the arm and they help to propel it along the bottom of the ocean. And those little suckers are really sensitive. They have 100 neurons apiece. So while they're swimming along and or walking along the ocean they're also checking things out with their suckers, like food and stuff like that. Or threats. And we should say at this point that we've been talking we probably should have said this at the beginning, but if you were an octopus nerd we've been talking the entire time about the nonfend octopus insurate. Sure. Nothing much. Rarer and less discussed and less studied. Serrate or fend octopus? I didn't look up a picture of those. You know what they look like? No. They have fence. I feel bad for those guys because no one ever talks about them. Well, they keep to themselves. Yeah. Like all octopi. So, Chuck, we've gotten to the point now where the most unsettling part of any octopus for me emerges, and that is the beak. It's awesome. Octopus is squishy boneless, muscular, little weird things have a beak very similar to a parrots. Strong center of the underside of their head where all their legs come together. Yeah, it's up inside the mouth. And they don't have standard teeth, per se, but they have the beak, and they have something called a radula, which is a barbed tongue. And so, basically, they'll use the beak to crack a clam open. You don't need teeth when you have a beef. No. And then they'll use a radula to scrape out the meat. Like a little finger to scoop it out. Right. And then the last thing I want you to say because that's really awesome the salvory pepea. Yeah. It's like a tooth covered organ that they can shoot out from between the beak which, by the way, is surrounded by lips. They can shoot it out and drill into a shell. Like a shell they can't open. They'll just drill into it and suck out. Have you seen Starship Troopers? Yeah. You remember the Brainworm or the brain bell? Yeah. It's probably based on that sucking brains out to remind you of that. Yeah. I think it's pretty cool that they have those little Swiss Army knife. Depending on what they want to use or what they need to use they can just use whatever tool that's inside their little mouth. Right. And when they come upon prey, most likely what they'll do is they'll wrap their legs. They'll catch it, like, in a net and then pull it close to them and just envelope it completely and just go to town with it. With the beak. Right. Or one of the other tools. The other cool thing, too, about the salivary papilla is that or papilla. Is it papa or papilla? Papilla. Tortilla. Tortilla. They secrete that thing. Secretes something that erodes the shell. So if it's like a really tough clan to get into while they're drilling in, it secretes this thing that erodes the shell as it's digging in to make it easier. Yeah. That's just another amazing evolutionary feed to me. Yes. How did you know octopuses were so interesting to select this article? I didn't. I always thought they were cool looking, and I just happened upon the article and read the first page, and it's like, this is a keeper. The male pillow octopus. Got you. Yeah. We should talk about that. Yeah, we definitely will. We will talk about that guy with reproduction. How about that? Okay. So first we're going to talk about being born, and feeding goes directly into that, appropriately enough, because octopuses are masters at metabolizing food. Actually, an octopus, by the time it dies, it will weigh one third of all the food it's ever eaten. It puts food to use that well. And apparently a young octopus grows body weight, increases its body weight 5% daily. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. And they don't know a lot about the little baby octopus, but some of them they do know will kind of float near the surface as tiny, tiny little specks. And as they grow, they start to fall. And then some of them, though, are born slightly larger, like on the sea floor. Right. But they're on their own once they're born. Well, let's talk about back it up reproduction. Chuck, how is that little thing born? So tell everybody about the male pillow octopus. Well, the male pillow octopus is one of the cool things about it is that it's tiny. How big is this thing? About a couple of centimeters. A couple of centimeters long. Weighs less than a gram. Yes. The trick is you think, all right, that's cool. There are small things in the world. I think I've eaten one of those. The trick is by accident, no sushi. Oh, okay. Never again. The trick is that the females of the same species are more than 6ft long and weigh \u00a3100. They're 40,000 times the size of the mail. Yeah. And Jennifer Horton put in a perspective here that would be like one of us asking out the well, asking out. Right. Let me put that in air quotes a woman five times, four times. Four times as large as the Statue of Liberty. Yeah. Proportionately. It's a lot of women. Yeah. So you might think, well, how in the world would these things mate if this octopus is so much bigger? What happens in the case of the male pillow octopus is he has an arm. All octopuses have an arm. Well, all octopus have the arm that contain the sperm. Is that right? Yeah, it's called a hectocardylus. And instead of doing what some octopuses do, which is to put that with the woman, they will actually break it off and just say, here, just take this and use it whenever you need it. Please don't hurt me. They swim away and die? Well, the males actually die within a couple of months after reproducing once. So they pull off their hectic. Hecticatelis. It's like a naturalization class in here. Hecticatellus. Hecticateillus. Thank you. And giving it to the female, which she just stores in her mantle. Yeah. She keeps it until she's ready to have babies, basically. Right. So then she lays the eggs, takes out the sperm arm, the little magic wand, the hecticateillus. Right. And then basically just spreads it over the eggs to fertilize them. Or there are some species of octopi where the hecticatellis is inserted into the females oviduct. Right. So there is some sort of sexual act, the traditional thing that you think about right. Happens sometimes. That's an ink before we move on from the little guy, though. The little pillowcase guy. I'm sorry. The little pillow guy. There's no case. He also has been known to rip off the tentacles of a man of war and use it as a sword to protect himself because he's, like, build up resistance to the poison. Yeah. I love this little guy. Yeah. He's like the fiercest little beast in the ocean. And what's interesting is he's not supposed to be doing that because that's tool use there was actually, I think, like a couple of months back, there was a big sensation on the internet about an octopus being filmed using coconut shell halves as portable habitats, I guess. Oh, really? So we just carried around then. Every once I look around and get under it, it was pretty cool. But animals aren't supposed to use tools, right? They're not, but octopi do. Wow. So like you said, they'll have the little egg hatch and the female will die as well after hatching the egg, which is really sad. Yes. But she protects it the entire time. Yeah. She, like, blows water over it and keeps it nice and clean. And she might be caring for these eggs for between two to ten months, and she's not eating at all. And then once they start to hang, she's out of there. She doesn't die quite then. Right. But she's gone. So they're solitary. Aside from the moment when they're mating and the moment these eggs hatch, they're on their own. Like, octopi are solitary animals. Well, not a very good chance of survival either. Right. Don't let them die. Yeah. With the giant Pacific octopus, which can grow up to, I think, \u00a3600. Yeah. That's for the big ones. They have a 1% survival rate for going from hatchling to 10 wow. Tragic. We need Sally Strutters in here. What else we got? Oh, the personality stuff. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, we were talking about them using tools. They're not supposed to do that because they're cephalopods, so they're supposed to be stupid. They're all mating and eating and evading, maybe. Right. But octopi kind of buck that trend among even cephalopods. Yeah. They found some that have some can open jars. Have learned to open jars just for your outside of their tanks. Well, that, too. They found some that have gotten outside their tanks and gotten into the food bins. Right. And then they found some that can open jars, some that can work mazes, some that know to pick a red ball over a white ball. So crazy. Some that can call a World Cup. Absolutely. So octopus is supposed to have personalities, but we have come to realize that they largely do, thanks to the work of a marine biologist named Jennifer Mather. Right. Yeah. She and Roland Anderson are two biologists that kind of got the feeling that they might, from seeing all these things in these aquariums, that they might have a personality, and that's kind of a hard thing to test. Right. But they did it. What was the other guy's name? Roland. What? Roland Anderson. Anderson. He was the one who was tending or he worked at the Seattle Aquarium. Is that where it was? And he found out that the keepers named three species of animals. I think it was otters, seals, and their giant Pacific octopi. Really? And normally you reserve naming an animal based on its personality. Right. And since octopuses aren't supposed to have personality, you want to know what's going on. Right. So he went and found out, and he found that leisure suit. Larry, apparently, this is a very touchy feely octopus. When Handlers would get in its tank, he'd just be all over. I'm like, hey, baby, how's it going? And then Emily Dickinson was so shy that she eventually had to be replaced because she just hide behind the artificial barrier, would never come out, and look just like it, too. So people didn't even notice it. Right, exactly. She wrote poetry as well. Right. Sad poetry, but good stuff. And then there was Lucretia MC. Evil. Right, yes. And this one destroyed her tank, the interior of her tank. Right. So she was obviously pretty feisty. She was. And apparently they were afraid to get in there with her, because, again, this giant Pacific octopus can grow up to \u00a3600. So if you have a medieval oh one, it's trouble. Well, and once you see this video but wrestling a shark, I would be like, I'm not going anywhere near that thing. Right. So Anderson and Mather decided to come up with some, I guess some stimuli. I think they opened the cage, they put a brush into the tank, see what they would do. And I can't remember there was another one. And then they figured out that these octopus showed 19 distinct behaviors. Wow. And they put it into three buckets. Right. Activity, avoidance, and reactivity. So what happened? Well, what happened was they figured out that these octopus actually were showing personality. Wow. Like they had perctopus. You could say this octopus right here, number 89, is going to do this if we do that. But the octopus in the next Hank over will do something different that's personality and octopus aren't supposed to have that. They also the same group. I kind of looked over the article. It's in the February 2007 issue of Natural History. Right. They found that a couple of octopuses played. They gave him a prescription bottle filled with, like, half filled with water, with OxyContin. Yeah, they really played. They got really lethargic. I bet they would play with it. Like they were bouncing a ball. Really? In their tank. Yeah. These little guys are awesome. They really are. And girls. Yes. The other cool thing that they did the octopuses did in these tests, was they wanted to see how they did with problem solving. And so they, like, wired clam shut so they couldn't, because traditionally, they'll break the clam open and scoop it out, and they wanted to see if the octopus would just be like, oh, I'll just need something else. I can't get into this one. Right. No, what these things did was they said, okay, I'll get up my drill, and even though this is not how we get into clams, I'm going to drill into this clam. And not only that, but after a few tries, they figured out the best point at the clam to drill in, to get the best meat, like, right there in the center. Right. They figured all this out. Unbelievable. They're very smart. Very smart. You could play cards with an octopus. There's been octopus gangsters before. Yeah. So they're very smart. Sure. I mean, you have to have an organized brain, an organized mind to participate in organized crime. I would think so. Yeah. I hope everyone found this as fascinating as I did. I hope so, too. All they have to do is go and type in octopus, change color, and there's just, like, scores and scores of videos. And you can also read this very comprehensive article on the site, how Octopuses Work. Remember, you can say octopuses. Octopus. As a matter of fact, I think everybody should walk around and call them octopuses when they're corrected, you could be like, no, jerk. You can say octopi octopuses. Can't we all get along? And I found out because these other two jerks told me. Right. Because they some jerk wrote an article, and they'll be like, well, you're a jerk for listening to those two jerks, and it'll just go downhill from there. I wonder what the octopus's garden is. You know that Beatles song that Ringo sang? No, of course you don't. Yes. I'd like to be under the Sea in an octopus garden, I guess. Oh, is that the name of that song? Yeah. I thought that was from the Little Mermaid soundtrack. No, that's under the sea. Yeah, it's a different song. Got you. Well, if you want to learn more about the octopuses or the Beatles or the Little Mermaid, I'm pretty sure you can find something about all three of them on our site. Just use the search bar@howstepworks.com. And now it is time for listener mail. Yes. Josh andy in Houston says this. Okay. Hey, guys. Huge fan. After listening to your Customs podcast about bringing items from embargoed countries took me back to some stuff I did in college. During the Columbus Day break in my freshman year at Clarkson University, 20 miles from the US Canadian border, buddy and myself decided to go to Montreal for the day. Once we got there, we bumped around the city and bought some Cuban cigars, which is, I guess, what you do in Montreal. We decided that if we'd wait until we got back to campus we decided that we'd wait to get back to campus to enjoy them. We pulled off the bands and figured we'd be just fine. We got to the border and the officers asked us why we were in Canada for 6 hours and we just said tourism. We were then instructed to pull into a garage so we could get searched, I guess. Two college kids hanging out in Montreal, returning relatively soon through the red flag. We were told to exit the car so the dogs could check it out. We were brought inside and asked if we had any illegal substances, which we quickly handed over the cigars and were terrified. They said we could be charged with willingly smuggling illegal items and since they pulled the bands off, they could have charged them with illegally altering material with the intent of bringing it into the USA. Which is exactly what they did. And he said in the end, they let him off with a warning. And his Buddy's cup holder is still broken to this day from the car search. We were so angry at Customs that we decided to spite America by blasting Rush the whole way home. It seemed funny at the time, so I guess they blasted Spirit of Radio and said field day or something. Yeah. Nice. That's Andy in Houston. In Houston? Houston, Texas is what he said, but he went to school 20 miles from the Canadian border. Shady, if you ask me. I wonder. He's thrown up red flags. Talk about climate change. Yeah. Well, if you want to shame me for that terrible pun or you have a story you want to share with us, you got anything? Let's plug Atlanta first. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. We are having our Atlanta All Star Trivia event, which is hopefully going to kick off a nationwide tour. And it is going to be October 13 at the Five seasons Brewery, West Side, sometime in the evening. We'll get a time stamp soon. Just show up sometime after six, probably. Yeah, I would say it's probably right in there. And should we announce our special guest? I think we can now. Sure. Yeah. Dude, we got some three people verified we're very excited about. Yes, go ahead. We've got John Hodgman. John Hodgman is coming to Atlanta for a trivia. Yeah. Just to play truth. He's not just going down the block like New York. He's coming down to Atlanta to play with us from Brooklyn. Yeah. Also from Brooklyn, the esteemed Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of the Fine, Fine Onion newspaper. Yes. America's finest news source. Joe and John are both coming down. And then as of yesterday, we landed local legend Dave Willis, who is the co creator of Aqua team hunger Force and Squid Billies yeah. On the cartoon networks. Adult Swim. Absolutely. And we are super psyched that Dave is joining us, and we're working on a couple of other people, but if no one else shows up to me, that's a stud team right there. That is a stud team. We'll see if we can beat everybody. I don't even care about that. I'm just excited to get those people together. I'm going to keep my mouth shut about Ohio Virginia Presidents. Okay. Yeah, we missed that one. So if you want to come play trivia with us and Hodgeman and Randazzo and Willis, we're going to be hanging out at Five Seasons Brewery on Wednesday, October 13. You got it. And just send us an email about whatever you want. How about that? Use your creativity. We have no thesis for you today. Just wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Want morehoustuffworks? Check out our blog on the housetofworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-22-sysk-sun.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How the Sun Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-the-sun-works | In this week's SYSK Select episode, amateur astrophysicists Josh and Chuck break out the stats and attempt to explain the complex, boiling ball of gas that we call the sun. | In this week's SYSK Select episode, amateur astrophysicists Josh and Chuck break out the stats and attempt to explain the complex, boiling ball of gas that we call the sun. | Sat, 22 Jul 2017 18:23:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=18, tm_min=23, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=203, tm_isdst=0) | 25964543 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. This is Chuck bringing you this week's SYSK Select, and we are going there, people. Well, Josh actually doesn't even know I'm picking this one yet, so you might be mad, but what you're about to hear is is the legendary how the Sun Works episode. And if you haven't heard us talk about this over the years, then you haven't listened to many episodes or heard many interviews with us because this one has gone down. And Stuff You Should Know, Lore, as what we call our worst episode ever because it was so hard, and we were so in over our heads, and we were clinging to the cliffside by our little nubby fingers during the entire podcast and got a lot of it wrong. And so instead of burying this thing, I chose to highlight it this week. So without further ado, from January 14, 2010, our amazing episode, how the Sun Works. Enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. Charles W. Bryan is not very happy right now. I'm going to handle this, okay, chuck the whole thing no, I'm just disclaimer. Okay. As we proof with our large Hadron Collider podcast, Chuck and I are not physicists, by the way. It doesn't shoot light. No, we found out. Speaking of light, we're about to talk about sun. Yes. And I just want to say that Chuck and I are not astrophysicists, either. There's a couple of guys who like to drink some beer and just talk, just rap. I thought I was an astrophysicist until I read the sun article and then my brain melted and oozed out of my ear. I thought you were an astrophysicist. Yeah. You're way off. Yeah, way off. So we're going to talk about the sun if we get the theory of relativity. Actually, no, we can't screw that one up. It's too famous. If there's a little thing here there and you're in astrophysicist, please feel free to send us an email correcting us. We love that. That's the first time we've ever called for corrections before. Yes, it is. I think this one's appropriate, so let me start, chuck okay. Have you ever heard of the sun? Yes. Josh all right. I wish we had more of it these days here in Cold. It is. It's a little chilly. If you'll notice, it snowed here. Chuck it did. If you'll notice, though, after a couple of days of sunlight, the snow receded. Yes. Do you know why? No. Radiation. Okay. Heat. Yes. Energy from the sun. Right, okay. The sun, which Josh, is one of over 100 billion stars. It's just a star. It is. And not even like a giant star, either. It falls a little above average size. Did you know that? Should we talk about the size? Yeah. Because if there's one thing I can do, is read stats. Yeah. This is a very stat heavy article, so it should be up your alley, Josh. The Sun's radius is about 432,000 miles. Yeah. It's 109 times the radius of the Earth. Yes. 109. Exactly. Which I was like, wow, that means that it has 218 times the diameter. No, that's not true. No. Still 109. Right. It's constant. Yeah. And I like this. NASA broke it down, our good friends at NASA into something that I understood, which was, if you think of the Earth, the width of an ordinary paper clip is the Earth's radius. Let's say then the Sun's radius would be roughly the height of a desk. Yes. And I know this one. And about 100 steps from each other. Is that what you were going to say? It was what I was telling you. Sorry. That's all right. Hey, so, yeah, that kind of puts it into perspective. The sun is a hell of a lot bigger than the Earth. Much, much bigger. And it's pretty far away. Right. How many miles did you say? Eight light minutes. Which is actually, Chuck, apparently 92 million mile and change. Right. And to put that into perspective, other stars are light years away, not eight light minutes away. Right. And since this is a stat bonanza, can I take a shot at one, please? So you said that the sun was how many light years? 25,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. Yes, sir. It takes about 250,000,000 years for the sun to do one revolution around the galaxy. Can we stop here? Sure. I feel really good about it so far. Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good, too. Chuck. What? Sold you're on. Shall we? Yes. The sun is a G two type star based on its temperature and the wavelengths of light that it emits. Right. And it's about four and a half billion years old, which makes it a population one star. Apparently, there are two types of stars as far as age classification goes. Yeah. I didn't know that. Population one star are the younger stars, which include our son. Population two. Stars are older, and they think that there was a third population, but none of them are around anymore. Right. Population three. Right. They should just go ahead and just claim that. Why not? We wouldn't know. We'd be like, oh, okay. Nobody would ever know. Yeah. Right. Well, luckily, NASA is very honest and forthright. Thank you, NASA. Thank you, NASA. So, yeah, check. The sun, we said, is about four and a half billion years old, and they think it's about humanity arrived at about the halfway point in the Sun's lifetime. Sure. It's got about 5 billion more years worth of fuel, which is good news. It is, because at the end of that run, it's not good news for us. No, we'll get to that. That'll be the grand finale. How about that? Exactly. All right. So, Chuck, what is the sun? Well, should we talk about the parts of the sun, or do you just want to talk about the fact that it's a big ball of gas. I think we should mention that because if you talk about what the sun is, I think it's easier to understand its different components and then in turn, what it is. Okay. Well, it's made up entirely of gas, Josh, which is really weird because gas generally doesn't form a ball and have an atmosphere and all that stuff. I know why though. Why? Because of the extreme gravity and heat. And heat right. Holds everything together. Right. Which is crazy. So this extreme heat actually takes this gas and converts it into what is technically a fourth state of matter. You've got solid liquid gas and plasma. Yeah, plasma. And plasma is a type of gas that behaves in a way where it responds to magnetism. Right. Right. Generally people just say that it's gas, unless you want to get really technical and you'll call it plasma. Yeah, that's what NASA said. Like scientists only sometimes will even call it plasma. Right. So the core, which we'll talk about in just a second, but the core is so dense, thanks to the force of gravity, that it makes up 2% of the sun's volume, but it counts for half of the density of the entire sun. Right. And so the gravitational field in the core is so strong that it pulls hydrogen atoms together right. In a nuclear reaction. A fusion reaction. Yes. Which is where everything begins. Yes. This is where everything is accounted for, the sun. Right, yeah. And a fusion reaction, just to if you guys don't know, is when two atomic nuclei join together and create a new nucleus. Right. And so the key element, I guess, in the sun's nuclear reactions, because that's all it is, it's not burning like we consider like a wood fire to be burning. Right. It's a huge nuclear reaction where the sun is. Right. But the key element is helium four. Right. When helium four is created, it has actually less mass than the two, I think, hydrogen atoms that originally began, that set off this chain reaction, that led to the creation of helium four. And since matter or energy can either be created nor destroyed, it has to be displaced. Right. So under Einstein's theory of relativity, which we won't screw up here, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. You can describe how much energy is created, right? Yes. So when the mass is displaced, when the helium four atom is created right. The mass is displaced, it transfers into energy. Right. I'm wondering how many of our commuters right now switch this off and just put on Howard Stern on satellite radio. Like my fingernails are bleeding. I'm hanging on just barely right now. You're doing fine. Thanks, buddy. How are you? Alright. So Chuck, that's the core. It's the center of the sun. Yes. It extends to 25% of the sun's radius. Just so you know how big that is. Right. And it's hot. 50 million Kelvin, which is really hot. Trust. And that's at the center, like you said, it's 25% of the radius. What's outside of that? Just outside of that is the radiative zone is how you pronounce that. Either that or radiative. Radiative. Radiative. Radiative. That extends about 55% of the Sun's radius from the core. Right. Okay. So these helium four atoms are created, and remember, they create energy or they displace energy. Right. When they lose their mass, translucent energy, that energy starts traveling outward, and it hits the radiative zone. And they're generally the type of energy that's created can be gamma rays, Xrays, whatever. But technically, all of these are light waves. So they're carried in these discrete little packets called photons, right? Yes, they're carried by the photons. And photon travels only about one micron, which is a millionth of a meter before it's absorbed by a gas molecule. Right. Okay. So then this photon, which is absorbed by the gas molecule, heats the gas molecule up, and then the gas molecule spits out another photon, which is technically the same one, because it's the same wavelength as the original photon. Right? Right. Then it goes another micron until it's absorbed by another gas molecule. Right. So this keeps going on and on, and by the time the photon escapes from the radiative zone, it averages about 1 million years from the time it was, I guess, created, you could say, from the creation of that helium four atom. A million years for one photon of light to travel this short distance. Yeah. That would be ten to the 25th absorption and read emissions right. Taking place. Yeah, that's a lot that's a lot of zeros. Yeah, it's actually, I think, 250. Exactly. Maybe 26. So once it escapes the radiative zone, it hits the convective zone. Right, right. And that is the final 30% of the Sun's radius, basically. Right. It takes a little while for that same photon to escape that area right. 100,000 to 200,000 years right. To reach the surface of the sun. Yes. What's crazy is this once it escapes, once that one photon escapes the surface of the sun, it takes eight minutes to reach the Earth's surface, because, remember, light minutes away, and it light travels at the speed of light, so it takes eight minutes. But the sunlight that's hitting us when we go outside are made up of photons that were created more than 1.2 million years ago. I can't even comprehend that. Isn't that awesome? That is really cool. So we've got all these ancient photons bouncing off, but let's get back to the convective zone. Right? Okay. This is the area made up of these alternating areas of rising and cooling gas. Right. NASA once again breaks it down a little easier. It's boiling convection cells, basically. Right. It looks like a pot of boiling water. Sure. Except these are gas plasma, and there's no pot. No. There's only the sun. Okay, Chuck, so we have the three parts of the sun. We have the core, the radiative zone and the convective zone, right? Yes. Now we've reached the atmosphere. The sun actually has an atmosphere. Yes, it does. And that's made up of three parts as well, right? Correct. The photosphere, the chromosphere, and my favorite, I think everyone's favorite, the corona. I like the corona, which can only be seen in an eclipse. Yeah. Corona gets all the press. It does. So, Josh, are we in the photosphere? We are. Is that where we are? It is hot. That is the lowest region in the Sun's atmosphere. Yes. And that is the region that you can actually see from Earth. That's where you can start to see things. Right. And actually, the photosphere is what gives the sun its kind of round, crisp edge, because as you travel outward to the outside of the photosphere, the gas is cooler, which creates that crisp edge we see for the sun. Right. Has an average temp of about 5800 Kelvin, and it is 180 to 240 miles wide. Right. That's big. It is big. After that is the chromosphere, right? Yes. That's outside the photosphere. Obviously. It's about 1200 miles above the photosphere. Right. And that's about 4500 degrees. So obviously you'll notice that it's getting cooler as you expand outward. Right. But they think it's heated by the photosphere and the churning gas. The convection cells are still present in the chromosphere as well. So basically what we're seeing so far is the sun is a nuclear reactor that at its core, gravity is pushing things together, and then they're exploding outward. Right. Okay. Okay. I'm with you. But actually, I sort of misspoke because the temperature does rise across the chromosphere and it can rise up to 10,000 kelvin, which is even hotter than the photosphere beneath it. Right. And then we have the corona. Chuck, your favorite. Yeah, that's the final layer, Josh, and it extends several million miles outward from the photosphere. And you can see this. In fact, I think they first discovered the corona during the first solar eclipse. They were like, what the hell was that? Yeah, exactly. How hot is that one, Josh? It's 2 million degrees Kelvin, actually, which, again, is very hot. Yeah. So it's not actually cooling as it goes outward. I completely misspoke. No, I think that's one of the reasons why the sun has these different features, like sunspots and solar prominences, which we're about to talk about, is because these cooling and heating, rising and lowering convection cells are kind of competing with one another and they actually create the magnetism that the plasma is attracted to, or responds to, I should say. Right. Yeah. And I don't feel too bad because the article even says that no one knows why the corona is so hot. No, because you would think it would be cooler. Right. And there are hotter places than others because the cooler spots are called coronal holes. Right. Let's talk about sunspots. Chuck. Okay. Sunspots are these areas of magnetic activity along the photosphere, right. Darker and cooler. Right. They always appear in pairs, as far as I know, although I think they can appear singularly. But it's very uncommon because it's a monopoly. Right, right. Like I said, that there's that convection activity that actually creates the magnetic fields around the sun. Right? Right. And so when sunspots appear, generally they appear in pairs because one represents magnetic north and the other represents magnetic south. And along these magnetic fields, other solar activity can occur. Right. You've got solar prominences, which is actually an arc of, I think, particles and radiation that can extend, I think, 1000 km outside of the Sun's atmosphere. Right. Yeah. And they last for two or three months. It's like a temporary thing. Right. And these things are it's kind of like an arc of electricity, except a lot bigger. Right. And every once in a while they erupt into coronal mass ejection. Right. Which is my next band name. Is it? Coronal mass ejection. That's a good one. Actually, I got one more thing on sunspots, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. They break through their magnetic fields that break through the surface, but they can only enter, exit and reenter through other sunspots. Really? Which I thought was pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Yeah. They also occur on eleven year cycles, right? Yes. A full solar cycle is 22 years. So every eleven years it either peaks or troughs. And what's interesting is 2012. Everybody's like, 2012, the world's going to and I think we mentioned this in our 2012 podcast, right? That is the predicted peak of the solar cycle maximum that we're in. So you've got these sunspots. Sunspot activity is going to pick up when sunspots pick up. Solar prominences pick up. When there's more solar prominences, there's more coronal mass ejections. When there's more coronal mass ejections, the Earth is inundated with radiation and radioactive particles. Right? Right. They hit the Earth's atmosphere and actually mess with the magnetic field. This accounts for the aurora borealis and Australia. Right? Right. And when enough of them hit the Earth's atmosphere and they actually ionize, they interfere with our electrical activity. Right. They call it blackouts. Right. Which is why a lot of people think that 2012 will have all these catastrophes. Right, that makes sense. But really it's just part of a 22 year cycle of the sun, so calm down. Are you mines? Exactly. No, the mines don't think that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Josh? Yes. You want to talk about the color of the sun real quick? Yes. Because this is a cool little fact that I bet most people don't know, because most people say the sun is yellow or orange. Not true. The sun is actually white. Sunlight is actually white. Do you know why it changes? Why? The atmosphere. Oh, yeah. The atmosphere acts as a filter for the setting sun, and that's when it changes its color. It is white. It doesn't appear white, but it's actually made up of all the colors of the spectrum. Right. Which is why you can take a prism and shoot sunlight through it, and it spreads into the different colors. And you have Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album cover. Right? Yeah. Got another couple of cool facts. Rotation of the sun. Everyone knows it makes a complete rotation in about a month, but because it's gas, basically, it's different parts rotate at different rates. So gas near the equator takes 25 days to rotate, let's say, and gas at higher latitudes may take as many as, like, three more extra days. Right. Pretty cool. So it's rotating at different rates. It is. Because it's a ball of gas. Exactly. And I got one more. Are you ready for this one? Sure. About the vibration? Yeah. This is pretty cool, too, I thought. I had no idea. The sun vibrates constantly like a bell that is continuously struck. Right. Creating sound waves. But there's two minutes between intervals. Yes. And 10 million individual tones at the same time. Right. So we could, if our hearing was, I guess, different I don't know if that's the right word, but if we had a different type of hearing, we would be able to hear the vibrations coming off of the sun. They actually do hit the Earth, but like I said, in two minute intervals. The slowest distance between intervals, time wise, that humans can hear is one 20th of a second. Right. So it's constantly making a sound, we just can't hear it. Which leads me to the question, if the sun makes a sound while it's vibrating, can you hear it? I bet those blue people in Avatar can hear it. No. You still haven't seen it? I'll never see that movie. You should never. You're going to be that guy? Yeah. Okay. It's fine. I got a couple of other stats for you, Josh. If you're into it. Why not? Fewer than 5% of the stars in the Milky Way are brighter or more massive than the sun, but some are more than 100,000 times as bright. Isn't that crazy? Yes, that is pretty cool, actually. And if you go in the other way, some stars are less than 110 thousand as bright as the sun, which is kind of nuts. But really, I mean, stat wise, we have a fairly mediocre sun. Yeah. It does the trick, though. Yes, it does do the trick, and it should for about the next 5 billion years. Like we said, the sun is middle aged right now, right? About halfway through, sure. It's starting to look into wearing tracksuits all the time out in public. Exactly. And after about 5 billion years, it's going to run out of fuel. Yeah. Run out of hydrogen. And what happens then? Well, the density of the core is going to remain, but it's not going to have the fuel to create these nuclear reactions, which, remember we said that the sun is a bunch of nuclear reactions, gravity smashing things together, and then the energy escaping. It's a constant push and pull. Well, when it runs out of fuel, there's going to be nothing but pull. There won't be any push any longer. Right, right. Which is bad news for the core. Right. But before this happens, when this kicks off, Chuck, it's going to turn into a red giant. Right. And this red giant is how the sun just kind of heats the Earth. Yes. Well, that's not going to happen. I mean, it'll heat the Earth, but it's also going to vaporize it when it turns into a red giant. Exactly. Which is the bad news for us. Well, we probably won't be around. We'll be long gone. There'll be no trace of humanity anywhere. Yeah. In 5 billion years. No way. I would think not. I don't know that we have that much staying power. No. And so the sun is going to vaporize the Earth, which is probably pretty wicked cool to see when that does happen. After that, then the core will turn into carbon. I misspoke earlier. Right, right. Which cools it down. Right. And then as it cools, it will turn into a white dwarf and then a black dwarf eventually. Yes. And then it'll just be some hulk that won't even resemble our sun anymore. Right. And once this whole process starts, it's going to take several billion years to even complete that process. Right. So it happens overnight or anything. Probably about 10 billion years from now, the sun will just be this massive Hulk of carbon like my brain is right now. Right. Not so massive, though. Can we be done now? I think so. Okay. I mean, there's a lot more. We didn't even touch on solar wind and things like that, but we leave it up to the listener to pursue these. Yeah, sure. The listener or stuff from the Science Lab are soon to be forthcoming. Sister podcast with the esteemed Robert Lamb. Yeah. And his esteemed editor, Alison Loudermoke. Yeah. And then we can just talk about noodling. Yeah. We'll go back to what we do best, phone stuff. So chuck. Josh. I can barely get it out. I know. Listen to me. Okay. I feel so defeated. I'm just going to call this the best part of this podcast. This is on human experimentation. And we actually, as always, if we put out a call for some random weirdness, there's someone out there that listens to the show that has been there and done that. You remember the kid whose father used him as a human shield when he had a baby? Remarkable. Yeah. So I've got this one from Rebecca, and she says this I just listened to the podcast on human experimentation. I was thrilled that you featured something I can relate to because I'm a former NASA human test subject. We just talked about NASA. I know. Weird. Funny how that works. In 2006, I spent three months in a bed at a negative six degree tilt. Isn't that crazy? The effects of the human body at that angle are very similar to what an astronaut goes through after spending extended periods of time in space. Which makes me wonder how they figure that out. Because they're NASA. Yeah, that's the answer. Eventually, NASA hopes to take that information they got from my time in bed to help astronauts stay in space longer and travel further from the Earth and one day, even land on Mars. Wow. As a test subject, everything I did, from surfing the Internet, eating, reading, even using the bathroom was at an angle. Cool. Five days a week, I was wheeled to a lab where I was attached to an elaborate pulley system that pulled me onto a treadmill that was bolted to the wall. I walked, jogged, and ran a few miles a day to help my body avoid muscle atrophy. Of course, not everyone selected for the study was so lucky, though. Half of them did not get to run on this unique contraption, so they were just in bed the whole time. The data of the engineers got from my running will help NASA figure out what types of exercise astronauts will have to do to experience, like, long, extended trips into space. Sure. So while I didn't love everything about it going to the restroom, for example it is a thrilling thing to have been a part of. I'm a huge fan, and I like to learn neat stuff. Rebecca, did you have that last part? No, she said that okay. Yeah, more neat stuff. Well, thanks, Rebecca. Hats off to you for helping our astronauts. She didn't mention how much she got paid, if at all, but, I mean, she did. NASA has deep pockets, buddy. That's what I hear. Yeah. Well, if you have any stories about developing bed sores for the greater good of advancing human knowledge, you can send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Want morehousedofworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.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." | |
c5523140-5460-11e8-b38c-ff20f868cccc | Selects: How Hot Wheels Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-hot-wheels-work | If you're an American who had a childhood, you probably have some nostalgia for Hot Wheels. Get your engines revved for this trip down memory lane as we discuss these fun and iconic toys in this classic episode. | If you're an American who had a childhood, you probably have some nostalgia for Hot Wheels. Get your engines revved for this trip down memory lane as we discuss these fun and iconic toys in this classic episode. | Sat, 22 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=142, tm_isdst=0) | 39916853 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, everyone. It's your homeboy, Josh, and I was feeling nostalgic this week. So for this edition of SYSK selects, I've chosen our classic episode how Hot Wheels Works. It's from 2015, team, and it is banging. I hope you enjoy it, hope it takes you back to some great memories, and who knows? At the very least, hope it mellows you out. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. You know, that just sounded like what? Like that's what happens. Like, you're having a nightmare, and you may wake you up in the middle of the night, and you just go, hey, welcome to the podcast. And then she slaps you across the face real hard. That's true. Yeah, that is what it sounded like. It's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me. You were just supercharged about this topic. That's terrible. Supercharged? I don't get it. It's like a supercharged engine. I didn't even think about that. Oh, good. That makes me feel a little better. Yeah. You know, Jerry, by the way, before, when I told her what we were doing oh, my gosh, that was my favorite toy when I was a kid. Nice. Hot Wheels are pretty great. Yeah, I had quite a collection, and I don't know where they are today. Oh, really? They're missing, huh? Yeah. I don't know if they were thrown out or if my brother has them or they're in my mom's attic or what, because I'm kind of curious if I have any value you need to find them. They could be apparently as far as Hot Wheels collectors go, it could be in mint condition all the way down to beater condition. Oh, is that how they rank them? Yeah. Mine would be beaters because I played with them like crazy. That's good. I mean, that's what they're for. Sure. And there's value for a Beater, too. Like, some people apparently harvest them for parts to rebuild a new Frankenstein model. Oh, really? Yeah. That's pretty neat. There's a lot of stuff you can do with them. Yeah. And we should thank the fifth grader who wrote this article, too. Sad face. I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like, this article actually says Sad face, like, as a sentence. Yeah, I know that issue. I'm glad you said something. Yeah. What if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings are all hurt. I think your feelings are hurt either way now. Sad face. So we're talking about Hot Wheels today. I had a couple. My favorite toy was GI. Joe, but I appreciate the Hot Wheels. Yeah, I had GI. Joe, too. We do GI. Joe episode sometime. I had the older ones, though. You probably have huge ones. Yeah. Now I have the real ones. That's fighting words, man. The ones that I had were so awesome. There was a huge fast collection of all of them. Cobra didn't exist when you were collecting GI. Joe. No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one that's ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy hair, and the kung fu grip is inferior to this little plastic thing. I think you just said it all fuzzy hair. Says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck. I don't have a dog in that fight. Like, if you like the big GI. Joe, that's cool. I got no problem. Yeah. As a quick side note, I have to tell this story. Okay. You know how I used to do book reports and you have to have a visual aid? Yeah. I might have told this before. If I do, I apologize. I don't recognize it. I did a report on Franco Harris. Went to elementary school because he was the football player. Yeah, I don't know why I did it on Franco Harris, but I got my mom to make me a little Pittsburgh dealers uniform for my GI. Joe because he looked like Franco Harris. Nice. Yes, that was my visual aid. Do you still have it? No, of course not. We have the GI. Joe's, but I think the Steeler's uniform has gone by. By. That's sad. Yeah, I'm sure your mum put a lot of work into that. Now I feel guilty. So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Yes. Did you know that the number one vehicle manufacturer on the planet is, in fact, Hot Wheels? I did it's astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure. Like, apparently since 1968, when Hot Wheels were first introduced, more than 4 billion Hot Wheels have been produced. That's more than the big four Detroit automakers combined. Like, wow. And then you think, oh, yeah, it costs a minute fraction of the cost to build a Hot Wheels, and it does a normal car. But also, it's not like you're going to go, I want this Buick Cutlass Supreme in every color. It comes in right? With the Hot Wheels. You can do that. Yeah. The Lego status is they're the biggest manufacturer of tires. Yeah. I wonder, though, do these not count as tires because they're plastic to count as wheels? I don't know, man. Because 4 billion times four, that's 16 billion tires. That's a really great question. I might have to challenge Lego or maybe just look up how many tires they manufacture. Old. Kurt Christensen is not going to be happy about this. Who was that? The founder of Lego, remember? Old. Oh, that's right. I thought you were saying old. No, older. Old. Let's talk about the history of this stuff, huh? Okay, so Hot Wheels, like I said, have been around since 1968, and anybody who's heard the Barbie trademark podcast will recognize the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie trademark's husband. Sure. And Elliot apparently saw a real chance to muscle in on an already extant market by a company called Taiko that had a line of miniature metal cars, diecast cars is what they're called, called Matchbox cars. That's right. By the time Hot Wheels came around, matchbox was already there and had established a market. And Mattel said, let's get in on that. Yes. And the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren playing with them and said, they kind of stink, I can make these better cooler. Right. And as the story goes, had a designer, which we'll talk about in a second, called Harry Bradley. Sure. And he had a hot rod. And Elliott was in the parking lot one day and said, man, those are some Hot Wheels you got there. And apparently if you go look at the old original commercials for Hot Wheels did they say that? Well, that's how they pronounce it. Hot Wheels. Oh, instead of Hot Wheels. Yeah, the emphasis is on the hot. It sounds awkward. They're like race your Hot Wheels. But it makes sense. You can race them. Just go buy some Hot Wheels. That's how they say it. Collect all your Hot Wheels. Yes, but that makes more sense in the context of a sentence. It does. But having been raised right post the infection, hot Wheels is wrong. Yeah, hot Wheels. Now, I'm trying to picture the guy in the parking lot saying, those are some Hot Wheels you got on your there. You'd say? Hot wheels you got there. Yeah. Oh, boy, we can sure waste some time. We sure can. But like you said, when the first line came out of 16 Hot Wheels, they were sold initially for fifty nine cents a piece. Yeah. And like you said, the guy whose car originally inspired the name Hot Wheels was Harry Bradley, and he was the designer of that 1st 16 cars. They were also called California Customs. Miniatures was that first original 16 group of Hot Wheels that were released in 68. And Harry Bradley designed them all, including, apparently he got his hands on the first one. By the way, that came out was a Chevy Camaro. Of course, the second one that came out was the Chevy Corvette. Of course. And apparently the Chevy Corvette came out before the actual Corvette came out. Yeah, the 69 Corvette. That is. So Harry Bradley was an old hand in not just miniature car design, but car design in general. He was an old GM designer, and I guess he had connections still at GM and probably under the table in a possibly illegal way. Got his hands on the blueprints for the Corvette that hadn't been released yet. And Hot Wheels beat GM to the punch in releasing the 1968 Corvette. Yeah, 69. Thank you. That's all right. As the door goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria door was unlocked, so he snuck in through the cafeteria door. That's called industrial espionage. Yeah, that sounds like a story, like just lore. Okay, but maybe so maybe he's committed industrial espionage. Yes. So, like you said, those were the two of the first 16 in that original line up, that original collection, which, if you have any of those yes. You're doing okay. Yeah. You got some money that you're sitting on because they went all out on that original line. Yeah. Like, there are bushings to the suspension. Yeah. I mean, the chassis, it had suspension like shocks. You could press them down and it would bounce back. I had some of those. I don't think they were from 68, but when did they quit making those? It said up until 77 was when they stopped making the oh, no, 70 is when the suspension got an overhaul. Okay. So for the first couple of years, they were really putting a lot into these things. The tires were redline racing slicks. Yeah. And the whole reason they went to so much trouble is because they really wanted to destroy their competitor, Matchbox. And one of the ways they did that was by making these things far more functional than the Matchboxes were. The Matchbox cars were so they really could race. And if you put a Matchbox car up against the comparable hot Wheels, say, the same model car, the Hot Wheels will destroy it every time. In the head to head race, as we saw on the Internet. A guy did that, of course. He took two Volkswagens and two Audi Eight, I think. And one Matchbox and one Hot Wheel. And he said they won by at least a car link every time he tried. Right. And this was no loop d loop or anything. It was just a straight race. Right. They painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny and sparkly and expensive. And I don't think we said that all Hot Wheels are built at 164th scale. Yeah, that's a big point, but not necessarily all Matchbox cars. They kind of vary here and there. Right. But like you said, that Spectra Flame and the redline tires didn't only last until 77, and the suspension only lasted till 1970. And sadly, a lot of that had to do with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California, to Hong Kong. And like any product, you're like, hey, you can make it for half as much if you make it in China. So let's move. Let's ship the operations overseas. Well, not only that, it's the Spectra Flame pain is pretty expensive. It's awesome. It looks great, but it's pretty expensive. So with any collector's item, as they started to downgrade the components and the parts and the manufacturing and ultimately the final product, all that did was make the original stuff all the more valuable today. Yeah. There's fewer and fewer of them as the years go on, proportionately speaking. Yeah. They had actual axles. They were designed by car designers, and they were made, apparently, to reach 200 scale miles per hour. Yeah, that's pretty cool that's way. Cool. Yeah. Remember in the Cockroach episode, we talked about how they're the fastest animal on the planet, relatively speaking. Pretty neat stuff. Yeah. So, Chuck, right out of the gate, Mattel had a hit on its hands. Oh, yes. They released him in. Hot Wheels was a Saturday morning cartoon in the vein of, like, Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo and all those guys. Hannah. Barbara. Dune buggy or speed buggy? Speed Buggy, yeah. Remember Speed Buggy? Yeah. It was like a dune buggy that could talk. And it was basically wonder bug. No, it's Speed Buggy. Okay. Because there's Wonder Bug too. If you took Shaggy and put some Grace and goggles on them and then turn ScoobyDoo into a Doom Buggy. Yeah, that's Speed Buggy. Oh, is that a cartoon? Yeah. Solving mysteries and stuff like that. Yeah. Wonder Bug was I think that was live action. Oh, this is a cartoon sydmartycroft. This is exactly like Scooby Doo by the people who did Scooby Doo using the same people who did the voices for Scooby Doo. It just vaguely changed the characters. The Hot Wheels was virtually the same thing, except it was about racing clubs. There were the bad guys and the good guys. Do you know what this proves? What is the 1970s, the Doom Buggy was a very popular thing. Do you remember seeing those on the road? I used to see them all the time. Not all the time, but in the 70s, it was a common thing. Yeah. You don't see them anymore? Very rarely. No Gremlins. No. You go. No wonder bugs. You know, I like gremlins. Do you? They're okay. For me, though. The coutigra of car design is the AMC Pacer. Yeah. It's like the form mica kitchen of cars. It's beautiful in all the weirdest ways. So much window. That would be my sought after Hot Wheels. If I had a Hot Wheels that if I just could have one Hot Wheel. Yeah. I don't know if that would be it. I'd be happy with that one. Now, do they have that as a Hot Wheel? Oh, yeah. Okay. And if you look up AMC Gremlin, Hot Wheels, they went to town on those. They had some with, like, the intakes sticking out of the hood and just all sorts of awesome different variations, like Indy car Gremlins and stuff like that. That raises a pretty good point. Hot Wheels has always been about the racing design. Like, they've designed them to look like racing cars, but they've also manufactured them to actually be able to win a race, like we talked about with Matchbox. Yeah. And one of the differences that is one of the main differences between the Matchbox and the Hot Wheel as they were just much more interested in being sportier. Like, you could get a Matchbox like a delivery truck. Right. But the Match boxes looked more real. They all were about looking realistic and not necessarily performance. And, hey, if you want a bread truck. You can get a bread truck. Right? Exactly. But you can't get a bread truck. Hot Wheel. Right. We'll talk more about all of this jam right after this. You want to go and talk about some of the other differences between Matchbox and Hot Wheel? Yeah, sure. Since we're at it, hot Wheel is the one that is more likely to have branded versions. Oh, man. And do they ever like the Ghostbusters Ectomobile, right. Or even more than that, they have a deal with Eminem Mars for 2015. They do. So they have, like, a Twix trucks and a skittles van and all this stuff. They have licensing with DC and Marvel this year. Fast and the Furious. I know they had a line. Yes. So they're really big time into branded, and a lot of times they'll have, like a store will just have exclusive access to an exclusive line of skittles cars or something like that. But you can only get it KB Toys. Yeah. I think they have a NASCAR deal, too, if I'm not mistaken. I would not be surprised. And the Hot Wheels usually have a little bit longer axel and wider wheels because it's just cooler if that wheel sticks out from the body a little bit. Well, plus, also supposedly and we'll talk about this a little more, when you shrink a car down to scale, it looks a little weird. Yeah, you might as well go ahead and bring that up. Okay. It looks weird. You can't just shrink it and have it in the same proportion and have it look normal. Right. Like, it will be as far as, like, shrinking a car down by scale, it will be in the exact same proportion, but it's just off a little bit. So what they do to make a Hot Wheels raceable, as they expand the wheel well a little more, they break it out a little bit, which is why the wheels stick out some on a Hot Wheels but not on a Matchbox. That's right. Because Matchboxes are all about realism. To heck with how it looks, as long as it's real. One of my favorite ones and I had one of these that they mentioned this article was the Red Baron. The person who wrote this said it was an inexplicable and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. I don't know about inexplicable. It was just the roof of the car was a helmet. Right. But I looked it up again today, and I was like, oh, yeah, I had that thing. But it wasn't a Nazi helmet per se, but it was that shape of the helmet. Like, the US. Soldiers have that shape now where it's cut lower around the ears instead of just a straight like the World War II helmet. Right. But the Nazis use those first because it's a better design for war. And it also had a black iron cross on the side of it. Well, hence the red baron. Right? Yeah. But it's easy now as an adult to look and say, that looks like a little Nazi hot rod. Yes, but the red baron was world war one. He was pre Nazi Germany. Yeah. And it was also, I think, at the time, just looked like the biker gang sure. Would wear, like, those helmet with the iron cross. Yeah. And all of it was southern California. Hot rod culture is what gave rise to hot wheels. So it makes sense. Yeah. I don't think there was any, like, articulate intent. So, like I said, right out of the gate, hot wheels was a hit. They had a cartoon within a year or so of the first 16 being released. Sure. The second release, they had, I think, 22 new cars. Yes. 33 total. And then the third year, they had another. They released 33 after that. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry. 33 by 1970. So they did 1624 and then 33. And all of them came in, like, different colors. Right. So, like I said, if you had one, that didn't mean you had them all. You wanted to collect them all. So kids were going crazy for it. And another way that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in with fast food. Yeah. In 1970, the first hot wheels came out as toy at jackintheboxes. Oh, really? Yeah. The big one, though, the one that put them over the top was in 1083 when kids who were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner happy meal, to get a hot wheel, which is what they called it at the time, we could get one of 14 hot wheels in 1983. And they had some cool ones. They had a Chevy Citation. Did they really? Yeah, they had one that was one of my favorites, actually. It was a Toyota mini truck, which is like a station wagon camper, and it even said, painted on the side, good time camper, that you could get in your happy meal, which, if I could have one hot wheel, it would probably be that. You know what they were doing now that I look back through my adult eyes, like snorting pot? No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones because you wanted to keep coming back to get the cool one. Yeah, probably. You're like, I got a citation. I'm like, can I go back because I want to get the hot rod? Right. That's exactly what they were doing. Sure. Man, I feel so manipulated. What did you think they were doing with happy meals? Well, I know it was all manipulation to get you to try and own all of them. Right. But they should have been all cool ones. But you can't do that because the regular kid might be like, no, I got the cool one. I'm fine. But if you get the citation, you feel dipped off, and you really want to go back and get one of the hot rods. Yeah. My eyes are wide open, my friends. Well, that's why our friends down under in Australia have outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is a fantastic oh, really? Yeah. That's so unfair to market directly to children. It's just almost literally like taking candy from a baby. Right. Like, kids aren't sophisticated enough to psychologically defend themselves from being bombarded by adults to say, Go tell your parents to buy you this. You can't function correctly without this Trapper Keeper, so go get it. The Trapper Keeper? Yeah. Did they make a law? Yeah. Really? Yeah, it's a big one. Very progressive law, which I think all countries should adopt. Well, in 1983 I agree wholeheartedly, by the way. In 1983 is when that Happy Meal thing happened. And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong to Malaysia, and it said that's when they added their economy cars. So that must have coincided with the citation. Yes, the citation, man. One of the most disappointing happy military you could possibly get. Yeah. Because it reminded you of your dad who drove a citation. Right. Who was always mad. Yeah. Oh, dear. So, Chuckers yes. Not a lot happened. Hot Wheels kept going on, expanding more and more and more. I think they had another Happy Meals joint in 91 or something like that. And in 1995, they said, we need to do something big. And they did. They released something called Treasure Hunt Series, which is a purposefully limited release car series of cars. I think they did twelve models at 10,000 each originally, and hence the name Treasure Hunt. They were hard to find. Yeah. And one of the cooler ones for me was the Oldsmobile 442. Yes. The thing is neat. A dude at my church had 442, and it was just awesome, man. He had the only muscle car in the youth group two years ago, my brother. I was talking about this dude, Jason Singleton. I was like, Whatever happened to him? He's like, oh, he still lives in so and so. And he went, and you know what, dude? I went, no, he still got it. Oh, yeah. Why would you get rid of it? He still has the car. Went to his Facebook page, and it is, like, the center of his life. I'm sure it's his baby. I mean, he's had that thing since, like, 1986, and it's juiced up, and he used to scare the daylights out of me and that thing. But it was also exhilarating to be riding with him. And, like, 200ft of drag, he would lay, like, power breaking, and you would get, like, four sets of tires a year. Right. You'd be in the passenger seat going, Save me, Jesus. Yeah. I was very scared because I didn't flirt with the wild side back then. The old Mobile 442 is as close as you got. Yes. Exhilarating. So that was 1995. This Treasure Hunting kind of went it didn't go exactly as planned. Motel was like, oh, we could make even more money if we put these into wider release. So the original 10,000 releases were redone again and again and again. So treasure Hunt kind of became commonplace. Sure. But it was a good idea, and it tapped into this whole idea of collecting. Like Mattel is like, we know you're out there, and we're going to design these just for you, and we'll talk more about collectors, but just to kind of button up the history of Hot Wheels, it all came full circle in 1996 when Mattel bought Tyco, and hence Hot Wheels bought Matchbox. So they're all owned by Mattel at this point? Yes. All right. We'll get to the design and collecting right after this. So back then, if you wanted to do a smaller version of a larger car and scale it down, you didn't have computer aided design and stuff. Sometimes you might have had a Blueprint, which helped, but sometimes you just had to get out there in the parking lot with the tape measure and just take some measurements and then be good at math. Right. Basically. And like we said, Harry Bradley, who's the daddy of the Hot Wheels designs, who's the guy who did the first 16? He was the GM designer. Originally in his footsteps, followed Howard Reese, and then after that, Larry Wood. And those are some of the legendary Hot Wheels designers. That's the Mount Rushmore of Hot Wheels. Pretty much, yeah. And they would just literally go out and measure these things. And that was one way that Hot Wheels were born. Another way was that and this definitely differentiates Hot Wheels from Matchbox, is that there are Hot Wheels that only exist in the Hot Wheels world. Yeah. They are called the fantasy cars. They're just the designers imagination come to life. Right. Whereas Matchbox only, I believe, has bread trucks. Exactly. Well, they only have cars that are based on real cars. Right, right. Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line. It's interesting that they're owned by the same company still, and they just have kept that distinction. I guess some people are Matchbox kids and some kids are Hot Wheels kids. I had both. I think I had a bread truck. Is that why you keep going to the bread truck? Well, no, I didn't have a bread truck. But I do remember having a couple of weird utility type vehicles that I don't remember. They were probably gifts or stocking suffers or something. I don't think I sought it out. I was always into Tonka trucks. I thought Tonka was great. They were obviously much bigger, but those were like construction vehicles, like dump trucks and stuff like that. And still today, that Volvo dump truck, the giant one with the huge wheels, I think is one of the coolest vehicles ever created. Yeah, I think I had one of those when I was a kid. I didn't have a lot of tonka stuff. One of my favorite Hot Wheels, though, was the little red express truck. I don't remember that. If you saw it, it might ring a bell. I can't remember what kind of truck it was. I think it was a Dodge, but it was just a cool red step side pickup truck. And it had the two vertical mufflers on each side that went up above the truck. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. And if you go to the Peterson Automotive Museum in La. Oh, yeah. They have a really cool exhibit there that I haven't been to in person, but I was looking at it online, permanent exhibit, where they have the real life versions of the Hot Wheel cars, and they have a little red express truck, a full sized one. And I saw it and I was like, whoa, did you just die from nostalgia? Might have cheered up a little bit at the desk, but they have the gussied up Corvettes with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood. Do they have the 442? I don't know if they have the 442, but I'm they will when your friend dies, but it's in his will. I'll go straight to the museum. Yes. I'm going to go to this thing, though, at some point. I don't know on this next La trip or not, but it's right there near the La Brea Tarpitz, I think. Oh, yeah. So I want to go check it out. I've been there. It's neat. It is neat. But back to the design. These days, you're not going to need a tape measure and stuff like that. You're going to Photoshop designs, and you're going to even get a 3D printer to your prototype that had to have helped them tremendously, because if you're designing real life cars and you have a 3D printer, that's pretty handy, but with Hot Wheels, you can print out pretty much exactly what it's going to look like. Sure. And once they have the prototype done, they'll make a mold out of it and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure. And that's why it's called die cast. You create a die that you cast all of the ensuing ones from. Yeah, and I think they're made with less metal than they used to be. But they still have metal components, right? Yeah. I haven't seen a new one in a while. I haven't either, but I'm almost positive they do. And apparently they're still about like a dollar. Oh, really? Yeah. I was on the Hot Wheels collectors site today, and they kept making reference to about a dollar. So just what's called the main line, the ones that they make on mass. The citation. Exactly. I'll bet if you got your hands on that 1983 citation, it'd be worth a few bucks. You're right. But they kept referring to the mainline stuff, about one dollars. Well, They just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper. So they've maintained that cost, I guess. Yeah. So as far as collecting goes, the most valuable, and that is not this crazy one made out of diamonds for the 40th anniversary, which we'll talk about in a minute. But the most valuable regular Hot Wheel is the 68 Beach Bomb, which was a VW bus in hot pink that had real surfboards sticking out of the back of it. Yeah. Originally, they only released, I think, 25 of them, like that. There were a couple of problems. It was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboard sticking out of the back, even though it was more realistic. Sure. And it also was terrible on, like, a loop de loop track because I guess the surfboards would either weigh them down or it would get stuck. So they only made just a few of these things. The Beach Bomb that was the highest selling Hot Wheels ever was a pink one. They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot of boys were like, I'm not playing with some pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking out of the back. So the thing sold for, like, I think 70 something, $75,000 in 2000, and it is since sold again in 2011, I saw in La magazine for like, $125,000. Yeah, it's a lot of money for a tiny little car. Yeah, it is. And that's the highest one ever, apparently, by a long shot, too. Yeah. I mean, I've seen others that were worth, like, ten grand and stuff. Like, I think one of those 442 originals is, like, ten grand. Yeah, I guess, like, 1970 Mongoose or Cobra are worth about ten grand these days. And a lot of them, just like with any collector's item you'll see, if there was just a few of them made, obviously they're going to be worth a lot more if there's something where they adjusted the design. Like, for example, the Python was originally called the Cheetah, and then they found out that a real life executive with real life lawyers at GM own the name Cheetah because apparently GM executives just own names for cars that could potentially be used, like every fast animal name. Right, exactly. So they changed it to the Python, but that was after they started manufacturing the Cheetah. So there's some out there that say Cheetah stamped on the bottom, and if you have one of those, it's worth ten grand. Yeah. It's funny to think about. It's the same with Star Wars. Like, sometimes the mistake ones are the ones that are super valuable because there was some recall, but they're like, oh, but you want that one because the Boba Fett's rocket really shot out before kids started choking on them. Right. Or catching on fire. Yeah. And that's the one you want. But like you said, it's all about scarcity and supply and demand. Dude, this whole thing has reminded me of a really great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Go to stuffyshireknow.com and look that up. It's pretty awesome. There's some really strange interpretations of beloved toys, including Star Wars toys that people who make counterfeit toys come up with to try to skirt trademark law, maybe, or something. Or else they just fully don't understand the toy and what it's allure is. So they just make it in this weird interpretation. It's pretty hilarious stuff. Yeah, it's a good one. We'll post that again. Okay. And then I did mention the diamond studded one. I always think these things are just ridiculous, but to take any of the diamond studded bras was worth I just always think it's kind of dumb. But they did make a 40th anniversary in addition I'm sorry, in 2008 with 2700 little diamonds and rubies for tail lights and black diamonds for the tires and all that stuff. 18 karat white gold body. But it's worth $140,000 to put together, I'm sure. Gaudy. It's a gaudy hot Wheels. Yeah. The car is cool. It looks like Mad Max's car. Oh, you get is that a picture of it? Yeah. I don't think I saw that. Can you identify that car? What is that? Looks familiar. It does look familiar to me. It's sort of like a DeLorean, but I don't think it is. I don't think so either. No, man, that new mad Max looks good, though. Are they remaking Mad Max? Well, there's a new Reboot, I guess, is what they call it these days. Cool. Who's that? What's his face that played Bane. Oh, yeah. Tom Watson buddleston nostalgia looks it's the same director. Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy. But it's the same director from all the Mad Max series. Oh, really? Yeah. And it's supposed to be just like one long, intense chase battle. Yeah. Sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie. Have you ever seen Vanishing Point? I think so. What is that? It was like man, I can't remember the car, but the car was basically the star. It was one long car chase from, I think, Colorado to California. Yeah, I remember that. It was a good one. From the 70s. Yeah. Two lane blacktop, too. I haven't seen that one. Yeah, that's a good one. That one weirdly. Had James Taylor in it when he was young on drugs and cool. Were they apologizing to France? No, I don't know what the deal was. Did you hear about that? No. So that whole Charlie hebdo solidarity. March the US. Sent, like, I think the assistant deputy in charge of the USDA or something like that. So to apologize, John Kerry had James Taylor go to France to perform. You've got a French shut up. For the French government. Yeah. Just talk about embarrassing. I know, isn't it? Send guns and Roses or something. At least send guns and roses from guests. Guns and Roses, man. One more thing about collecting. If you wanted to be the coolest collector of Hot Wheels on the planet, you would have to build a time machine and go back to 1987 to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the first ever Hot Wheels convention collectors convention was held. I really wish I would have gone to that because I was there at the time. What year was it? 87. Oh, yeah. I can't believe we sent James Taylor. I'm still just like I can't focus on anything. Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor or Hot Wheels or just about anything there is in the universe, you can type it into the search bar@housetoforks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this minimum wage argument. Not argument, proposal. All right, listen to how homelessness works from quite a few years ago. And you guys commented that part of the problem was that low minimum wage in comparison, the cost of renting a two bedroom apartment, you'd have to work something like 87 hours per week to afford it, with the implication we need to raise minimum wage. After hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I think disagreements on raising minimum wage as a result with simple misunderstanding. On the raise side, people believe this wage should be set at a level that would allow someone to raise a few children and live a modest but reasonably comfortable level, or at least a safe level. On the don't raise it side, people believe minimum wage is just a starting point for working, like for teenagers at their summer job or after school. This I believe workers should, were never intended to and should not expect to be able to support a family that pays minimum wage. So here's my solution. Since we're a democracy here, let's just decide what it is supposed to accomplish and then set it at the appropriate level to do that. If we decide as a nation that someone should be able to raise a family, rent a two bedroom apartment while earning a wage, minimum wage, let's just figure out what that would cost and set the wage there. Figuring rent, clothing, food, utilities, transportation, et cetera. Let's say it's 27 grand per year, then set it at that rate. On the other hand, if we as a nation decide that minimum wage is just a starting point and not meant to support a family, it's intended for people with no work history or experience and low to no marketable skills, and we need to set minimum wage at a relatively low level and let the market, the free market will ultimately determine the wage for entry level workers. And workers historically, have been able to increase compensation by gaining skills and good work history. With this settled, any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage would be mistaken because we all just decided that people are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly not meant to support a family. That is from Joe Prohaska in Reno, Nevada. And interesting, I look forward to seeing the rebuttal email. Yeah. Love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a great proposal. I think that is what it's based on. Sure. But as far as I know, the cost of living calculations are really out of date and take a lot of stuff into account that doesn't really apply any longer. Plus, regardless of what you think it should or should not be, the fact is adults with two kids are still going to be working these jobs. It's not just going to be teenagers looking to advance, but it would be nice to put that issue to bed, to say like, this is what we're trying to achieve, where this is not what we're trying to achieve. Right. At the very least, you get everybody talking. Yeah. Because should some teenager at his first job make like $14 an hour? I don't know. I don't know if that's sending the right message either. I don't know. We'll leave it up to you guys, our dear listeners. When I started working, it was like $3 an hour or something. It was ridiculously low. That is ridiculously low. Yes. If you want to let us know how you feel about Joe's proposal. Was it Joe? I believe it was Joe Reno. Joe Reno. Joe, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S Kpodcast. You can post it on Facebook. Comstuffynow. You can put it in an email at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And just for kicks, you can hang around our home on the web. Stuffyhoodnow.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 listened to your favorite shows." | |
3f86a716-5461-11e8-b6d0-27bc8b1aa9f1 | Selects: Please Listen to How Plasma Waste Convertors Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-please-listen-to-how-plasma-waste-converto | There is a way to not only sustainably get rid of 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. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | There is a way to not only sustainably get rid of 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. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 13 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=72, tm_isdst=0) | 34731264 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, it's Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen please listen to How Plasma Waste Converters work. It is one of those unsung sleeper episodes that may prove to be one of the greatest stuff You Should Know episodes of all time. It talks about technology we had never heard of until we came across it and started researching it. And still, to this day, five, four years later, it is just as mind blowing to me as when I first heard about it. So check out. Please listen to how plasma Waste converters work. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. Charles W, Chuck Bryant guest producer knows 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 is my boy. What was it? Sidekick's name? Radioactive Man's. 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, won't we? 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? Yeah. 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. Yeah, 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 does 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 the gas awesome. Okay. But plasma is super awesome. Gas. 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, like, this crazy, weird, different type of fluid, and that's plasma, and it's awesome. Yeah. Ionized gas. Yes. Pretty good stuff. Super high temp, as you were saying? And because it's a super high temp, 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. Right. 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. It doesn't even need to use oxygen. No. 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 thin 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 torches, they're just not very good any longer. All right, so the leather was at one point organic. I guess it would still be considered an organic material that turns into gas. Yeah. The metal in the skates, that will turn into something called slag. Yeah. Right. And it undergoes the 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, is 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 net up to 80% of the 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. 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. Yeah, 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. Oh, 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, but yes, 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 something 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 a torch. Because these things use a lot of energy. Yeah, a lot of energy. They probably saved that for when the investors come by, right. They're like, Why, 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 degrees Fahrenheit, high again, Celsius, like the temperature of the sun in this canister right here. That's amazing. I'm surprised you 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 slag 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, like, you have a drain for the flag, 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'll 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. Just like having your own little lava bed. Right. Just sort of sitting there. Exactly. Eating things up. So it's pretty cool. But eventually you're going to probably want to get some of the slag 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 watercooled 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 your 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 sungas. Let's talk about single gas. Dude, 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, and it uses this hot heat gas to turn the water into steam. 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 seeing 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 longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. How you feeling, buddy? Are you okay? I'm so excited. This might as well be ocean currents. Oh, yeah, you like that one, too? 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, inner. 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 sting gas isn't pure. Right. 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 a 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 sin 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 it 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. And there's a lot of uses for it, like you can use 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'll float on the water, soak up the oil and you 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 Rockwell now, it's about a dollar 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 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 this 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'd 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. Alright, 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 the future where like cruise ships have these things. They don't have to 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 planned 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. I like to go get more garbage. Well, 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. Well 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. Yes. 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. You 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 slag 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 in 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. Yeah. Keep the tipping feel low. 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. 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. Sercio said he envisions a future where you don't just have the big municipality plant. Like that'd 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. Or Doctor Sercera says, doctor Shuk de Soleil 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 sting. 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 the 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. It's going to ultimately be cleaned 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, just bring out the P 3000. Throw those cows in there. Yeah. Maybe grind them up first, too. Yeah, why not? Yeah. And 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. Storming, 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 do I 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 listen to that. Because it should. Yeah, because then even people that are super into, like, green technologies will probably be like, 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 I 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 have. That's how things change and improve, though. I know. Well, we're saying it now. Young ladies out there going to 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 podcast. 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 not 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. Well, 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. Continent. That huge. Yeah, because no one says, well, in North America. No, they do say, like, in the US. But it's just 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? We get those a lot. Yeah. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, STUFFYou know, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouhoodnow.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Dissociative Identity Disorder Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dissociative-identity-disorder-works | 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. | 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. | Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:34:07 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=15, tm_min=34, tm_sec=7, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=105, tm_isdst=0) | 40874410 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and there's Noel. Is no one of my altars? No. Do you have alters? 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. Yes, 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. 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 much split personality. Yeah. When I was reading this, at first I was like, it sounds an awful lot like split personality. 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, like, 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 the host personality, and sometimes, especially under periods of acute psychosocial stress, maybe 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 therapied that out of your subconscious. 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 Terra, 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. It can come out years later. And there's not an awareness necessarily that's a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the host. Person doesn't have an awareness of the altars 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 Terra. 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 altars 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 altars. They don't like how they deal with the host or deal with life or something like that. Which is kind of neat because is that shows that these alters are aware that the effects or the actions of the other altar or the host affects them. Yeah. If they are, somehow they understand that they're part of the whole. Well, you can be the host person, just the regular Josh is a non drinker, and you could have an alcoholic altar 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 Meisterbrow. 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 associative 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 Dissociative 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 Remembering our Amnesia podcast is 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. All right. And it was dissociative of amnesia. Yeah. That's that where it's like you don't remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Right. There's also 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 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. Yeah. 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, and memory disturbances, either short or long term. Right. It's kind of one of the keys, probably. Yes. And apparently a person suffering from dissociative identity, just kind of like you said, foggy is a really good descriptor of, if not life, then there are periods of this condition flaring up, I guess. Yeah. Just their sense of place and time is completely disrupted. Yeah. It sounds awful. Yeah, it is awful. Yeah, it is. Like I said, I haven't seen the United States of terror, but apparently it gets a lot of comic effect out of yeah, of course. But if you have dissociative 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 alters, 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. People sure. Doctors, especially in the, were pretty excited about it. Yeah. 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 and they killed them or locked them up in some room. But the first symptoms of did came around in 1791. That was a long time ago. Yeah. A guy named Eberhardt Gamalin. No. Yeah, gamalin. 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 was 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. Really? Is that still the belief that it's greater? As far as I know, certainly among Freudians, but yeah, that's true. I don't think anyone's really discredited the idea of the subconscious. All right. Who knows? Well, sure. We're going to find out 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 Viva Viv, he was 22 years old, and 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 Louie, 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 different voice in a literal way. Right, yeah, that's a good point. And then after that, actually, around the same time, Pierre 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. Yeah, 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, dissertative Identity Disorder and hypnosis were 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. The key is that they're using hypnosis. Right. And hypnosis isn't real. Right. So 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 sexiest craziest versions that we come up with. And it did this in the we'll tell you how right after this message. 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 all of our 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 say 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 not to cover, 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. And then the host was just kind of a combination of the two. Yeah. She's still alive. She still is, yeah. Wow. So this doctor, was it Sigpin? Yeah, doctor who was treating her. Corbett Sigpen, and a colleague, I believe his name is Henny Klekley. Seriously? And thickpen. So Sigpen was the one who 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 to 20th Century Fox. Yes. 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's a total fraud. Yes, I do have multiple personalities. Right. But they didn't cure me. No. This guy kept insisting I was cured. Didn't work. He shot me up with sodium penthol and just use the power of suggestion. And he's just a huckster, basically. He was after the story, but here I am, left with my condition still. 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. Like, people just 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 Sybil 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 yeah. Is when Sibel, 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 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. Oh, wow. 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 Civil is a smash hit. It's based on the wave, the first wave that was brought about by All About Eve. And the public is just fully aware of multiple personality disorders. 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 Sybil comes out. And it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient with multiple personality disorder. And because of all this sensationalism that went along with it, there were 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 explain it away by saying, well, these people may have something 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 is 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 seventies, 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, which contemporaneously, some psychiatrists said, this isn't a peer reviewed case history. 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, it's not a real name, but we'll call her Sybil. Yeah. While the Wilbur was out of town. And he was like, you know what? This doesn't add up. He said these case notes. Yeah. He said, it seems like she's really highly suggestible. It seems like you gave her sodium pinthol 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 that. They were in a session, and Sybil said, which personality do you want me to be? Yeah. Which is not something you say when you can't control your altars. No. And then secondly, 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, 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. Yeah. 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. Drug addiction. Alcoholism. Depression. The hallucinations. The mood swings. 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 calling 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 penetration. Right. You go to a medical professional that medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, you have that. And this one is named Tim is very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now. And then all of a sudden the person is 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. 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. And we'll talk about how they figured it out right after this. Okay, Chuck, so now we're at they've renamed Multiple Personality disorder and now it's Associative 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 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's confronting them with the stress. It may be very protective of that personality, but the point is it's still part of a 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, like, 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. If a person is experiencing a different personality and it happens to be a British guy named Rob, that's the 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. Like, you do feel detached from your life. You do have missing time. 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 the associative Identity Disorder in order to treat it right. That they aren't separate personalities. Because you can basically let's tantamount 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. Former Georgia Bulldog running back and NFL star Herschel Walker. He suffers from d ID 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 many years thinks it all makes sense now. When she finally came out with us and he just came out with a few years ago, wow. She was 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's 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 bobsleigher. 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, that is really fascinating. 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 the 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. Like, 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 did Herschel 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. Yeah, 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 housetofworks.com, and they'll bring up this article. And since it's the 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 aspirable true dad. 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, mid school friends. So Tony Defritis wants to know what he should do. Man, that's a tough one. I've actually been thinking about this dude's email for a couple of days now. Oh, yeah? 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 study 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? Yeah. 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, like, 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, like, a guaranteed job or something afterwards. Yes. 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, he's interested in sales and business development and finance, let us know. Interested in anything, sea 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. We give them 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.com stuffychenko, send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Check out our Josh and Chuck YouTube channel and hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushoredown.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com." | ||
d6b393cc-3620-11ea-822e-373bbe4a4125 | Short Stuff: Chinese Food on Christmas | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-chinese-food-on-christmas | What started out as a tradition among Jewish people on the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century has become a full-blown American holiday custom. | What started out as a tradition among Jewish people on the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century has become a full-blown American holiday custom. | Wed, 23 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=358, tm_isdst=0) | 12134244 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's even here. She's sitting in for Dave C, the super producer. And this is short stuff. A good one, too, if you ask me. Yeah. So I know that A Christmas Story is one of your favorite movies, and I know that great scene at the end that is unfortunately, now dripping with ethnic overturns and racism, but it's still a funny scene of the family going out to eat Chinese food on Christmas. Yeah. In an empty Chinese restaurant. The only problem I have with that, well, aside from the other stuff I just mentioned, is that it's not full of Jewish patrons. Yeah, it's pretty much empty, if I remember correctly. Isn't it the only ones there? It is entirely possible that I think that takes place in Cleveland, outside of Cleveland, doesn't it? Or is it Indiana? I think it was shot outside of Cleveland, but maybe set in Indiana. Okay. There was probably not a Jewish person to be found in Indiana in the 1930s, maybe. So that's probably it. And my God, did you know Bob Clark died in a car accident brought on by a DUI driver in 2007? I had no idea until just recently. He's right. Yeah, his oldest son. Very sad. Rip. Bob Clark and son. But yes. So there is something weird in that. There's no Jewish people in there. Because any Chinese food restaurant on Christmas in America, especially these days, you're going to find plenty of Jewish people eating there. In fact, it's a huge tradition among the Jewish American community, it turns out. Yeah. And you brought up this very kind of funny moment at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Elena Kagan. Someone said, Where were you during the Christmas attack launched by Al Qaeda the year before? And she said, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant. What a great line. And apparently Chuck Schumer was like, well, the reason being is because it's probably the only place open. So he just kind of ruined the whole thing. Yeah, he did. He explained it. But he probably didn't need to explain because from just researching this, but also my own awareness, like, eating Chinese food on Christmas is not just a Jewish tradition any longer. It's become an American tradition. But it definitely traces its origins back to the Jewish community. And apparently right around the turn of the last century in the Lower East Side of New York City is where it really finds its roots. Which is pretty cool that you can trace something like that back like that. Oh, totally. It makes sense because if you're talking about different types of food, like Mexican food or Italian food, there's like dairy mixed in with the meat and a lot or most of the dishes. So it's hard to eat kosher Chinese food, first of all, doesn't have dairy. My famous story about does it have cheese? On it in the Chinese restaurant. Still, one of the great things that ever happened to me as a child was overhearing that conversation. But they don't have dairy in their food generally, and stuff is just you got your meat and you've got rice and you've got things that are cooked together, but it's like vegetables and meats cooked together. It doesn't have like cream sauce or cheese and stuff like that. Right. Which to a Jewish person is basically the tan amount to being kosher. And today it's really easy to be kosher in America because the food industry back in, I think the 50s said, oh, there's a lot of Jewish people who live here now. There's like a whole market for making kosher foods or just labeling foods as kosher that were already kosher anyway. But before that, Chinese restaurants were one of the only places out in the rest of America where a Jewish person could go and feel pretty confident about having a kosher meal. So that in and of itself makes sense. And there's also some commonalities, too, especially between Eastern European Jewish people and Chinese cuisine, and that there's a lot of sweet and sour dishes common to both. Creplock, which is like a meat filled dumpling, kind of resembles some of the Chinese meat filled dumplings, like dim sum. And then also the Chinese pancakes resemble blends, too. So it's not like it was just the most entirely foreign concept to a lot of these Jewish Americans who recently arrived, but it was still exotic and new, too. Yeah. So we'll take a break now and then, as promised. I know it let us astray, but we will head down to the Lower East Side right after this. All right, so you promised talk of the Lower East Side where this was kind of born. So there's a woman named and this is not a joke. Her name is Jennifer eight Lee. The number eight. I guess she's named after the movie. I don't know. I didn't get that far. I just verified that wasn't a typo. Yeah, jennifer eight with Andy Garcia and I can't remember who else. And John Goodman. I can't remember. Who was Jennifer Eight? Zuma thurman, maybe. Well, you talk and I'll look up. How about that? All right, so Jennifer Eight Lee is a producer of The Search for General So. It's General So, right? Yeah, it's General Eight. And she had this to say. Jews and Chinese were the two largest non Christian immigrant groups at the turn of the century. And so these groups were linked by living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and they were also linked by otherness and for Jewish people to love Chinese food, she feels, just says a lot about immigration history in the United States and being an outsider in the United States kind of living together, which is really kind of a nice thing, I think. Yeah, I thought that was a really good point. I'm sure it's an accurate point, too, but it's something that's kind of easy to overlook. A lot of people just kind of, I think, narrow it down to, oh, well, that was what was open on Christian holidays and Sundays, which is true. Like, Chinese restaurant is going to be open on Christmas. So if you're a Jewish person looking to go out to eat, the Italian place is going to be closed because they're celebrating Christmas. The Irish pub is probably going to be closed because they're celebrating Christmas. So the Chinese food happens to be open, but there's a lot further, deeper layers to it than that. Yeah. Another one is that Chinese people had no history of being prejudiced toward Jewish people, which was a big deal. They were open on Sundays. They were open on other Christian holidays. I think there could have possibly been a reputation at some Italian restaurants early in the days of New York that they were maybe not as welcoming for Jewish people. Is that a nice way to say it? At the very least, if you were Jewish and you went to an Italian restaurant, you might take note of the extensive religion yeah. The imagery of the word Virgin Mary and Jesus with the crown of thorns and all that, and be like, I'm going to the Chinese food place instead. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily hostile. Right? But yeah, it wasn't like, come in, Jewish friends, necessarily, who knows? But they didn't have to think about it at the Chinese restaurant. And then what's more, too, it wasn't just the Jewish community that was welcomed with open arms to Chinese restaurants during this time. If you are black, too, you could find a place to eat at a Chinese restaurant. They didn't discriminate against anybody. They were like, you got some money and you want to eat, come on in. Yeah, it's very nice and welcoming in the 30s. By the time the 1930s rolled around, jewish cookbooks, like, full on had Americanized versions of famous Chinese dishes like egg fuyang and chop suey. And the Lower East Side sort of started expanding. Jewish people moved out, moved to different boroughs, different neighborhoods, out into the suburbs, and bad boom. All of a sudden, Chinese restaurants were following because they know they've got a good customer base. Yeah, dude, I saw that. There's something like 40,000 Chinese food restaurants in the United States these days. There's 140 McDonald's, 400 Chinese food restaurants. And it was diaspora of the Jewish community from the Lower East Side of New York further and further out into America that kind of drew Chinese food restaurants out with them. So you can thank the Jews from New York for your local Chinese food place that you love so much, give them a tip of the hat and say, thank you, Jewish friend. I appreciate you bringing the Chinese food restaurant this way. That is really cool. I know they became sort of neighborhood hubs in Jewish communities, and they would see friends and neighbors, and the families were there and children were playing together. It was just sort of a beautiful, symbiotic relationship, it seems like, from the beginning. Yeah. And so over time, the rest of America said, hey, the Jewish people are really on to something here. Let's get in on this. And nowadays, like, eating Chinese food on Christmas is just a general American tradition. And you can see that apparently in Google searches for Chinese food, which I guess skyrocket on Christmas or right around Christmas, right? Yeah, I think they go up or actually, that's a grubhub status. Chinese food is up 152% on Christmas Day. But definitely the Google search peaks on Christmas Day, and that's been going on since they've been keeping track of Google stats. Yes. And so apparently the most popular Chinese food order in all of America on any day but in particular Christmas Day, is that General Sews? Have you ever had Chinese food on Christmas? Yeah, and as a matter of fact, I didn't realize how cliche we were. You mean I would go get general source chicken at Golden Buddha on 10th in Midtown, not the one in Decatur. Got you. We just drove past it the other day and it's gone, which is kind of sad. So there goes our Christmas tradition. But, yeah, for a few years, we would go eat Chinese food on Christmas. It's good. I love Chinese food so much. Yeah, I do too. As a matter of fact, researching this the other day, we ended up getting Thai. It wasn't Chinese, but close enough. But I was like, we've got to get some Chinese food. Just from reading about all this and seeing words like egg fu, yang and chop suey and stuff, it made me so hungry for it. I never had that stuff. I don't even know what chop suey is. So that, I think, is a short stuff in and of itself, but supposedly they think it's chop suey basically means leftovers. It has its own origin story. We'll do one on chopped suey, too. Okay. Sweet. Sweet, indeed. So if you want to know more about Chinese food on Christmas, well, then, buddy, you've got a day to figure it out and then try it for yourself tomorrow. Because the Jewish community figured it out a long time ago. And since I said that, it means that 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://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1216673742258sysk-carbon-capture.mp3 | How Carbon Capture Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-carbon-capture-works | Carbon capture is the process of trapping carbon emissions and storing them away from the atmosphere to prevent global warming. Check out our carbon capture article at HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about the possibility of reducing carbon emissions. | Carbon capture is the process of trapping carbon emissions and storing them away from the atmosphere to prevent global warming. Check out our carbon capture article at HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about the possibility of reducing carbon emissions. | Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:02:25 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=18, tm_min=2, tm_sec=25, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=204, tm_isdst=0) | 5623868 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at House. Offworks.com with me is my fellow staff writer guy I like to call Chuck Charles. Chuck Bryant. How are you doing, Chuck? I'm doing great, Joshua. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Chuck, I've been thinking a lot about carbon dioxide, as you are often wanted to do. Yeah. I've come up with the theory that carbon dioxide is getting an awfully bad rap these days. Yeah. All you hear about is your carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint, like your Sasquatch stepping on every beautiful thing on Earth. Exactly. And I think that we are having a problem with carbon dioxide, but it's really us. Yeah. It's a human problem. Exactly. There's a type of carbon dioxide emission called anthropogenic, which means it's exclusively human created. Now, carbon dioxide is a vital part of Earth's processes as part of a biogeochemical process. The carbon cycle, it's like the rain cycle, that kind of thing. And there's carbon dioxide stored in the atmosphere and the ocean and the soil. This is where these are stored plants. Exactly. Another place that it's stored is in decaying carbon based life forms, or former life forms, say dinosaurs or things like that. Stuff that's become things we use for fossil fuel. Now, rather than this carbon dioxide being released organically, we're digging this stuff up, burning it, and releasing this carbon dioxide on mass in a very inorganic way. Right. That's called oil, which is oil. Oh, yeah, right. I thought you were Abbreviating something. No acronym. No, just good old fashioned oil. We burn it and the CO2 leaves is waste, just like in a snap instead of taking place over eons. Right where our problem comes in. What's the solution? Well, one solution would be to if you could somehow capture this carbon. You're blowing my mind here, Chuck. What are you talking about? I know you can actually do this. There are three ways you can capture carbon. One before it's burned, called pre combustion. One, after it's burned, called post combustion. Logically, before it leaves the old smokestack. And then the old oxy fuel combustion, which is when you add almost pure oxygen to the CO2. And when it burns, it just allows you to separate it out a little easier. Got you. So that's kind of like a post combustion taken to an extra step. It's post combustion. Supreme nice. Okay. All right. So we've got a way to capture it. And actually, as I understand it, a typical electrical utility or a power plant that outfits itself with a self sustaining carbon capture system can run it, like with 85% or 95% less reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Pretty amazing. That's pretty significant. But you've got all this carbon dioxide. What are you going to do with it? Well, ideally, you could throw it in a Ziploc bag and put it in the dark recesses of the back of your fridge. Okay, you can't do that. But we have something almost as good. Call the abyssal plains. Do you know what that is? I do. That's where the Titanic is, baby. Right. Which is deep, deep, deep into the ocean. Two and a half miles. Yeah, it's two and a half miles. 4000 meters. 4000 meters for Canadian friends. Right. And down there, it's dark, my friend. Very dark. Nothing lives, nothing grows. There's no photosynthesis. Very cold. Kid yourself. And there's a heck of a lot of pressure. Almost \u00a36000 per square inch of pressure, which we do about \u00a314 on the surface, I would think they'd crumple a full soup can, which is pretty much my measure of power. Right. It's very cold down there, too. Yes, it is. It's very cold. It's about two degrees, which is chilly. Okay, so all this makes it an ideal setting. The abyssal plane an ideal setting for carbon dioxide storage. Right, exactly. But the question is, how do you get it down there and contain it? Well, okay. All right. I've got one for you. There was a group in the late 90s who figured you could just put it at the bottom. Because of the pressure and the temperature liquefied, carbon dioxide should be negatively buoyant. Which means not only will it not float, it'll actually sink. Right. And ideally stick to the bottom of the sea floor. When they tried it, they injected some into a beaker, it turned into this lava lampie, gloves and floated away. Yes. So a guy named Doctor David Keith came up with an idea. Put in bags. Right. Just like the Ziplocs, except they're not Ziploc. Right, exactly. And we also already have carbon dioxide pipeline technology. Right. So we could have to build it down to these planes and just capture the CO2 and put them in these giant bags. Which, by Dr. Keith's estimate, could hold two days worth of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions that we put out. Right. Which is great. And you never know, you might be able to use it one day in the future. Exactly. We may be able to synthesize a fossil fuel from this captured carbon. That's crazy. My brain is melted. Nice. That's what I'm here for. So if you want to learn all about carbon capture and storage, we have a lot of articles on it. Go on to HowStuffWorks.com type in CO2 capture and storage in the search bar. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | |
How Ebola Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ebola-works | A disease that was discovered and contained to Central Africa in the 1970s has revived and spread in 2014. Now there is an Ebola outbreak that has moved across borders and science still has no cure for it. | A disease that was discovered and contained to Central Africa in the 1970s has revived and spread in 2014. Now there is an Ebola outbreak that has moved across borders and science still has no cure for it. | Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=226, tm_isdst=0) | 35863890 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at Chewy, amazon and Haloopetscom. Com. What if you were a global 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. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry in our Germ free, sealed off recording booth in Atlanta. I assume this is isolated. Yeah, I don't think it's a biological safety level four venue. Would you say maybe three? I don't know. I think we're probably zero. Have you ever been to the CDC? No. They have. You can go into their lobby. There's, like a lobby museum. Couple of stories, a lot of interactive exhibits. And you and I went and she tried on one of those biological safety level four suits. Oh, yeah. I got a very cute picture of her in one. They probably swallowed her up, huh? Yeah, that's extra small. I think it's one size. Yes. It was just kind of drooping down. But it's a really neat museum. If you're ever in Atlanta, I strongly recommend going to the CDC. Yes, I'm going to wait. Well, not that I'm paranoid, because we'll talk about how you can get Ebola, but it's still I don't really blame you. There are two patients in Atlanta right now for those of you who have been under a rock lately right. Who are being treated for Ebola, apparently successfully through at the time, an unapproved drug or therapy, I should say. And they're at memory, though. They're not at the CDC. Right. The CDC is only dangerous because they keep anthrax and unlocked refrigerators and that kind of thing. Yeah. And, hey, we want to thank Jerry for speeding this one through. Yeah, thanks, Jerry. We got a lot of requests to do this, obviously, because it's timely and we waited a week, and there's been some new developments, and there will be more in the coming weeks, obviously, but we're recording this today, and it's coming out on Thursday, and, like, it's Tuesday. Today's Tuesday. Yeah. So, bam. It's dropping. That's right. So there's people in Atlanta with Ebola right now, and those people came from Liberia. There are a couple of missionaries, and they were flown back to America to be kept in isolation units in Emory. Yeah. With controversy surrounding that move. Well, yeah, because if you're a Utilitarian philosopher, that was a monstrously stupid thing to do, to voluntarily bring Ebola into the United States. Yeah. And there's a good chance that you will save the lives of two people, but you also threaten the lives of several hundred million people who may not have ever otherwise been exposed to the virus. So I'm not one for, like, panic, and especially not fomenting panic. Of course not. But if you understand utilitarian philosophy, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But we're compassionate humans, not robots, so totalitarian philosophy doesn't usually go over that. Well, have you seen Contagion? Yeah, I think we've talked about that on the show, reading all this stuff. Really? Like Sliderberg kind of nailed it. Yeah, he did. And I believe in that movie, it became airborne, though, which is was it Ebola in the movie? Well, no, I don't think they something similar. Yeah, I don't even think they named it because they could take a little bit of a fictional license. Or maybe they named it, but I don't think it's Ebola. But it started with a fruit bet and transferred we'll get to all that stuff. Yeah. That one scene where Gwyneth Paltrow has that fruit bet on her face and she can't get it off. It's riveting. Very scary movie, though, man. It is. Outbreak was pretty good too. I haven't seen it for many, many years. But I liked it at the time. Yeah, it's all right. It was okay. Not as good as Contagion. Justin Hoffman. Oh, he plays an epidemiologist like no other. He's great. Okay, so let's get down to it, man. Let's talk about Ebola. As far as Discovery goes. It's a relatively new player on the deadly virus infectious scene. Yeah, I guess we should go back to it's actually named for and I didn't know this, the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which I mentioned. That river doesn't see a lot of traffic anymore with that name. But it has nothing to do with the fact that they discovered it in the river or anything like that. No, it's just the region. Yeah. And at the time, that country was known as Zaire. Yes. And even still, there's a strain of Ebola known as Zaire, type Ebola. And it's the deadliest of all. Yeah. Each of the five strains are named for the origin country or area. And in this case, a man named Mabalo sought treatment for a fever in 1976. They thought it was malaria, which a lot of times they still mistake it for malaria or other diseases. So they treated them with a shot of quinine and said, this should make you feel better. Let me reuse that needle because this is air and we're underfunded, medically speaking. And that, of course, spread. And before you know it, relatives, friends, after performing burial rituals where they have close contact with bodily remains and fluids, people started dropping like flies. Yeah, it's really scary. And then they think he was Patient zero. At the very least, he was an index patient, which is different. Patient Zero is like, the first person to ever contract it. And an index person is the first person in the outbreak. Okay. I believe it's possible that Mabala is both he could be patient zero and the index patient for that particular outbreak. But the patient zero for all of Ebola. Yeah. And in this case, in 1976, 91% of the 358 people died, and kind of a near simultaneous outbreak happened in Sudan, and 53% of the 284 died in Sudan, which is pretty good because it generally kills about 90%. Okay, so that's Sudan. Type Ebola. It's less deadly than type Ebola by about 40%. In that case. Yes. But even still, you're talking 50%. That's way better than 90%. But consider this, Chuck, I looked this up. You know, the influenza of the Spanish flu, I think, is what it's frequently called. Okay. Back then, there something like, I think, 20 million to 40 million people died in one year across the world. Wow. Okay. The average life expectancy in the US. Dropped by ten years. That one year. Because of that one flu, it has a mortality rate of only 2.5%. Wow. Ebola has a mortality rate of 90%. Well, yeah. That's why it's so frightening, because if it became airborne or aerosol and widespread, it could eradicate, like, the planet, pretty much of human beings. Luckily, it's only been shown to be able to spread via aerosol through the air among monkeys. That's kind of cold comfort, though, if you think about it. Yeah, totally. We can get it from monkeys. And if monkeys can give it to each other like that, then that's terrible. That's bad stuff. The reason why they think Ebola has not spread as one because you can't catch it through the air. Yes. But also kind of chillingly, it kills people too fast for them to infect that many other people. One of the problems. And you mentioned it in that story about Mabalo patient zero. Or at least the index patient from 1976 in Central Africa. There are a lot of burial customs that require. Like you said. The family and friends of the deceased to wash the body. Sometimes to clean the waste and food out of the body and to not use protection or gloves or anything like that. Contact with the body is key. Right. It's a part of the ritual burial. And it still is. Like, even during this outbreak, now you have World Health Organization people going from village to village saying, do you have any dead that we can take away to bury? And they're like, no, no one's died here. And they're literally hiding the bodies because they don't want their deceased to not be honored in the way that they should be based on custom and tradition. The problem is this custom and tradition is also simultaneously spreading the Ebola virus. Yeah. I mean, just something like that. If they could just talk them into at least, like, wearing gloves or something, like, any little bit would help. Yeah. At this point, yeah. So you said there's five types of ebola. Yeah, I guess we should talk about the phylovirus family, because Ebola is a virus and it is a phylovirus, which isn't that different from any common kind of virus, actually. But it is a worm like particle that's described as a hook, like a shepherd's crook or a six or you. But you mentioned the five different types and they're named after the region of their origin. The Zaire and Sudan strains that we talked about, the Bundabergio Nice, the Thai forest, formerly the Co Duvoir and the Restan type, as in Reston, Virginia, which is, you might think, what? Yeah, but it's true. Yeah. There was a shipment of crab eater monkeys that came out of the Philippines, which is the origin of the Rest and type Ebola virus. And they were sent to a lab, a testing facility in Reston, Virginia. And a bunch of the monkeys started dying. Actually, two shipments, I think, of monkeys died from this. Well, and in the second shipment, some of the monkeys infected some of the humans. And the humans contracted the virus, but nobody showed symptoms. So we found out that the resting virus, humans don't respond to. Yeah, it's not deadly at this point, at least, which is great. But one less deadly Ebola virus is definitely a good deal. Yeah, seriously. All of the genetic information, though, from Ebola comes from RNA instead of DNA like us humans. And it's really pretty basic compared to us. If we have 3 billion base pairs of DNA, they're only about 19,000 number of RNA and a phylovirus, which is pretty basic. Yeah. And the RNA actually is basically like with any virus. It's just there to say, here's the instructions to replicate me. And here you go. The Ebola virus spreads like any other virus where it basically enters a cell. It injects that RNA, which in turn hijacks the processes of the cell and turns it from its regular duties into becoming a replication machine for this virus. And it turns out all of these different virus particles, virion, I think is what they're called. And those things eventually overwhelm the cell. And if it's an enveloped virus like Ebola, that means that the virus can go in and out of the cell membrane because it's surrounded by, like a fat lipid coating. Yeah, it can go in and out of the host cell without destroying the whole cell. A naked virus goes in injects its stuff, it takes over the whole cell, which makes so many that the wholesale disrupts. Sure. And then that's the way that the other viruses are released. With the Ebola virus, it just basically secretes in a really gross way. But a cell that's been hijacked secretes new Ebola viruses. Yeah. A lot of this is still a mystery that we're figuring out, but they do know that it can infect a lot of different types of cells, but mainly attacks the immune system. And then from there it travels to the lymph nodes and then the spleen and the liver through the bloodstream. And once it's in those cells, it's going to release a bunch of nasty chemicals. They think it's related to the closest to the measles and the mumps actually, which all that stuff is helpful in trying to figure out yours. Oh, yeah. So they think from what they understand of the Ebola viruses, you can track it through contact with body fluids and it gets into your mucous membranes or breaks in the skin and once there, it shows a preference for immune cells. Talk about an aggressive virus. It goes after the very cells that are meant to destroy it and it messes with them. Depending on the type of cell, it'll either make their function go haywire, which accounts for a huge immune response, or it will shut down like an immune cells defenses. Right, right. So it makes your immune system go haywire, but also prevents your immune system from mounting a defense. Which is why you're in so much trouble if you contract Ebola because it just goes after your immune system. And then once your immune system is suppressed, it goes after other cells. Like epithelial cells or endothelial cells. Yeah. So like connective tissue cells, neurological cells, cells that line the interior of your blood vessels, which makes your blood vessels weaken and start to bleed internally. And then like you said, it goes into your liver and your spleen and just hijacks everything there, ultimately leading to tissue damage and then organ failure. Yeah, that's how you will eventually die as multi organ failure and shock. And you mentioned the antibodies. That's typically how they test for Ebola now looking for the antibody instead of the virus. But like you mentioned, it may have suppressed the immune system such that they can't even detect it. Right. And the only tests they have are expensive and they're tough to transport, require machinery. So it's not the kind of stuff that they're sending over to west and Central Africa? For the most part, yes, sadly. So the fact that it's in often very remote locations that the outbreaks have been kind of contained, I guess they've been relatively small, I think something like 2500 people out of 25 outbreaks since 1976. Yes, I have 3000 cases and 2000 deaths. And that's up to the minute, like that. It includes this current outbreak? Yeah, this was like from 3 hours ago that's a lot of people, especially if you live in Central or West Africa. But if you're looking at the grand scheme of things, especially for as virulent as this virus is, that's not that many people. So the fact that it's so contagious that it's hard to get and that it's hard to detect makes it very difficult to work on Ebola, work on a vaccine, work on a treatment for it, that kind of thing. Well, and sadly, like, I know this isn't 100% across the board, but pharmaceutical companies develop drugs that will make them money. They're not in it for curing the world of rare diseases that number in the hundreds or low thousands. And basically, it's tough to admit it, but there's not a market for these vaccines, a money market, which is a big failure for humanity. Yeah, well, it takes the threatened life of two American missionaries to really get the pharmaceutical industry going, and that's exactly what's happened. All right, well, let's take a break here and then we'll talk about some of the actual symptoms 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? 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's, 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. You're going to know if you have Ebola. Actually, you won't know for a little while. That's what's kind of scary. You may think it's something else, but when it enters your body, it's going to kind of just sit there silently for two to 21 days, typically about four to ten. And then you're going to start noticing fevers, headache, chill, joints aching. You can be really tired. And then that's when you will likely be misdiagnosed. Right. With malaria or something else. Maybe dengue fever. Yeah, maybe yellow fever. But typically malaria is the one that they go with because central and West Africa so it's lousy with malaria anyway. Exactly. And it looks exactly like malaria. After a couple of days of showing symptoms, that it starts to become apparent that possibly it's Ebola. And the reason why is because you take a very sudden, very sharp turn for the worse after the first couple of days of showing the normal flu like symptoms. Yeah. Then you're going to have bloody diarrhea, jaundice, really bad sore throat. You're going to vomit. You're not going to be hungry. And then once you have symptoms for about five days, about 50% of the victims will develop rashes on their shoulders in, like, chest area. Yeah. And that's the second stage. There's still yet a third stage. It's about this time where if you are going to have large amounts of bleeding, this is where it's going to start to happen after several days. Apparently, in very aggressive cases of Ebola, like the Zaire type, you can die like in six days after symptoms, which is extraordinarily mind bogglingly fast for something like this. Yeah. And thanks to our friends at the movie Outbreak. When people think of Ebola, they think of people like squirting blood out of their eyes. Right. There is typically some sort of internal bleeding with Ebola. It is a hemorrhagic fever, after all. Yeah. About 50% of patients will have this bleeding, mainly in the gastrointestinal tract. Right. But it's not coming out of your eyes or anything like that, but it is a result of the Ebola virus going after those endothelial cells, those cells that make up the structure of the blood vessels and going after the tissues and the organs and just degrading them, basically. It's also a part of your immune response. Like you can have an over inflammation as a result too. So all this stuff is adding up to you bleeding internally. And we should say, though, Chuck, you're not going to bleed to death. People who die from Ebola typically die as a result of the internal bleeding, may lower their blood pressure and they'll die from Hypotensive shock. Yeah. So what happens is your blood tries to clot, thanks to proteins, and there's so much clotting going on and so many proteins hard at work, it can't keep up, essentially. And once the tissue damage starts, those proteins are busy and your bleeding is uncontrolled at that point. Right. And it's very sad result. Speaking of proteins, Ebola makes two types of this one specific protein, a glycoprotein, and one is pretty straightforward. It allows the Ebola to move in and out of a host cell. The second use of the it's called secreted glycoprotein SGP. That stuff basically goes out and hushes the immune response. It says you be quiet and be still. And it just basically goes and shuts down the antigens is what they're called, that come after things like Ebola and kill them. And it basically just ties them up and gags them. Wow. I know. Isn't it just crazy? Yeah. I mean, it's a nasty, nasty virus. What we know about it right now is, and this is one of the other scariest parts, is that they are still not for sure where Ebola hangs out for the years that it lies dormant in the world, because it doesn't go away. If it went away, it wouldn't come back. It just means it's out there somewhere in a reservoir and a host it is a zoo, notic disease, so it occurs naturally in animals, but obviously it's transmitted to humans. And like I said, it doesn't go away. What they have to look for and what they've tested and killed scores of animals doing is to see if an animal can survive the virus, because if they can survive the virus, they are a good candidate to be the host reservoir. Yeah, exactly. So they've tested all kinds of animals, and what they're pretty sure of, but still not 100% sure of, is that it is the fruit bat. Yeah. It looks a lot like the fruit bet. The reason that they've been having such a hard time finding it is because after the 1976 outbreak, ebola just, like, went silent until the 90s. Till there's another outbreak in the 90s, which is really suspicious as far as epidemiology is concerned, because that's not supposed to happen. So it made them think that maybe there was some exotic animal or exotic plant or something that was acting as the reservoir, but now they're starting to think more and more that yeah. It's the common fruit bat. Yeah. Because fruit bats can have the virus and not get sick. Fruit bats are in locations where they have the index cases. Yeah. Most pointing toward the old fruit bat. Yeah. Plus you can get they've shown that Ebola can be transmitted through bat guano, which is bat poop, which is what happened in contagion. Was it bat poop? Yeah, that scene where Gwyneth Paltrows is eating a bowl of bat poop on a bat spoiler alert, I think it was through a bat, through a pig that eventually found its way to a restaurant. Yeah. The way that movie unfolds at the end, man, is just chilling. So, like we said, we know how it's transmitted through, first human animal contact, then the infection, and then through bodily fluids and secretions and dirty needles is the biggest culprit, though. And depending on how you get it could affect the outcome. If you have gotten it through a needle, you have 100% chance of dying since 1976. If you've gotten it other like through other contact, it can be about 80%. So I guess that's where they come up with the 90% rate. Yeah. I think the 100% rate was for the 1976 outbreak, specifically. Yeah. 100% of people who transmitted it via needle in that outbreak died. That is insane. Yeah. And the incubation period is different, too. Three to six days for a patient if you're stuck with a needle, versus five to nine for contact exposure. Yeah. So, Chuck, we're going to talk about how to prevent the spread of Ebola up next and what's going on right now with possible cure. 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 up until recently, when we had these patients shipped over to America, your only chances of contacting Ebola is if you went over to Central or West Africa, which a lot of people do. A lot of people live there as well. And they suggest that if you find yourself over there, you not dwell in forests or caves, because that's where the fruit bats are. Well, plus you can contract it from gorillas and stuff, too. Sure. So you shouldn't eat bush meat, shouldn't touch dead gorillas, shouldn't touch dead animals, period. Unlimit that contact. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. And of course, if you're over there working as a health care worker, or if you're just over there working or living, you should avoid any kind of reuse needle because you're guaranteed to get it almost. So we mentioned already the burial practices that are becoming a vector for disease, the spread of Ebola. There's also a couple of other factors that are coming into account. They think that if the fruit bat is the reservoir for Ebola, then the reason that it spread, because it was always just in Central Africa before, now suddenly it's in West Africa. The March 2014 outbreak started in guinea. They think that it's because the fruit bats migration patterns might be shifting because of climate change. So that could be fostering the spread of Ebola. I didn't hear that. One of the other problems with this is that there's a very widespread lack of trust for the government of West African countries. There's a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation. There's very little trust for the world health authorities. There's very little trust for the government. Some of the governments are using it as political tools. And I think Sierra Leone, they call it East Bola because the government empower their main opposition strongholds in the east. So they're blaming the east on Ebola. There's a lot of stuff going on over there that's not helping with this particular outbreak right now. Yeah, that's really sad. You mentioned about this strain or this outbreak started in guinea. They think they've traced it back to Patient zero, two year old patient there. It was about eight months ago. They think that this toddler died. She suffered from fever and black stool and vomiting and then died on December 6 of last year, even though they don't know how she got it. And then shortly after, her mother died on December 13. Then her three year old sister died on December 29 and then her grandmother died on January 1. And this is all in the village of I know I'm probably going to butcher this, but it's Melian Du and GUI Kadoo. Nice. It's my best effort there in guinea. Yeah. And then that area is really close to the Sierra Leone and Liberia borders, which explains a lot. And then it spread outside their village to people that attended grandmother's funeral because of course, again, they had close contact with the body. And then two of those funeral attendees brought that back to their village. Then health care workers there and family members got sick. And a healthcare worker in Guacu was suspected to have triggered the spread to three other villages in February of this year. Oh, man. And that just shows man. Again, just like in Contagion, it's just like from person to person and all of a sudden it's in places nowhere close to where it started. Right. And then all of a sudden it's in places not super far from where it started. Yeah. Did you know that? Did you hear about the health care bots that caught the outbreak before the announcement? No. There's these bots, I can't remember the name of the company that runs them, but they're basically just their job is to just scan the internet, scan journal articles, scan news. They're probably hitting the deep web, I would guess. And they are looking for any and all mentions of things that have to do with outbreaks. I think healthcare stuff in general. But nine days before the announcement by the guinea authorities, these bots caught this outbreak in the area. Nine days. Wow. That's pretty impressive stuff. And hopefully it will come in handy further down the road when people learn to trust that. Yeah, but still, this one has been the worst yet. And one of the scariest reasons is because it's happening so fast, the common methods we have for dealing with it aren't working quick enough. Well, the common methods we have for dealing with it are as follows, like you said. Well, there are ways, there are tests that show this is Ebola. They're tough to get to these areas. So it's mostly shoe leather diagnoses, I guess. And then the other aspect of it is that there's no treatment aside from rehydration. Consider that, Chuck, if you're struck down with Ebola, guess what treatment they give you? IV fluids. Yeah, that's it. They isolate you and give you IV flu to try to replenish what you're vomiting out, diarying out and losing in sweat. That's the treatment? Well, it was until about 5 hours ago. Yeah. I wish we had some sort of a news wire. Oh, we do. Jerry knows one. Remember when I went? Yeah. And then she had one accompanying and it might. Not even be out yet. So let's debut it right now. Chuck. This is fresh off the wire via CNN. What they have now are an experimental serum called ZMap, and it's made by Map Biopharmaceutical. I'm not sure where they're located, but there's another one called Kentucky Bio Processing, which manufactures another version of the drug. And they're the ones who are making this brand new, very experimental drug. And so experimental that this week the World Health Organization had to get a group of ethicists together to say, should we use this stuff? Because the normal testing process is way longer than what they've got time wise. So can we speed this through? Should we use it? The who panel said unanimously, yes, it's ethical, we've got to do something. I think the UN came on board just a few hours ago as well. And so they treated the two Americans dr. Kent Brantley and Nancy Wright Bowl. They are recovering. But sadly, Miguel Pajares, the Spanish priest, died this morning, even though he was treated with the ZMap as well. So it has a two third success rate at this point so far. But that's the deal with experimental drugs, is they don't know if it's going to work or how it's going to work or who it's going to work on. It's sort of an ethical quandary because if there's already people saying, well, you've used it on these Americans, why haven't you used it in Liberia? It's sort of a no win situation this early, because if they had died and this is from Paul Root Walt. He's the director for ethics at Emory here in Atlanta. He said if it had killed both these Americans, people wouldn't be saying anything, but because it worked, they're saying, Why isn't it being used in Africa? He said, but if we would have taken it to Africa and it killed them, they would have said, Americans are experimenting this drug on poor Africans. Well, the way they've done it then is exactly right. They experimented with Americans and then shipped the rest of it to Liberia. Liberia has the remaining stock of ZMap right now. There's no more of it in the US. It's all in Liberia. Yes, they applied for it, and like you said, they've got it all and they're already out. And it takes a while to make well, they figured out some ways to make it even faster. So what ZMap is called a monoclonal Antibody treatment therapy, basically introduced something like Ebola into, in this case, a tobacco plant, and they create antibodies. The plant creates antibodies to the virus. And then they say, okay, these are the antibodies we need for Ebola. Let's synthesize them. And they make synthetic antibodies and they take those synthetic antibodies, the monoclonal antibodies, and they inject them into you, the Ebola patient. And these antibodies go in and mimic your body's immune response, which in turn mounts a real immune response and then fights off the Ebola virus. And they don't just use it for Ebola. They try this on cancer? On all sorts of other viruses. Sure. So monoclonal antibody therapy isn't new, but using it against Ebola, the specific one for Ebola is new and then also using tobacco plants as the source of the antibodies. Yeah. That's crazy. It's fairly new, too, but it makes it so that you can turn it over a lot faster. Wow. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah, that is very cool. But like we said, it's so new. I mean, they've literally just treated these few patients and one of them died. So the jury is out, and in the coming days, we're going to learn a lot more about ZMap. Yeah. So hopefully it'll save Liberia. Yeah. I never knew this either. An outbreak is considered over after there have been 42 days straight, which is double the incubation period without any new cases. Got you. So everyone's hoping for that 42 day period very soon. I'm hoping for it. You got anything else? No. Did we ever mention Marburg virus? No. That is a cousin that is also deadly. Right. It's the other non Ebola virus in the phylovirus family. Right? It is deadly, but it's extraordinarily rare. It's named after a German town where there's an outbreak in the 60s because of some monkeys that were shipped for testing. Well, so I guess it's a disease naming convention here or everywhere. Is it even after where it started? Yeah. Reston Ebola, Marburg. Yeah. There you have it. That's up to the date Ebola info. Yes. I don't have anything else. You don't either? No. But you know what, you guys, if you want to follow this, we should follow up in our video series you Better Believe it. That you can find on our YouTube channel. We use that. We take you in the studio to kind of follow up on some stories, talk about newsy items or make corrections. It comes out every Monday. Yeah. And you can go to see. That, I think, is our YouTube channel. Josh and Chuck. Yeah. So we'll follow up on this as things develop. Good thinking, Chuck. If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of Ebola, you can type Ebola into the search bar athouseofs.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this guy. Making a move. Oh, yeah. So Corey Barker wrote us in and says, hey, I just want to thank you guys, first of all, for all the hard work you do and also for inspiring me to make a move in my career. My day job involves a completely ridiculous amount of driving. You guys have always been instrumental in keeping me awake. I've had people tell me on and off for years, you should do radio because Corey's got a great voice. He said, I would always kind of scoff and think how impossible that would be. But recently I decided that I would try it out. I invested in some decent studio recording equipment, made a few audition tapes, I guess. Digital files. Yeah. And as of last week, I signed my first audiobook contract. Yeah. That's awesome. Congrat. Congratulations. I'm going to do this. You can. Is it that easy? Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's easy. I think you have to have some talent. But I think there's plenty. Of course, self published authors on Amazon are looking for people to make audiobook versions of their stuff. That's awesome. Well, that's what he did. He said we deserve a lot of credit, since if I didn't listen so much to audio while driving, I would never have decided to take this plunge anyway. I decided I would try to repay a slight amount of what I've received from you guys by creating an ad that you could force all the other stuff, podcasts to play. I think this is a good idea. If you like it, use it as much as you want. I surrender. All right. Keep on trucking. You will always have at least one listener, and that is Corey Barker. And he said, PS have decided to start writing again as well, thanks to you guys, because your episodes have spawned some amazing short story ideas. So, Corey, let's go ahead and hear your ad for stuff you should know right now. Enrich your mind, explore new horizons, and learn about the world around you. Stuff you should know. Tuesdays and Thursdays onhouseffordscom, man. How about that? Thank you, Corey. Good voice. I don't blame you. We are going to totally oppress the other podcast with this. Yeah, and I told him to listen out for this, and he wrote back saying, I'll make sure I have an extra pair of underwear to change into for when I hear this. Awesome. Which is really gross. Stuff it into your front shirt pocket. Oh, my gosh. The clean pair, Chuck. Oh. Okay. If you want to get all excited like Corey, you can share your excitement with us on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. 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 all your favorite true crime podcast. 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/2008/1225217301725hsw-sysk-free-market-2.mp3 | Is a free market "free" if it's regulated? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-a-free-market-free-if-its-regulated | Prices in a free market are determined by the law of supply and demand, yet the US government has recently given billions of dollars to rescue large corporations. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn whether or not the US is still a free market. | Prices in a free market are determined by the law of supply and demand, yet the US government has recently given billions of dollars to rescue large corporations. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn whether or not the US is still a free market. | Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:18:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=18, tm_min=18, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=302, tm_isdst=0) | 14818418 | 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 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Chuck. Hi, Josh. How are you doing? I'm great, man. How are you? Okay. I'm all right. I know for a fact that you are fully aware of the $700 billion bailouts. I don't say you're not the what? The $7 bailout. The $70 bailout. If only yes, you are aware of you I'm somewhat politically inclined. That's good. So I was watching an unnamed TV cable news network, which is called CNN. Sure. An unnamed one. Right. And basically, I was watching basically just coverage of this bailout, what it means, all this. I'm hooked on the bailout. Okay. Right. If you haven't figured it out by now, I eat information up. Right. You should get a T shirt. I'm hooked on the bailout. I'm hooked on Kashkari. Right. Yeah. So this one commentator, this one pundit, was saying, so long, free market. And I was thinking, you're stupid. You're a stupid person, because we don't have a free market. Did you know that? Of course I do. We never had a truly free market. Well, maybe early on. Yeah. In the early heady salad days. Retraining corn America. Yeah. And whiskey. Right. Or bracelets and trinkets for large tracts of land. Or hemp. Hemp. That was a big one early on. Sure. Yeah. I'm glad to hear you say that. I find it refreshing. Most people, when you say, what kind of economy does the United States have? They say it's a free market economy. Right. And it's just false. And let's talk about why it's false. Let's do it. I think we should. So basically, how about this? Let's describe a free market economy under the capitalist system, and then we can say, this is why the US. Doesn't have one of those. Okay. All right. So you know who the father of capitalism was, right? Yes. Charles Darwin. Darwin. Yes. So terrible. Adam Smith. Right. Economist extraordinaire. And this guy was working from nothing. Right. This is all just out of this guy's head. He was good, right? What year was this? He actually wrote the wealth of nations in 1776. Yeah, exactly. So the US. Is like, what kind of economy should we have? Right. What are they doing over in Scotland? They heard about this Adam Smith fella. They bought them over, bought them dinner, and he told them everything they needed to know. And it's a great theory. Capitalism, in theory is great. Right. Okay. So basically, when you have a bunch of people that have a bunch of products, the supply outpaces, demand, prices come down. Exactly. It protects just the average consumer like that. When demand is high and supply is kind of low, then companies are protected. And it's this constant swing back and forth exactly. Between protection for consumers and protection for producers. Right. System checks and balances. It is. And ultimately, whichever one is benefiting at any given point in time, everybody benefits. Right. Because if you have demand high, then you have companies who are just working away at making stuff. Right. Jobs are up, production is up. Exactly. And another point I made in this article is that these companies pay taxes. So indirectly, even people who can't get employment are being helped through government funded, taxpayer funded social programs. Right. So everybody's doing really well. In capitalism, employees are probably paid even more, too, when demand is high. Yeah. Now, there's some natural checks and balances that are built into the capitalist system. Like, for instance, capitalism kind of demands that companies keep wages low. You're trying to maximize profits because capitalism fosters competition. Right. You got a lot of people out there competing for that consumer dollar. You want to compete and you want to keep your business efficient and trimmed. One way to do that is to pay low wages as low as you can get people to work for. Right. But Smith pointed out that if you pay people slightly higher wages, they're going to be able to and this is so 18th century they're going to be able to feed themselves better, and thus they'll be sturdier and be able to work harder, and all of a sudden you're more efficient. You can extrapolate that into other terms. A better paid employee should be, theoretically, a happier employee who will work more, be more productive, that kind of thing. Right. I've seen that first hand. Actually, as a quick aside, I worked at Stone Mountain Park here in the great state of Georgia for many years. We had a laser show. We still do. And I sold, as I think, you know, the glow in the dark necklaces. I had no idea. I did. I did that for five summers, man. And the guy it actually wasn't a park employee job. It was a private contractor that did this. And he paid us on commission. He paid these 1617 year old kids on commission. And man, I made more money then than I do now. You're kidding. Well, if you factor in bills and things, absolutely. You must have been quite a hustler. Yeah, but that's the long story. Short is we all worked our butts off to sell as many as these things we could for this guy because we made more money. Right. And in the meantime, the park employees were slapping popcorn and candy and stuff. They're all sneaking behind the bushes and smoking cigarettes and making out and stuff. Yeah, they didn't care. No, they didn't care because they're getting paid. Government employee. Exactly. Which kind of brings us to our point down the road, which actually we shouldn't get to quite yet because we're not done talking about capitalism. Okay, back to capitalism. Let's put that segue off and we'll pick it up later. 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 and overall demand. As in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that roll up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitautomation. Hey, summer is here, my friend. Which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah. From the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between. Hosts Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Yeah, sounds good to me. Okay, so this is all bright, shiny capitalism. The problem is, when you factor in, like, the competition and the competitiveness, you actually come up with a survival of the fittest scenario. Darwin. I told you he factored in. Exactly. He's not the father of capitalism, but, man, is he ever important. Yeah. So you get all these companies competing, and then there's this thing called a correction. We know and love it as the word recession. Right? Okay. And all of recession is decline in productivity. And the reason these declines happen is because you have too many poorly managed companies, you have too many bad investments. So, I don't know, like a mortgage backed security or something like that, right? You have all these things, basically gumming up the works and they actually drag the market down. When the market goes into recession, these poorly managed companies and bad investments can't survive. Right? Exactly. They actually slough off. It's kind of like a recession to capitalism is like a forest fire to the woods. Right. You've got this raging fire that burns out all the undergrowth. It gets rid of the pests and diseases and pestilence and all that, and then the only thing left standing are these huge old trees that are allowed to flourish and grow. Exactly. And then eventually the cycle begins again, the undergrowth comes back into the pests. Sort of like what we've seen with the internet, actually, the big internet boom that everyone and their brother started a website, a startup in, the same thing happened there. The giants like the Amazon.com, they stuck around and all the other ones fell away. That was kind of a self correcting thing, too. Right? That's the same thing. The reason that giants like Amazon.com stuck around is because they prove their worth to the economy. Right. They provided a valuable service to the consumers, judged, hey, we like this, we want this, we're going to give it our money. So Amazon survived. Exactly. Other ones, they were bad ideas, for better or worse. They didn't appeal to people, so they fell away. Right. That's exactly what we're going through right now as a recession. This makes me think of recession is actually kind of cool. It is. It's a very natural component of capitalism. Here's the thing. Capitalism in the United States, it doesn't have the full faith of the US government. Right. Normally when we hit a recession, the government goes into socialist mode. We start buying stakes in companies and start flooding the market with all sorts of money and adjusting interest rates, that kind of thing. Exactly. So here's where we enter how the US. Is not a capitalist free market economy. Right. I love the examples you used in this article, too, because I don't think many people ever think of these as bucking capitalism in the free market, but it's exactly what it's done. Yeah. Well, the obvious one is the SEC. Yeah. The securities and Exchange Commission. Yeah. And basically they watch the stock market. And the reason the SEC exists, and I say in the article, the only reason why or the very fact that the SEC exists shows that capitalism in America isn't based on a free market economy. Exactly. The reason the SEC is because in the US. For 100 or 200 years almost, this capitalist economy eventually devolved into its worst form of itself. Right. You had, like Robert Barrons, that were, as Ian Rand, the capitalist novelist, would argue, these titans of industry help build modern America and modern America's economy. But somebody who is maybe happy with labor on the side of labor would say, yes, they did, but they built it through the direction of the suffering working class on the backs of the working class. Exactly. So you've got two sides of the same coin. And ultimately, if you look at the federal government's track record, they usually side on the suffering, alleviating suffering of the working class. They're like, thank you very much, Robert Baron, for endowing this entire city, but we're going to have to step in. And they have the securities and Exchange Commission was a big one. What else is there? I know another one was the government getting involved in big companies like Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil and the railroads, union Pacific Railroad and big, major corporations that all of a sudden the government was putting their finger in their pie and saying, you guys got a little too much power, we need to step in and kind of regulate you a little bit. Yeah. Because that competition from 100 plus years of unregulated capitalism led to some really nefarious business practices, like corporations saying that they had saying to their investors that they'd made $17 billion or back then $17 million in profits, but turned around to the government and called for rode off 11 million in losses, things like that. So you create the SEC or monopolies. Monopolies were the first one. Like you said, the railroads and steel companies and all that, they had too much power and they were all basically running the show in their industry. If you wanted steel, you had to go to this one company. If you wanted oil, you had to go to this one company so they could set whatever prices they want. And really the first appearance of government regulation into the free market was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 18. What? Okay, good enough. But that was hardly the end. You've got food packages, right. The FDA in itself is sort of the same thing. Well, big time. I mean, really under free market system, somebody should be able to put as many rat excrements as possible. A million excretions, yeah. You and I know that there is a very finite amount that can be allowed in there. Sure. So the FDA regulates business, it interferes with the free market. Right. The same thing with the Federal Trade Commission. They were actually created to encourage competition among corporations and prevent monopolies. That's pretty much their sole reason for existing. Right. Even the very idea of setting a minimum wage is the government getting involved. It's huge in the business. Yeah, it really isn't. I mean, it took a lot of labor strikes, a lot of violent clashes with police. The anarchists were coming up for a little while there and basically, ultimately, government fell on the side of the people. If you really look at, again, the federal government's track record over the last 100 or so years, they've ultimately sided with the people. Right. I encourage you to look at the record, my friends. Yeah. The record is out there. I mean, it's in the faces of the happy employees at the FTC and the FDA and the SEC, you go look those people in the eye and you can think, the government cares about me. Right. So what do we have, though? If it's not a free market, what would you call it? I would call it a managed economy. And I wouldn't be the only one to call it that. Okay. You didn't come up with that term. I didn't. A managed economy is basically what we have. You have, like, a free market, but then there's some government regulation and oversight, hopefully in all the right places. Yeah. So the next time somebody asks you, what kind of economy does the United States have? Don't say free market. Don't say credit. You say, we have a managed economy. And if they want to know what you're talking about, tell them to go type in is a free market free if it's regulated on how stuff works.com. And then punch them in the head. Exactly. And stick around to find out where Chuck got his current gambling problem. But first, what if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn More@ibm.com hey, 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 into 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 Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. 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. So, Chuck, where's your gambling top and cover? I've seen I made like $150 off you during this podcast. Right? Where is it from? Well, as you know, Josh, I have the jimmy legs. I have the jumpy legs. I think the technical term is RLS restless leg syndrome. Kicking you as we speak. I know it hurts, but $150, it goes a long way to pain. Well, Josh, I have this malady, and I'm on some medication to help control my jimmy legs. And that medication has a side effect, and one of them is a compulsive activity. Like gambling. Yeah. So I had the jimmy legs, and next thing I'm like heading out to the Cherokee, North Carolina every weekend to gamble. That's great. Well, if I had a kid, I'd say you're putting it through college. What's this medication? Well, I can't divulge the name on the air, but it's cured my jimmy legs. But now I'm way in the hole. That's correct. Well, thank you, big pharma. I'm going to go spend this $150 on scratch off tickets. Right. And you can read actually about this in a very cool article called the Top ten weirdest Side effects of Drugs that You Can Take to Make You Feel Better. Also known as Top ten weird prescription drug side effects. You can find that on howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four 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 science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health. Who needs better than leading brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
cd2194ea-7294-402f-983f-ae9401064b0b | Short Stuff: Artificial Banana Flavor | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-artificial-banana-flavor | In the Watermelon episode, Chuck and Josh stumbled into a bit of little-known history about why artificial banana flavor doesn’t taste like bananas. Turns out it does; it just tastes like a banana you’ve probably never eaten.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | In the Watermelon episode, Chuck and Josh stumbled into a bit of little-known history about why artificial banana flavor doesn’t taste like bananas. Turns out it does; it just tastes like a banana you’ve probably never eaten.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 18 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=138, tm_isdst=0) | 12327020 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We're the Banana Splits. And this is short stuff. Let's go. I thought you were going to say we're bananas for banana flavoring. I should think we should retake this whole thing, frankly. No, yours is better. No way. Not by a million years. Yours was better than mine. This is a good episode. Hats off to you for putting it together. Thank you. But the hats really come off to a handful of astute listeners, Chuck, because I had no idea about this until in our Watermelon episode, if you'll remember, you started talking about how just far off, like, banana candy flavors from actual banana taste. And I was like, you're absolutely right. They just missed the mark so badly. But after we talked about that, we didn't realize we'd accidentally stumble into kind of like an overlooked history of at least flavor science, if not pop culture, that some of our listeners wrote in and said, guys, get this. That banana flavoring actually is really dead on to a banana that we don't eat anymore. It was created back at a time when there's this banana that's not around any longer, was popular. And that's why it seems weird to us because it doesn't taste like bananas we eat today. And I just started tearing at my clothing and shaking my head left and right. I was I got to get a short Stuff out as fast as possible about this. Delirium said in when you heard there was an OB. That's right. An OGB. That's right. And that banana, my friends, is called is it Michelle? The Gross Michelle. G-R-O-S-M-I-C-H-E-L. That was a banana grown in the beginning of the mid 19th century by a coffee grow in Jamaica, and Big Mike would be his name here in the States, but it was Michelle. And this stuff was great for sending around the world because it grew in little tight bunches. It was very thick skinned. It was very slow to ripen after you picked it off, and so it was really good as a shipping fruit until disaster struck. Is that right? Yeah. I think in the around then, the Gross Michelle became the dominant banana. And that lasted all the way until the banana. That's right. That lasted all the way until the 1950s when something called a Panama disease or banana wilt, which is a fungal disease that attacks banana plants. And it's caused by a fungus called fusorium oxysporum forma spacialis cubanzae. And it actually aroused to the dead or something. I think it did, too. Look out behind you, Chuck. Yeah. This particular soil dwelling fungus really munches down on banana crops. And so after 70 years of market dominance, the Gross Michelle went basically extinct in less than a decade because this banana wilt just took a hold and spread through the banana crops like wildfire. Yeah. Which is a problem when you have a monoculture, when you have all these identical, essentially, plants and you have a fungus that attacks it, you're going to have no more bananas or any sort of monoculture. So, like you said, within ten years, it's gone. It went from the OB to the nobi, and everyone said, we got to get a new banana. We invented the cabin dish and that's what we eat today. It's another monoculture. So if something else comes along, that's trouble. But the cabin dish is resistant to Panama disease and so far, so good. The Cavendish is doing pretty well. Yes, but they've identified a couple of diseases the Cavendish is not resistant to, and so if those diseases ever took hold, we'd have the same problem all over again. So the banana growing industry does not learn lessons very well. And that Cavendish is if you are eating a banana today, basically anywhere in the world, there is genuinely a 99% chance that the banana is a Cavendish. Because not only is the Cavendish the most widely grown variety that supplies the world's bananas, the Cavendishes that are grown are actually clones of one another, because it's really hard to get a banana to get sexy with another banana. Sure. So they use clones, they take rhizomes from one plant, plant that grow another plant, and so those plants are clones of one another, meaning they're not very genetically dissimilar, they're pretty much identical. And that means that if you have a disease that can take out one of those plants, it can take out all of those plants. And so the Cavendish, like you said, is in the same position that the Gross Michelle is. We're just lucked out by it not happening yet. That's right. So the top banana is gone, second banana is now dominant. And I think it's time for a break before I think of another bad pun. And we'll be right back. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck wanna learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck it's stuff you should know all right. All right. So now we're at the part where we talk about banana candy and everything from nower laters. I'm sorry? Now and laters. I always say now or later. I did too. Now and Bladers, which is really a huge sea change. Yeah, because they're saying, like, have them start every time now and you're going to be chewing them later still, too, because they don't go away very fast. Or Ruth or Necklace wafers, any of that stuff. You've probably eaten it and said, this really doesn't taste like a banana. And like you mentioned the beginning, it's because it doesn't taste like a Cavendish, apparently, it does taste like a Gross Michelle. And there is a very nuanced story to why. Yeah, because gist of the story, the legend, as it goes, is that they created this banana flavoring to mimic the dominant banana at the time, the gross michelle. The gross michelle went extinct, but this banana flavoring carried on. And so to those of us alive today who've never had a gross michelle, it seems weird and foreign, but it's not like the chemist extracted gross michelle and then inject it into the candy, and then that's where banana flavoring came from. It's like you said, the whole thing was a lot more nuanced than that. And in fact, they developed this artificial banana flavor and then tinkered with it to make it mimic the gross michelle, which, as we'll see, they apparently did pretty well. Yeah. So there was, believe it or not, there's a banana flavoring researcher, I think just general researcher, but an author named Nadia Rubenstein, who did a lot of research on this on this story and traced the development of the banana flavoring back to 1912 by these New Jersey chemists. I guess the Fritz brothers. Sure friccia. It's like Fritz and Nietzsche mixed together. S-C-H-E. It's kind of a weird name. The Fishy Brothers. But they were from New Jersey, so they didn't take any guff and they didn't want anybody poking around their banana synthesizing operation. But Nadia Rubenstein found out that they did isolate from real bananas and that they had to have been gross michelle because that was, again, the top banana. Right. So you'd say, well, then the story is true. They took gross michelle essence and put it into candies. Still not quite right, because it gets a little more convoluted than that, because what they extracted from the gross michelle and identified as basically banana essence is a chemical compound called amyl acetate. And it's not just found in bananas, it's found in other fruits. And it's actually one of the other fruits that it's really kind of predominant. It is pears. And Rubenstein found from a research that depending on the company you're buying from and the decade it was, amyl acetate would be marketed in their catalogs either as banana essence or pear essence. And that over the years, it eventually just kind of evened out into a generic fruity essence because it depends a lot on the power of suggestion and the nose or tongue of the beholder, what fruit it evokes. Yes. And this is, I think, where it gets super cool, because if you live in the UK, you probably eat a little more pear than banana, or at least historically or culturally. That's sort of the deal than you might here in the United States. I think Americans eat 130 bananas a year or something like that. That's everyone around the world. That's everybody. Yeah. But the UK is big on their pears and pear flavor things. So if you take the very same exact vial of that what's it called again? Amyl acetate. Amyl acetate. You stick it under the nose. First of all, you say, get that beer pine out of your hand so you can smell something for a change. And they say, right? And you put that vial under the nose of someone from the UK. They'll say, tastes like pear. Think about the Brits. Put that same vial under first of all, you smack the cheap light beer out of the American's hand, okay? And you put that under their nose, and they'll say, it tastes like a banana. And it's the same thing, right? It's the same vial. It all depends on what you've been exposed to. Remember, we were talking about, like, gray candy having banana flavor? If you'd even be able to recognize this banana flavor. I was right in a really roundabout way, which I super love that kind of thing, because you have to basically tell people, this is banana candy, this flavor, it's banana flavor. And the thing is, though, is they really did kind of nail the taste of gross Michelle with this amal acetate, because upon later inspection, food science and flavoring science has gotten exponentially more sophisticated than it was back in 1912 when the Fritzi brothers were working, and they found that gross michelle bananas had more of a related compound called isoamol acetate than the Cavendish does. And that because of this kind of thicker concentration of amyl acetate in this banana flavoring. It evokes the Gross michelle way more than it does the Cavendish. And like you said, beyond just food scientists, there is a banana grower in Hawaii that does grow that top banana, the OG banana, the Gross michelle. And they went out the BBC interviewed this guy, and he was like they're like, well, what does the Gross Michelle taste like? He said, It tastes like that fake banana flavor. It tastes like a rut, basically. Yeah. And he said, when I first tasted it made me think of banana flavoring. So I want to get my hands on one of those Gross Michelle's. I want to go to Hawaii and check this thing out. Yeah, same here. Next time we're in Hawaii, Chuck, I'll bring you back some grocery shelves because they're great for shipping. That's right. You drop one in the mail. Yes, I will. I'll put some stamps on it and send it to you. You got anything else about gross michelle or banana flavoring? No. I thought this was super interesting. Me too. I've loved it. So thanks for all the listeners who wrote in to let us know about this wonderful little story. And in the meantime, everybody short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my husband, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Alcatraz Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-alcatraz-works | Sure, you've heard stories about Alcatraz. From high-profile escape attempts to tales of notorious inmates, the Rock is unique in American history. But how did it actually work? Join Josh and Chuck as they explain the Stuff You Should Know about Alcatraz. | Sure, you've heard stories about Alcatraz. From high-profile escape attempts to tales of notorious inmates, the Rock is unique in American history. But how did it actually work? Join Josh and Chuck as they explain the Stuff You Should Know about Alcatraz. | Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:06:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=15, tm_min=6, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=319, tm_isdst=0) | 39154068 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, Charles W, chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know the podcast cast the audio version because we have a video version, baby. Yeah, we throw videos about once a week now. No, I mean, we have, like, a video version of our podcast that has rules. It's like a game show. Remember the stupid game show? Yeah, that one. That's coming soon. It will probably be out by this time on the website. I think it published in you and Me time right here. I think it publishes next week. Okay. In the time that where we're in people's earbuds right now. Yeah, it published already. So go to the video section of How Stuff Works and search in the video section, Stuff You Should Know, and you'll be able to find that. And it's not an audio version of what we do. It's a totally different it's a couple of minutes long new content that you've never heard. Loose fun. It's not that fun, but it is definitely loose. You'll like it, and if you don't, again, it's free. Yeah, free. Also, you can find us on Twitter. We have fun on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is SYSK Podcast. We're front loading this one. Yeah. Okay. And then on Facebook, we're almost like 50,000 friends on Facebook. Buddies, you could call them. And you can listen to us on WFMU in the New York metro area at 90.1 FM and in the Hudson Valley at 91.1, I believe so. And that's Friday evenings at 07:00. Yeah, we love WFMU, and we're very proud to be a part of that station. Yeah. Our buddy Ken over there just takes one classic episode and another classic episode and makes them kiss like Barbie dolls. That's right. And puts them into, like, an hour long version. All right, plugfest out of the way. Oh, we have two audiobooks, one on the economy and one on happiness. You can find them on itunes. Yeah. Super stuff. Guides. Yeah. It's okay. You're ready now? Yes. Chuck? Yes. Have you heard about this Occupy Wall Street jam? Yeah. You have? Yeah. They're shutting it down here and there. Are there I thought they were doing been really keeping it as long as it stayed contained in Zakati Park, it was relatively okay. Well, I mean, in different cities, they're like they cleared them out of Atlanta yesterday. Oakland, they tear gassed them. Tear gas and stung grenades. And apparently when they came back, they tear gas them again, stunned, grenaded them. And the Occupy Oakland people are like, we're going to come back every day. And the cops, they're like, we're going to stun grenade you every day. We got lots of stun grenades. Did they clear out Atlanta? What happened? They cleared out Atlanta overnight. Last night, I think. But I don't know if people are going to come back or not. That is so shady to clear it out overnight. It happens, apparently so well, Occupy Wall Street in particular is doing pretty well. It started September 17, and as of today, October 26, it's been going on for 39 days, which is substantial. Sure. I think a lot of people are surprised that it's been going on this long, but as long as 39 days seems it's got nothing on the occupation of Alcatraz that took place starting November 20, 1969, and lasted 19 months. The Red Power Movement. Yes, Red Power. Basically, you've heard of Aim, the American Indian Movement, the one that Marlin Brando helped out by having what was her name? Little Feather go. Except as Oscar. Yes, I think that was her name. This started that. This is largely credited with starting that. So on November 20, 1969, a guy named Richard McKenzie, who was a I think he was a Mohawk. No, I'm sorry. Richard Oakes was a Mohawk. He led an occupation that took over another occupation, basically, that it started, like, a couple of weeks earlier and basically just sat in with about 100 people on Alcatraz and said, hey, we think this should be a cultural center for Native Americans, and we think it should be the site of an Indian university as well, and we're going to stay here until you meet our demands. And they did. And one of the key ingredients of this was that it was intertribal. There was more than one tribe. It wasn't just the Mohawks who were doing this, which made it groundbreaking as far as the Indian Movement was concerned. And it lasted for a while. It had its ups and downs, and basically, it was ultimately coopted by the dirty hippies in San Francisco across the bay, who started showing up and doing drugs openly in the prison. Now, granted, you don't get too many opportunities to take acid on Alcatraz, but they ended up eroding the occupation severely. That's right. And there was a basis for that. Even the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 said that all retired, abandoned, out of use federal land shall be returned to the native people from whom it was acquired. And since Alcatraz the prison had shut down in 1963, it was declared a surplus federal property. So they said, you know what? We'll give you $0.47 an acre, which is what you bought it for, so we'll give you $9.0.40 for a capitraz. Nice. And they said, no, let's bring in the Coast Guard. Well, for a while, it was tolerated, again, 19 months. But then in January 1971, two oil tankers collided in San Francisco Bay. And although it was clearly established that the lighthouse, which is no longer working on Alcatraz because of the movement, had no part in this, it was enough so that public sentiment was like, Get those guys out of there. So Nixon was like, Get them out of there. Yeah, they shut down, the power, shut off telephone service, a fire broke out, and then it dwindled down to about 15 people. And that was small enough to where they could just go in and say, come on. Yes. Five women, four children, six unarmed men. And Richard Oakes 13 year old stepdaughter unfortunately fell her death during the middle of this occupation, three stories down, because she probably fell from a cell block because they were three tiers high. Right. So this is just one major event in the history of alcatraz, one of many. And alcatraz itself dates back at least, well, far before this. As far as Europeans are concerned, Alcatraz's origins begin in 1775. But let's talk about the Native American use of alcatraz before then. I got one more interesting fact for you. I want to hear a young Benjamin Brad was one of the with his mother and sister. No way. Benjamin Brad of TV's Law and Order Fame. Yeah. Wow. He was one of the kids. That's awesome. All right, so taking alcatraz, let's go back in time to the Native Americans. There were some rumors that it was actually a prison for them as well, where they would exile those who broke tribal law, but historians say that might not be the case. They probably just went there looking for eggs. Right? Pelican egg. There pelican eggs specifically because the word alcatraz is an Anglican I think that's right. Of the word alcatrazis, which means pelicans organic. Organic for birds, though. That's what I didn't get. But we're going with pelicans. That's what I've heard. But alcatrazas, which was given to the island by the Spanish explorer don Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775 when he sailed into San Francisco Bay. One of the coolest ones. He was pretty cool because he was like, it is on the site that I decree uranium will eventually play. Yes, that's right. That was my Don Juan ayala. Very nice. Very nice. So that was the earliest history that we know of, even though it's not written down. In 1847, there was an official survey of this island, which we should mention is the top of a mountain, because San Francisco Bay used to be a valley. Pretty much all islands are tops of mountains. Yeah. When you get down to it. Yeah. But I like how grabbing ask you is like, no, I'm just coming out and saying it this time. Lieutenant William H. Warner of the US. Army was like, hey, this is a really prime location here in the bay to stage munitions and to have a defense position, so let's construct a building here to guard against the confederate soldiers. And I don't really think about it. You're north and south, but forget about San Francisco on there. Yeah. Being a part of the Civil War. Oh, yeah. Especially with the gold rush going on out there. Anybody who controlled San Francisco controls a substantial amount of gold. It's a big deal. But despite the fortifications that were eventually built there and the guns that were brought there. The Citadel is what they called it, but it is not to be confused with the school. Right. I'm the guns were fired a couple of times, but never in battle. It was always like a case of mistaken identity. Yeah, like, what was that? Or everybody who was stationed on Alcatraz got drunk and just fired him off out of board them. I suppose that could have happened eventually. People started being sent to Alcatraz. If you deserted and were caught, or you're a court marshall and it didn't go so well, you might end up on Alcatraz, especially if you were stationed around there. And the guy who was the head of the fort there basically was like, well, we have a basement. I guess we can start keeping people in the basement. Yeah, it's a brig now. Build a couple of cells here and there. And then all of a sudden it became very apparent. Not only is it a great spot for a garrison, it's a great spot for a prison. Because, Chuck, there's a lot of aspects of Alcatraz that make it a very attractive prison location. It's an island. Sure. It's a rock. There's a prison on it. And the water is very chilly. Yeah. And it's infested with great white sharks. And that's the word everyone uses. As infested I don't know if that's it infested. That's what everyone uses. Even San Francisco are like infested they make it sound like you jump in and you will be attacked by great white sharks. Have you ever seen the movie Piranha? Yeah. It's like that, but with great white sharks. I saw the remake the other day, by the way. How is it? It is kind of awesome. Gruesomely awesome and funny. Is it an homage to the first one? Yeah, I mean, it's way over the top. And it's one of those is so over the top. It's like, well, this is kind of fun. Have you seen Hobo with shop guns? Not good. I have a feeling it's sort of like that. Yeah, that's way over the top. And awesome for that reason, too. But have you seen Piranha 3D? Remember they fly eventually. Yeah. The Spawning. Yeah. You know who wrote that, actually? Benjamin Brat. No. Amazing writer, filmmaker John Sales. Yeah. That was one of his first writing jobs in Hollywood, was writing Piranha Three. The Spawning. I think Crazy Roger Ebert wrote did we talk about that? In the exploitation? Yeah, that's my go to well, you should say, though, beyond the Valley of the Dolls. All right, back to Alcatraz. I'm sorry, back to the Citadel. Post Civil War, there was a big earthquake in San Francisco, and so they had to actually bring 200 regular civilian prisoners out to Alcatraz. The military at that point was like, it's really expensive. We don't really need a military prison anymore, so let's tear the citadel down. Jegger Hoover said, we need a big deterrent and a big scary place, so why don't we use Alcatraz and make that a regular federal penitentiary? Penitentiary. Well, that was in the 30s. In 1912, they said, the city that we do need a military prison, or if we're going to do it, let's do it right. And they tore the citadel down and built the military prison. They built. Actually, the technical name was it United States Military Prison. Pacific Branch, Alcatraz Island. Right. That was in 1912. But then, like you said, they were like, this is really expensive. Yeah, you got to bring in everything from the San Francisco area. Everyone knows how expensive cheese is in San Francisco. Right. And they're like, hey, Mr. J. Hoover, look over here. And he did, right? He did. He said, I'm trying to crack down on all these bootleggers and all of these chippies, and I need a prison that's going to just scare people. Just the name of it is going to scare people. And I'm in love with my assistant, and we're going to use Aquatraise because it is, again, a perfect prison. That's right. So that happened. Ownership was transferred between 33 and 34, and they brought the first regular civilian prisoners over to stay in secrecy. Yeah. I wondered why. I think that's a good way to start off the worst prison in the country. Okay. By secretly transporting prisoners there that makes you feel like you can be stolen out of your house at any moment. All right, so that is the history of the island and the origins of the prison, aka part one, now starts part two. Thank you, Chuck. Yes. Part two begins with let me stop you first. By the way, did you mention that lighthouse, that's the very first lighthouse on the West Coast, is that right? And they rebuilt it, and it still operates today. Yeah, they actually had to rebuild it because they started building up San Francisco, and the lighthouse is like, I can't see it's foggy. Yeah. And there's sharks everywhere. Help. And so they tore it down and build it again in now it's bigger and it's unobstructed. That's right. All right, so more modern day, at least. Alcatraz we mentioned it's a mountain, top of a mountain. It's very rocky. Well, they call it the rock for a reason. Yeah. There's not a lot of plant life growing there. It's not some beautiful island getaway. No. Almost all the plant life that grows there was brought in by construction crews over the years who were like, god, we need a tree or something here. We need a boxwood or something. And so they started bringing in soil and shrubs and trees and planted a few things here and there. Few of those things found purchase. It's just a dead piece of rock, which just adds to the gloom and the dismalness of it. Right. Which actually plays a part in the end of the great, great movie Escape from Alcatraz. That is a good movie. Remember you saw the little flower on the shore? Yeah, that's right. There ain't no flowers like this here. Yeah. So Alcatraz Josh was built to accommodate 600 cons, but it only held about 300. And at the time, in 1912, it was really innovative because first you had the island as, hey, you can't escape from the island, so why bother trying? Then they had cell blocks within the concrete walls. So for the first time, sales is within cells, almost. Right. You didn't have a window looking out to the outside from your cell? No. So, yeah, if you wanted to get your way out of there, you had to make it through the wall of your cell and then the outer wall. That's right. They also have metal detectors, which are pretty much new, brand new at the time. And rather than the key like they had in The Green Mile, they had the levers the lever system to open cell blocks. Like they had an escape from Alcatraz. Yes. Which was a big deal because you could do that remotely. You didn't have to go to the cell where you're vulnerable. They also reinforced all the iron with hardened steel. It was called Torresistant because you couldn't cut through it slurry a little bit, like me, because you couldn't cut through it with a hacksaw. And apparently it cost as much to install those as it did to build it in the first place in 1912. Yes. 200 kwh. So the average the typical cell was something like 5ft wide by 9ft deep. And there were concrete walls. How big is this in here? Oh, this is like two cells. I think if you go like this, it's like two cells going that way. All three of the four walls were made of concrete. And then the fourth wall was the steel tool resistant bars. That's right. The fourth wall, you didn't want to break that. People thought you were corny. That little bed, you have a little toilet. You had a couple of shelves in the back to put your stuff. You had a little they call it a desk. It was really just a sort of a little fold down. It was very small. Obviously. Everything was small. And that was it. No due days, no breakfast in bed. You can imagine this is pretty bad in and of itself. But that's A block, B block and C block. Right? That's right. There was also D block, and D block was where if you were in trouble, they sent you. They call that the treatment unit. Yeah. The inhumane treatment is what they should have called it. Yeah. They had, I think, 14 or 15 cells in DBlock, and that was solitary confinement. And then you had cells nine through 14 was the hole, and those were the ones with the iron doors where you had no light. And then they had one cell that apparently was the worst of the worst that just had a hole in the floor to go poopoo and peepee. And you were usually naked if you were in there, and not for any good reasons. That's where the birdman stayed the whole time. Really? He's on deeplock. Really? Yeah. Apparently, you couldn't be in the hole for more than 19 days, but the birdman, Robert Stroud, was in prison for 54 years, and 42 years of that were in solitary confinement. Can you imagine? Dude, I can't. They're not rehabbing that guy. And I'm not making a big political statement, but 42 years in solitary, that was just straight up punishment. I think that that was the best Alcatraz movie ever. Birdman of Alcatraz? No way. Yes. Have you seen it? Yeah, dude. Bird Lancaster. Yeah. It was good. It was good. He didn't have any birds in Alcatraz, though. Did he really spend? Yeah, he did. What are you talking about? It's like you're crazy. There were no animals allowed there that came from Leavenworth prison. And when he got to Alcatraz, they were like, no more birds for you. I thought he ended up keeping birds anyway, and that's probably why he was in D block the whole time. Let's go with that. Okay, well, then why would they call him the birdman of Alcatraz? Because he was already a birdman when he went to Alcatraz. It's a movie. The same reason they fictionalized murder in the first with Kevin Bacon. We'll get to that. Yeah. And prior to the construction of D block, you'd just be held in the dungeon, which is in the basement of the original citadel, which is where the first prisoners ever to be kept on Alcatraz were kept. It's probably not a fun place now. So, Chuck, you said that there was no breakfast in bed. There was breakfast. And that came every day after you swept your cell and you lined up for inspection and you went down for breakfast. That's right. Then after that, you went to work. 20 minutes. 20 minutes breakfast, huh? 20 minutes for each meal. I could do 20 minutes breakfast. It's leisurely. That is true. Leisurely. So you'd be sent to, like, the laundry. You would be maybe if you were the book guy, you would be sent to the library. Lot of dock work, lots of unloading and loading of things. Yeah. And also the manufactured stuff on Alcatraz, they manufactured brushes and brooms. But little known fact, these things, by law, could not be sold on the open market only to federal agencies because the government didn't want to flood the broom and brush markets with cheaply made goods. So government buildings were swept with Alcatraz brooms. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. Did not know that the walkways, the central walkway, was between the cell blocks was Broadway. Because they had a flare for the dramatic. They named them after New York Street, Park Avenue, Michigan Avenue and Broadway. And then Times Square was between the mess hall and the cell blocks. And overlooking all this on either end was a very important station called the Gun Gallery, and it was enclosed in bars and mesh. And there is where you will find some of the only guns aside from the towers in Alcatraz, where these armed dudes had a very clear shot and line of sight of the whole place. But the guards didn't carry guns or keys or handcuffs, because that was a risk, but they illegally carried these things called SAPS. It was like a metal baton and a leather strap. Blackjack. Yeah. And they weren't supposed to have those, but they had those. Yeah. And then after a hard day of work of being eyed by guys in the Gun Gallery, you would have dinner lights out at 930 20 minutes, and then oven sports, and then the thing is, Alcatraz, thanks to Jagger Hoover, had a really crazy reputation for being, like, the hardest place ever. But everything we just described, you're going to go through generally in any prison in the 30s through the 60s, sure. But Alcatraz did differ in some ways. Specifically, it was extremely especially at its beginning, it was extremely rigid in its discipline. Like, there was literally no talking for most of the time. Prisoners weren't allowed to speak out loud except for designated times, I think, like, 20 minutes a week. I don't know. That sounds about right. And if you did speak out loud, you went to the dungeon or D block later on. Did you have no talk in school? Elementary school? I don't remember if we did. They would do that in the cafeteria. Sometimes. We had these flags, and if things were getting rowdy or they were whatever, they were mad at us. They would say, you're on no talk, and they put up the red flag, and it was the worst, awful, especially for me. I was just, like, dying to say things to my friends. Yeah. They actually said, the dining room is the most dangerous place in Alcatraz, I would imagine, because you got all the cons in there. Have you ever been? No, I'd like to go. Okay. They have on the wall in the dining room where they kept the knives, the knife rack, they had silhouetted outlines in the shape of each one, so if one of them was missing, you would see what's missing immediately. So there's no sneaking out of butcher knives, even though they had that stuff there. John Liftow on Dexter had that for his tools. Oh, yeah. That was a great season. They did have visiting hours, or should I say visiting hour? You got one visit a month. Had to be immediate family or an approved visitor, and you could only talk about personal matters. You can't talk about the prison or life there. And there was, of course, no contact whatsoever. They wouldn't put you in a room with them yes. They'd be like, touching. Yeah, no touching at all. Alcatraz also was a little different in that people lived on the island, which isn't all that different. I think most prisons have an area around them where the guards live. I didn't know this, but without the trees, it was like, you live on the island, your family lives on the island. You can take a boat to school every day, crazy. And back if you want, a grocery shop, if you want some smokes, whatever. You take a boat and back. If you use up your razor and you need to shave, you throw your old razor in the bay, saying, with used utensils, I'm sure after they're worn out, not from washing, like every time they throw their pork in the bay or anything like that. Yeah. And the kids weren't allowed to have toy guns for really good reasons, because they didn't want to convict, getting their hands on one and then pretending that they were going to shoot a guard with a cap gun. Yes. And magazines had to be carefully patrolled because they didn't want prisoners looking at sexy things or reading about current events at all or sex or crime. Those are two things that the prisoners were not allowed to read about, which came into play with your buddy Robert Stroud. What, the birdman? Yeah. What do you mean? He was not allowed to read his biography because it had chapters of his criminal past in it. So his biography came out and he wasn't ever allowed to read it. He had a pretty sad life. What did he do? He moved to Alaska and took up in the pimping industry with one particular lady of the night. He went to go protect her at one point from this dude who didn't pay her. A scuffle broke out and he was killed, and he turned himself in with a gun and said, here, I did this, but took the money from his wallet, which I think trumped it up to a more serious charge. But it was originally manslaughter, so he probably would have been okay if he hadn't gone to prison and been such a jerk when he got to prison. He was one of the most violent inmates anywhere he went. Oh, really? And that just kept adding time and adding time, and he kept shuffling him around until he ended up at Alcatraz. But Bert Lancaster says that he wasn't like that. One thing the grabster did not mention was the wreckyard, where you could go, I think, for an hour a day if you're a good boy, and an hour a week if you're in solitary. And they had handball and horseshoes and chess and checkers and backgammon, and you were allowed to play hearts cribbage, and that is it for card games, even though it says they played bridge using domino's. From the wreck yard, you could see San Francisco, which they said was the biggest psychological crippler of all, as you could see the stuff going on. And they said every New Year at the yacht club would have a party, a big party, and if the winds were blowing right, you could actually hear, like, music and ladies laughing and stuff like that. Wow. Which was just torture. A lot of fun. Yeah. Like listening to something. At least you're in spirit. Yeah. Al Capone. Did you know that? That's what I hear. So Al Capone is there. You got the birdman of Alcatraz, and it has the reputation of being the worst of the worst, the worst prison where the worst of the worst are housed. Al Capone is a pretty big criminal. He's a pretty big NAB for the G men. But it was a federal prison, and it was early on in the history of the federal prison system, so people who really probably didn't belong there sometimes ended up in Alcatraz. You could be sent there for shoplifting in a store that had a post office branch, maybe a federal crime, if you know how you like to bring fireworks into Georgia a lot, or had that been bootleg liquor and had you been caught just bringing in, like, a fifth, you could have gone to Alcatraz. So it wasn't all murderers and gangsters. No, it wasn't. It had a very surprisingly normal history as far as prisons go. Federal prisons go for the time, but it also had a very fearsome reputation, and some of it was earned. Yes. Capone didn't have very good time there, though. No, he had syphilis, and he was crazy and used to cry like a baby. Plus, he had a made in the prison before. Apparently, he was still running his ops. And they got the Alcatraz, and they're like, no, it's not happening here. So you want to talk about escaping from Alcatraz? Yes. I did want to mention, too, you did get cigarettes. You got a pack of smokes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, whether you smoked or not. Oh, yeah, that's currency right there. Yeah, I would smoke, I think, if I was in prison. Would you? Yeah. Something to do, man. I don't know. I think at that point, I try to shorten my life anyway I could. There's faster ways. That's true. More efficient ways as well. So escape. Yeah, it happened. Yeah. There have been plenty of attempts, but at least two were possibly successful. Right. So the first attempt was two years after the prison started, I think, when you still weren't allowed to talk. This guy was like, I can't take it anymore. And he ran and jumped on the fence and was shot and killed. So that was pretty easy. That's the first escape attempt. Yeah. What, two years after that? No, the next year, two prisoners got out and they escaped, and they think that they drowned, but they're not sure because they never got bodies. Yeah, right. But the place is infested with. Great white sharks. That's right. I'm sure they were eaten alive. Then Henry Young. We talked about the movie Murder in the first with Kevin Bacon, 1939. He tried to escape with three other inmates. They were found on the beach, so they did get out. One was shot and killed. Another one was wounded. And Young and Rufus McCain were probably near hypothermia and were collected back into prison. Yeah. And this I think Young stab McCain the next year to death in the workshop. But if you see the movie Murder in the first, it is highly, highly fictionalized. Yes, Kevin Bacon was ever in prison. It's not very close to the real story. So it's a good movie, though. No. And the trial of Henry Young definitely brought attention to the treatment of prisoners in Alcatraz and the public outcry. He may still be out there. He broke parole. He was released in Washington and skipped parole and just disappeared. He's probably not out there because he was in prison in 1939. They said he'd be in his 90s. Crazy. My grandmother lived to be 101. Wow. If you're Henry Young, we want to hear from you. Yes, please let us know. That'd be great. We want your deathbed confession. That'd be sweet. Did I ever tell you that I wrote about DB. Cooper? I wrote an article, a brief article about him. One of the guys who I cited as possibly having been DB. Cooper, his widow emailed me. It was like, it was not him. It wasn't him. I'm like, that is pretty cool. People have asked for that podcast. Is it meaty enough, your article? Yeah. And there's enough research and stuff that's happened since it was like a five minute podcast. Do you want to redo that one? Oh, we actually did that one. No, I didn't see it was preview. I'm sorry. I know. Cheater. Do you want to yeah. Okay. We will. That brings us to the most famous escape attempt and possibly escape from the great, great movie Escape from Alcatraz, which was really pretty accurate. Clinics would now man. It was pretty accurate. Machete job that they did. Have you ever seen the real head? Yes. It was nowhere near. So we're talking about Clarence and John Anglin, two brothers, played by Fred Ward and some other guy. And Frank Morris, played by Clint Eastwood. Worked a couple of years on their plan to get out of Alcatraz. And they chipped away at the wall, which was at that point, rotting somewhat from salt water and salt air. Yeah, well, probably not water. And they chopped the way holes big enough to get out. They made a little false facade that looked like the grate in there. Anyway. It was like painted cardboard that they would pull two behind them when they went out in the conduit area behind the walls. So they go behind the walls, which is where they kept all their stuff. They fashioned raincoats together to make a crude sort of a life raft that they could blow up. They made paper mache heads that they put in the bed every night. They could go work and think about how tired they were because they couldn't sleep the next day. Yes. They must have gotten I wonder how they figured out a schedule like, okay, we can do this X number of hours every night or else we're going to lose our minds. Yeah. But I imagine it's like, should I be tired or should I escape from Alcatraz? Well, when you escape from Malcucharas, you want to take your time. You're right. As they prove, though, because one night, finally everything was finished and they went up to the roof through this little conduit area and hopped the fence and made their way out into the night and we never heard from again. That's right. And they found apparently these Mythbusters. Have you heard of them? Yeah, they apparently did in the first season. They tried to recreate it because they live in San Francisco, right? Yeah, they're up there somewhere. So they tried to recreate the escape and they did it, which I guess kind of shows that it is possible too, especially if you were going to go back. I can imagine they had all the incentive in the world to make that happen. Yeah, that's a good .8. Months after that escape, there was a Norwegian ship, discovered a body that they said resembled Frank Morris. But years later they found this body, dug it up, did DNA testing, and found it wasn't him. And the FBI closed the case in 79. And then years later I'm sorry, this year on a station called Nat Geo, they had a special called Vanished from Alcatraz. And there was new evidence where they discovered a raft on Angel Island with footprints leading away and a report of a stolen car in the area that night, which could have been those guys. Crazy. And they confirmed these facts and that they were hidden from officials for a long time. And as a result, the US marshal's office said, you know what? We're going to keep the case open until these guys are supposedly 100 years old and then we'll close the case. Well, that's great. It's the Marshalls. If they live to be 101, we'll just give it to them. Yeah. Then they can come out. Exactly. Yeah. So what else you got? That was it. I mean, that escape and the deterioration of the prison physically pretty much meant the end of Alcatraz. They were like, it's really expensive to operate if dudes can escape from here. The whole point of being here in the first place was that it was escape proof. So it's just a drain on our funds, so let's just shut it down. Nice. And now it's a tour. Yeah. It's starting in the 70s, right? 71, 72, something like that. Yeah. Well worth your time. And Alcatraz is not alone. There are other Alcatraz Islands, or Alcatraz like islands throughout the world. Like south africa has robin island. Tasmania has port arthur. And there's one that wrecker's island. You got Rikers Island. There's a bunch of them. The one that I found that was really interesting, though, is in Norway, and it's called Bastoy, or however you pronounce the O with the slash through it. The Nelson. Yeah. Bostoy. It doesn't have any bars. No doors are locked. There are no guns on the island, so the guards aren't armed. The guys farm their own food. There's a little grocery store. When they get there, they're given 500 cronin, I believe it's cronin to spend at the supermarket and basically get themselves started. And that's it. That's the prison. It's basically like a little commune where you're free to kind of live your own life and hopefully undergo some sort of reformation. But there's guards. There are, but they're not armed. The only gun on there, on the whole island, it's in the warden's office and it's a statue of a bronze statue of a pistol. And the warden says he has no idea where it came from. It predates him. I kind of like the Escape from New York plan. Yeah, that's a good one, where you just throw them on the island and build up big walls and just leave them to work it out. That's kind of what they're doing with Bostoy, but it's a little more hippie than he from New York. Are they drug offenders? Probably. Well, they're Norwegian, so not too much violence there. And if it is, it's just like one guy. That's Alcatraz baby. Scary place. It's chilling. There's ghosts, apparently. Yeah, I didn't look into that. I didn't either. I'm sure there's ghosts there. If you want to know more about Alcatraz, see a picture of Robert Stroud, who is a little bird like himself in appearance. And, well, this is just a good article all around. If you want to go over it, you can type in Alcatraz, not Alcatraz. It's Alcatraz in the search bar athouseopeworks.com. Which means now it's time for Listener Mail friend. Yeah, this is an old one that's been sitting in the queue. It's about Ethnobotany. Remember that one? Yeah, that's a good one, guy. I'm an undergraduate chemistry student who has been a long time listening to your awesome podcast. You guys asked about synthesis versus extraction in the Ethnobotany podcast, so I thought I'd clear it up for you. Extraction is often more difficult than synthesis because when one extracts something from a plant, one also has to worry about separating the desired component from the rest of the plant, since the plant is an organic material. Duh separating. He rubbed that, by the way. Okay. Separating one organic compound from another is often very difficult, whereas if you use synthesis, one could use polar and nonpolar solvents to manipulate the process for easy separation. Kind of like how oil and vinegar will separate when left alone. And lastly, synthesis are constantly being updated because of more efficient and faster reactions. The less steps in a synthesis, the better the in yield, the better the yield, the happier your boss is. And that is from Evan. And he says, PS, I forgot to mention that an extracted product and a synthetic product will show no chemical difference. Very interesting. That's excellent. Thank you for clearing that up. That was Evan. Yeah, very insight. Nice. Thanks a lot. Evan is he an anthropologist and anesthetic botanist. I think he's a gym teacher. Okay, Chuck, we got a pretty good response from our call out for Autumn Treats, whether they be cocktails, hot tubs, dessert, breads, what have you. That was nice. I think we should do it again and I think we should compile them eventually, once we get enough into, like, maybe a step, you should know, Autumn Cookbook or something like that. That's great. I will undertake that with forward by Paula Dean. Anyway, if you have a great autumn treat, whether that be drink or food, we want it. You can email it to us at stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstyle Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-11-02-sysk-ham-radio-final.mp3 | Ham Radio and the Hams Who Use Them | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/ham-radio-and-the-hams-who-use-them | If you thought that Ham Radio enthusiasts were (mostly) men and boys who sit alone late at night in order to scan frequencies searching for a human connection then you're absolutely correct. But it's much more than that. | If you thought that Ham Radio enthusiasts were (mostly) men and boys who sit alone late at night in order to scan frequencies searching for a human connection then you're absolutely correct. But it's much more than that. | Tue, 01 Nov 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=306, tm_isdst=0) | 43902519 | 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. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For Digestive health, find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com. Make your business official with Google and Squarespace. When you create a custom domain and a beautiful business website with Squarespace, you'll receive a free year of business email and professional tools from Google. It's the simplest way to look professional online. Visit squarespace.com. Google to start your free trial. Use offer code works for off your first purchase. Google and Squarespace make it professional. Make it beautiful. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseteporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. So it's stuff you should know. Go ahead, Josh. Clark, this is Chuck in Oregon. Oh, well. 73, Chuck. 73. I don't know what that means. It's probably your age. If you're a hand radio operator. 73 is a term that means my compliments to you. Oh. Or ham regards. Yeah, it is ham code. Well, I wasn't joking, by the way. We're talking about ham radio. Sometimes called amateur radio, sometimes called shortwave radio. Although it's not always shortwave radio. Right. Like, technically on the electromagnetic radio spectrum. Yeah, but I did make a joke about 73, but that is actually, in some countries, the average age is 80 and older. Is that right? Yeah. Which countries? I don't know. I don't know about the US. The most recent stats I found, though, there are about 800,000 ham radio operators in the US. Of A. Is that right? Yeah. Not bad. No, that's more than I saw. I saw I think 672 was the number I saw. And then double that in Japan. Yeah, they're into it. Had no idea. In the millions. Two to 3 million around the world. And in the United States as of this month, there are more than 740,000 amateur radio station licenses, with California having the most. Well, California's big into ham radio. Everybody knows that. And I feel like it's obvious, but this is mostly men. About a 15% rate of women or females, young ladies, whatever. They're ham radio enthusiasts. Just seems like a guy thing. Not just a guy thing, but a Ned Flanders guy thing. Yeah. I don't want to knock them because I think it's a neat thing. It is a neat thing. I was sitting there, I was researching this a little more and more. I was like, okay, there is one corner of the world where you can go to escape, like, humanity as it stands. Like on the Internet. Totally. And that's an oversimplification. Like with ham radio, they are very much known, very well known for being very polite, very professional, very Eagle Scoutish, I guess. Yeah, they're rules. And you have to get a license. Right? Exactly. And because you do have to hold a license to operate a ham radio, they do think that that's kind of where this tradition of professionalism came out of. It weeds out a lot of jerks. At the very least. It does. There are jerks on ham radio, some really bad jerks, but they're very much the exception to the rule. I would think so. Whereas, like, on an Internet chat room, the polite people are the exception of the rule. In ham radio world, it's just the opposite. So it's very refreshing that there's out there, there's a place that's still, like, kept polite and nice and like, hey, how are you? I just wanted to see how are you? Oh, you're in Korea. While pretty far away and just having a conversation like that, just to do it. That's basically the point of ham radio. One of them. There's a purity to it that really spoke to me. Yeah, same here. I watched a little vimeo documentary called Ham Radio ancestors of the Internet. Yeah, great little. It's true. And this guy across to me, ham radio the ethos or the persona of ham radio. There's a segment where they're talking about how one of the big foundations of ham radio is public service. Sure. In times which I did not know. I didn't either. But in times of, like, natural disaster where other communications are knocked out, shortwave radios draw very little power, so you can run them off the battery and they can communicate outside of the disaster zone when cell phones and the Internet is gone. And they do do that. They do. It's one of the pillars of ham radio. Well, during this segment, the director of the vimeo documentary was playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nice. And I was like, this is ham radio. I love it. They are called hams. So when we say that we're not being derogatory, although some call them radio amateurs is one word. Oh, really? Well, the word ham comes from back in the day when there were ships and coastal stations and government stations and amateur operators increasingly all over the world vying for the same signals. Sometimes these amateur radio operators would have powerful signals and they could jam like government operations. Right. So they, in a derogatory, pejorative way, would call them hams. And that name stuck. Although the meaning of it being pejorative has fallen away and they embrace it now like queer sure. It's the same thing, the same principle. Yeah. It was meant to be a put down, and they adopted it with a sense of prize. Yeah. And it's like, we're going to take this from you. Right. Like, take the power from you. Yeah. It's a great way to handle things, I think. Sure. I saw another origin story. Yeah. And I think with the one you're talking about, when they said that they were hams, they were saying they were ham fisted, like they didn't have the delicacy needed to tune into a frequency correctly or broadcast on a frequency is not true. No. They're very delicate hands, actually. It's part of the requirement by the FCC. I saw another origin story was that in three Harvard men founded a radio club and they called it based on their last names, the Hymen. Almie Murray radio station. Or Ham for short. It's also a law firm, probably. It is. Now, interesting how verified is that? Or is that just something we're going to throw out and say? That could be interesting. This one comes from Rfcafe, which is a legit site. Yeah. I like yours more. Well, it's not mine. You didn't just make it up? No. So I found this great little piece that kind of helped explain to me a little bit about how radio works and how amateur radio works. So, if I may, can we play Battleham of the Republic? Oh, it's got to be. Sure. All right. So if you look at an Am radio dial well, you'll have to find an Am radio dial. Right. Go find your dad's old Malibu. Yeah. Actually, you don't have to look at the physical dial. If you have a radio in your car that's digital, you can just go to the bottom of it. Okay. All right. It's about 535 all the way to the top. It's about 16.5 khz. Is it kilohertz or megahertz? Kilohertz. Is it really? For Am. Okay. For Am radio. Okay. And that is one band. When you hear about a radio band, that entire spectrum is one band. Yeah. And a band is just an arbitrary trance, right? Yeah. It's a group of frequencies. Right. From one to the other. Right. And the distance between those two from what did you say for Am radio? 535 to 16 five. Right. So that would be the band width between those two. Correct. Yeah. So you've got that as a band. The FCC doles out on the spectrum, available bands for the government, for the military, for all these different people to use as their own, and they have allocated 26 bands for amateurs. That's from 1.8 MHz in this case, which is just above that radio broadcast frequency sure. To 275 GHz. That's a pretty significant swath of the spectrum. It is. So much so that you're using essentially different types of technology to transmit or receive on them. Yeah. This is going to be a good one. I was kind of worried. Oh, man, don't worry. I feel like it's heating up. This is us. So the way this person put it is if you think of the radio spectrum like a measuring tape, between a half an inch and about 1.7 inches is that Am radio band. If you go all the way up to like, 88 inches to 108 inches, that's the FM radio band. And between a half inch and 30 inches is this very special place where the ionosphere, it reflects off the ionosphere depending on what type of day and what time of day it is. Right. And I can step in and explain that, if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. So the ionosphere is one part of the Earth's atmosphere. It's toward the top, right? Yeah. And cosmic rays and solar rays and all sorts of rays are constantly smacking into the ionosphere, and they're knocking electrons off. The atoms up there, ionizing them. These electrons don't just float away into outer space. They actually form this kind of blanket layer. And it's a really great medium, this blanket layer of electrons in the ionosphere for bouncing radio signals of a specific type of frequency back to Earth. Right. So one of the benefits of a short wave radio is that you're using radio waves in a frequency that they bounce off the ionosphere really well. And so you can shoot it up into the ionosphere and reflect it back down. And because of this angle, you can transmit this radio over really long distances, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, because you're bouncing it off of the ionosphere. During the day, the sun solar rays add this extra kind of dense layer on the bottom of the ionosphere so they tend to get absorbed more than at night when the sun's rays aren't hitting that part of the ionosphere. So they bounce better, which is why you get better reception. Or your signals travel longer at night than during the day for shortwave radio, which really plays into ham. Right. Because the idea that you always have is 02:00 in the morning. Right, exactly. A dude in his attic talking to someone in Taiwan, which is great. Or talking to Pinhead in Burma, right? Before he opens that box and becomes pinhead in hellraiser. Yeah. Or talking to Ronnie Millsapp. That's where this guy got me, because he's a celebrity ham. Unfortunately, he waited until, like, the last sentence of the entire article, but he finally got me then, well, we'll get to that later. There are other celebrity hands out there. Okay. That'll be our last sentence, too. So, like we said earlier, between if you're thinking of it as a measuring tape, between a half inches and 30 inches is where you get this great reflection off the ionosphere, which you described so well. I like your measuring tape. Well, it's not mine. Above that, 30 inches, they stop bouncing and it becomes what we call line of sight. That's, like FM and TV and stuff. Yeah. When you drive out of town, you lose your reception because you have gone out of the line of sight from that broadcast antenna. And there's trees and buildings and mountains in your way, all sorts of junk. But if you're shooting stuff off the ionosphere, nothing sea and heck mountains. So between three inches and 30 inches, that's called the high frequency spectrum, and then from 30 inches to about 300 inches, and again, these aren't inches. Measuring tape analogy, that is called the VHS spectrum. And we're going to get into that later. But the VHS spectrum is really neat. You can operate ham radio via that and use things called repeaters, where you basically share part of a broadcast tower in the city and you say, well, if I can get my signal to you, you can repeat it back out further because you have way more wattage and power than I do. And I was looking to see what the tip for Tat equation is with wattage for distance. Is there one? Not that I could find, no. But the rule of thumb is that the more watts you have, the more power you have, the further you can send your signal. Right, but yeah, I mean, like if you're buying a transceiver, which we'll get into later, it might have anywhere between five watts and like 100 watts, maybe a little more if you're running like a radio station. Like George State here has very famously has 100,000 watt transmitter. So you want to shoot your signal to them and then they change the frequency a little bit and shoot it out on a slightly different frequency. Greatly empowered. Yeah, you're like piggybacking off these antennas, basically like Michelle Obama is talking to you directly. Kind of empowered, you know what I mean? And that's just for the repeater. That's if you're going the VHS, VHS, the VHF route, there are all kinds of different frequencies below that. In fact, I think probably well, I'm not going to say that because I don't know. I was going to say that people mostly don't use the repeater method with VHF, but I don't know the stats. I think it's specifically FM that they use the repeater for. VHF, FM. I think that's what you use the repeater for. No, it is, but I'm saying that as far as ham radio operators, I get the feeling that the majority of people don't use that method. Yeah, but I might be wrong. No, I think you're right. Yeah. I don't know if you can because everything I saw was anytime they were talking about repeater, they called the Fmvhf. Yeah, but you can still operate him radio that way, right? Yeah, but in that specific band. Right, correct. Okay, I got you. Yeah. Actually, I'm sure there are a handful of hands out there that listen to the show that are groaning in pain right now. I know I do want to apologize, because anytime we do a show where there are rabid enthusiasts, we're bound to get some stuff not quite right. But hopefully there are some of the nice enthusiasts that we've had over the years. These guys that say, like, thanks for helping to spread the word. You got this and this wrong. Not like those chess players. They were so mean. I think it's interesting what kinds of people are attracted to different of course, it's made up of the spectrum of people, but they seem to be grouped a lot of times. Sure. At least from the feedback that we get. Birds of a feather flock together. I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Should we take a break? Yes. All right. We'll come back and we'll talk about just what in the heck these hams are doing. 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. 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And then finally they're like, South Korea. I've been looking for someone to talk to you from there. Maybe. So and actually, there's a thing called the QSL cards where you get in touch with somebody, and from what I can gather, they mail you a postcard saying, this person got in touch with me. And you collect these postcards QSL cards just to be like, look, I've spoken to people in 100 different countries. I'm a member of the Century Club. It's like a little merit badge, I think, right? Pretty cool. Yeah. So you can listen in. The difference between, let's say, a radio DJ who just talks at the world or talks to their city is you are generally having a two way conversation with someone or a little roundtable or a little network where people meet at a certain frequency at a certain time of the week to talk shop, I guess, or rap or talk about whatever you want, basically. Like hanging out in a general store, but on the airwave. Yeah. Locker room talk. Right? Because all guys do that. So they can use all kinds of frequencies. Like we said, they're above the Am broadcast band, and apparently a good band, a good frequency range is from about 1.6, about 27 MHz during the day. 15 to 27 is good for these long distance communicators. So if you're trying to reach your friend in Taiwan, right, maybe log on. Not log on. So weird to try and use the Internet terminology, because these guys are the ancestor of the Internet. What if you needed a license to get on the Internet, would that be great? Oh, yeah. If you had to pass, like, a decency test or something, it would be I mean, it'd definitely do away with that whole net neutrality thing, but yeah, true. A decency test. Or maybe just to be, I don't know, on social media or something. Yeah, facebook's, like, yeah, that'd be great. Let's limit our users. No, but at the same time, it's like, well, who decides what's decent and who creates that test and who administers it? Do you do it at the end of a barrel of an M one or something? No, I do it. No guns involved. But, I mean, I think it's the questions. Yeah, I'm pretty even handed. Okay, give me a good decency question on your test. Just be nice. Don't be a jerk. Be hilarious. If every single one of the questions start out with, let's see, just be nice. Don't be a jerk. Don't bait people. Yeah, well, that's just good rules to follow. Just be nice. Just be nice. Don't be a jerk. Right? Yes, it's true. And again, if you're looking for generally a place where most people are nice and not jerks, you would be happy to get into ham radio, if you're not already. Right. Another thing you might be doing is, if you are really into it in your old school, you might be chatting in Morse code. Yeah. And they used to become a licensed operator. You have to take a test, and there used to be a Morse code test, and apparently that sorted people out pretty quick. Sure. I would spectacularly fail a Morse code test. Not if you studied. Even if I studied? No, you do fine dots and dashes. My brain doesn't think like that. Like Big Macs and pizzas. Yeah, exactly. Although a pizza does look like a lot like a dot. And if you stretch a Big Mac out, it could be a dash. Maybe I could take on this Morse code. I think you could. Well, it doesn't matter anyway now, because they did away with that segment, because they're like, morse code is stupid. And we all have voices, so we're just going to go with voice instead. Yeah, I don't know if exactly, that's how they put it, but that was pretty much the thinking behind it. But I also get the impression that the purists still dabble in morphs code. They also write in perfect cursive. I can't do that anymore at all. Hardly. I could never do a capital Q. Couldn't do it, remember? Yeah, it's one of these I don't know, it's kind of sad to me to be losing some of these things. Other people say it's roll with the changes. Like you can't fight progress. But is it progress when you lose something? I don't know if it was an albatross. I guess it's progress, but I don't know if cursive writing is exactly holding us back as a culture. I print weirdly now because I write seldom, dude. My handwriting is sometimes I can't even read what I wrote. I can never read what you write. It's terrible. Not even a doctor anymore. That's why we just type to one another or tattoo one another with what we want to say, or use Morse code. So they've gotten rid of Morse code. Purists are still into it. I guess we should talk a little bit about well, I'll tell you, one cool thing you can do is talk to people in outer space. Yeah. This article dated itself by talking in the present tense about space shuttle missions. True, no more space shuttle missions. But astronauts are generally ham licensed, not ham fisted. No, you got to have tiny, delicate hands to be an astronaut. For sure. You just made lobster hands when you do that. But astronauts are generally ham radio people, and I think one of the little neat things they'll do is get up there and talk to people on Earth. Yes. And you can talk to them because I think they're using a VHF FM handheld radio, typically. Right. Although we may be dating ourselves, too, because from what this article made mention of using packets, which is an Internet term, which makes me think that this technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, really, as far as using satellites and stuff like that. So I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, but ten years ago, when you were communicating with an astronaut, they had to be directly overhead. Right. But you could talk to him over ham radio, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. And a lot of times when the astronauts having a conversation, they're talking from one school to the next as they pass over. Oh, like elementary schools. Yeah, sure, because everybody likes talking to an astronaut. But elementary school kids really love that kind of stuff. Totally. At least they did back in our day. Surely they still do, right? I hope so. I would like to think space will always enthrall the young until you get a little older and you're like, what's out there. I like it still. I do too. I'm kidding. What's out there? That's a good question, Chuck. All right, so I guess we should talk a little bit more about licensing. First of all, I don't understand this whole license thing. Like, can you be a rogue ham? Yes. There was a guy who was sued by the government for $21,000. Fine. You can do it and set yourself up, and you're just not doing it legally. Yeah. Do you remember the person who wrote in with their pirate radio station? Yes. They were basically, from what I gathered, they were operating a short wave transceiver, but they were, like, talking and broadcasting. Well, there's a couple of problems with that. Obviously, they didn't have a license, which makes it a pirate radio station. But number two, one of the hallmarks of shortwave communications is a two way conversation you're not supposed to broadcast. Yeah. So there's this dude who is transmitting on 14.25 MHz frequency, and I think it was in Michigan or something, and he basically was running, like, a ranty radio station. And anytime somebody was like, hey, get off the line. Leave this open for somebody else, he would go berserk and really? Yes. Man, everyone hated this guy. Like, curse people out and stuff. Oh, yeah. He did not fit in the community. He didn't. But he was like, I belong here just as much as you do. I'm licensed, and I can be here, too. He countersued the government for, like, $50 million, and it got thrown out or whatever. I'm not sure what became of them. The last article I saw was from 2010, but he's a good example of there are places where you would not want your kids to sit around listening to what they're talking about on the ham spectrum. He's a hamtroll. Yeah, he was a hamtole for sure. And there are plenty of others out there, but for the most part again, it's mostly the opposite of that. Apparently, CD is known to be the opposite, where, like, anything goes, they use like, crude and vulgar language and so everybody's like that's. CB ham is different, but these guys were Cbsque from what I can gather. All right, well, let's take a little break and we'll talk a little bit more about ham. I'm hungry for ham. I know. Delicious ham. I'll just talk of ham. I wish I had ham. Fists. Like a honey spiral ham. I've never been into the sweet ones. I like smoked ham, too, but like a honey baked ham, you don't discriminate, man. Have you had honey baked turkey? That's pretty good, too. Sure. I think it's better than their ham. Oh, yeah. Oh, you mean from the actual honey baked Ham corporation? I like a good smoked ham. No, sweetness doesn't need to be sweet. It stands on its own. The problem is most hams are really processed just by definition. It's tough to find ham that's not super processed. And you know me, I'm trying to eat better, so I want healthy ham. I don't want to give up ham. I don't blame you, man. I love ham. We said ham a lot so far. Ham. All right, so if you want to get licensed, which you should, but you have to well, that's what I'm saying. If you, like, not run afoul of the law. Right. There is no age restriction, even though the average age in some countries is 80. I also get the feeling that there are plenty of twelve year olds out there that have kind of like you get a chemistry set, you read an article or hear this podcast and you say, I think I might like to try my hand at ham. Right. Maybe there was a G Wiz in there. Yeah, golly G Wiz. Mom, dad, can I have a ham radio? Well, if you're thinking that right now, there's actually something called Kids Day. It's like an international ham radio day to kind of get kids who might be interested in ham radio into it. Yeah. Basically dying thing. Lower the barriers to entry. I don't think it's dying, man. Those numbers that you gave are significantly higher than the ones I saw are the ones that are in this article. Well, maybe it's growing. It seems like it is growing. Well, and maybe there will be some sort of a luddite backlash. I think that's part of it. I think some people are saying, like, if I have to go work on the Internet for work, but I'm so tired of jerks, I want to go somewhere where there's not jerks. I want to feel like I'm giving something back to my community. Yeah. When a natural disaster strikes, I want them to be able to turn to me so I can say, yes, this guy is dying at this address. Too bad you can't get through to get him out of. There. We just thought you should know he's going to die. I like the notion of just the general public do gooder. Like my dad when I was a kid, we had a Jeep, and Jeeps are all over the place now for people that have never been off of pavement. But back in the 70s, if you saw a Jeep on the road, you saluted. Enough. 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.com SSK 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. Sysksk squarespace. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. Well, no, you waived. They all waived at each other. Yeah, but there was about a 95% chance that that person was an offroader as well. And about half of the Jeep said those little winches on the front of them. And I remember it didn't snow that much in Georgia, but every time it snowed, my dad would get on the horn with his Jeep buddies and they would get out and pull people out of ditches and like, tow cars that's all onto the road and stuff like that. That's very cool. Just for no other reason than it's probably fun for them to come in and save the day. Yeah, and to help to get that sense of satisfaction. I mean, it's the same thing, except a little less rugged. Yeah, same thing. Though it was also the CB crowd, which kind of ties it all together. They're the rough ones, though. The jeep, dudes. All had CBS. And we talked to each other and stuff. All right, so there's no age restriction. Right. Every country is going to have their own licensing deal, but here in the US, you have to pass a test. Now, I think it's multiple choice. 35 questions. I'm curious what they are. I looked and I didn't really see any. Just be nice. Yeah, just be nice. How much do you love America? A lot. Super lot more than my head. Can take some time. And then Toby keith levels. Right. But there's three different types of licenses, and they're graduated in difficulty. The tests are yeah, but each one gives you more access to more bands on the spectrum. Yeah. I think the highest class is the extra class. And you don't need to know Morse for any of these now. No, but I'll bet the whole thing I'll bet if you're a level three ham license holder, you probably know Morse code pretty well, too. Yeah. It's not 100% across the board, but I'll bet it's pretty high percentage because I imagine you might have a little egg on your face if you're an extra class license holder and everybody's just speaking to one another, making sound of their tongues. Yeah. And you're like, could you say that, please, out loud? I feel a little left out. Isn't it beeps or is it clicks? Both. Okay. Both. I think it depends on the receiver. Oh, got you. There is something called the American Radio Relay League, the ARRL, and they got a great website if you go. They're all manner of articles about your entree into ham operating and statistics and tips and pointers. They're way into it. In Atlanta, we have a club. I can't remember the name of it, but it was formed in and apparently is the oldest continuously running club in Georgia. Wow. That actually predates ham radio, according to this. Oh, no. It predates the American radio relay league. Yeah, they were 1914. That's really impressive. It's pretty neat. Go Atlanta. I kind of want to go to a meeting now and just say, Hi, I'm Chuck. Should we talk about the equipment a bit? I guess, yeah. Basically, I had to do a crash course in radio theory. Yeah. I didn't know a lot of this. I know the wavelength is the distance between two crests. I knew that frequency is how many waves pass, like, any given point in 1 second, but I didn't understand how radio waves are propagated or how antennas receive them. And apparently you are running an electromagnetic field through your antenna. And your antenna basically. Is. To put it in a layman's terms. Shooting out radio waves that are being created by an oscillator in your transmitter or these radio waves. Which. Once you shoot it out. If you were in outer space shooting off a radio wave. And it was guaranteed to never run into a planet or a star or anything like that. That chance. It would just keep going forever. Right. That's what a radio wave wants to do. It just wants to keep going. It's not going to get messed up or diminish or degrade or anything like that. It's when it runs into stuff that it starts to or when it's hit by cosmic rays that it starts to diminish or degrade or something like that. Right. So if it hits antenna and the antenna is cut to the right length, and the length that you're looking for is half the distance of the wavelength. Okay. So if you have a very low frequency wave that's a hundred feet between waves, you would want a 50 foot antenna to pick it up, ideally. And that's basically the rule of thumb, is you want half the distance of the wavelength you're receiving to pick up a radio wave most efficiently. All right. But anyway, when a radio wave encounters this electric field, this electromagnetic field that you have running up and down your antenna, it basically excites the electrons in a way that it shoots down into your receiver and magically is transformed into a voice or clicks and beeps. It's really difficult to understand all this. People go and get, like, masters and PhDs in this kind of thing. I agree. It's really tough, guys. Give me a break. Wow. Do you already sense the ire? Yeah. Even from amateurs, I think are probably like, that was terrible. I can sense that was terrible. No, I think feel confident in it. You probably have a transceiver. Like I said, you could have just a receiver. If you just want to listen, you might want to talk to if you go to buy a new transceiver, they run the gamut and price. I saw, like, these fancy ones with all kinds of really gadgets and spawn divots on it. That was, like, $1,000 and up. I saw a pretty good one for $1,000, too. But you don't have to go that route if you want to go a little more old school with something that's a little easier to master quicker than you could get an old used one. Yeah. Analog ones are the ones with the tuners that you have to physically adjust your dial. They're not quite as precise as these digital ones, which you can adjust the frequency to 100 past the decimal. Oh, really? Yeah, they're really precise, but they're a lot more complicated and they're more expensive. You don't need that to start, for sure. Well, and that's one of the things they point out in this article, too, right? Like, if you think about millions of people and only a certain amount of bandwidth, apparently, I think that's where you can be on the same frequency and just dial it back by a couple of little points and create a new I don't know, does that count as a new frequency or just part a subset of the same frequency? I don't know where that begins, where the cut off is. Yeah, but that's to keep from overlapping and jamming someone else's frequency. Yeah. Which can be a problem, especially if people in the same town are using the same frequency for a different conversation. Which is why most of the time when you're in the same town, you probably know the other ham operators. Sure. And so if you're having a network where you're sitting around hanging out, talking to other people in the same area, you are going to have a receiving and transmitting frequency pair that everybody's using that you know is different from something someone else encounter in that same area is going to be using as well. Yeah. And if you need to move it, you just text each other and say, just get on the Internet. Then you go, oh, wait a minute, what are we doing? Incentives are obviously a big, big part of this. And I get the feeling that hams really enjoy hacking objects as antennas. Right. Kind of like when you may remember this, but when I was a kid, did you have like, antenna TVs in your kid? Do you remember that? Or was it always cable for you? I never had an antenna, but like, neighbors did. Yeah, I know. Old fashioned neighbors. I know what you mean. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, you would put the tin foil sometimes attached to the antenna. Oh, like rabbit ears on a TV. Yeah. I thought you meant the ones on the roof. Well, those two, I guess, but I mean rabbit ears. Sure. Yeah, we have those. So, like, if you're not getting the picture, you would put like foil, aluminum foil at the end and it sucked up. Be the one to stand there and hold it. Yeah. And sometimes you yourself could act as an antenna if you had metal in your hand or in your teeth. Yeah. And I get the feeling ham enthusiasts really get into that because some of the different things that they will use include window screens on the upper floor of a hotel, an extension ladder, an aluminum ladder, rain gutters and downspouts. Slinky. Slinky made sense to me. Yeah, but that's a heck of an antenna. Put a slinky on a pole right. Basically anything that's metal that you can get a current going through and transmit and receive on. Yeah, they're talking about wires like you cast with a fishing pole between dormitories. This is old school stuff. It's very cool. Do you know what burglar tape is? No, I saw that. I had never heard of that. Apparently the Internet hasn't either, because I cannot find any other reference to burglar tape aside from this article. Yeah. I don't know. Everything on the Internet is probably like, burglars caught on tape or some burglar died after being taped to a tree when he was caught. Yes. Ham radio, to me, though, kind of falls in that bucket of things that I was talking about. Like old I can't remember which podcast it was, but old technologies that you can still use. I think it's a cool skill to have. Like, if it all goes south and everything, the Internet crumbles and people turn on one another, the hams are going to be ahead of the game. They're going to be able to communicate with one another. It's kind of a neat skill to have. They'll be like, yeah. The purge looks like it has come to pass. The city's on fire. You can go to a ham fest if you want to meet people and the others. You can buy cheap used equipment sure. And get tips and tricks from the people you're buying from. If you're at all into this, find a ham fest. Oh, yeah. And if it turns out to be the food, then enjoy that as well. You lucked out. It's called a happy accident. And then they say the best thing to do, like you said, is to talk to a ham enthusiast. And apparently the teachers are called Elmer's, and I imagine they delight in teaching any young kid that comes their way about ham radio. I think there's very few that are, like, out of my face kids. I don't want to pass on my knowledge. I bet they really enjoy that. Yeah. I'll bet there's genuinely zero of them who like, forget you. I don't have time for this. Right. I don't like talking. All right, celebrity hams, are we there? Yeah. Number one, Ronnie Milsapp. Apparently Joe Walsh of the Eagles and the James Gang is a ham. Gary Shamling was. I did not know he passed. And that's the neat thing. You can talk with Joe Walsh. Maybe. Right. Like, the community, they encourage that. He's not like, oh, I'm Joe Walsh. I'm looking for Ronnie Milsapp only. Right. I just want privacy on my ham radio. Priscilla Presley. What? Probably spreading Scientology via Ham. I didn't know she was a Scientologist. Oh, yeah. Or a ham. King Hussein of Jordan. There are a lot of I was surprised to see a lot of dignitaries and presidents and leaders of the free world. It's crazy. Yeah. I didn't know that. Am enthusiasts. Barry Goldwater was Chad Atkins. Marlon Brando apparently was. Oh, man. Could you imagine that conversation? You would be able to pick him out immediately. I think that's Marlon Brando talking lies descending on my face. The darkness. People like that's. Not Joe Walsh. Right. And apparently when you die, it's very sad. It's called an SK silent key. And that means you're no longer operating, not in this realm at least. Not using these antenna. I like that thought. Less positive note you got anything else? Nothing else. So I'm going to go out and get a ham radio. I knew you bought a Slinky. You got exploding head syndrome. Now you're going to become a ham operator. If you want to know more about ham radio, you can start by typing those words into our search part. But again, just start asking around. Find somebody who is a ham radio operator. Find an Elmer. Yeah, find an Elmer. And they will teach you everything you need to know. And since I said Elmer, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Huge fan of the show. Great entertainment. Interesting stuff. That. As a normal lazy person, I'd never look up myself. I really wanted to thank you for keeping me company while training for my first ever marathon. I believe it's a New York Marathon. Yes. Training is brutal. Long hours running alone with nothing to do but obsess on how much it sucks and why on earth am I doing this? Sounds awful. I don't even like to drive 26 miles. I can't imagine running. That a bit of background. I'm 39 years old, first time ever running a marathon, and it's going to be the New York City Marathon in early November. Well, that's a heck of a one to start on. Yeah. Listening to your show makes training so much better. I've tried everything from music, audiobooks, regular radio, other podcasts. Nothing keeps my mind distracted from the pain better than your show. Everything is disgusting. It makes me want to cute. I truly love it. Not sure if you guys have done it, but maybe a marathon episode would be great. Why do we put ourselves through such hell? And the high that one gets from running and completing a rates runner's high, that'd be interesting. I would do a marathon one. Not a marathon. I would do a marathon episode. It would be really short. We just do that to be funny. Yeah. Or make it exactly 26 minutes long. Anyway, thanks again, guys. Congrats for an excellent show. That is marco. Marco, good luck. Yeah, buddy. Good luck in November. This will be coming out sort of around that time. Yeah, you can listen to it as you cross the finish line. Yeah, that'd be good. Marco, come on, man. You can do it. You're almost there. Hang on there. Get up, Marco. Come on. You should probably seek medical attention for that. Just stay there, man. Stay down. I love it. Thanks, Marco. Best of luck to you. For reals, though, and all of you who are running in the New York City Marathon or any marathon or doing anything that you use us to motivate you with, you can do it. Just keep it up. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with me on Twitter at JoshM Clark and S-Y-S-K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck at Charlesw, chuckbryant on Facebook and stuff. You should know on Facebook, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today, you know you're the best pet mom. When you 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 chewie amazonandhalopets.com." | |
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1216235015719sysk-shark-eye-gouge.mp3 | Can I Survive a Shark Attack by Gouging Out Its Eyes? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-i-survive-a-shark-attack-by-gouging-out-its-ey | Although it can be intimidating, a shark is not invulnerable. Punching its nose, gouging its eyes, or grabbing its gills can stun the shark and give victims a chance to escape. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about shark attacks. | Although it can be intimidating, a shark is not invulnerable. Punching its nose, gouging its eyes, or grabbing its gills can stun the shark and give victims a chance to escape. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about shark attacks. | Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:24:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=20, tm_min=24, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=197, tm_isdst=0) | 5628495 | 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. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer. Here@housetepworkscom with me is fellow staff writer Charles Chuck Bryant. We call him Chuck. We know him and love him as Chuck. We think pretty highly of Chuck. How are you doing, Chuck? Hold on, hold on. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing. What is that from? Is it from Tremors? No, it's not. From the awesome Fred Ward movie trimmers. Is it another Fred Ward movie? Maybe uncommon Valor? No. Remo Williams? No. I'm stumped. What is it? It's from Jaws. That's right. Yes, I've seen Jaws. It means that we're talking about sharks. You want to talk about sharks? Yeah, we're thinking about sharks and more specifically, what you can do if you get attacked by a shark. What can you do? I mean, I imagine, like, just lay there and bleed to death. That's what I always planned on doing. That's one. I know you profess to have a black belt and running away, but swimming away is not quite the same thing, my friend. No. I think the best advice you can give is to try and hit the shark in the nose. Grab the shark by the gills or poke a shark in the eyes. Curly from The Three Stooges. Yeah. Except I don't know if you can get your fingers across, which is cheating. It is cheating. All of those three things could have an effect on making the shark leave for a couple of reasons. I know you want to talk a little bit about the receptors in a shark's nose. How do you know that? We're in sync that way. Okay. We're sympathetico, right? Yeah. All right. So there's this thing in the sharksnose. It's basically in the sharks nose, the area of it called the ampule of Lorenzo. Right. Which you can order with the side of sconjilli. Exactly. And you're all set and fat and happy. And you should probably wear the napkin in your shirt during that meal. Always. Right. So basically what this is, it's a series of these little pores, and they're jelly filled and they have little hairs in them, and it's a shark's electrical receptors. Sharks pick up very faint electrical impulses put out by, like, living things. Right. Movement creates electricity, that kind of thing. And the shark can it's one of the shark senses. It's the sense that we lack that a shark has. Right. And that's probably the reason why they've been around for hundreds of millions of years and we haven't. Precisely. Yeah. And they haven't changed that much, have they? No, they haven't. They used to be a lot bigger. Megalod, I think. Megalodon. That's it. He was like a great white, but three times a size, like 60ft long, perhaps. That's unsettling. Yeah. It is. But apparently I'm not sure if this would have been the same case with the Megalodon, but if you punch a shark in these pores, the Ambulatory Lorenzo, it would be tantamount to basically punching you in your soul. Right. I mean, if you could detect maybe punching you in your fillings, your metal fillings in your teeth while you were chewing aluminum foil, I imagine it would be something like that. That will get a shark's attention. It will basically say, back off, pal. Right. And there's a good chance that if you get a hold of gills or you punch him in the nose like that. If you're able to do this that's the problem we talked about. If you're able to have the wherewithal why you're being attacked by a shark and taking in salt water and possibly having a foot ripped off, that you can bring it all together and say, let me go find that eye, or that gill, or even make a fist, for that matter. Right. It kind of makes me wonder if something that on another podcast we talked about, hysterical strength, if that comes into play, where you're just totally focused and just raining blows upon some poor shark, things never come back. Never come back, that kind of thing. Yeah. Like Clubber Lang and Rocky Three just go off on the shark's nose. Pretty much, yeah. I don't know if that would happen. I wouldn't want to know. And there are some considerations to actually fighting a shark. We also want to say that our esteemed colleague Kristen Conger wrote this article. She did. She knows her stuff. She actually went into the shark fighter. Yeah. Kristin points out that when you're going for sharks gills or its eyes, you're also simultaneously presenting your arm going, hey, shark, check it out. You want this and take it. And the flailing limb is kind of what they're attracted to in the first place. It's something they can easily grab hold of. But I know the mythbusters on the Discovery Channel tested this out by putting a sort of a Rockham sockham robot that they made outside of a sharks cage. And this thing would they attracted the shark, and it would punch the sky in the nose, which was kind of cool. In the nose, yeah. Punch the shark. And it was kind of cool. But I also kind of felt bad for the shark because shark abuse. Yeah. They're just trying to eat. They don't mean anything. I know. Most shark attacks are mistaken identity, right. Mistaken identity. And sharks some sharks are threatened because of overfishing and by catch when they catch sharks when they don't mean to. And we need to protect the sharks, not going on punching them in the face. So now that you know this is very similar to martial arts. You never start a fight with a shark, but if a shark starts a fight with you, you can finish it. You should probably brush up a little more and read Can I Survive a Shark Attack? By gouging out its eyes on HowStuffWorks.com Shaw. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuckworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housetopworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready due." | |
02a2cb54-3b0e-11eb-947e-473bf016e061 | The Appendix: No Respect | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-appendix-no-respect | The poor appendix. Despite findings that it serves a purpose, many people still cast it off as a second rate organ and the Rodney Dangerfield of organs. We aim to correct that notion.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The poor appendix. Despite findings that it serves a purpose, many people still cast it off as a second rate organ and the Rodney Dangerfield of organs. We aim to correct that notion.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 04 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=124, tm_isdst=0) | 41675622 | 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. Choke. Bryant swelling away on some champagne. We're sorry. Sparkling if we want shandon. So it's from Napa. And there's Jerry over there. Jerry's got her champagne, too. We're all just hanging out. We're going to talk to you guys while we wait for the shrimp cocktail. That's all. Literally. Yes. And that makes us stuff you should know. That's, right? We're back in the same room, everybody, for the first time in about 14 months. And Jerry brought in champagne and frozen shrimp cocktail. There's a story behind that. Go ahead and say it. You go ahead and say it. I don't remember. You were the shrimp. You first started it, I feel like twelve years ago. We were tracking to hit number one on itunes in 2008. Okay. The beginning of 2008. No, nine, maybe, whatever. And I was like, I want a shrimp cocktail. In the recording studio. When we hit number one, we hit number one cocktail, stayed number one. Hit number one again. No shrimp cocktail. This is the shrimp cocktail from 2009 and finally has made an appearance. And it's frozen. It might literally be from 2009. It might be. The veins are turning kind of purple as it thought. I can't wait to eat the shrimp cocktail. Yes, we're having champagne. Jerry clasped it up, basically. I feel it was a nice homecoming. She did. But the three of us are fully backs. We're in a room together. The microphones don't have fake ears attached to them. Yeah. I mean, that joke won't make sense to you now, but we recorded another episode before this one, but it was getting released later. So this technically our second episode. Yeah. Just put that in your button and smoke it in your head. What are you talking about? Have a weird urge to curse. I don't know why. I think you just did. So, Jerry beep, beep, beep. But it's great to be back together and a little weird, but not as weird as I thought it would be. That first one was weird because we were in a different room. Yeah, we got all the weirdness out in a weird situation. It would have been weird regardless. But now we're back in studio one. A, that was a really good move, Jerry. Did you plan it like that to get the jitters out? Jerry's real. Everybody chooses not to talk. Jerry's let her hair grow out. I know. She's got a ponytail for the first time that I've ever seen. It's gotten even more peppery. No, salty in a salt and pepper way. It doesn't get more peppery unless you make a move to make it so. And she looks like a wealthy retiree who drives a Maserati and knows their way around the club. You know what I mean? Okay. That's what Jerry looks like. She looks distinguished, but also foxy. Yeah. So I spent my last January of losing \u00a325 and then Covet hit and now have gained back \u00a325. I'm exactly where I was. Is that right? Exactly to the pound. And it makes me full circle, really angry. Oh, no, just go with it. You chuck. Oh, I know, but let me get back together. I was like, I'm doing so good. I'm so good. Pandemic. I was like, well, now I can eat and drink all I want. Right? Because it's sad. So you lost the weight before the pandemic hit? Yeah, I hit it hard in January to January 1, probably of 2020. Yeah. Okay. And I was working with a trainer, so I was having to go to her every, like, three days a week and just making the right decisions and tracking, and the weight disappears. And then Covet hit, and I just started making all the wrong decisions and let myself do that. Yeah. That happened to all of us, myself included. I went through what you went through, where I lost a bunch of weight and I managed to keep it off, and then Covet hit, and I was still doing okay, maybe eating a little more than usual. Like, I'm not going to let it happen, though, and I wasn't. And then our book hit, and that's what got me oh. When we were writing it and working on it. 2020, 2 hours a day, every day. I was eating so much. You gained book weight. I gained book weight. And actually, I have not been this big since I don't know when, man, but I've still got it, so I'm doing what I can. You look the same. Well, then what I started two weeks ago was kicked in. I guess if I look the same. Well, you look great. Everyone looks and feels great. Yes. Let's talk about the Appendix. The Rodney Dangerfield of Oregon. This is one of my favorite articles that we've done in a while. Agreed. Yeah. And you know how I often complain about science? This is the kind of science I love. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. Body science. Understandable. Super cool. This factors into our hygiene hypothesis episode, our human microbiome episode, digestive system episode. Yeah. It all sort of fits together. And that little wormlike organ. It's an organ, right? Yeah, it's an organ. Yeah. A lot of people thought it was a vestigial organ. They're wrong. Right. But that weird little thing hanging out there just going, just wiggling around like a little worm is really kind of cool and fascinating, and I love that it has a great story behind its lack of usefulness and then turns out usefulness. Yeah. And it's just a great idea. This is really good stuff. It's smash bang stuff. You should know that's. Right? Let's talk about it. So like you said, the appendix is like this little worm like thing that dangles off the bottom of the ascending colon, large intestine. Colon, large intestine. And large bowel are the one in the same so when you hear people say bowel, they're typically talking about that colon, large intestine, it's all the same thing, which I found confusing until I looked it up and found, okay, it's all that two to four inches long, the appendix. Right. Generally. Although the biggest one was pulled out of a 72 year old Croatian man named Sofranco August during his autopsy, and his was ten inches or 26 CM long. What do you think they were like in that autopsy? They're like, wow, I think that the medical examiner staff had a T shirt made up that So Franco August was buried in that said, I've got the biggest appendix ever, maybe. I mean, that's crazy, because I encourage you to look up a picture of the appendix. It looks like a little worm, and it's hanging there on this little bulbous pouch called the sequel. And the secant is kind of like where it's the part in between the small intestine and large intestine, where there's an agreement that takes place, basically, where the small intestine is like, all right, listen, I'll take all this food and I'll make it into time, but I am not going into the fecal zone. Now, you handle the fecal stuff colon. And the colon says, fine, here's my buddy, the Seekam it goes. It will serve as a little halfway house. You can pass everything along to me. I will broker it. You won't get any poop on you. Small intestine, and I'll send it to the large intestine. But off of that cecum is dangling this little dude. Yeah. Which, as far as anybody could ever tell, had nothing to do with digestion, which makes it really weird, because everything else around here has to do with digestion. That's just what they do. That's their trade. And the appendix is just hanging out, and people just thought, okay, this thing doesn't make any sense. But the fact that it's attached there and doesn't seem to have to do with digestion made people for a very long time think that it was a vestigial organ. Right. Which we'll get into the specifics of one man who really championed that idea in a way that, frankly, made a lot of sense. And you can see why it took that many years for anyone to really poke around further into it. Yeah. Because you're just like, yeah, he just explained it. Sure. But there are other mammals that have Seacoms, and in some mammals, especially herbivores, that can be really big relative to their body size, because in herbivores, it acts as the predigestion house for plants. And since they're eating tons of plants, they have large circuit. Yes, plant fiber is really, really good for you, but it's also really hard to digest a lot of cellulose, and that's that large intestine coming into play again, because in the stomach and the small intestine, there's a microbiota. A microbiome which we talked about in that one episode, the Human Microbiome Project. There's some in the small intestine. I think there's far less even in the stomach. But in the large intestine, that's where it really shines. Got to make that poop. And those microbes, the pathogens, the viruses, the fungi and the bacteria most of all, they all kind of work or fight or play and digest this stuff. They break it down so that we can absorb it. They turn it into fiber, dietary fiber. Keeps you from absorbing a lot of sugar or fats or whatever at once. Insoluble fiber bulks your stool up. So it really kind of gets everything out of the colon, really cleanses. It when you finally poop. Yeah. I've missed your hand gestures. Yeah, I've missed you seeing my hand gestures, now that I think about it. Because I see this even when we're recording at home, I'm sure I forgot what it's like to be seen. You're seen? Yeah. The large intestine has this microbiome that lives in there. Just remember that. That's a big important point. Yeah. Put a pin in that. But not literally. Right? Because that would be dangerous. Out of the 361 mammal species, only about 50 of us have an appendix or something. Like an appendix. Obviously, the great apes do. Rabbits possums, wombats. Weirdly. Sure. They have square poop. Do they really? Yeah, it comes out in cubes. Really? Yes. I can't tell if you're messing with me right now. Wait, hold on. Keep talking. You're thinking of the square watermelons in Japan. I may be thinking of wallabies, I'm pretty sure. Won't it have square? All right, a rare in show check. But dogs and cats don't have appendix. Cows don't orchestrate. Sheep don't. Little poop cubes square. Yeah, it looks like those ice cube chocolates. How does that happen? How does that work? I don't have time to read that short stuff. But it looks like there's a science alert from January that says wombats are the only animals that poop cubes, and now we know how. Okay, well, that's a definite short stuff. Okay, we'll do it. Look for that soon. So back to the vestigial organ aspect. Charles Darwin is the person who came out and said, hey, I've been looking at these. And by the way, that was named officially by an anatomist named Felipe Verhan in appendix. Vermiformis, which means worm shaped detachment. And I think the first appendix removal is in 1735. But Darwin was the one who said, hey, everybody, I've been looking at these herbivores, and they've got these really big Seacoms. Yeah, giant Seacoms for this reason that Josh just described. Future Josh, right. And he said, so here's the deal is when we see a bunch of plants, we had humongous sequence as well. And as our diet changed and we got away from plants, our body started to change along with it. And that sequin just kind of shrank. And the appendix is just a little shriveled up piece of that formerly large seacom. Yeah. And it's just dangling there doing nothing. Isn't that amazing? And everyone until 2007 said, it sounds right to me. Darwin's got it right. It does. I mean, it totally makes sense and seems completely believable. Yes. But now that I know it was wrong, I questioned every single thing he ever thought of or say. Yeah, welcome to our world, Darwin. You guys messed up that one thing. I just don't know if I can believe anything he's saying. Exactly. We hear that, like, every week, too, don't we? It's fun. We went for well over 150 years of just everyone believing that the appendix was a totally useless vestigial organ that had no function whatsoever any longer. And so it was fine if you just took it out, which, as we'll see people do a lot, actually. And it is fine for the most part, which we're lucky that it's fine. Right. But also, I think if it weren't fine, we would have figured out very quickly, like, oh, wait, you're not supposed to do that. So the fact that we were able to remove the appendix later on without a problem just kind of lent support to the idea that it was a vistage organ. Right. But it turns out it does serve some function. We'll start talking about that, I think, after a break. What do you think, Chuck? That was so smith. Thank you so much. Mther in person. All right, we're back from our break. Who knows what amazing ads you guys just heard, but I'm envious of you because we didn't hear it. And we just have a moment of silence in between. That's right. And now we can talk about the microbiome a little more. And if you want to look into our Human Microbiome Project workshop, that was May 13, 2014. There are 130,000,000,000,000 cells in the body. About 30 trillion of those are human cells with DNA, and the rest of those 100 trillion are the microbiome. That is it just amazing. And there's something about the digestive system that just, frankly, turns us both on a little bit. Yeah. There were these animations. I cannot remember who made them many years ago. Yes. But the animator just understood us on a level that even I'm like, oh, I didn't know myself. Just a little shorts for clips of our show. They did one about a four and a half minute clip from how the Digestive System Works, which is worth looking up on YouTube. It's where I watched it the other day. They were just gifted and talented. It's one of my favorite little things that someone ever did for us. Yes. I want to say Nick. Nick sounds right. Okay. I think it was Nick. I hope it's Nick. Nick, please, like, write in if you still need Nick moved on. Okay. Well, anyway, they were really great Nick's work. And if it wasn't Nick's new nickname is Nick. That's right. Okay. So, yes, the digestive system does get us jazz, and in particular the microbiome, which we wouldn't have a digestive system or at least one that functions because again, those bacteria help us break down stuff that we would normally have trouble breaking down, help us form poop, all of that stuff. And it's a symbiotic relationship because in breaking those things down, like that plant fiber, for instance, they're eating, they're happy, they're reproducing, but then the byproducts and the stuff that they break open make that stuff bioavailable for us so we can kind of get the nutrients and all that stuff from it as well. It's a beautiful relationship. Not all bacteria is good, though. No, there's the bad stuff. And we should point out that most of these bacteria is in that large intestine in the stomach and the small intestine, most of it's killed off by gastric acid. But the bad bacteria is if you eat some bad chicken or if you have you ever done that? Yes, you know me, I've had all manner of stomach issues over the years. Where did you get your bad chicken? I don't remember specifically, but I know I've had bad food before that made me sick. Yes, and in my case in Guatemala, if you remember. Oh, yeah, you and Jerry both. Well, it was not me. We were even closing our mouth in the shower, we're being so careful. But on that last night, it was the ice. I know that from the mixer. I know it. I forgot the ice is made from water, and that water was not good for Americans. And I stayed home that night, so I didn't get diarrhea. It was worth it, though. Jerry and I had such a good time. So, yeah, I got bad sick after our Guate trip. But that's the bad bacteria, and that's how it can get into your body. And your body's solution to this, as Jerry can affirm, is diarrhea. It's your body's way of saying, we're just going to flush you out, human being. Just get rid of everything, get rid of all the stuff. But that's going to take a lot of the good stuff with it. Right. And that's no good, because if you have all the good bacteria or a large amount of good bacteria leaving your body, then that can leave you very vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies and other bad stuff. Sure, yeah, because I mean, like a lot of the neurotransmitters that make your brain function correctly or produced in your gut and the function of the bacteria, there's a lot of bad things that can happen if you don't have a balanced microbiome in your gut. Right. So enter Duke University in 2007. I guess someone was staring at a picture of the human body from the inside out and locked in on that appendix. They said no, they're like, it's just sitting there attached to the seacom. It's got to do something and they did some studying and testing, the opinions went, I know exactly. You like me. And they figured out this theory that this is a safe house, essentially, for that good bacteria. It's got a really rich biofilm, which is we've talked about biofilm in a bunch of episodes. I feel like it's like coating on the inside of the blindings of all kinds of things. Yeah. It keeps bacteria from being destroyed. It's like a protective mucus. Exactly. Which is that sounds gross, but it's really a good thing. And the appendix is just lousy with this great biofilm. And they said, I think we think the Duke University Blue Devils think that this is a safe house for that good bacteria. Because when the body's being flushed out with diarrhea from its illness, the appendix is down there at the end of the cul de sac. It's not even getting affected, basically. Right. So when that bacteria leaves and takes the good with it, the appendix says, hi, I'm here. Look at all my good bacteria friends. Go forth and do your work. Exactly. It goes bloop and pushes all like a big hunk of mucousy, or bacteria ridden mucus into your large intestine to recolonize, which is amazing. And all of a sudden, the science world was turned upside down because they thought they and it turns out they did find a use for the appendix. Yeah. And not only is it a storehouse, they found for bacteria, the good bacteria that make up our microbiome, it's also a place where lymphocytes and other immune cells are produced. Like it's called lymphoid tissue, where, like T cells, B cells. I think there's one called T natural killer cells. That's great. Which you don't want to mess with. That's the ice tea. Yeah. Or the Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis of immune cells they're produced in the appendix. Right. So when the recolonization process is going on, you could still have bad bugs in there. But to prevent them from taking hold, those immune cells come in and just wipe them out while the good stuff comes back in and recolonizes. So the appendix is really apparently a very useful organ that has a use after all. Yeah. But you can still live without it. That's the weird thing. Why, if it produces this really important function, why would we still be able to live without it? I don't know. Oh, well, we'll talk about it later. Well, no, what I didn't see anywhere was, like, if you live in an adverse way because you don't have your appendix, does that make you more susceptible to certain things if you have that foodborne illness? Right. Okay. So here's the other thing. There was more support from the fact that you can have your appendix removed. Right. So there's more support for the idea that the appendix plays a role and isn't vestigial from the fact weirdly that if you remove it, at least in the developed world, you're still going to be okay without it. Okay. It makes no sense. It's a paradox. But then when they looked into the paradox, they're like, actually, this does make sense because of that hygiene hypothesis that you mentioned earlier. Should we dive into that? Sure. All right, well, hygiene hypothesis in a nutshell, and I recommend you listen that episode because it was really good, but it goes a little something like this. I'm sorry. In the developed world, our immune systems can be overactive, and that's why we have things like allergies, especially foodborne allergies to like peanuts and shrimp that's sitting here in front of us thawing out slowly because our immune system really wants to do something. It is not good at Netflix and chill. It likes to really be active. And if you got clean water and really good fresh food and your body doesn't have to worry about that kind of stuff, it starts to attack your body in other ways just because it wants something to do. Right? It's like one of those people at work who breaks something and then fixes it just to show they're working. Do people do that? There's got to be some people out there, okay, we nudge a base off their desk or what? Right? At the base, putting back together plane. Okay, but there haven't been any breaks for a while. Well, I'm just trying to see how that would happen at our office. How does somebody break a podcast? You could break an RSS feed or something like that. Or maybe an It person who screws up the system. So everyone's like, you got to help us fix it, right? Kind of like that. What about this? What about somebody who organizes things when they're already a certain way, but they just have too much idle time, so they organize stuff and all of a sudden there's a problem. That's kind of what I'm talking about, right? So with the hygiene hypothesis, the idea as far as it relates to the appendix is that because we live in this very sanitary version of the world where we don't get hookworm because we don't wear bare feet and poop outside, our drinking water is clean. We don't have, like, giardia in it, typically, right? Because we're not exposed to this stuff, our immune system is on high alert. So it attacks not just peanuts, but also potentially the appendix, too. It's just sitting there. It is just sitting there. But also, remember, it's a storehouse of bacteria, right? It's also a storehouse of the lymph system. So it's producing immune cells. And apparently if you're a kid and you get appendicitis, which we'll talk about in a minute, all that whole thing, the number one cause of that is overproduction of lymph cells. So it's possible that your immune system says this part of the body is producing a lot of weird immune cells are way more than it should. There's a lot of bacteria here. I hadn't noticed before. Let's go attack it. That your immune system attacks your appendix and causes inflammation, and then that creates the appendicitis that can be dangerous later. That sounds very weird. Why would anybody say that? Well, Chuck, turns out that there's a paradox that goes hand in hand with developing countries. Well, yeah, they've seen this kind of proven out in developing countries is as they become more developed and more industrialized, their rate of appendicitis has gone way up. Yeah. And their body previous to that, industrialization, is maybe getting water. That's not great for them. Or food that might carry some sort of foodborne illness. So their immune system is like, we love this person in this culture because we're always busy flushing this system out with diarrhea, and we're just hard at work, and we don't have time to create some fake peanut allergies or to go after. The appendix is not sitting around doing anything, so it's busy. And they've seen as they become more industrialized, appendicitis have gone up and sort of lockstep with that. Yeah. It happened in the United States and Europe in the beginning of the 20th century. There was a big spike. Like, before that. There was no such thing as appendicitis, basically. Right. There was, but it was very rare and then huge, an enormous spike, and then it plateaus and stabilizes. I think in both Western and Eastern Europe and the US. We're hovered around 100 cases per 100,000 people of Appendicitis these days. Over in, like, I think South Korea around that time. No, Appendicitis later in the 20th century, early 21st century, as their development just went through the roof, a huge increase of Appendicitis. And you can just kind of follow it around the world. As development comes, appendicitis goes up, and they think that it's this hygiene hypothesis that explains it. I love it. So you've got the safe house theory that the appendix actually does have a purpose in a role, and then you have the hygiene hypothesis that explains why Appendicitis is a thing in developed countries. Well, should we take a break and dig into Appendicitis? I think we should. It's going to be awfully painful and gross. I'll bet the ads everyone heard were just astounding. So we've been dancing around the appendicitis kind of this whole episode. It was identified for the first time in 1886 by Reginald Fitz. And before that, they just said, if you've got an abdominal illness and you die because of it, it's just you had a bad stomach ache that killed you. Sorry. Yeah, too bad. So sad. Dave wrote one of my favorite lines in the History of Stuff you should Know articles. He said, Fitz was the first to finger the appendix. It's the culprit. I was like, man, finger the appendix? That's a spinal tap record. That's gross. But you actually probably could finger the appendix because it is like a little pouch. Think about finger sized. Yeah. You can fit your whole forearm into the Francoco August appendix. Oh, man, that ten inch. So appendix, everyone. Right. The appendix. Everybody grew up. Calm down, calm down. So the appendicitis happens because basically I mentioned it was a cul de sac. It's the end of the road situation once you get to the far end of the appendix, but the other end that connects to the sea camp is very narrow, and the opening is not that big. And it can get clogged up with bacteria. It can get clogged up with certain kinds of seeds that go through your body undigested. Hay seeds. Hay seeds, sure. This is really gross. But it can get clogged with fecaliths, which are stone like pieces of petrified feces, my friend. I saw that. That is the number one reason for appendicitis in adults. It's fecaliths. Yeah. It's a hard word to say, but that's what happened. The opening blocks, bacteria, builds up, it gets inflamed, and inflammation is the sort of enemy of all the human body. Right. And you start to get fever and nausea. You got pain. You might get a pain in your sort of lower right side of your gut. Yeah. Because that's where your appendix is. Like if you make an L shape with your thumb and forefinger. Like the loser. Exactly. I didn't want to say it, but okay, sure. We're going to get some email about that. If you take the thumb and put it in your navel and point your finger to your hip okay. That is like in the little V is where your appendix is. Okay. Where your thumb and the little webbing. Yeah. All right. Well, if you get a pain there and you are nauseous and you might have a fever, then get me to a hospital emergency room. Because you might have advanced appendicitis at that point. Yeah. It can be a problem. You might have an appendectomy quick. Like they can do them super fast. If you get it really early, they might concure it with just antibiotics, which is great. But I think 1887, the very year after Fitz identified the disease in 1886, is when they had their first appendectomy, which means they had been happening the whole time. They finally just said, oh, wait a minute, I think it's the appendix, is why all these people are dying from the stomach pains. Right. So maybe we can start removing this little useless dangle. Yeah. I think it was a guy named Thomas Morton, maybe. Yes. Thomas Morton was the surgeon who looks like he lost his brother and son. It was from mysterious stomach ailments, but it was probably ruptured appendixes. And that's what happens. It ruptures and then leaks bad stuff into your intestines and your toast. Yeah. So when the appendix is infected and it leaks that stuff, it perforates as what they call burst is another way to put it. Depending, I think, on how bad it is. All the. Infected pus. If there's fecalists in there, whatever bacteria they have with them, all that stuff gets watermelon. It spills. Right. It spills into your abdomen. And your abdomen has an abdominal wall, and it has an inner coating called the peritonium. And the peritonium is not to be infected with anything. It's very delicate. It doesn't like gross stuff. No. Keep all that in the appendix and the intestines and all that. Yeah, large intestine. But when your appendix bursts and releases all that stuff, it gets your peritonium infected. Your peritonium is like a highway straight to your blood vessels, straight into your organs. And so all of a sudden, your infection goes from your appendix, which you can deal with, to your peritoneum being infected, which means your blood and then your organs are infected, which means you can go into shock and have, like, cascading system failure. That's why it's such an emergency when you have appendicitis, because it may rupture, and that can be problematic. Yeah. And you can still die from that. I think the surgery itself, in 1925, the mortality rate from an appendectomy was 14%. Now it's down to one 10th of 1%. Whatever that is. That's pretty low. And that was since the mid 50s. But that's the mortality rate for the appendectomy. Right? The surgery. The surgery, yeah. For appendicitis, I think overall, for all maybe worldwide, it's, I think, 0% to .8%, which means between two and eight people who get appendicitis out of every thousand people who get appendicitis. There's got to be an easier way to say this. They die from it, they buy the farm. Not many, but that's significant if you're eight people out of 10. For sure. I wanted that to be zero. Eight. And I think the mortality rate is lowest in young people, obviously. Although young people between ten and 30 are the most likely to have an epidemic, I think. Right? Yes. Which is interesting. It's weird. The reason that it's lowest and very young people is the common knowledge among doctors and in the medical field is that the appendix has played a role for a long time, but it's just part of your immune system when you're very young. I have the impression that that is old school thinking. That is pre bacteria, safe house thinking. What? That young kids don't get it because they just have killer immune systems? Yeah. And that the appendix is just on fire and it's just happily working, and that it can become problematic after it stops providing its function. Okay. The idea is that the younger you are, the more vulnerable you are to dying from diarrheal diseases or infections, and so you would have a healthier immune system. And kids do have, like, just this hopped up immune system. But I think the medical understanding up until recently is that the appendix plays a part of that. Right. Got you. But that it stops functioning as you get older, and then you're vulnerable to appendicitis. And then after you make it out of the danger zone, you can just basically coast and get fecal lifts all day long blocking up your appendix. And it doesn't matter. The new thinking is that now it's the storehouse for stuff, we just don't need it anymore because we don't really get diarrhea infections here in the developed world. Right, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. But appendicitis is a thing, and if you do have symptoms that seems weird, generalized painter on your navel or where your appendix is, you should go to the doctor. The thing is, this new idea that the appendix actually does serve a function has, at least in some quarters, created this call for doctors to stop doing what are called negative appendectomies, where it's like, oh, you got stomach pain. Let's take your appendix out and just see if that fixes it. Right? Yeah. Because supposedly a non perforated appendix may actually resolve itself, right? Like, it may go and spit that seed out and go back to normal or whatever. Right. And you don't want to just lose your appendix willy nilly. For one, you're undergoing surgery. There's always complications in absolute surgery. The point is, though, don't just stay home. This one paper I read was like, you're better off for the physician to wait and see in the hospital, keep you in the hospital under observation so that if you do need emergency surgery, you're there and that it may resolve itself on its own if it hasn't perforated already. And that's preferable to just removing the appendix. I can still play my street docket game later, right? Yeah. I think they were saying that it's not up to you. The patient like, just go to the hospital. I'm talking to the doctors right now. The paper was saying, of course, don't remove the appendix if it doesn't need removing. Are we at Harry houdini? I think so, yeah. So this is a little addendum. I kind of think, oh, it's like an appendix. I kind of think we should do a Harry Houdini episode at some point. You bet. Don't you think? Yeah. Should we talk about this now at all? I think we should do Houdini around Halloween. Okay, that sounds fantastic. I tried to think of something to rhyme with weenie. That's the approval. Now it's like a thumbs up magnafini. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that was good. I'm going to stop it right there by using good. Well, people really don't know that I just left the room for, like, 15 minutes trying to think of something and get the magic of editing. Jerry didn't do, like, the star wipe sound. So there have been a few people who have died from a ruptured appendix. They believe that Brigham Young, the Mormon Prophet, did charles Floyd, the only person the Lewis and Clark journey expedition to die. I didn't remember that. Did you? I think I remember just mentioning I do remember the one person died. Yeah. And we were like, what was his problem? Why did he screw everything up? And it was his appendix. So Harry Houdini did die of an appendicitis. And I don't even think we even said perianitis. Yeah, we did. Did we say that was the actual word? I don't know. But that's the affection of the peritonium. Yeah. That's the name of it, though. Yeah. You don't die from your appendix bursting because, again, it provides a function, but it doesn't keep you alive. It's not like your heart bursting. Right. It's the peritoneum getting infected that kills you. So Houdini did die of that, but the old story is that he had come off stage. He was backstage in his green room and presumably having smart food and beef jerky. If you're at a stuff you should know chef filling club soda everywhere from opening the bottle. Oh, man, I can't wait to do that again. Yeah. But I can't wait because not doing that anytime soon. I don't want to get on a plane yet. No, not quite yet, but we're looking forward to that for sure. But there are these college students came backstage, and one of them was like, I heard that anyone can punch you in the stomach and you can make your stomach strong and it won't even hurt you. And I'm a pretty good stomach puncher. He goes, well, that is sort of true. And the guy punches them before he even has a chance to really prepare and say, sure, bring it. Right. A sucker punch that burst his appendix, and that's how he died. And that story is just a little blurry around the edges, is how that went down. Exactly right? Yeah. So there were eyewitnesses, and they did say that this guy did punch Houdini. It's conflicting whether or not Houdini gave the guy permission to punch him or not, or if the guy just started punching. But there was a young man named Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead. Whitehead hoody's last words were done in by a guy named Jocelyn. Didn't see that. One account was that he was still laying on the couch and the guys started wailing on his stomach. Well, yeah, because he had injured his ankle, I think the night before, a couple of days before. So he was reclining on the couch. I guess somebody was sketching. It was basically like that scene in Titanium. Oh, really? Yeah. He's like, drawing me, like one of your French girls. And the guy started drawing, and then the guy punches them all the time. That happens. The question the thing that's sketchy is whether or not that guy punched Houdini in the appendix. And Houdini's appendix ruptured where it otherwise wouldn't have. They think that that happens very rarely. Appendicitis is brought on by blood trauma. Yeah, they think that he probably had appendicitis already. This guy punched Harry Houdini and his inflamed appendix, and that created problems. So the guy definitely killed Houdini one way or the other. It's just did Houdini already have appendicitis or not? Right? And he probably did. Most scholars say yes. There's just no way this little guy from McGill University, I mean, come on, the Canadian Harvard? Give me a break, Jocelyn. Yeah, he burst. Houdini's. Appendix. Yeah, I had a weird brief Houdini obsession when I was a little kid. I think I did some sort of visual report when you would just do not even maybe it was a book report. An interpretive dance, is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what it was. But yeah, it was on Houdini and I was just for a little while I just was really houdini obsessed and then kind of magic obsessed. Do you have one of those kits at a magic phase? Did you have a kit? I may have had a kit. Did you go to the trick shops? Magic shops? Yeah, there was one called Eddie's Trick Shop here in Stone Mountain that I went to. That's awesome. Those places were great. Deck of fake cards or some nice fake vomit. Yeah, you always looked up to the person behind the counter and then you grew up and you're like, oh, that's how you used to work there, kind of thing. Yeah, it was the magic shop and then the place that sold old magazines. Those were the two greatest places on the planet when you're a certain age. Yeah. You got anything else about appendix appendicitis Hodini? This is good. I quite enjoyed this experience. I did too. Thanks to you guys for listening. And since we don't have anything else about the appendix, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this great idea from a ten year old listener. And this one is genuinely going in the to do file. Okay. And this is short and sweet. Dear Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark. Hi. My name is Jack and I'm ten years old and from Hiwatha, Iowa. And I listen to your podcast while I mow. My dad introduced me to your podcast and they've been great. My favorite one so far was probably Titanic. It's really interesting. Before I listen to that one, I wasn't really interested in the Titanic, but when I listened I got more interested. I was wondering if you ever thought doing one on child labor. It was after he mud the grass. Okay. Yeah, I learned about it in school and want to know more about it. Thank you for all your great podcast. And that is from Jack. And that is on brand of stuff. You can upsize as I've ever heard. Yeah. But also coming from a child laborer, it really kind of has a certain glow to it. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I wonder if this kid is just like, I'm going to get my parents back for this. Maybe. Do you remember wanting to mow the grass when you were ten? Totally. And then you started to in about the third or fourth time. You're like, I've made a terrible mistake. Well, it all depends, but it also depended on the kind of motor that your parents stuck you with. Yeah, we did have a rider for a short time. Wow. That was kind of pre go kart car driving. Yeah, it's like driving. Yes. But with a blade spinning at thousands of RPMs. Right beneath the blade. Sure. Just put that nine year old in the seat. All right. Who is that again? That was Jack. Jack. Thank you. Great name, great idea, great person all around. Coming soon. You can count on that one. Jack, if you want to get in touch with us, like Jack did with the Great Idea, we are always open for those. Take your idea, wrap it up, spank it lightly on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, myheartrad radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
0e8105fe-33f2-11ea-86f8-2ffb7a263860 | Short Stuff: The Mona Lisa | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-mona-lisa | The Mona Lisa is a captivating work of art. But why? We'll try and figure it out in today's short stuff. | The Mona Lisa is a captivating work of art. But why? We'll try and figure it out in today's short stuff. | Wed, 15 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=15, tm_isdst=0) | 12821775 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, there's JJ. Over there. Let's get to it and talk about maybe the most famous painting in all the world, perhaps SAG Clown Hobo by John Wayne Gacy. All right. Have you seen them on Elisa? I have. Same here. I'm sure your first impression, like many people, was sure, it's small. It's impossible to not have you can go into it saying, I'm not going to think that. I've been prepped. I'm not going to let myself think that. And you will think that. Yeah, it's 2ft six inches by 1ft nine inches. It's a small little painting. It is. And they have it behind some seriously protective casing. You can't get too terribly close to it. You can get kind of close, but you can't just walk up right on it. And I think we talked a lot about why they have it under that casing in our how the Louvre Works episode, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I think we covered that. This is a little more about the lady herself. They think for sure that Mona Lisa was a person, a real person. And there's been a lot of debate over the years, but the current thinking is, what's her name? Oh, boy. It's lisa Jeradini delgian condo. Nice. Also known as Lagio Condo. Very nice, because she's a lady and she was a wealthy woman married to a wealthy silk merchant. And the thinking is that he had this commissioned to celebrate the impending birth of a child. Yeah. And it's bizarre to think that we don't know much about the Mona Lisa. It's not that old. I mean, DA Vinci started it, and I think 53 is when he started the painting. Exactly. Which is what I was going to say eventually. Okay, so it's not so ridiculously old that it's just completely lost to history. And yet it is because the Geocondo family never took possession of it. And the reason that they think that they're almost certain that that is who it is, that it's Lagiakonda in that painting is that there was a book written about it in the time that Leonardo DA Vinci's sons were still alive and so still around to refute this if it was incorrect that it was her, that she was the one who was seated there. And then years and years later, somebody found a margin note somewhere in some book or some notebook that said as much, that Lisa Giordini sorry, was the Mona Lisa, and that she was going to be sitting for this work that DA Vinci was working on. Right. And they speculate about the impending pregnancy because she has some kind of loose clothing on. And that little smile is interpreted as, oh, guess what's coming? I'm about to give birth. I can't wait. So we should probably talk a little bit about the artistry of the Mona Lisa. I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there oh, really? Are you crazy? You don't like it? It's not that I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of portraiture, period. Not a lot of portraits knock me out like other paintings do. Okay. I can appreciate them for sure, but I've never looked at a portrait and been like, man, I want that in my house so bad. Not a big Rembrandt fan, huh? Yeah. So I think one of the reasons I appreciate it, Chuck, is because I recently saw Decoding DA Vinci, a little Nova documentary. The Tom Hanks movie? Yeah. He's got a mullet in it running around all over the place. No, this is even more legitimate than that. Oh, wow. But they really go into the techniques that he used in this painting, especially this foomato method that he's very well known for, which uses shading and some other stuff. You're going to have to watch the Nova episode for it to be explained. But the upshot of it is there's no lines in the Mona Lisa. There's no hard lines. He didn't paint a line. He suggested lines. Every line in that painting doesn't actually exist. It's all an illusion created by the painting techniques that he was using on the Mona Lisa. And they really go to town explaining this, and it really makes it that much easier to appreciate. Yeah. Another thing that's mentioned here in the House of Works article is the fact, and this kind of stood out to me is mostly when you see portraits, especially oh, my Lord, from that era, is you have someone in a room, maybe, and not necessarily a landscape as well. There were landscapes and there were portraits, and never between shall meet. But he blended those two things together, and there's a landscape behind the Mona Lisa and an aerial perspective, and she's very much in a big open space with these mountains and winding paths behind her. And your eye doesn't always go to that because you're looking at that face and that smile. Right. But that dreamy landscape is certainly back there. Yeah. And I think what they're remarking about is that it's supposedly an imaginary landscape and that most people didn't paint imaginary ones. And people have tried to prove that it actually isn't imaginary. Most recently, a pair of italian researchers, olivia neshi and rosetta borkia. I don't do it nearly as well as you, but they said, no, it's this place in Monte Pheltro in the east of Italy, east of Florence on the Adriatic coast. And they're like, this mountain is this one. This is this mountain. They said this bridge used to be there, but it's since been destroyed. This lake is no longer here. It's filled in by mudslides, but they're pretty sure they pinpointed it. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're correct. It's still speculative, but they seem to have a pretty good case to back it up. But the position is that Legio condo posed in front of that? No, just that's why he painted. I don't think that they were saying that he made her sit there for four years or that she was ever even there, but that it wasn't their point is that it's not a made up landscape. Well, no, I mean, I'm sure he took a photograph of her, right? And then just work from that. Yes. Knowing DaVinci, he probably did. I will say that the Mona Lisa's eyes following you, the Mona Lisa effect, which he did not invent, but it is referred to that way anyway. And I know you're pretty into this idea that I can follow you. Sure. That works on a laptop, even. It does. And that's a whole other short stuff, if you ask me. But this Mona Lisa effect, it being called that the eyes following you around the room in a painting, that's actually a misnomer because they've proven that the Mona Lisa does not actually demonstrate the Mona Lisa effect. It did to me, man. Does it? I mean, I don't know. Maybe it was the fact that I got super drunk at lunch, but I was sitting at my desk, and I was going heavy back and forth to the left and right, and they seem to be following me, or maybe it was suggested, so I saw it that way. I don't know. I wonder that man. I wonder if that is because when I looked and saw that she doesn't have that effect, I was like, oh, yeah, I totally see it. Some researchers measured where people pointed on the screen or pointed on themselves where she was looking, and most people said she was looking. Pass them to their right about at a 30 deg angle. Well, it may have been power suggestion. Yeah. For both of us. Who knows? All right, well, let's take a break here. And here you will hear, we will say a little bit about when and why the Mona Lisa became Soups famous. All right, Chuck. I thought that break would never come. Right? So it's funny to think, as famous as the Mona Lisa is, but she was fairly neglected by the world until the mid 19th century. And even then, just like a small little group of French art critics finally discovered this DA Vinci painting. And we're like, this is a masterpiece. This is an amazing work of Renaissance art. We haven't noticed all these few hundred years, but it's amazing. They didn't really tell the rest of the world, and people like the Mona Lisa was fine, but it wasn't until she was stolen off of the wall and the Louvre in 1911 that the world really sat up and took notice. It's very much like that Cinderella song. You don't know what you got until it's gone. That happened with the Mona Lisa, too. I think they wrote that about the Mona Lisa, right? Probably, yeah. August 21, 1911. There were three handymen that just kind of went out the side door with the Mona Lisa. It took 26 and this is kind of evidence that she wasn't that big of a deal, yet it took a whole 26 hours before anyone even noticed she was gone. And whereas today there would be alarm bells the second that was removed. Yes. But it was put in the papers, and all of a sudden, it kind of ran away in the press. The Lou shut down for a week, and everyone from Pablo Picasso to JP. Morgan were named as potential suspects. Yeah, they thought JPMorgan. Was financing people to steal artworks for them. Amazing. Yeah. And actually, it's funny that raise this other thing, chuck, real quick. There are accusations against wealthy Chinese people who are funding art heists to repatriate Chinese art. How interesting. There's, like, a whole string of art heights around the world that are just ancient Chinese works of art, and they think that some people in China are financing it. It was a GQ article called The Great Chinese Art heist. Wow. Well, I certainly believe in repatriation to a certain degree, but I don't know if he should go to that length. Okay, so anyway, the newspapers get it out. Lou shuts down. People were coming to the museum to see what was known as the mark of Shame, that empty, non, cigarette stained square on the wall. And everyone went and went, is that how big it is? That little nondusty square? And then it took a full 28 months for this thing to finally reappear with an attempted resale from Vincenzo Pedagilla. And the owner of the art gallery that was being offered this painting said, yeah, this is the Mona Lisa. You know what? I'm going to make sure you get a good reward for this. Just stick around and stay right there. I'm going to go in the other room and make a quick phone call to the reward center. Right. And make sure you get your reward. Reward right there. Reward. And then Homer Simpson just stood in place and waited for the Italian Politia to come. Yeah. And he got busted, and he got eight months in prison for this. It was a pretty big art heist, but he was in Florence trying to sell it, so he'd stole it from the Louvre, Paris, and his defense was, Napoleon stole this from us, and I was repatriating it myself. And I think he actually kind of got eight months. Isn't exactly a slap on the wrist, but it's also not a ridiculous sentence, either for what he got or for what he did. So I think that actually helped. That defense worked. Do you know if he ratted out his two buddies? I don't know. And I don't know if it would have mattered, because he was the one that lived with it in the false bottom of his steamer trunk in his apartment for two years before he tried to sell it. So I don't know if it would have helped at all. Man, I wish I had a false bottom. Steamer trunk. Those are be pretty handy. I thought you meant, like, a bottom. No, just a false bottom trunk. Seems like false bottom. Girls, they make the rocking world go round. Kind of false bottom. Stop it. Can we say that it's not the 70s any longer? I think we're okay. Okay. You got anything else? Nothing. Well, then everybody. Short stuff, says Ariva dairy. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
3fea1736-121b-11eb-ba6a-5b86a23b6db9 | Short Stuff: Humpty Dumpty | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-humpty-dumpty | Humpty Dumpty is not a good nursery rhyme. And what was Humpty anyway? Listen in to find out. | Humpty Dumpty is not a good nursery rhyme. And what was Humpty anyway? Listen in to find out. | Wed, 11 Aug 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=223, tm_isdst=0) | 11243561 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's chocolate short stuff, as I said, and that means we're going to start now to talk about Humpty. Hump do the humpty humpy R-I-P what? He passed away recently. I definitely did not know that. No, that's sad with shock. G is that right? I thought his name was Humpty. It's not Humpty. Yeah, I mean, I think he died just, like, within the past couple of months, even. Wow. Yeah, he died in April. Man. That is very sad. Yes. And I got to say, too, just very quickly, that's a great song, but Digital Underground was awesome. That was their big MTV hit, and it was kind of joking and fun, but they were really good. Yeah. He was, like, on this one song, I should say track, I guess, to sound hip, with a rapper named MERS called Risky Business, and you get a really good view of what Humpty was all about. It's pretty cool. So if you liked the Humpty dance and you want to learn more, I would start there. All right, peach. G. So Humpty Dumpty. I'm expecting that. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Do you need a minute, or are you good? You just go on. I'll gather myself while you're talking. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall humpty Dumpty had a great fall all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. And the whole point of this episode is to sort of talk about why do we think this thing is an egg when it doesn't say it's an egg anywhere? Right. And what are some of the theories about how this whole thing came about to begin with? Well, supposedly, and I found very confusing in the article, the rhyme you just said is actually a riddle. It's meant to be a riddle, and somewhere along the way, the riddle was answered for us. And now we don't even think of this as a riddle. But that's one thing to bear in mind. When the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty first came out, it was meant to apparently, there was some line like, what is it? And you're supposed to go in egg. And then that was the delight that you found in it. Yeah. And it's also something that's been rewritten in different forms over the years. I think the first time, the rhyme itself was in a book, 1797 in Juvenile Amusement by Samuel Arnold. And the third line, instead of all the king's horses and all the king's men, it said, four score men and four score more. So all of a sudden, it's not Rhyming, right? Unless it's four score men and four score more. Couldn't help get Humpty restored or something like that. Sure. That's what I'm going with. I like that. But the first rhyme did you say it was back in 1797, when it first appeared? Yeah. And so from the get go, I think everybody was like, what is everybody talking about here? There's got to be something to this. So people started thinking that there was more to the Humpty nursery rhyme because it is so bizarre. Like, it gives you almost no context whatsoever. It's really dumb. It's a little dumb. Not a lot happens. And the thing that does happen is very unsatisfying. Very. I think after the people who understood what this was all about had died off and failed to pass along what they meant, those people started wondering exactly what was behind all this. And so there's some theories started developing. Yeah. One of it is that Humpty Dumpty was supposed to be Richard III, King of England, and Shakespeare about Richard III. He's depicted as a poisonous humpback toad, and that's basically how history came to see him, thanks to Shakespeare's depiction. Right. But King Richard was only in office, ruled for a couple of years, about 26 months, and supposedly fought for the common man and was against corruption and bribery and enacted a bunch of laws to fight that stuff. So not fair to King Richard now. And for some reason, some little part of my brain is being tickled right now. Like, we talked about King Richard as if he was and I think the Robin was there a Robin Hood episode. Isn't King Richard, like, the bad guy in that maybe like, he was like just a lion who just wanted his pudding or something weird like that? I don't remember. But, yes, apparently he wasn't a bad king, but it was basically Shakespeare who did that. But the point is, Richard III was the last English king to die in battle. He died at the battle of Boswell. Bosworth. Bosworth. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Charlie's Angels lately, and I wanted to say bosley at first. Are you really watching a lot of Charlie's Angels? Yeah. Remember, they keep reselling that one where Sammy Davis Jr. Placed versions of himself that got you hooked. But, yeah, King Richard had a horse named Wall and supposedly fell off of the horse and was bludgeoned, so sat on the wall and fell off the wall. So that's sort of where that connection comes in. Couldn't be saved. All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put them back together again. This is where my money is. I just want everyone to know that's what I think Humpty Dumpty is all about. All right, well, let's take our break, and we'll come back and talk about Louis Carroll kind of gumming up the works and some other theories right after this. All right, chuck 1797 is where it first starts. We see him again a few years later in a book called Mother Goose's Melody from right. Yeah. And that one was like a little tubby kid because the last line is, couldn't set Humpty up again, I guess. Just couldn't get him upright. Kind of like an Augustus Gloop type character. Yeah. And supposedly the British satire Punch, the weekly magazine, said that humpty was a symbol for Cardinal Wolfe, and other people said that that might be right, too. So that's another theory. That one to me. So Cardinal Wilson was the guy who couldn't get a divorce from the pope for Henry VIII, so he kind of went down in infamy as not a great adviser helper to the king. That's a little politically nuanced for me, because, remember, this is a nursery rhyme. So I don't see kids like, singing a nursery rhyme about Cardinal Wolsey falling from favor with Henry VIII. I do see them singing a nursery rhyme about the death of King Richard, though. Yeah, I'm with you so far. I mean, adults don't say, like, hey, kids, I got a nursery rhyme for you. Here it is. Don't adults just, like, write down nursery rhymes that they hear kids saying, and then that's how they become widespread and popularized, but they're ultimately created by kids? I think that's the deal. So, yeah, all the more reason I got my money on Richard III. All right, well, then Louis Carroll comes in through Alice I'm sorry, through the Looking Glass and Moore. It's particularly, seemingly drug fueled tones to ever be written. And the eggman has a chapter in this dedicated to them, wherein Alice says she clearly saw that it was Humpty Dumpty himself. It can't be anybody else. I'm as certain of it as if his name were written all over his face. Pretty great. And if you've ever read that or even parts of it, it's really out there. So the idea of a walking, talking egg person human hybrid is not, like, far off the mark. Right. And so that was the whole thing where you and me and everybody else breathing today thinks of Humpty Dumpty as an egg. Thanks to that book, thanks to that chapter on him, thanks to the fact that he was just out and out of egg. There was no riddle at this point any longer. It was just, Humpty Dumpty is an egg. And the illustrator for that first edition, John Tenille, or Tennil, his illustration of Humpty Dumpty is like an egg with pants on and a face and arms and legs and all that stuff. That's where the idea of Humpty Dumpty that we have today finds its roots almost visually and through our imagination from that book. That's right. That's the first time it was like, look, it's definitely an egg. Let's just cut to the chase. Face it. Cut to the chase. And there was also that was printed differently in that book, too. The actual rhyme, the final line is, couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again. So there wasn't even an egg breaking in that version, which I found kind of sweet. Nice. Yeah, sure, why not? So there's one more theory. There's a few more theories. Some are literally not even worth mentioning, but there's an idea that a humpty dumpty was actually the name of a drink. Right. And, boy, this doesn't sound good to me, but you never know. Does it sound good to you? Yes. So, beer boiled with brandy. Okay. Not the boiled part. Did you check out the recipe that was revived by bartenders today? Oh, you mean the modern version? Yes. No, I'm sure they made that taste good. Yeah. Okay. I'm talking about the original version. Ale boiled with brandy was called and this is the first time that the rhyme wasn't there. But the words humptydumpty ever appeared in print was in 1690 in a slang dictionary, and it was ale boiled with brandy. And the connection there is that really strong beer was called hum. And so humpty dumpty. There you have it. I feel like we should give the recipe for the humpty dumpty, don't you? Sure. And I think it sounds delicious. So you take 1oz of brandy, one and a half ounces of ale I would go with pale ale if I were you. A quarter ounce of lemon juice, a dash of angostura, and you put it in a mixing glass with some ice. Stir 15 seconds and strain into a glass without the ice. Garnish with the lemon peel, and raise a glass to your friend. Humpty dumpty and shock g. Apparently. That's a great call back. You got anything else for a great MC? I got nothing else. Well, since Chuck said he has nothing else, I can attest I have nothing else, that means we have nothing else to shut share with you in this episode of short Stuff, which means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." |
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