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The Nile IS Just a River in Egypt | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-nile-is-just-a-river-in-egypt | The Nile River has been flowing south to north for about 30 million years, and the human race's cradle may have been along the Blue Nile stemming from Ethiopia. Find out some amazing facts about what may be the world's most important river. | The Nile River has been flowing south to north for about 30 million years, and the human race's cradle may have been along the Blue Nile stemming from Ethiopia. Find out some amazing facts about what may be the world's most important river. | Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:10:12 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=15, tm_min=10, tm_sec=12, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=291, tm_isdst=0) | 31814302 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all, rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. With no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA Member FDIC brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry it's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. That makes this steppieceneau express edition monday morning edition. It's the chili to go edition. I think Monday mornings are my favorite time to record. Really? Are you kidding me? It's the worst of the worst. So you're lying? I was lying. I got you. Oh, wait. Before we get into this, can we give a quick Kiva shout out? We totally should. Thanks to Glenn for emailing us to be like, hey, busy movie star. Guys, we need you to pay attention to Glenna de. Glenn and Sonyas. Yes. Hey, guys. So, Chuck, we have reached the $700,000 mark in loans. So great. From our stuffyshouldknow. Kiva team. Kiva. orgTEAM stuffy. It's a microlending organization where you loan increments of $25 to people who use it to basically keep their businesses going, start new business by inventory, whatever, and it's basically global peace through capitalism. It's nitro torpedo, and we support it. And not only that, not only did we hit the $700,000 mark, we just celebrated our second anniversary. We did it in, like, two years. That is nuts. So we're on track from glenn is the uber math genius of this heading this up? Right? I think he says we're on track to hit our three quarters of a mill goal in mid November. Yeah, the original goal was to hit it by the end of the year. Great. Yes. The juggernaut that is team. S-Y-S-K on. Kiva rolls on. So congratulations to you guys. $800,000. A million bucks. I know. I can't even write my mind. Do you remember how all this started? Yeah, a simple podcast. It takes a village. So way to go, everybody on our Kiva team. And we're not exclusive. Our Kiva team is very open and friendly. Again, if you want to go join it's Kiva.org teamstepyoushouldnow. Right. All right, back to denial. Okay, so, denial. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard of an ancient man eating crocodile named Gustave? Yeah, man, I watched a video on him. Did you? He is enormous and scary. He's pretty creepy looking. So for those of you who aren't in the know, like Chuck, let me tell you a little bit about Gustav. He's 20ft long. Chuck 6 meters. Okay. He weighs a ton. He does weigh a ton, which is more than \u00a32000 these days, isn't it? It's a ton. And he's about 60 years old, I think, which is pretty substantial because wild crocodiles he's a now crocodile. Wild crocodiles. Lived to about 45. I think he's close to 70 now, actually. Yeah, that's right. Because he was about 16 2004. So yeah, he's pushing 70. And he is very old. And he also has a real taste for humans. Yeah, I think a lot of that is true. I think there's a lot of legend built up, too, though. Well, there's this guy, this hunter of him. His last name is Faye. What's his first name? Chuck Feyrey. No. His first name is Patrice Fay. Yeah. He was the documentary that I watched when he tried to catch him. He seems to be something of a controversial figure, and he's a bit of a captain. Ahab. And Gustav is his Queen Quake. Yes. At least. Anyway, the point is, I would say I think about 300 people are attributed to dying to Gustave. Yeah. And some legend has it that he sometimes won't even eat you, he'll just kill you. Which makes me think that's probably not true. Right. He kills for sport or something. Exactly. So Gustav has been on the loose and Burundi for a long time, and he is a Nile crocodile. And he's in Burundi because the Nile actually flows partially through Burundi, which is the whole reason I brought up Gustave in the first place. It's a great way to start. It was. Okay. Do you know much about the Nile? A little bit. I know a thing or two. Do you? It is just a river in Egypt, but it's not just in Egypt. So true. If you have a problem with the title, stop emailing, because we know what we're talking about. Technically, if you want to know, it's in Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, Zayer, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Aforementioned Burundi. Yes. And throughout all those countries, it gets fairly wide. I think it's up to 10 km wide at its widest point. Ten clicks? Yes. You see the width? That's good to know. But 10 km, that's a substantial width for a river. Right. It's over 5 miles wide, which is kind of wide. But at the same time, for flowing through ten countries, it's still fairly narrow compared to its length. Yet about 370,000,000 people depend on the Nile to survive and have for a long time. Not that many people. A very long time, as a matter of fact, in Ethiopia, where one of the now's headwaters are, it's considered the cradle of the Cush people, which is the black race, I guess. And possibly the human race is the cradle of the human race. I've heard that. But don't tell the Aryan Brotherhood because they will be mad. You get mad about everything. Yeah, they do. Tell us some more about the knighthood. There's some amazing facts. It is a river. It is, but it's an amazing river. And it's not even the longest river, is it? No. The Amazon generally is quoted as a little bit longer, but I think they said the most recent expedition, they found out and they used advanced mapping equipment right. Which is advanced to find 4175 miles long. 6719 Amazon clocks in. And we're going to do an Amazon show, too, at 42, 25. So it's about 65 miles longer. Yeah. And I think that the new Nile, as we'll call it, includes the new headwaters south of Lake Victoria. Is that what they determined? Because they used to say it was originated in Lake Victoria. Yeah. But now it's south a little bit. Right. That was controversial. When the guy came up, there was a guy named John Hanning Speck, or Speak, and he was an English explorer who lived to 1864. Before his death, he went on an expedition to Africa and went off by himself. His co expedition leader got injured, so he went off by himself like gustaf. I don't think it was Gustav's father. Right. And he found Lake Victoria and said, well, this has got to be the Nile. Must be the headwaters. And there was a big public debate over whether it was real or not and between the guy who was injured and not on the expedition and Speak. And so finally Speak was like, Fine, you know what? Let's go back. So we went back and they found the place where the Nile exits Lake Victoria. So Lake Victoria has traditionally been the source of the Nile, but they found that actually, no, there's some headwater somewhere in some forest in Rwanda. And you say that it's south of Lake Victoria. Which is crazy, Chuck, because that means that the Nile flows south to north. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that was so strange because I thought south meant lower. And it's just not the case in Africa. The lowland, or I'm sorry, the highland is south. Right. And so it just flows toward the equator with gravity like it should. Toward the equator. Never had a cavity. Just not one. That is kind of big news, though, that the headwater is the source of the Nile has changed. I like how it's somewhere deep in a forest in Rwanda. That's pretty cool. It's fairly mysterious. It is. So it still has a mysterious origin. It's always had this kind of mysterious dark Africa vibe to it. The Nile has. Sure. So, Josh, let's talk about the tributaries. If you're going to talk about the Nile, you got to talk about the fact that there's the White Nile and there's the Blue Nile. The White is the newest source south of Lake Victoria. Is the White Nile easiest to navigate. It's the longer section, but actually has less water, feeds less water. So we're going to talk about how the Nile raises and lowers in a little bit. But it's the White Nile that's responsible for that. Yeah, and it's lightish gray in color for the sediment, which is why they call it the White Nile. The Blue Nile is very sparkly blue and its origins in the Ethiopian Mountains and provides about two thirds of the water to the river. And then it turns darker as it goes, like in the Sudan. Things get dark. The Blue Nile. Yeah. And there's also another tributary that's the two largest tributaries, the Blue Nile and the White Nile. I also found out that after the Nile exits a lake, like it comes out of Lake Victoria, that's called the Victoria Nile. Then it gets to Lake Albert, Victoria's loverboy, and then after it exits, that it's the Albert Nile. So it's named kind of based on where it is in any given part in time. Got you. But the third major tributary, the Atbara River, which comes out of the eastern portion of Sudan, they think it's the original source of the Nile. The Nile is about 30 million years old from the Tertiary period. Wow. But they think that that was the original source and other rivers started coming out and joining together and now it forms the huge, massive Nile. Well, it goes to a lot of twists and turns on the way and we'll talk about a couple of those, but let's go ahead and just tell you the ending now. Spoiler alert, it splits again in Egypt into the damietta, which is on the east side, or is that on the west? Damiet is on the west. The west. Damien is on the east, rosetta is on the west. I had it right to begin with. I had it right one of the time and then it splits into two main things. But it's really a fan of many little fingers that all spill out into the Mediterranean. Right. But did you notice what those two things were called? The damietta and the rosetta? They're called distributaries. Right. You have tributaries coming in, distributaries, distribute. Yeah, that's where the word distribute comes from. Crazy. What's sad is I was like, wow, there's the fact of the podcast. That was it. Yeah. I like all the canal stuff. I mean, it's not the fact, but I just thought that was the coolest stuff, how they made it work for them. So as the Niles flowing from south to north, I mean, it's wide, it flows, but you're not going to get thrown out of a kayak on it until you get to Aswan. Right. Once you get to Aswan, there are six cataracts after that between Aswan and the Nile Delta, and these cataracts are basically rapids. I wonder how really navigable, like, okay, you got to get out and put your boat on a trailer and drive around and then get back in what do you call that? Unnavigable. There's a word for that when you have to pull your canoe out and do some walking. Just besides sucks. Yeah. I think is what it is. Monday morning, Friday afternoon, I would have that word. Am I ready? I'm sure that people have hit these rapids before, but you're talking not just this isn't like a normal river creek. This is the Nile hitting rapids. Right. So there's six of those, and then you get to the delta, and it calms down again. It's the longest kiss in history. That's what they call it, the Arab poets. Isn't that nice? Like, when they meet that's the Kiss At cartoon. Yeah, it is very nice. I thought that was very poetic, which is, I guess, why poets wrote it. Right. Okay, so you want to hear a little more? A few more stats? I actually have a couple of stats. Let's hear it. Just a couple more things. If you live on the Nile and you're a member of a certain ethnic group, a few ethnic groups, especially in Sudan, you're described as nylotic, like Caucasian. You're nylotic. If you were to measure the amount of water that passes down the Nile every day, at its peak, you would come up with 79,251,615,372 US gallons, which is 300 million water every day. Wow. And if you wanted to get to the root of the name of the Nile, neelios, Greek for are you ready for this big river? River valley. That's a little disappointing. It was a little disappointing. I thought so, too. Sometimes it just makes too much sense. So there's a certain culture of people that grew up along the Nile. We mentioned the Kush people from Ethiopia. Yeah. But they get a lot less press than their neighbors to the west. The ancient Egyptians. Yes. This is after the Great Bend. North of the Great Bend. We left out the Great Bend. Well, the Great Bend is interesting because it literally runs east to west for a little while, then bends back and runs the other way. Yeah, it's going just due north, and then it cuts. It's pretty switchback. You would call that if you're a hiker. Yeah. And they found out finally, like, this is perplexed. People who navigated the river and mapped it, and they're like, what the what is this? It's not supposed to do this because it actually does it in one of the driest points of Earth. On Earth. The whole area around it is dry, too. That's worth pointing out. Is it's in the middle of some serious sand? Well, it depends on what part you're at. It goes through a lot of different clients. Well, that's true, but when it hits the Grey band, it's like in the middle of the Sahara Desert and it should just keep going north. But it didn't. So they found in, I think, 1994, through satellite photos, they found that there's this ancient river bed that it did used to go straight. Something happened. They estimate between 10,001 million years ago something happened and now it takes this bend. No one knows what happened. They don't have a theory on that. It just ain't the same since then, though. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if it was superstitious in nature. It's like some person stood and said halt to the Nile and it went around him. I don't think so. I think it was the other way around. I think the Nile just kind of like we're your boss. Objects carry a lot of power. They can tell a story about a person, a place or a time in history, and sometimes they just look like household objects. On Mysteries at the museum. The podcast from Travel Channel Don Wildman travels across the US. To find the objects that tell shocking stories of American history. You'll hear about the plane beige uniforms that were at the center of the Stanford Prison Experiment or about the failed invention from World War II that became one of the most popular toys for kids. Uncover the secrets behind these incredible objects and learn about the history of war, science, crime and everything in between. Listen to Mysteries at the Museum on Apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So I mentioned that a lot of the northern part, especially in Egypt, is in the middle of serious sand. And that sand is what protected the Nile and the Nile River basin and the people there because you couldn't just, like, walk over there and attack them. You were lucky to make it through the desert to get to the Nile. It served as a natural protection plan. I didn't realize that. Yeah, sure. So you know about ancient Egypt. Of course, there were several kingdoms, each of which collapsed. Very advanced people, though. They were one of the cool things. We talked about the Nile rising and falling every year. The Blue Nile is slow and steady coming out of the Ethiopian highlands. And it's the White Nile coming out of Rwanda and through Lake Victoria and through Sudan that is subject to fluctuations because there's heavy rainfall in Rwanda. There's also I saw heavy rain in the Ethiopian highlands too, though. There is. But for some reason, the Nile stays steady. The Blue Nile coming out of Ethiopia stays steady. And snow melting, too, is another big reason. So I think what it is maybe snow in Africa, it rains on one during one part of the year and then the snowmelt happens in another and it equals basically just an equal volume coming out. Okay, so on the white Nile, it's subject to wild fluctuation and it raises up to 20ft at its highest point. That is the secret. And the ancient Egyptians were pretty smart about capturing the stuff. They could capture the water in canals and basins, so much so that they would have all the water they needed for next year's crops. Let me say that again. They could capture all the water they needed for next year's crops through the Nile. That's right. Specifically, Josh, the river is at its lowest in May, it's at its highest in September. So between May and September, there's something called the rise, which is the inundation, and then there's the fall, which is the relinquishment. Happens around October is when it starts the fall. And during that time, where it rises so much, like you said, they would capture this water, it would flood the sand there, and when it receded, it would leave this mud, this awesome, rich, fertile silt. They would dry that out for about a week and then they would start a plan. That's why the Nile Delta is so lush. It's that annual bringing of the silt that changed the history of the world. It did. And definitely Africa. And apparently the silt is between 50 and 100ft deep, and it's just this black rich, nutrient rich soil that you could grow rocks in. Soil, yeah, sorry, but still I know what you meant. Sure. Like you said, it changed the history of the world. And there was problematic as it was a gift as well as a curse, because it would not only bring the silt, sometimes it would bring way too much water, it would come in at the wrong time, and they couldn't harvest fast enough. But the Nile give us the tickets away. Right, exactly. So to prevent the flooding and to allow for more settlement, because you need to pack people in there. As a matter of fact, the Nile is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Right? Yeah. There's a stat here somewhere. I think it's like 3280 people per square mile, which is yes, that's dense, my friend. And it was always that dense, or not that dense, but it's always been very dense with people because that was the lifeblood. Right, as they say. So when you have a bunch of people, you need to settle them where you can, and you can't just let the Nile flood everybody every year and then rebuild. So what they did is they started building a system of dams and they started controlling them out a little more so they can keep the flooding in check. They've got plenty of water for irrigation, but they're losing out on the sediment. Yeah, it reduced the fertility sum, so they started using fertilizer. They kind of rolled with the punches over the years from what I gathered, as far as building the dams, and they realized that saved the land from being flooded too much. But also they said we got to start using fertilizer now. They did. It was part of the green revolution, I think. So it's kind of like, yes, we've got all this fertilizer, but now we're screwing up the land two different ways. It's basically just another example of humans controlling nature and shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, but the good news is though, that through their control and through this silt and the flooding, it allowed for a lot of of kind crops that you wouldn't think you would be able to grow out there. Like wheat and barley. Right. I think these days what do they grow? Cotton, even sorghum well, Egyptian cotton the best. It's very thought of what kind of thread count you go with these days. Higher the better. You know, what I just recently learned is the higher actually means heavier, too. So if you go out and get like a 1000 thread count sheet, you might not be getting what you're looking for. It might feel like a blanket. Right. It depends on what type of fabric they're using. Yeah, exactly. It's on the weave. It is. And also you have to look out for you definitely get what you pay for. If you find like 600 thread count sheets for like $20 on the internet, the reason why it is 600 thread count. But they're counting each of the three strands of thread. So rather than a single thread counting 600 times, it's one thread divided by into the three strands that make up the single thread. That's really 200 thread counts because I've seen those on the internet. 600 thread counts. Right. And then you pull it up over you and you get like a rash. You might as well sleep in a potato sack or something. You get the Nile rash. Yeah. So, Chuck, we talked about dams. I did a little extra research. It turns out that the Nile connects nine countries and it connects them geopolitically as well as just geologically, geographically. Yes. And apparently Egypt and Sudan like to make agreements over water use for the Nile. And this has been going on for a really long time. It used to be Egypt and Ethiopia, and Egypt would occasionally accuse Ethiopia of controlling the Nile and keeping the water to themselves, which they had no way of doing. And then every once in a while, Ethiopia would threaten to do that and Egypt would be like, okay, all right, let's talk this out. To keep all the water. Right. So then it changed between Egypt and Sudan, and those are still two of the biggest players now. So Egypt has a really long history of blocking projects that would kind of equitably distribute the Nile waters. And you remember in Ethiopia had this horrible famine, do you remember? But the Nile was just fine. They just hadn't figured out or they weren't using it to irrigate properly. And the world didn't really care that much at first. It took a little while to really I remember being a big deal. It took a while. It was a big deal before I found out about it. In other words. Yes. Okay. Exactly. I have a little fact to the show for me is to measure the recession and the rising of the river, they used a staircase. They built a staircase down into the river and literally just marked it. It was called a nilometer. And they just marked what stair it was on from time to time. Pretty basic. It is basic because you can't have a big pole you can't stick a big pole down. How old are those stairs? Oh, I don't know. If they don't think they're still around. Oh, really? Oh, that was Ancient Egypt. Old kingdom. Now they just measure it with advanced equipment. So no advanced advanced mapping equipment. So what else do you want to talk to more about? Some animals. Sure. The denial is well known to house crocodiles. The Nile crocodile is a fish eater for the most part, goats or chickens and whatever happens to be lurking nearby. Yes, Goats, I did know. Fish I didn't think of, but they do attack humans. They say roughly 200 human deaths per year, thanks to the crocodile. And Gustave, that we mentioned earlier, is he's large for a Nile crocodile, but it's not like he's some freak of nature. I mean, there's plenty of crocodiles that get to be 20ft in length. Well, the saltwater crocodiles tend to grow larger, so he's just big for the area, and he's old as the hills. So that gave him the spooky legend. He's as old as a 70 year old hill, 67 year old neighborhood kids, and then hippopotamus. The hippopotamus doesn't live in the Nile anymore, and I didn't find why they're not no, they don't live in Egypt. Oh, they live they live on the Nile. Yeah. They're around Sudan more now. Egypt gets all the press, but they used to be around Egypt. I'm not sure exactly why they left. Well, probably because of the crocodiles. Although there are crocodiles everywhere. Yeah, but they would eat hippos even though they're not supposed to. And the hippos were pretty fearsome in their own right. Yeah. They like to mess up crops, run over people. I mean, we think of them as very lovable hungry hungry hippos. Sure. But yeah, you don't really want to get too close to them because well, it's like an elephant. An elephant not going to, like, necessarily mean to kill you. If it means to kill you, you're dead. Sure. But it can still kill you just by you being in its way. Right. So you don't want to get too close to the hippopotami. Okay. What about insects, Josh? Who cares? The CDC, apparently they've gotten the malaria pretty well in check there, so you don't even have to get vaccinated any longer if you travel to that area, you're going to the city. If you're on an expedition on the Nile, you're probably going to need to go ahead and get the valeria not here. Even if they didn't recommend it, I would get it. Yeah, but they do recommend that if you're traveling there to take the standard anti diarrhea stuff, iodine tablets, water purification, all the good stuff that you're going to need to stay alive. Yes. And to keep from pooping your skeleton out, like that guy said. You said that one of the listeners, remember? Oh, yeah, that's right. What else? Josh denial today still booming. And you know, the way they farm there today is still really similar to the way they did it back in the day. I saw a video from last week of the oxen pulling stuff right on the banks of the Nile. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That is cool. The Arab Spring that led to the revolt in Egypt. Egypt and Sudan are the two big players with water. Now, to get around that, a bunch of other countries, some of the smaller countries started the Nile Basin Initiative, which is basically like trying to figure out how to do it on their own without depending on Egypt. And Egypt kept going around and blocking their lives because you need money for it. These are countries that have just enough infrastructure to keep their people going. So a new project that's going to really develop the country, they need some money for it. So Egypt would go to the World Bank and be like, you don't want to do that. So now that there's like, a leadership vacuum in Egypt, people are hopeful and worried because Egypt still has commitments to water agreements. And it's kind of up in the air at this point, like, how it's going to go? Are they going to get stingier or are they going to get better? Who knows? Interesting. I got one more stat for you. You talked about how densely populated it is. Yes. Despite the fact that the Nile River Basin only makes up 5% of Egypt's land mass, 95% of the population lives along the Nile. That's great. In Egypt. It's nuts. It is, but necessary. Yeah. And the Nile River Delta itself not just the Nile, but the Delta is so significant that the ancient Egyptians worshiped the Delta as a god. The god Hoppy. Happy. H-A-P-I was represented by a frog. Really? Yeah. Hoppy than delta frog. Yeah. And despite the fact that they do grow things like cotton and wheat and sugarcane there, and citrus fruits, it's still a lot of poor people doing the farming. It hasn't led to, like, this abundance of riches as farmers. No, it's pretty sad. I don't know what the problem is either. I don't know. I'm not sure. Are they exporting tons of this stuff, or is it mainly for their use, I wonder? I don't know. Objects carry a lot. Of power. They can tell a story about a person, a place, or a time in history. And sometimes they just look like household objects. On Mysteries at the museum. The podcast from Travel Channel Don Wildman travels across the US. To find the objects that tell shocking stories of American history. You'll hear about the plane beige uniforms that were at the center of the Stanford Prison Experiment, or about the failed invention from World War II that became one of the most popular toys for kids. Uncover the secrets behind these incredible objects and learn about the history of war, science, crime, and everything in between. Listen to Mysteries at the Museum on Apple podcasts spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cheering, laughing at us. They're also getting into hydroelectric power, which that could change things. Well, the s one dam. Yeah. I think it's been producing power for a while. It opened in 1970. While they're getting more and more into it these days to like more hydroelectric power, more dams. It's huge. So it's like 364ft tall above the river. What? And it's 12,000ft wide. Wow. That's an enormous dam. That is big. It took eleven years to build. Really? Yeah. How does that compare to the Hoover Dam and generation of power, I wonder? I keep asking for stats. I hate Monday morning. You got anything else? No. I wish I did, but I don't. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. And this one we're going to chalk up to if you want to know the entire world, we have to explain the Nile eventually. So that's what we did. We're going to kill the Amazon. Nobody can. We're going to shut it off. Got anything else? No, I should be asking you that. Chuck, you got anything else? I don't. Okay. Well, if you want to learn more about the Nile, you can type in Nile N-I-L-E in the search bar@houseforce.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, you know that we read our emails occasionally from our younger listeners. Yes, I do. We like kids and we like them learning stuff. We like to be role models. As far as our show goes. That's good. Caviar. This comes from a listener from Wisconsin. I'm sorry? Minnesota. Okay. You can't say it like that, though. I am Eli of Linstrom, Minnesota. It's a small town located on the nose of Wisconsin. That's why I said that. I'm 14 years old and have been listening to your podcast for about six months. I really like it a lot. It is straight to the point, yet it isn't so facty. You got that right. Unlike Radio Lab. But I really enjoy your sense of personality you had. You guys don't sound like robots. I was having an anger attack when I heard the Underground Railroad podcast. That lady wouldn't know real genius if it hit her in the eardrums. Harsh words. Wow. Your topics include a variety of pop culture, science, psychology, and some downright obscure ones. I listen to you on the lawnmower along with wait weight. Don't tell me. And how to do everything. I've heard of that one. Sounds suspiciously like our own, like, Catholic stuff. You should know. Yeah, exactly. One of the people who turned me on to your podcast is my Scout Master, Dana. He and I have very heated arguments and discussions about certain topics on our way to and from Boy Scout camp. Me, being the Senior Patrol leader, need to have a certain connection with the Scout Master in order for things to run smoothly. I appreciate what you guys are doing for me, and I hope that you write back. I would get all warm and fuzzy if you went as far as to read this on the air and Dana would not believe it. I hope you have a wonderful fall. Sincerely, Eli from Minnesota. Thanks a lot, Eli and Dana. Take that. Yeah, I think Eli just went up to Dana cover for that from that yeah, I just had s'mores the other day. You mean I are into s'mores right now. You build a fire. How do you do it? Hey, dude, I don't have, like, a backyard to have a fire in and set it on fire. You got a little city on fire. Yeah. Okay, well, if you have a good S moore story or how about this? If you have a good Autumn treat recipe, we're in the market. We want it. Okay, good pumpkin pie, perhaps? Something like that. Something that I haven't heard of. Good autumn cocktail recipe is always appreciated as well. I had a nice autumn beer the other night. The dogfish head pumpkin. Yeah, you've been talking about that ever since, too. I just had it two nights ago. What are you talking about? No, you didn't, because this is like the third time you've mentioned they just added two nights ago. Whatever. You're thinking of your other friend Chuck no, I think well, then Chad had one. Okay. Okay. So if you have a good recipe of some sort for an autumn treat, we want to hear it. You can tweet it to us, but it better be short. That's Syskpodcast is our Twitter handle on Facebook. We're at facebook. Comstuffynow and you can totally email us, totally at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join Housetoforks 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 Ashken, 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 the Electoral College Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-electoral-college-works | When you vote in an American presidential election, you're not voting for your candidate - you're voting for a group of people you hope will in turn vote for your candidate. Listen in to learn more about the strange process for electing the president. | When you vote in an American presidential election, you're not voting for your candidate - you're voting for a group of people you hope will in turn vote for your candidate. Listen in to learn more about the strange process for electing the president. | Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:03:59 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=16, tm_min=3, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=241, tm_isdst=0) | 39626375 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporxcom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W chopped up to Bryant, and you put us two together, a couple of microphones, some cameras. You get something called Stuff you should know. Cameras? Yeah. You're talking about oh, yeah. There's nothing here. Everything's very normal. Just proceed. Chuck? Yes. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? What's your time as nigh? I'm getting over my cold. Yes. You sound good. Do I? Yeah. Well, you sound better than you did last week. Yeah. I'll give you that. But I don't feel like I sound 100%. Not 100%, but compared to the swimming and snot phase. I will take this, man. It got really bad. Pretty snotty. I'm not going to go into it here, but wow. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Election time is nigh. I know. I tried to get right to it. Yeah. And I blocked you. That's why I wanted to do this one, because people perennially ask for the electoral College and other people say, I don't know what that is, but I want to hear about that, too. And then people in other countries just say, you guys do what? Yeah, it's kind of depressing. Yeah. Actually, I meant to look up to see what other countries did with their elections. It's all like kings and birthright and stuff. No one else votes? No. Okay. It's just the USA that does that good price. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. I don't really have much of an intro here. All right. It's more of a can you believe this kind of thing. Okay. How long have you thought that you went to the polls and cast a vote and the vote you were casting was for the candidate that you were casting that vote for, who that vote went to every time up until yesterday. So you didn't have much of an idea about the electoral cost? No, I did, and I knew sort of how it worked. But until you really get down to it, you don't realize that, wow, I'm voting for a person that's going to vote for a person. Yes, exactly. Because in some cases, it's not even on the ballot. Like the person who you're actually voting for. Okay. So we did what I like to do. We confused everybody, and now we're going to go back and explain what we're talking about. Okay. Yeah. I was confused, actually. I'm going to be ashamed myself. Right out of the gate, when it said every four years on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, I was like, why don't they just call it the first Tuesday of November? But then I realized that I guess if November 1 is a Tuesday, then the election won't be until the following Tuesday. Yeah. Because they got to get the Monday in there. It gets even crazier than that with the electoral College. They go the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December. Yeah. I think everybody had like, gout or something like that back out consumption. Right? Yeah, that's what it was. So that is when the actual Presidency is decided in December? Yes. Although everyone knows. Well, you would think. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about this. So the electoral college, the whole thing. Why don't we just stick to the popular vote, which is what everybody thinks they're doing anyway. Where did this come from? I have an answer. Okay. Back in the day when our founding forefathers and mothers were doing their thing here, they decided, I think I don't trust a regular popular vote. It's reckless. Yeah. As described in this article. And then another camp said, you know what? We sure as heck ain't going to let Congress decide the President. Right. So why don't we come up with a really confusing wacky system called the Electoral College? Yeah. Because it's, like, compromised. Do you want to have a bunch of uninformed rabble rousers who just revolted against the King of England a few years before voting, or do you want a group of elites voting? It's like Citizens United. You don't want either of them. So yeah, they just went and got confusing. Yeah. I imagine it was more confusing back then than it is today. You think so? Or maybe not. Maybe it made more sense back then. I think it probably did. Okay, so what did they come up with? What was the compromise? Well, the compromise is when it comes election time, there are these people called electors who actually decide the Presidency, and they represent that's equal to two US. Senators that every state has, plus the number of Representatives that each state has. Yeah. So that comes to 538 total. Yes. And three of those are part of the 23rd Amendment from 1961 that gave three electors to DC. Yeah. They figured since everything is based here, we might as well talk to them. A few boats. Right. It seemed like the right thing to do. Right. And did you say that was a 23rd Amendment? Yeah. Okay, so they actually cast the vote when we vote for the President, we are voting for the electorate. Right. And like you said, they're not always even on the ballot. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. And I bet you anything 90% of the people who vote have no idea who their electors are or how they got to be in that position. Right. They're like, I'm going to vote for Barack Obama, but who is this Todd Vinemaker in parentheses next to him? I have no idea who that is. Or if in some ballots you'll go to the end and it's like county commissioner, dog catcher, and then electors, and then there's a list of people's names biparty, or like you said, it's just not on there at all. Yeah. And one thing I was surprised to learn was our own electric here in Georgia. I looked them up just because I thought I might as well know who they are and their addresses are in there. Like, I can go knock on the dude's door in Decatur, like eight blocks from me and say, you, sir, have a great responsibility at your hands. Are you going to do that? No. Okay. But I could. You could? I think maybe you should reconsider. I'm just surprised. I don't know. I guess well, we know where the President lives, so that's not a big deal. But I guess I was surprised that all that stuff is common knowledge. I thought it would be, like, secret. Yes. I think they want that to go the opposite way. Well, no, it makes sense now that I figured it out. They do want everything out in the open, so everyone knows. But it just seems a little weird that the guy voting for the President is actually like half a mile from my house. Right. Or one of the guys. No, I'm with you. All right, so you've got this group of people who are actually voted in, and they meet after the popular election is certified. The Secretary of each State certifies the vote. The Governor whips up a certificate saying, here are all the votes that each candidate got. And then based on this, the Electors go and cast their vote the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December. That's right. I couldn't find why. I don't know. I guess it just falls somewhere in between the election and January 20, I guess, and that's what everybody it's like, Wait, Christmas, Christmas. We've got to make sure we're done in plenty of time. And then they cast the vote and then it's unsealed. Right. In red. That's right. Even though, barring any surprises, you pretty much know election night from either exit polls or whatever Dan Rather tells you, or whoever does it these days. You'd hope. Because that guy who lives a few miles away from you blocks or miles, I think I charted him out. I'm stalking him. It was less than a mile. So that guy you want his name? Yeah, John White. That's his name. So John White, the elector. Right. One of them, yeah. It's perfectly legal for him to say, you know what? Supposedly I am supposed to be voting for Barack Obama. Yeah. But I really like the cut of this Mitt Romney's gym. Yeah. That doesn't really happen, though. It has, but not quite like that. But in the modern times, I think one of the reasons why they published their addresses is so a good lynching container, it's throwing you out there like, hey, man, you can vote however you want, but everybody knows where you live. And if you think they get mad about referees making bad calls faithless Elector. That's what they're called? Yes. Which is a great band name, you think Faithless Elector or the Faithless Electors? No, I don't think so. It's too maybe for like a DC law school band. The Faithless Electors. I could see that. Stomach's girls, they have no future whatsoever unless they turn it into something like Scorpions or something like that. Right. And actually, Faithless Electors have no future as Electors because one thing you can probably be sure of, if you change your vote, then you're not going to be asked back to being an electorate in the future and you could possibly be fined, depending on what state you're in. Yeah. And you're probably going to be kicked out of your party. You're putting a lot on the line. Yeah. See, this is the thing that made it all clear to me. Each party has its own electorate. So that's why no one's going to turn. Like, the people that are put in the place as Electors are like staunch party line people. They're not going to turn and vote. The reason they're there is because they know that they're going to vote for either the Republican or the Democrats. They know where their bread is butter. Exactly. Okay, so let's talk about these people. How are these people elected? What do they have to qualify for? Obviously everyone has to have at least a jurisdicter, if not a PhD in law of some sort, like a jurisdictorate, some sort of political science degree. And probably they have to have several hundred hours of community service under their belt. No. Yes. That is not true. Are you sure? Nice set up, though. Thank you. You're being coy. There actually are no real strict outlines per the Constitution as to who these people are. Yeah. They are usually nominated by a state party committee. It says in here usually or sometimes to reward many years of service to the party. So they could be like big on the campaign trail for you or activists, maybe for your party. Or like a robotiler. Yeah, I guess so. Like the all time robotiler. But they cannot be senators or representatives. Yeah, and I would imagine former too, although I didn't see that. I don't know. I think active is what it is. Really? Yeah. Okay. You can't be a high ranking official in a position of trust or profit. Makes sense. Yeah. And this one, I love that they actually had to specify this. He or she cannot be someone who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion. Well, this obviously was put in by the people who were like, we can't just leave it to a popular vote. These people are crazy. Yeah. Like, I saw a musket in that guy's hand last week aimed at my office and now he's an elector. Right. He can't vote. Elected is still in there, though. Yeah. The insurrection rebellion thing definitely helped form this country. Okay, so you've got people who are active in their party who have been rewarded. Maybe they're activists sometimes they know the President or President elect. Right. Like they met him on the campaign trail. Yeah. And that's really about it. Each state has, I think, probably a different nominating process. But overall, when you have a candidate who is running for Green Party, democrat, Republican, as your party, as your Green Party, you all go down together and you pile into the camper and go down and the one that runs on veggie oil. Exactly. And you're all very depressed because you don't have a shot at winning. You know Roseanne is running for president for the Green Party. Roseanne Barr? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Auntie's being roasted right now. Don't think that that's not immediate play. Right. So they all go down to the Secretary of State's office and say, hey, these are our candidates. There are electors. Candidates for electors. Yeah. So when you vote for Roseanne, it should have all those people's names next to hers, or on Bipartisan, it might say, like, Green Party electors here's all the people. Or it might not say anything. But when you cast that vote for Roseanne, you are voting those electors. That's who you're voting for. That's who the vote goes to, not Roseanne. Right. Goes to John Goodman. That's who I would have as my electorate if I was Roseanne. What about Tom Arnold? No, Tom Arnold, they had a messy divorce. He'd be the party present, though. Well, John Goodman was never married to there's just TV. TV marriage, though. That's like sacrosanct. That's just my opinion. All right, so where are we? We're talking about how the vote goes toward not Roseanne, where you wanted it to go, not Tom Arnold or John Goodman, but two Todd Vinemaker and all the other electors. Right. So what's going on here? What's this process? Well, they literally just make their vote supposedly in accordance with the people's popular vote. Right. And I think what do they give to the Secretary of State? Right. That's who's like, it's registered before Election day. Right. So your name is on the list. Yes. So at the very least, if it's not printed on the ballot, the Secretary of State knows who the electors are. Right. And there's two ways to do it. 48 states have a winner take all system. I get that one. And then Maine and Nebraska have a district system. I'm just confused by that one. Okay, so the district system actually more closely follows the Electoral College system than the winter take off. Now, is this to vote for the electorate only? No, that's what confused me, I think. So let's say you have let's do the winner take all system. Okay. Which is so easy, but think about it. So let's say you are in Arizona, all right? It's hot. Right. And you decide to stay, you're not moving. Yeah, that wouldn't happen. Well, in 2008, and I believe it's the same in 2012, there's ten electoral votes. Yes. Right. So the Green Party candidate, Roseanne, should have ten electors associated with her. Right. The barack Obama should have ten electors. Mitt Romney should have ten electors. So when that person wins the popular vote and that's certified, then those electors are the ones those ten associated with that candidate are the ones that should go down to the state capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December and cast their vote. Okay, I get that. And also we should point out that in this system, that is the reason why sometimes the name isn't even on the ballot, because there's something somewhere in the state constitution that says a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for these ten people. You don't need to know who they are. Just trust us. Right, exactly. Okay. That's the winner take all system. Right. The other system in Maine and Nebraska is the district system. Right. So the winner take all system, that's a lot like a popular vote. Yeah. In the district system, you get two votes. The guy who won the guy or the lady or the gender neutral president, depending on when you listen to this episode. Whoever got the most popular votes in the state gets two electoral votes, the two associated with the Senate. Right. Then the other electoral votes that are divvied up by congressional district. Whoever won that congressional district gets that vote. Yeah, I get that. And I looked it up a little further and saw that there are scenarios in Maine, in Nebraska, where you could have three different votes cast for three different candidates, but they said it's never happened. Yeah. It's just theoretically possible. Mathematically, statistically possible. Yeah. All three. Okay. I don't know. It just seems like everyone should just be all on the same system. But it makes sense. But think about it. The whole reason you have the Electoral College or one of the big reasons is to prevent one region or one part of the state from wielding enough power to vote for everybody else. And I think that's what the district system is set up to prevent, too. It's kind of like, hey, man, you voted for this person, and we want you to have your say in the Electoral College. I think it's smarter. Oh, yeah. I think so. Well, then I do too. You swayed me good. Now, you said John White, I've got his number. You know, he could use this as evidence one day. For what? I don't know what's going to happen? What are you going to do? I'm not going to do anything. Okay, but if something happened, then everyone would point their fingers at me. Yeah, we heard him say it so on his podcast. Yeah. All right. I won't testify against you, though. I appreciate that. Should we talk about some of the hinki results over the years? Yeah. When things don't go quite as planned or go exactly as planned. Very true. That's a teaser. There have been four presidents POTUS, is that what they call them? Four POTUSes. Potai that have won their post without the popular vote. Yes. I mean, it's happened four times in this country, and all the ones up until 2000, we probably weren't as concerned with, because you're like, who cares? They're all old timing. They're all old time. They're wearing knickers. They were just working it out back in 1824 when John Adam's son, John Quincy, the queue, he 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson. This one was definitely Hanky because neither one of them won Electoral College. So if that happens, you defer to what, the 12th Amendment? And that's when the House of Representatives decides who the president is. Which would be really weird these days. Yeah. Don't you think? I think there'd be a lot of that would just be bad news. Yeah, that would be bad news. But at the same time, this is 1824, and there was still a lot of insurrecting, rebellious people, so I'm sure it was a little nervous back then. Yeah. So who won? JQ. JQ. Yes. This is the first time, and I think the only time that small states actually swung the election. Hayes carried a bunch of small states and basically, with their combined electoral votes, gave him the electoral vote. Although he lost the popular vote by a lot. By 109,000 no, 264,000 votes. He lost the popular vote. Yeah. We almost had President Samuel Tilden. Yeah. Samuel Tilden. The Haymaker. Really? I feel bad for the Haymaker all of a sudden. Yes. I mean, everybody liked him a lot more, but he's cobbled together a win from small states, and Colorado had just been let in. This is the hanky part. And they didn't have any popular vote. There was no vote whatsoever. They just did some electoral voting, and it went all to Hayes. So he put it together with Colorado. So with very little popular vote, and then in one state, no popular vote. Isn't that crazy? Anyone? And he went on to be the greatest president this country has ever seen. I mean, Colorado, I guess they were just like, we don't even have pens and pencils. Can you give us, like, a buffer? Because we're all boxes over here. We haven't even started unpacking yet. Exactly. So they said, oh, well, let's just give it to let's just give it to Hayes. Yeah. Good on you. Yeah. Who you got next? 1888, Benji Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 95,000 votes to Grover Cleveland won the electoral vote by 65. And this is one of the cases where they say it worked exactly like the plan, like we planned it to with Electoral College, because you can't just overwhelm someone in one region and get the presidency. That's what happens. So in six states in the south, the whole campaign pretty much was based on, we want the tariff, we don't want the tariff. Well, the north and everybody else wanted the tariff. Right. South didn't want the tariff. So Grover cleveland was like, no tariff whatsoever. And the south voted as a block. They had a bunch of people. He won the popular vote by like, 65%. It's a huge number. Yeah, but in the other 32 states he lost by 425,000 votes. No, he lost by 300,000. He had won by 425. Okay, so 32 states were against him combined. Six states were for him. And the Electoral College steps in and prevents the south from picking the President for the rest of the country flawless and then not flawless. Let's go to the year 2000. Yeah. So Bush B. Gore. Yeah. I was driving across country moving to Los Angeles during this election, and I made a self made video of my journey, most of which was me singing along to songs on the radio in my U Haul. And I've still got this. I should get it digitized and posted at some point. It's pretty funny, but I remember very specifically one part in the thing. I woke up in New Mexico and you can tell them all, sleepy, you don't remember going to sleep there, but I remember going to sleep okay. But I woke up and I said, yeah, here I am in New Mexico. It's weird. I woke up this morning and they don't know who the president is. And it's like captured in time this moment where I realized was sleeping my eyes. Like, that's weird. Yeah. I went to bed expecting because that night everybody was going to a Gore. Well, I think it was called a couple of different ways a couple of different times. It went back and forth, but when everybody went to bed, it was like Gore all the way. He won the popular vote. They knew it was close, but everybody had called Gore. And then they woke up and they're like, Wait a second. And then a huge mess cluster ensued afterwards which involved the court system. It involved hanging chads. Well, not only that, you remember there was this one county where their votes just got lost for a little while on the way to be counted. They just vanished and then reappeared later on. That kind of stuff. You should just basically be like, no, everybody has to wait. The whole state has to start over and vote again. Yeah, that might have been a good move. There were, like, accusations of disenfranchisement among black voters in black areas. Yes. Both sides had a lot of arguments, like, when you really start peeling back the layers and researching this, it will make you cry. And there are just like dozens and dozens of factors that many people never even saw on the nightly news, like military votes or disenfranchised voters in poor county. And then I think Gore asked for a recount in only four counties when people are saying that he should have asked for a hand recount in all the counties. And in the end, POTUS was decided for the country by less than 400 votes. Is that what it came down to? Well, I mean, it depends because all the different factors, like, do we count these votes? What about these these people meant to vote for Gore or Bush? And it was cloudy. And what about these hanging chads? So there's all different kinds of numbers, but I've seen one that said it was less than 100 votes was the deciding factor. Okay, so it came down to 100 votes. But Florida's winner take all. So that means that those 100 votes, since Bush got those 100 votes, he got all 25 votes in the Electoral College for Florida, which just so happened to put him at exactly the amount of electoral votes he needed to win the presidency, which was 271. It's crazy. I mean, I've looked, as many people have since then, like, the independent studies they did afterward, and it just depends on which ones you want to read. Today I saw, like, ten independent studies, and six of them showed that Gore was the definite winner. Four of them showed that Bush was. So it's just confusing and disheartening. Yeah, but what it did was shed light on a pretty flawed system in how we cast our boats, how they're counted, and they gave us the hanging chad. It gave us the hanging chad joke. There was also a bit of awkwardness that came out of that. Just a bit? Well, in one instance, there was kind of an overlooked bit of awkwardness. When the electoral votes are unsealed, they're unsealed by the President of the Senate. President of the Senate is the vice president. So in the 2000 election, remember, Al Gore was vice president. He was president of the Senate. So he had to read his own defeated Electoral College votes. Yeah. And there was, like, something of an insurrection and a rebellion among black congressional members who were protesting the vote and protesting, including Florida's vote, in the count. And he had to basically be like, it's over. It's done right. For the good of the country, let's move on. But there was, like, no emotion. Even the emotion you just had. It wasn't that there was less than that. For the good of the country, let's move on. Gore always got tagged as the robot. The robotron. But there was a video I might have talked about before that Spike Jones made of Gore that never was released, a campaign video that I think would have won him the election. Did he like his tie leased? No, man, he was, like, way funnier and cooler than you would think he was on 30 Rock. He did a good job on that. Yeah, but that was later. But this was before when he had the bad rap as a robot. But he led him inside his home, and it was just very casual, very laid back, and you're like he saw him as a dude for the first time, like cracking jokes and hanging out with his family and it was, like, very endearing. And he was like, do not release this. Yeah, I'm sure. And he lost the election. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Lisa buys out Gore, one of his books, and the information is transmitted and somebody runs into the I don't know what the vice president's office is called. The trapezoid office. Yeah. And it's like, Mr. Vice President, someone just bought your book. And he goes, well, this calls for a celebration. And he turns on the record player and puts on Cool in the Gang. Celebrate. And it's like, Celebrate good times. Come on. He goes, I will. They nailed it. Oh, poor guy. Yeah. So that's Gore. Yeah, that's Gore. So I guess on both sides of the coin here we have people thinking this is a great thing still and people saying, this is not a great thing. Yeah. For each instance, even the one we were saying, like, the Electoral college worked perfectly. There are people who are like, no, it's all messed up. He clearly won the popular vote, however you want to put it. Yeah. And other people say, like, Calm down. Right. Let's all just calm down. Well, one of the knocks against it is some say it discourages voter turnout because unless you're in a swing state or a battleground state, it's, quote unquote, pre decided. Yeah, but then again, so does, like, the two party system. We're in a very red state on that. If we were to not vote red yeah. We could make a case that our votes would be thrown away and that could dissuade voters from turning out too. And the people for it say, no, this is exactly what we need. Because it's a wage system. The states that have the most should have the most influence are the states that are the most populated. Yeah. Well, that's how it's divided up. Like, Alas is great, we love all that land, but land shouldn't be deciding who the president is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. Now I'm with you. It's people. It's people that counts, not mountains. People, not mountains. People, not mountains. What do we want? Time travel. When do we want it? It's irrelevant. All right. I like that sign. Where was that sign? I don't know. It was just some random guy who posted on the Facebook page. Everyone thought it was me, though, I guess, because facial hair. Yeah, there's more than me. I see mustaches out there. Yeah, man, they're all over the place. So over the past 200 years over 700 proposals have been introduced to reform or eliminate this process. Is that right? Yes. The most proposals for any constitutional amendment. I could see that. I think it's probably because executive orders aren't in the Constitution and therefore can't be repealed. Maybe. I know the attorneys, by and large, are against it. The American Bar Association polled at 70% in favor of abolishing it, whereas political. Scientists have generally supported it. And then there I could find three popular polls, opinion polls over the years. In 1967, 58% of Americans said they don't like it. In 1968, 81%, late 60s, they're just like, what is it, government? I don't want it. Yeah. And then in 1981, that declined to 75%. But by and large, the people are saying, or at least up until 1981, we don't like this process. Don't make us incorrect. Yeah. Whoever has the most votes should win is what many Americans believe. Yeah. Did we talk about the two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives because there were ties in the Electoral well, we talked about the one, which we mentioned the other. Oh, yeah. But Burr and Adam or Jefferson 18 one. Right. Yeah. There was a tie in the Electoral College, and it took 31 votes in the House of Representatives to decide who was the President, and it turned out to be Thomas Jefferson and then Aaron Burr was shot. That's right. That's the sad end of that story. No. Aaron Burshaw. Alexander Hamilton. That's right. Into that story. Right. And that's the sad end to Electoral College. Yeah. You don't vote, people. That's all we have to say. Even if you live in California and you're a Democrat and you think, hey, we're going to lock up those 55 votes, even if I sleep in and go see my medical marijuana doctor, get out and vote anyway. Or if you're in a state like Georgia and you're a Republican and you think, hey, we're going to carry this, you get out and vote, too. It's pretty much the fable of the rabbit and the hair that you're talking about is the hair, I guess the hair is the person who visits their medical marijuana doctor and over sleeps rather than voting that day. And how do you oversleep? You mean like sleep until Wednesday, not get up on Tuesday? That's happened, yes. Have you heard about Ohio? Well, that's a swing state. Yeah, but have you heard what's going on there? No, dude. The Secretary of State, a Republican, has decreed that counties that are typically blue, generally blue counties, are not going to have weekend voting and their early voting hours are going to be short compared to red counties that are going to have weekend voting and longer early voting hours. And there's no explanation for this whatsoever, so that's my problem. I know you probably can't do it nationwide, everything's the same, but within the state, every district should have the exact same procedure, the same machines, the same. Like, all of that should be the same. I can't believe there's districts that have like, here you do a punch card, and here you scribble in with the number two pencil, and here you just say it quietly into a booth and there's someone on the other side. Right. Or you blow out a candle. One of two candles. Yeah. That's another sentence. It's pretty messed up, though. I think at the very least, we should be allowed to tarn, feather elected officials who decide stuff like that. Anybody who's responsible for voter disenfranchisement, tard and feathered. I guess that's it. And that makes you an insurrectionist. Yeah. All right. I always knew I was. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about this weird process we have in the United States called the Electoral College, you can type those words into the search bar. Howstafworks.com it'll bring up a handy and out of date graph of how the boats were distributed in 2008. Is it out of date? 2008 was four years ago. Yeah, but isn't it still the same? Well, then it's a snapshot of a moment in time. Know what it is? Anyway, it's still a good article. Electoral College handysarchbarhousedupworks.com. And now it's time for Listening to me. Josh, before we go any further, I didn't realize you were going anywhere. We are coming to New York City. Yeah, we are. Our town. One of our towns. We are doing another trivia event there, which we're both really psyched about. Yeah. But we need some help with a venue. We need to have the trivia event somewhere. That's right. And we are coming. Friday, October 12. And actually, that is when the event is. That evening. That night. And we could use some help from anyone out there who has connections, good ideas. Yeah, whatever. Room for a few hundred people. I don't want to tune their own horn, but I would say that that's probably a pretty good projection of everybody who's coming. Either way, even if you don't have a venue. Guys, we're going to be in New York for your trivia event, so make sure you come out, details to follow, but mark your calendar. October 12. Yes, you're right. Your tiny little bar that you love that does trivia in Park Slope, probably can't go there, just to give you an idea. Although it's probably a great bar. Exactly. To give you an idea, we had our last trivia event at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, and it was pretty big, and we packed it out, and imagine we could pack it out, at least that or maybe a little more this time around because it's few years down the line. Maybe we can work out a deal. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Do you? Yes. Okay, so hit us up at Facebook or Twitter. Email to us. Yeah. Or you can email stuffpodcast@discovery.com and just put, like, New York venues in the subject line, and that's a great help for us. Yeah. In October 12. That's right. It's going to be awesome. Jess is already excited. I am excited. All right, back to it. Yes. I'm going to call this an Englishman. Englishman who went up a hill and came down a Mole. Came down a mole deers chuck josh and Jerry and then Princesses he actually says small hi to guest producer Map. Oh, nice. A small hi. I'm full. Hello, my name is Jack Mead and I'm an avid fan from England. I just started listening in October 2011. Just started in 2011. And tonight I just finished the 452nd podcast. I wish we had the sound maker. Yeah. The Haymaker from Grassleen with Josh and Chris Paulette Princesses terrible preach update to the most recent Shark Attack episodes. It's been a wild and exciting ride. You guys have come a long way. I just listen to the first one to see the difference, and not only is it missing the sweet dulce of tones of Charles W. Bryant, but Josh's voice sounds very weird. Yeah. And it sounded like we were recording in a can and I was really aggressive. Oh, yeah. Like, hey, what do you think? I can't even listen to them. Yeah, you poked me once. Yeah, sure, once. Anyway, I just want you guys to know your podcast has become a huge part of my life. Catching up with them has left me both a sense of achievement but also great sadness. So I listen to the podcast pretty much any time when I'm not engaging with other human beings. I've listened over nine days worth of your voices and speak to ten months. I probably heard you two speaking more than my own fiance's voice. I was thinking, man, what a lonely guy. But he's engaged. Yes. Like, dude, you should prioritize here. Let's pause. Going from that amount of awesomeness to just two episodes a week is making me feel confused and frightened. It's okay, Jack. You know, it's strange. It's like this is a pretty frequent report. We hear it's like a condition. Well, I just bulk up, you bulk less, and then all of a sudden you have to wait like everybody else. Like a schmuck. I just did the Firefly marathon. Yeah, good. Think how I feel. You watch 14 episodes of that, then the movie, and then you're cut off after four days and that's it. There's not another one coming every week. Yeah. So I'm just, like, looking at the walls now, wondering where Captain Tight Pants is. Is that what's going on with you? Yeah, I'm like, sad. I've been trying to figure it out. Everyone else I've talked to more than Firefly years ago, like everyone else, but we know you're paying. Anyway, I'll be in my bunk. You don't have a punk. I would like to think that I'm your biggest fan in England, but I guess that is statistically improbable. I very much enjoyed Chuck's terrible attempts in an English accent and your attempts at pronouncing our place name. I've been wanting to email you guys since I got into the podcast, but wanted to catch up first. What you do is truly amazing and genuinely enjoy life more with the podcast. Doesn't soundtrack crazy. I know you guys must get hundreds of emails a day. That's not true. So I don't expect to reply, but I'm just glad to know that you will read this. I look forward to the day that I can contribute information and maybe even get on this in our mail. Yeah. So, if I may make a quick suggestion, I would love a special podcast hosted by Emily and Yumi. I have no idea how to spell your wife's names, but he actually nailed it. Did he really? Yeah. Wow. Really? Yeah. Look at that. Wow. And then he wants to hear a podcast how Chuck and Josh were from Our wives. He said it's a long shot, but you never know. Pretty long. We call that the longest shot, but a fun idea nevertheless. It is a good idea, Emily. Be like, get your beat button ready. Right. Let me tell you a thing or two. Yeah, exactly. Well, who is that from again? Jack Mead. Thanks. Jack Mead. Well, it's a pretty awesome British name, isn't it? Jack Mead. It makes me want to put on boxing gloves. Great. To Mead. Yeah. So if you are a fan, who is going to why should we call this position, I don't know, withdrawal? Yeah, I guess that you're going through stuff you should know. Addiction, withdrawal and you need help. We will look into forming some sort of support group for you. Let's do that. Any ideas on how to create such a support group? Especially one that would have to be international and global and instantaneous? We're open to that. So we need to hear from you via Twitter at syskpodcast. Facebook. Comstuffyshow or you can send us an email with these details 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?" | ||
Oh No, Snakes! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/oh-no-snakes | If you think snakes are legless reptile carnivores, then you are exactly right. If you think snakes are here to kill you then you are exactly wrong. Learn more about these fascinating and undeservedly condemned animals in today's podcast episode. | If you think snakes are legless reptile carnivores, then you are exactly right. If you think snakes are here to kill you then you are exactly wrong. Learn more about these fascinating and undeservedly condemned animals in today's podcast episode. | Thu, 23 Apr 2015 15:00:12 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=15, tm_min=0, tm_sec=12, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=113, tm_isdst=0) | 47398309 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. There's stuff you should know. Snake Edition. Snake Fliskin Edition. Oh, man. Good character. Yeah. Especially if, you know, like it had to have been something of a joke that was like the Kurt Russell, because he was I don't know whether that came before or after the thing, do you? I think the thing was first. Okay. So I guess it wasn't quite as big of a joke. But think earlier in his career, like, Kurt Russell didn't even have friends. He was like such a squeaky clean Walt Disney movie kid. Yeah. All the normal kids hated him. Oh, really? Yeah, he was just known as like this just can't do anything wrong. Like squeaky Clean kid. Well, that was my first R rated movie. It was escaped from New York. Oh, yeah. Can you dig it? No, that was the warrior. Oh, yeah, that's right. No, I remember I called it was on, like, HBO or something. It wasn't even in the theater. And I called my mom to ask her if it was okay. That's how good of a boy that I was. You're like Kurt Russell? Yeah, sure. I know you're by yourself because you don't have any friends. Go ahead and watch it. That's funny. Yes. Man alive. That's a good snake story. It has nothing to do with snakes, per se. Oh, I've got a good snake story for later. Oh, well, I was going to say lay it on us, but we'll wait. Yeah, I'm teasing that one. We'll wait patiently. All of you who suffer from a little something called ovidiophobia, you can go ahead and skip this one because it's going to creep you out. I'm not afraid of snakes, and I'm still creeped out by some parts of this because we're going to get down and dirty with snakes. Well, here's my deal, and I think we should say this as a public service. I get creeped out by snakes initially, and then I'm like, okay, it's just a snake. But snakes are vilified and killed when they shouldn't be killed because people are scared of them. And that ain't cool. Years and years ago in the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, where I learned of the stuff that I know, I read about a study of snakes. Like, people took a fake snake and put it in the road and then hid behind some bushes. And that's what people did. And allegedly, people would run over the snake and then back up and run over it again. Really? Yeah. Well, according to Uncle John's bathroom reader, but yeah, I think people go out of their way to kill snakes. Yeah. I know some campers who, like, if they're hiking, will kill a snake if they see it. Bad campers. Yeah, that's not good. Especially considering only like 5% of snake species are venomous. It's pretty rare to come across a venomous snake yeah, there are some out there that will hurt you pretty bad well, sure, and we'll talk about those but for the most part, most snakes either kill their prey by constricting or swallowing you whole while you're alive. You're too big for most snakes to really take on so they're not going to mess with you. Sure. But you can't really fault people necessarily although you and I both do, for just killing snakes wantingly and indiscriminately because a study after study has found that we are really there's no other explanation evolutionarily primed to fear and notice snakes in our environment. Yeah, you found that. Cool article and I'd seen this before that it's on Popular Science yeah, they've done studies that showed that people are more apt because we evolved to not want to get killed by snakes to see snakes and like our peripheral vision than almost anything else even spiders, which people are creeped out by. Yes, and also spiders are deadly too. So it would make sense that over time, the people who were best at recognizing spiders and getting away from them would live longer to pass on their genes and so through natural selection, that would be the case. Supposedly the same thing happened with snakes but we are even better at recognizing snakes than spiders snake Detection Theory yeah, pretty good band name. It's been a while since we had a good band name that's definitely one of them. I just saw that on T shirt and a marquee simultaneously oh, really? Wow. That means it's a good band name. So if you want to know more about that whole study, you can read about I think it was in The Lancet in 2010 but basically it's like, yes, we can find a snake just about anywhere even in our peripheral vision right. And we are scared of snakes and rightfully so yeah, I know. I feel like I'm primed when I'm camping and hiking I'm just always sort of on the lookout. I'm never just like daydreaming and walking I'm always looking at the ground. That's smart, man. Because they will lay right across the trail and that they're not looking out for you. Right. So you stumble upon them and that's when an accident might happen yeah. The problem is with snakes you're looking at the ground you better be looking up too. Like if you're in the Amazon yeah. A lot of bow constrictors dangle from trees and then drop themselves down onto their prey which includes monkeys of which you, my friend, are one that's right. So if you had a boa constrictor that was feeling kind of froggy, they might come at you or those flying snakes that obviously cannot fly but they glide down quite a ways in Sri Lanka, right? Yeah. If you've seen these videos, they leap from a tree and start squiggling and then they flatten their body out and they can go a long way from where they started. Right. And it's not straight down, you know what I'm saying? No. So let's just reshape all this. Let's restate it. You and I disagree with killing snakes indiscriminately. It's just wrong. But there is a healthy and understandable preternatural human fear of snakes. Sure. Actually, just natural human fear. Yeah. Even Darwin wrote about it. Oh, yeah. He tried to do a test, remember? Yes. I'm not going to jump when the snake jumps at me and he's like, Keep jumping, and he's basically like, it's human instinct. Right. All right. So shall we start with snakes in general? They've been around a lot longer than we have. Yes. There are 2700 known species of this reptile, and one thing you'll find in common with all of them is they all have no limbs. It's something they can't wear a vest. Can't wear a vest because there's nowhere to put their thumbs. Right. Or there's no thumbs to put in the vest. No arms. Oh, I thought you meant just like you got to have the thumbs in the vest, too. Well, sure, you got it, but I mean, you have the arms to have the thumbs. That's from PewDiePie. Big adventure. Oh, see, I just trampled all over that thing. It's all right. They are carnivores, means they eat meat. Yeah. Which includes you. It includes meat because I'm just a big monkey and they're cold blooded. They are ectothermic, which means their inner temperature varies along with where they are. It fluctuates depending on how hot or cold it is. Yeah. That's all snakes. And apparently they tend to thrive. Well, all ectothermic animals tend to thrive and get bigger in warmer climates, too. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Which is why the biggest snakes you're going to find are in the tropics near the equator. If you think they look like legless lizards, it's because they sort of are. They're from the same order, which is squamata. And then there are a couple of orders. Saria for lizards and Serpentis for snakes, or ophidia, which is where the ophidophobia comes from. ophidophobia, which is a fear of snakes. I like Serpentis better. Yes, serpenta. Phobias. It just makes sense. Sure. If you look at a picture of a snake, which we have on this article, there are some pretty good graphics. If you look at their body, it's pretty neat, because even though they look funny, they are not so different from us. They have bones and they have organs and they have a skull and a brain. Yeah, they're vertebrate. Yeah. It's all just sort of squished in that long body such that it all sort of fits next to each other. Right. The thing is, although they have the same senses that we have in much the same way, but they're adjusted slightly differently, like, pretty cool. They don't have ears. Anybody who's ever looked at a snake would flip out if you saw one with earlier. But they do have the ability to hear the sides of their skull have little specialized bones that the skin covers yes sound vibrations of the skin it's transferred to the bone and that transfers to an auditory nerve where the brain processes it and says it's a jack rabbit and I'm hungry exactly. I'm going that way site they do not see in color and depending on the snakes environment and how they live their life basically their eyes are going to be quite different there are rods that have a low light distinguishing I sort of get the sense that it's like the fuzzy looking shapes and things not super crystal clear yeah like that camera trick they always use when somebody's coming out of anesthesia in the hospital that is probably one of the sizes sites the cones produce the clear images and if a snake like lives in a cave in the dark for most of its life it's not going to need that awesome vision it's going to just have like that light and dark sense if a snake lives above ground. Does all of its hunting above ground they have really good vision and great depth perception yeah and can actually adjust the focus from far away to near very easily and they actually can see some color oh. Really? Just not like anything in the range that we can see got you but they do have the spectacular extra vision yes like infrared stuff yeah so basically if you see predator snakes see you like that some snakes do snake species. Especially ones that live above ground because they are frequently nocturnal and they hunt warmblooded animals so they have basically little thermal imaging cameras that are on top of their normal vision yeah and I think that helps their periphery a little bit as well like they'll just see something hot next to me snake is eating that monkey yeah. They make that noise too that was a great noise and then we'll round out the senses with smell they have little nasal openings and they have a little olive factory chamber to process that stuff and they also have tongues which are not there to taste because they don't have a sense of taste now which is safe yes they're just there to eat. Not to enjoy it yeah so they'll swallow a pig hole and just be like how was that? I don't know. I don't have a sense of taste. I'm full but they do flick their tongue as anybody knows that's one of the defining characteristics of snakes but what they're doing is gathering odorants out of the air and delivering them to these little scent glands or scent organs called Jacobson's glands jacobson's organs. Yeah and that thing is basically hooked up to a secondary olfactory nerve that further interprets the air scent so I get the feeling of the smell they're pretty good at smelling yeah. Two times over that's right then they have their digestive tract which is going to run all along the length of the body. I'm telling you, look at this graphic. It really kind of spells it out. Everything is just elongated. It's a good died in the wool how stuff works illustration. Agreed. So you got your mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, small and large intestines, you've got an anus, and it's all stretched along the whole length of the body. Right? Exactly. You've got a trachea, you've got lungs, at least one lung. Some snakes have two, some even have a third. Yeah. And that's weird because it makes sense if they would have three if they just have one. That's odd to me. The reason it's odd is because when snakes are digesting their food, their metabolic rate increases because they're often eating things that can be 50% to 100% of their body weight. Oh, yeah. And when you're eating something that large and swallowing it whole, your metabolic rate goes into high gear. Sure. And you also need to produce a lot more digestive fluids than you normally would so their oxygen consumption can increase by up to like 100 times. Oh, wow. So you would think that they would have like, 15 lungs. Yeah. But apparently some of them just have the one. Interesting, but what is even more interesting, Chuck, is when you have a whole rabbit just in your mouth is completely full of a rabbit, you still need to breathe. So the snakes can actually extend their trachea, their breathing tube out of their mouth from underneath their prey. Yeah, basically like one of those Wiley Coyote cartoons where I don't know if he ever did, but Bugs Bunny definitely did. You just grab like, a reed and use it as a straw from underwater. Yeah. Well, imagine that if Bugs Bunny were in a snake's mouth and that reed was coming out from underneath them. That's the analogy I was going for. I got you. They also don't have a diaphragm, which is pretty interesting. They breathe by widening and narrowing their rib cage, literally creating a vacuum, pushing air in and sucking air pushing air out and sucking air back in. And between each of these cycles, they actually stop. They have an apnea that occurs right. Where they don't breathe at all. And sometimes it's a few seconds, sometimes it's a few minutes, but that's how they breathe. It's crazy and cool. So I'm pretty much enthralled by now with snakes. I'm not creeped out yet. Okay. We haven't really reached the creepy part. No, we'll get to those starting after we get back from this break. Chuck. Yes. You have the ability to shed dead skin cells pretty much constantly. They're always sloughing off. Yeah, we had a great episode on that. We did. What was it like? Skin. Right. Yeah. But also, did it come up and does your body regenerate itself every seven years or something? Sure. You're constantly doing that with skin cells. Snakes shed their skin as well, but they do it in a completely different technique and they mold. They actually shed their whole outer layer of skin every once in a while. Yes. Sometimes you'll see that in the woods and you'll think, oh, well, there was a snake and now he's not here. But here's his hollow body. Yeah. Or hollow skin. Here's his ghost. So what they have is they have an elastic skin that attaches to muscles. And then the scales are made of keratin, the same thing that our fingernails are made from. And those actually the number of scales they have doesn't change or the pattern as they grow, I guess the scales just get larger. Yeah. And they replace themselves over time. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah. So when the outer skin of the snake starts to get kind of worn down and banged up, the snake says it's time for some new ones. Yeah. So they start reproducing skin cells, but almost these specialized skin cells between their outer skin and their inner skin, and those things form this layer between the two and they liquefy, which helps, kind of well, first, it makes the outer skin a little more shedding. Yeah. Softens it up. But it also separates it from the snake itself so it can eventually slide out of it. And it gets to a point where it starts rubbing its chin against a rock like a kitty cat. Yeah. Right. And it ends up digloving its whole body, basically. Man, you love that word. It's a great descriptor. It is. And it turns out and we'll see this as we progress here, but snakes use rocks and things a lot because they don't have limbs. Right. And so they'll rub up against that thing, like you said, and just peel it off and just keep going until the skin is all gone. And they're like, I got a new suit. Check it out. Check out my bow tie. And I just have to do this again. How often? Well, it depends. This article said it can happen anywhere from it can start again a few days later. A few months later? A few days later. What a useless species of snake that must be. Like. All they do is molt the whole time. Yeah. Because it takes about two weeks to complete the molding process. So that surprised me. They're consumed by the quest for looking young. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. A few months later makes a little more sense to me. And I think it could depend, too, on how banged up they get. Maybe they're forced to mold a few days later, I got because of something like a Steve McQueen snake would probably molt a lot. Snakes, they grow their entire life, which is another great fact to me. Maybe the best one of the show, with the indeterminate growth. Yeah. They never stopped growing. No, they can just keep growing and growing again. It depends on how ample their food supply is what the ambient temperature is in their environment, but they can just keep on growing. Yeah, it slows down. They don't grow at the same rate, but once they reach maturity, they keep on growing. They can live anywhere from four to 25 years, depending on the species yeah. And probably more than that or less, depending on the hazards in the area. Yes. Like people with machetes. Exactly. All right. Are we to the part and this, I think, is what creeps people out a little bit, is how snakes move. That's definitely probably the creepiest part about it. Well, it's one of them. I think it's amazing. It is slightly disconcerting to see because you're used to things with legs and arms right. But when you see that slithering motion, it definitely I think for most people, it's just a little bit of a but if you stop and look at it, you're like, wow, they really have that down path. Yeah, it's a wonder of nature. And snakes are able to locomote because we said they're vertebrates. Their bodies are made up of scores and scores and hundreds, depending on the size and type of the snake, of tiny vertebrae that are attached to pairs of ribs and it goes all throughout the snake's body and basically each of these is a point at which the snake can contort itself. You got a bunch of these working together in tandem. The snake can propel itself forward using a number of different techniques. They also have what amounts to on their bellies, on their underside, basically tire tread. Yeah. Ventral scales. Right. It's pretty neat. And those are used to just I get the feeling they just grip on whatever it can grip on and help it along. So there's four main ways that a snake propels itself along. The one that I think is most popular among snakes these days is the serpentine motion bug. The serpentine motion, yeah, the classic S shape, also known as undulatory locomotion. And basically the neck contracts its muscles and the body is thrust from side to side and it says, I'm going, and the snake just takes off like a rocket. Yeah. And this can be in water or on land. If you've ever been in a lake and seen a snake swimming across the water, that will get you going quick because those things move really quick in the water and a lot of water snakes are poisonous, for sure. Yeah. Water moccasins. Yeah. We have those here in Georgia, of course. What's the other copperheads getting? Creeks and rivers, because they have no resistance points, obviously, in the water, they can just slink along quicker, but on the land, they use these rocks and branches and little divots and dents in the landscape to just propel itself. Like, I'm going to put my belly on that rock and shoot myself forward a little bit yeah. And then whatever is below my belly, it's going to be on the rock. Right. It just inches itself along. Well, not inches. These things can move in some cases, right. By inches? Well, by feet. Like the black mamba. 13 miles an hour. Wow. That is so scary. Can you imagine? Because that's a pretty poisonous snake. Yeah, I think it's number five on the list, which we'll get to. There's side winding, too, which is crazy. Yeah, those are creepy looking. It'll get your dog disqualified in a dog show. Is that one of the big strikes against side gating? Yeah, for sure. We did one on dog shows, right? Yeah, we did. Yeah. It's good for snakes, though. Especially ones where there aren't those resistant points, like rocks and branches and leaves that a snake can use to propel itself, say, like a long sand in the Sandy Desert. Yeah, that's where I've usually seen sidewinders. That's where the side winding goes on. Yeah, it's the same S shape. But the cool thing about side winding to me is if you slow it down and look closely, the major portions of the snake's body is off the sand when it's moving. It's like just sort of check it out. Yeah. Like, my front's on and my back's down. Now my back is down and my front is on. And the whole time the middle is off the ground. Yeah, there's just basically, like, the parts that curve down. Everything else is held up. Those are the only points in contact with the ground. I'm trying to hop. I get the feeling. Yeah. Like I wish I had legs. Doing my best here. I'm doing my best. There's the caterpillar, which I haven't seen much. That is the same rectangular locomotion, but it's up and down, like, creates a rippling effect. Like you would see a caterpillar. I don't see that a whole lot yet. Rather than side to side, the curves are up and down. It's like the breakdancing move, the worm. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. They should have called it the snake. They should have. And then my favorite, the concertina, which is sort of like the S, but I get the feeling it's like when you see the old hand accordion in a cartoon. Like, the front moves forward and then stops, and then the back catches up, then the front moves forward again. That's sort of what it looks like. Exactly. Yeah. And they use concertina motion for climbing stuff, like trees, usually. Yeah. There's another disconcerting thing about snakes, that they can climb trees and then jump out of them. Here we are saying you shouldn't fear snakes, and all we're doing is make people fear snakes. Again, another cool graphic, though, on snake movement on the article here at How Stuff Works. All right, so let's talk big snakes. Okay. Because the anaconda, I think everyone knows, is the largest snake. And those things are great swimmers. They can weigh as much as \u00a3550. Yes. Man, about those things, I actually enjoyed that dumb movie. I never saw it. Really? It was terrible, but terribly good, I guess. I had a really good cast for such a bad movie. Yeah. Like Owen Wilson and John Voight and Ice Cube. JLo I don't know. Marlon Brando. Yeah, he was the snake. I wish I could do a Brando impression so bad right now. Oh yeah? Which movie would you do? I would just do him as a snake. Mine would have to be as like Vito Corleone as a snake because I can only do random through his movies. That's fine, go ahead. No, I'm not going to do it. Okay. Make him an offer he couldn't refuse. That is good. That was definitely worth the wait. They can be up to twelve inches in diameter and you're going to find these dudes in rivers in South America. And they spend their time in the water because they're so large. That's the best way they can get around. Right? They're huge. Yeah. So there's again, less resistance in the water. So they've learned to be pretty good swimmers. And they are quite the hunter. Their eyes and their nose, or on the tops of their head, so very much like an alligator or crocodile, they can be almost completely submerged, but still keep an eye on their prey. Yeah, they're tough dudes. They're not poisonous. They're constrictors. Right? Yeah. They're related to boas. Yeah, they're related to boas. And they can hold their breath for up to ten minutes if they do go underwater, which is pretty crazy too. But I even found that article, it was an article on Smithsonian about the titanoboa. Yeah. This ancient I think it was after the dinosaurs. Correct? Yeah. It was in that very heavy salad day time after the dinosaurs, when all of the former prey of the dinosaurs were allowed to get huge. One of the things that got huge was the titanoboa. It's about 56 million years ago and there's a coal pit in Colombia that has yielded just a trove of fossils from this era, including the titanoboa where it was discovered. Yes. And I think the remarkable thing about this one, aside from its size, was that they were able to find a snake skull, which is a really rare thing, apparently, because when snake dies, their skull bones just sort of go away to the wind because they're in so many little pieces. Exactly. Like a human skull is basically two pieces, your lower jaw and the rest of your skull with a snake skull. And we'll get into why, but there's, like you say, a bunch of different pieces to them and when they die, just disintegrates. There's snake skull parts, but an intake snake skull, it's rare. Very rare. So then to discover an entirely new 56 million year old species of giant snake with an integral goal was a big deal. And they found the titano bow and they figured out that it grew to about 40ft long. 40ft weighed about a ton. Wow. So it was about as long as a school bust and weighed as much as a rhinocerosaurus. That is crazy. And it could eat gators turtles, like, everything. It was the king of this Colombian jungle back in the day. Yeah, I imagine it whatever I wanted to. Yes. I can't imagine an anaconda these days is impressive. Right. But 40 footer, that's something else. I mean, it basically is what they were predicting in the movie Anaconda Unwittingly. Yeah. It was probably about 40ft in a ton right, in that movie. Yeah, really bad CGI. Yeah. To make it all happen. Well, let's talk about eating a little bit. One of the remarkable things about the snake is that it does swallow its prey whole and it can do this. And everyone's seen the snake when they go to unhinge that jaw. That is what they're doing. Right. They have a very specialized feature, and it's called a quadrate bone, and the upper jaw connects to the lower jaw with this, and it can unhinge itself. And the rest of the skull is connected by muscle and tendon, so it can get up to like, 150 deg wide open. Right. And it's not just the upper jaw and the lower jaw that can unhinge and get wider, I think what did you say, 150 degrees? Yeah. It also can expand side to side. So, like, the bones that make up the front of the snake's skull are, like you said, connected by muscle and tendons, so they can stretch apart as well. So not only does it get bigger vertically, the whole mouth can get bigger horizontally as well. And again, a snake can eat a whole rabbit. That's right. And how it does that is and this is how the article describes it, it opens its mouth and begins to walk its lower jaw over the prey as its backward curving teeth grind up the animal. So it just sort of sucks it in, right. It depends on the species of snake, whether it has backward curving teeth or not, but not venomous. Snakes do have the backward curving teeth so that the prey can't get out. They can get in, but they can't get out. They check in, but they don't check out. Exactly. All along, they are crushing as the deeper it goes in the digestive tract, crushing this thing down, until eventually it's just broken down into nutrients. Just like eating a regular meal. Exactly. And again, it takes a lot more digestive juices to make this happen. Sure. So snakes just producing this stuff over time, sometimes it takes venom yeah. To subdue this animal, because a rabbit is going to be like, I don't want to go in that mouth. No, I'm going to scratch your esophagus exactly. Like, you might get me, but I'm going to take part of you down with me. So that's why they have these wicked little things called fangs. And they're in the upper jaw. And venomous snakes have the two hallmark hollowed out fangs that are just basically a delivery system, a sharp little delivery system, and they have glands under each eye called venom ducts. And that's where the good stuff comes from, right. They just squeeze it through those little things. Right. And supposedly the venom passes through other glands where more chemicals are added to it, and it becomes this amazing specialized brew. And apparently each snake species kind of has its own signature death cocktail. Sure. But there are some toxins that are found in just about all of them. There's neurotoxins break down your nervous system function, including things like breathing. Yeah. So that'll stop your life eventually paralysis, you're not going to be able to move, which is why it's a big one that helps them to feed, because all of a sudden, the rabbits, like, alive, but has that looking inside. Yes, I can't move. What's going on? The time is near. I hate Tuesdays. cardiotoxins are going to deteriorate the heart and basically say you're done beating, and then they have hemotoxins, and that will rupture your blood vessels and you're going to bleed internally. You know what else I found that's pretty neat? So those are venomous snakes. Remember we talked about like, what's the most poisonous animal or venomous animal in the world? We had an episode on that. Sure. So venomous snake is something that produces its own poison. There are some snakes that are technically poisonous because they eat like, poisonous tree frogs or something like that, and they collect the poison from the frogs and store it. I didn't know that. And then they use it to catch prey or as defense later on. But they're not physically producing their own poison, they're collecting it and deploying it. And they wouldn't have fangs either. No. Or else they wouldn't have fangs with the hollowed out delivery system. Right. Interesting. They do have fangs, by the way. They fold backwards in the mouth. Did you already say that? No. There's like pockets, though, that are in their gums, the roof of their mouth. They're hard palate. Oh, it's like a little holster. Okay. Because if not, it just go right through the bottom of their mouth and they look pretty funny. Yeah, they would. Fang holster. Another band name. I knew this was going to have a lot of band names. The venom can also have, if you heard our blood episode, agglutinins and Anticoagulants, which are either going to make the blood clot or thin out. Remember, in our blood type episode, there was a glutonation and was what happens when you mix unlike blood. Yeah. Not good. No. Again, like you mentioned, this is just another addition to the cocktail that's added to the other stuff. And then if you want to die another way, you could be constricted. Yeah. There are boas and anacondas, and they wrap around you. Well, first they'll get you in their mouth, right? So you're not moving. And they'll wrap around you and you finally exhale. And then they say, that was your last breath, my friend. So long, sucker, because I'm going to squeeze you so tight, you're not going to be able to inhale ever again. Yeah. And it's not just the lungs that they crush. They also crush the heart. They squeeze so tight that the heart is prevented from contracting and expanding. You ever had a boa constrictor? Like, on your arm, like a prince pad or whatever? Yeah. And remember the one that when we were shooting oh, yeah. Did you hold that one? Yeah, I did once in college. I was at a party and someone had a snake and I had a few drinks. I was like, I'm going to get over my fear of snakes. Now is the time. And he let the snake crawl around me and wrap around my arm. And I was like, all right, this is awesome, and slightly creeped out, but I was like, all right, I can handle this. It wasn't like if you put a tarantula on me. No, I could not handle that. That would be very freaky. Yeah. All right, well, after this message break, we are going to talk a little bit about snake sex. All right, are you ready to talk snake sex? I'm ready, man. This is the creepiest part to me. Oh, no, it's not. It's beautiful. Okay. A female snake is the one who sends out the order, hey, I'm ready to have some sex, right? Via pheromones. Yeah, pheromones. And I'm going to leave a little trail of pheromones everywhere I go today, because today's the day. And the male snake picks up that scent and is like, I'm going to follow this trail until I catch up to this lovely lady at the end of the trail. And then he finally catches up to her. Apparently, the lady snake is just going about her normal business. But the male snake is like, Well, I know what I'm doing today, and following the trail everywhere he goes. And when he does catch up to her, he says, hey, how's it going? And he does that by bumping the back of her head with his chin, basically like, hey, I think that's cute. Hey. Yeah. Hey, you. Yes. Pay attention to me. Okay. And then after that, after he's got her attention, he also is, like, sliding over back and forth, just basically being a pest. Yeah. And finally, the lady snake, if she likes the guy, she likes what she sees, right? Yeah. She'll be like, all right, fine. And up goes the tail. I wonder if a snake, female snake, ever sees a lizard and it's like, oh, man, if only it didn't have, like, those arms and hands, what they could do. I don't think that's what happened. Snakes don't think like that, do they? I don't know. All right, so she lifts her tail, and she said, I like you. I'm willing and able. Let's do this. And so they wrap their tails around each other, and they sort of just intertwine until their cloacas meet up. And that's where it all happens, my friend. That's where it all happens to male snakes. Hemi peens, which is his reproductive organ, says here's some sperm. That thing got a hemi. It's funny. Yeah. He delivers sperm to his hemipine. Why is this so awkward? I don't know. So, yes, the hemipines delivers the sperm, and the female becomes fertilized hooray. And now they can make baby snakes or lay eggs. Yeah. This is infinity snake. Sure. Like some of them do both. Yeah. And I thought that was unusual. It would seem like, I don't know, in nature, you usually don't have one or the other. Yeah. Or both. Yeah. I mean, maybe this kind of animal, like a bird lays an egg. Sure. But a panda bear lays or has live young. Right? Yeah. There aren't pan bears that can also lay eggs or have live young. That just seems a little too random. Differentiated egg hatch would be about the cutest thing that would break the Internet. If a little panda bear hatch from an egg, it was like \u00a32. That would be pretty cute. So if they have live young, they can give birth to anywhere from one to 150 snakes, which might be some people's nightmare. Yeah. Remember that part in Indiana Jones and Temple Doom? Not Raiders. No, they were at the feast at the Maharaja table, and they bring out that snake and slice it open. All the live days. They make good use snakes. I forgot, because in Raiders, the famous oh, yeah. ASPs. Hey, that was a good salah. Was that his name? I think so. Right? I don't know. Man, I'm going to get killed for that one. If it's not if they lay eggs, they can hatch them internally, hold them internally until they hatch or give birth to the egg, and then the egg will hatch. And like you said, that it's sort of the combination method. If they hold the eggs internally and they take care of their young, but not really, like, forever. Sometimes they'll even leave the eggs before they hatch. Sometimes they'll stick around and protect them for a little while. So it sort of depends. Right? It depends on the species. I guess the reason why they would have so many different qualities in the same family is that they've been around for like, 160,000,000 years. Yeah. And the variety of their distribution all over the world. Yeah. So speaking of variety, like we said, just 5% of snakes and poisonous. But the ones that are poisonous can be really poisonous. Not just mildly poisonous, but like, really deadly poisonous. Well, you mean venomous still? Or poisonous. Thank you. Yeah, I mean venomous. You're absolutely right. Yeah. I found a list of most venomous snakes, and lucky for us here in the US of A in Canada and Mexico, we only have the rattlesnake to contend with. Well, wait a minute. I thought we had, like, water moccasins and copper. Oh, no. As far as the most venomous got you like a water moccasin bite, you'll be fine. Oh, really? I didn't know that. I thought it was deadly. Well, I mean, if you just went back and watched TV, maybe, but you go to the doctor. It's not like I'm going to die in 30 minutes, because it's all about what it comes down to, is how deadly the venom is. I got bit by a water moxie, but Judge Judy's on what am I going to do? Decisions, decision. I got to see this verdict. The Eastern diamond back is the most venomous in North America, and that was the one that I encountered my snake story when I was a kid. That's scary. We were looking at property with my parents in the North Georgia mountains, and my brother and I were running ahead. Oh, yeah. And there was a rattlesnake, a big rattlesnake, coiled and ready to go. And your brother just pulled out six shooters, shot it once in the head, and twirled his gun and put it back. Right. No, the old mountain man came in with a stick just from nowhere, like, running behind us, and one jab got the head. Jeez. Yes. It was scary, man. And looking back, I'm like, I wish he hadn't killed the snake. But we were 4ft from this thing, and it was completely coiled with his head up like he was ready to go. Could have gotten you. Yeah, he could have totally got this. Number nine is the death adder. In Australia and New Guinea, they kill other snakes, but if you happen upon them, you'll notice their triangular shaped head, which is always a dead giveaway. Usually that's not a good snake. Right, or not. Again, a good snake, but not one you want to play with. And by the way, Chuck, if you encounter the four foot rattlesnake, you could expect a striking distance of two thirds of its body. Length is usually the rule of thumb for a rattlesnake. We were probably close to striking distance then, man. Yeah, that's scary. We were out in the woods, too. That wouldn't have been a pretty scene, you know, the old mountain man would have just had to put you down immediately, just lay it on your face. He probably would have done the old stuck it out with his mouth and spit, which I think is not the way to do it, from what I understand. Yeah. Vipers are next. Number eight. China, India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Middle East. Very fast, very ill tempered. The Philippine cobra. I didn't know this. Cobras generally aren't I mean, they are venomous, but they're venom isn't among the most deadly. Like, you could go watch TV for a little while. No. Probably not, but the Philippines cobra is the exception they have the most deadly venom of all the cobras. Right. Very neurotoxic there's the tiger snake. Yeah. This one can kill you within 30 minutes yeah. Supposedly pretty quick and before there was such a thing as an invented tiger. Snakes killed at a rate of about 60% to 70% also in Australia. By the way yeah. As you'll notice. That is a trend and when we talked about the most venomous creatures. Australia was always around we have our black mama. Which we talked about in Africa. Very aggressive. Very fast and they can strike up to twelve times in a row and a single bite is capable of killing anywhere between ten to 25 adults. Very deadly. It's still not the deadliest though, is it? No, there's several more number four, the taipan, also in Australia, can kill 12,000 guinea pigs with a single bite that's what they compare calories to as well it's like eight guinea pigs worth of calories the blue krait, the blue crate Malaysian and it is the most deadly of that species in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, 50% of the bites, even with antivenon, you will die. That is so scary. That's super scary. That is a deadly snake. Number two, the eastern brown one, 4000 of an ounce is enough to kill an adult human and the scary thing about them is they live in Australia near major population center so those are the ones, I think, that you can go out and find like the second most deadly snake in the world in your yard right. Or like a bar or something like that at work. Can you imagine that? And number one. The inland taipan. Or the fierce snake pan and this is another subspecies. But they put it on the list because they just said it deserves to be there and it is the most toxic venom in the world 110 milligrams of venom in one bite is enough to kill about 100 human beings or 5 million guinea the good thing about this one. Though. Is it's not super aggressive and you're not going to see one very much it's rare to even encounter one for that reason they don't have any fatalities on record oh. Really? Yeah, on record, right. And what was that list from? Was that IO nine or was it a list verse? List, verse, list verse. Put it together for us, man. Yes. I double check that. I think it's pretty accurate. I'd say just any of those ten avoid in the wild. Don't kill them though, unless you have to. Right. But always hike with a flamethrower truck. Have you ever heard there's no snakes in Ireland? No, is that a saying? Oh, yeah st. Patrick supposedly drove all the snakes out of Ireland that's one of the reasons he got so famous oh, wow. He did not do that because there are snakes in Ireland, of course right. No, there really aren't. There are in, like, zoos, in people's homes, but now there's no snakes in the wild in Ireland. Seriously? What about England, scotland and Wales? I think that there may be, but Ireland, when snakes were developing, was underwater and snakes never made it over there. So they really aren't snakes in Ireland, as far as I can tell. But are there in Scotland and England? I'm guessing yes. Surely one has crossed the border. And I mean, like, the fact that there are some, like, in zoos and in people's homes mean that there eventually will be. Right. Because down in Florida, people would, like, take pythons that they had as pets and just release them in the Everglades. And now the Everglades have a really large python population, a nonnative python population. These people are stupid and they didn't realize that that python was going to get large. Exactly. Yeah. Go humans. You got anything else? That's it, man. That's snakes. That's all I got. You got anything else? All right, well, since we have nothing else, we want you to go learn more about snakes. You can type the word snakes in the search bar athouseupworks.com and check out our podcast page for this episode with all sorts of cool extra links. And since I said cool, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys, my name is Kristen. I'm going to call this hey, guys, my name is Kristin. Okay, lupus. Lupus. I want to send an email thanking both of you. Even though I'm a relatively new fan, I really think you are saving my life. A year and a half ago at 22, I was diagnosed with lupus, which is a progressive autoimmune disease. And about six to eight months ago, I started also struggling with the depression. My boyfriend Ross tried every trick in the book and eventually I wasn't even getting out of bed. I started to have passive suicidal idealization. It's a very dark time. My family really joined together to get me help, though. I have a great psychiatrist, great therapist, and I'm proud to say I'm recovering you to factor in because my boyfriend recommended I listened to podcast on panic attacks. He found it to be a really helpful tool when he was trying to figure out how to help me cope. I couldn't leave my bed, but I did have my iPhone. So I listened and I kept listening and kept listening for days. Eventually I started laughing again and then started looking at the articles related to topics of the podcast and being like, this is like the same thing. And it really gave me something new and positive to talk about with my friends and family. I listened to the show. When I feel like I'm going to have an episode of panic, it helps me to breathe and to laugh. Oh, that is so cool. It is. It stimulates my brain and keeps me thinking, wandering and in awe of all sorts of awesome things. So thank you for your help, and please keep up the amazing work. Still have plenty of content to get through, but I hope that two of you keep making the podcast for plenty of time to come. We will. We have no plans to stop anytime soon. And that is from Kristen Wolf, and she's a native Atlanta, but she is in Washington, DC. So, Kristen, you should come out and see our show in June in Washington, DC. Yeah, talk about relaxing. Where do you see it live? Well, yeah, but it's also extremely exciting, too. Yeah, that's true. Thanks a lot, Kristen, for sharing that. We're glad we got to help you out. And thanks, Ross, the boyfriend, for helping her out. Good to go, Ross? Yeah. I mean nice job. If you want to get in touch with us, to let us know anything, how we've helped you out, how we've messed you up, whatever you can tweet to us at xyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheno. You can send us an email, l two stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com, and check out our home on the web stuffyouhardnow.com. 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How Anti-matter Spacecraft Will Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-anti-matter-spacecraft-will-work | There may be a Bizarro World in our universe. Every particle has a mirror image with a reverse electrical charge, and when these opposites meet an energy transfer 300 times stronger than nuclear fusion occurs. Could this reaction power spacecraft? | There may be a Bizarro World in our universe. Every particle has a mirror image with a reverse electrical charge, and when these opposites meet an energy transfer 300 times stronger than nuclear fusion occurs. Could this reaction power spacecraft? | Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:09:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=16, tm_min=9, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=298, tm_isdst=0) | 40691340 | 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. You Bryant. Yeah. There he goes. The Flash. Brian, that's your new nickname, Flash. Okay. I just went and got this beverage and came back. You didn't even see me. It's amazing. I didn't chuck is now the Flash. Charles W, the Flash bryant and the anti Flash, actually. Well, that's funny that you bring that up, because that would make you buddy bizarre. Flash. Yeah. Did you see this? Surely you saw this. Saw what? Bizarro something. Yeah. No, man, that was good, Chuck. Really? Yeah. So you just tied me up for my intro, and then I squandered it by complimenting you. But let me pick up again. Proceed. Have you ever heard of a place called Hitre? No. H-T-R-A-E. Now, is that something spelled backwards? It is Earth spelled backwards. And Hitrey first appears in the DC Comics canon in the 1960s. It is what we know and love as Bizarro World. It is cube shaped. Its inhabitants include Bizarro, Superman, Bizarro, Lois, Lane and their kids. Right. And then, over time, DC added, whenever they wanted to, more bizarro characters like the Yellow Lantern, Bizarro, Flash, who is you? Wonder Zaro, which is Wonder Woman but bizarre is yellow. On the opposite end of the spectrum is green. No. I'm going to get to the Cubes. Stop. You're blowing my intro. Bat zaro is the world's worst detective, which is the opposite of Batman, who is the world's greatest detective. He got to start in the Detective Comics. Okay. DC Detective Comics. Okay. At any rate, the Bizarro World, which you also know from Seinfeld, of course, and Buffy the Vampires later, apparently. That was a great Seinfeld concept. Yeah, it really was. It's based on the idea the concept of antimatter. Yes. Okay, so the idea that for anything there is in this realm and the state of matter that you and I occupy, there is somehow, somewhere out there, a mirror image of it. Yeah. The problem is, with Bizarro World, like you say, the mirror image of Earth is not a cube. And although Batman would be the world's worst detective in Bizarro World yeah, there's some holes in it, but again, this is DC Comics. Sure. But the idea that it's based on is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. In fact, the idea that there is antimatter has been proven definitively by people way smarter than you or I. Yes. So let's talk about antimatter before we talk about the basis of this podcast. What it's really about, I guess you could say, which is antimatter spacecraft. I have to say I'm excited about this one. This goes into our GWiz folder. Okay. All right, Josh, it should be a pretty quirky subject. How much do you want to hit me right now? No, it's more just like pain. Okay. Matter, Josh, was always typically defined as anything with mass that occupies volume. That's still true, but it's got sort of a different definition now because of antimatter atoms. Break it down. I don't want to go subatomic yet, but let's go to atomic. All right. Everyone knows an atom has a central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The human ass sign held there the electrons by a magnetic field. The nucleus is a mix of positively charged protons neutral neutrons. And when these atoms get together and have a party, they form a molecule. Yes. Eventually you get enough molecules together, you're going to have stuff. You have our podcast. That's right. Yeah. So that'll matter, which kind of helps. Right. So antimatter is the exact same thing, but the opposite all it is. For every particle that you just described, there is another particle that has the exact same mass, but it has the opposite electrical charge. So for electrons, there are positrons, which are electrons with a positive charge, which is a cool name. It is very cool. Protons got screwed. Yeah. Well, basically, protons are anti protons. It's just like with Adams with positively charged or regularly charged. How about this? We'll call it the straights, the normals. Okay. With the normals, you can build them into atoms and molecules and so on. Conceivably. You can build anti atoms into anti molecules, anti whatever. Anti substances, anti stuff, like you say. Yeah. So all of this was theoretical. There was a guy named Paul A. M. Durak, smart dude, who had the audacity to revise Einstein's theory of relativity equals MC squared. Direct said, that took some cajunes. It did, because he did it in 1928. Einstein's alive and well, and he's in full boxing shape. He's ready to go. Yeah, bring it. And direct revised the equation into E equals plus or minus MC squared. And then he stuck his tongue out at Einstein. And Einstein said, well, if you want to get picky, sure. Yeah. I thought that was assumed. He said, which of us wears flow length for coats? Indirect is hung his head insane. We both just said, very poor Schwarzenegger, almost. Which Einstein kind of was. Yeah. Who's? The Schwarzenegger of Math. So he had the cajones to revise that he was dead on because they actually proved this, since that time, like, four years later, that antiparticles do in fact exist. Yeah. Have you heard of Carl Anderson? Well, just from this article. But did you look into them at all? No. So he won a Nobel Prize for this. I did know that. But he found evidence of positrons, definitive evidence of positrons. Like a photograph, right? Yeah, there's like a famous photograph of it. But he used a cloud chamber. And a cloud chamber is a very sophisticated piece of equipment. This guy built his own. But a cloud chamber is basically just like a cylinder filled with gas that's saturated with water vapor, and then you shoot cosmic rays through it and see what happens. Well, the cosmic rays leave a trail in the water vapor. You can measure the density of the water vapor and determine what kind of particle just passed through. Cool. It wasn't enough for Anderson to create his own gas chamber. Not gas chamber. Cloud chamber. Yeah. Wow. History is not rooted that one out yet, but we're going to think differently of them soon. He created his own cloud chamber and put an electromagnet around it so he could direct these cosmic particles in a circle. And he noticed that when he did that, when he shot a cosmic raythrough, something that had the same mass as an electron was creating an arc going in the opposite direction. He said, Holy cow, that's a positron. He said, what is that? He said, hello. Million bucks from the Nobel committee. Is that what he won? I think that's what you win back then. Yeah, probably not, but it was like $20 million compared to today. Yeah, that's a good point. Anti Adams were discovered by CERN, our buddies at CERN that we've talked about, like, many times. I know, I forgot about them since they didn't end the world. Yeah. They created the first anti atom to the tune of nine anti hydrogen atoms. And at first this is before 1998, they lasted 40 nanoseconds. But they were there, and they had a record of it. Yes, but then they're like PFG, but still quite an achievement. Anti protons were discovered in 1955 at the Berkeley Bevitron Atom Smasher particle accelerator. What CERN is doing is something that's been around for a while, which is basically we figured out and not we, meaning you and me. We have no idea. But other people have figured out that using magnets, vacuum tubes, and beams of light, you can shoot particles at one another and smash them together. It's called atom smashers. Exactly. That's another name for a particle accelerator. When you smash them together, like they do at CERN, because they get the atoms going almost to the speed of light, and then they smash them together. And when they do, all these particles are created very exotic ones. Like you said, the anti atoms lasted for 40 nanoseconds well, back then. And what they think is that this is what the Big Bang looked a lot like. Right? Yeah. I can collect them now. Yeah. Which is step one? It is step one toward building an anti manner engine. Got to have them. I guess the question is, well, let's talk a little bit about antimatter, and what happens with antimatter comes in contact with regular matter. It's pretty awesome. What happens is they collide, and it becomes nothing but pure energy. It explodes. They both are annihilated, and it's 100% efficient, creating pure energy at the speed of light. It's the only reaction, as far as we know, that is 100% efficient, like you said, where the mass of both the matter and the antimatter particles are transferred entirely to this explosion. Yeah, you get some subatomic leftover, but it's nothing like car exhaust. Right. You know what I'm saying? It's not even like nuclear reactions, like nuclear fusion. Apparently, only 3% of the mass of the atoms is transferred. 97% is lost is like heat. And that is not efficient. No light is created by matter and antimatter interaction. I don't think heat is it's more like the radiation that's created is where you get all your energy. There may be heat, though, actually, because I know that one of the first things you have to do is cool it down if they're storing it. Got you. Okay. It's just a guess. So the problem is that this doesn't just happen when you smash our atoms together. This happens anytime an antimatter particle comes in contact with its normal particle, they annihilate one another. So there's this aspect of the Standard Theory, which includes gravity. No, it doesn't include gravity. It's everything else but gravity. Okay? Electromagnetism. Weak nuclear force. Strong nuclear force. And it doesn't include gravity, which is like that's the Holy Grail, right? Sure. So the Standard Theory says at the beginning of creation, the Big Bang, there were an equal part of particles and antiparticles. The problem is, within about 2 seconds, since antimatter and matter cancel each other out through these violent explosions, there should be nothing in the universe except light left over from the first 2 seconds when all matter canceled itself out. Right. The fact that we're here proves that that can't be right. And that there's matter but not antimatter. Right. So there's a couple of explanations for this, and one is that there is simply there was and maybe still is or isn't less antimatter than matter. Right. So the idea is that over time, there was way more matter than we have now, but that canceled out all the antimatter, and there is none anymore. We can produce it now, but it doesn't exist naturally. Right. The second explanation is that it does exist. Right, right. It's just kind of sequestered off elsewhere in the universe. Yeah. And there's sort of an addendum to the first one that it's not necessarily that there was more matter than anti matter, but there is a slight asymmetry between them. Right. And they've actually proven that. There was the NA 48 experiment that CERN did and the KTV experiment at Thermalab. And those are the two big daddies, this kind of research, okay? Not the Berkeley Bevertron I don't know about them anymore, but they directly measured this asymmetry and proved it like there is an asymmetry. And that could have been just that little bit. Could have been enough to matter one out, essentially. Right. And when you're talking about asymmetry, it's almost like a coin toss, right. Where when you create a particle, say, seven times out of ten, it creates an electron, and then the other three times it created a positron. That's the asymmetry. So there is evidence of that, but there's also evidence that there is a store of antimatter toward the center of the cosmos. I couldn't find much about that. They think they discovered it in 1977, but I haven't seen a lot of follow up. Okay, so let's say it is there, but have they done follow up? I don't know. Okay. But I have seen recent reference to that idea also that your star wars came out. No coincidence. If there is, I guess, a deposit of antimatter, then it is conceivable that there is an anti world there. There's anti stuff there. Wouldn't that mean there's no matter there, though, because it would be colliding, right? No, there's matter. It's just the opposite of what we have. Oh, there's more anti matter than matter. Yeah, because think about it. At CERN, they created anti atoms. Yeah. So maybe there is no matter there. Sure, it's just antimatter and everything there's us, but it's the opposite of us. Bizarro josh and Chuck. Wow. Two guys who are really talented at their jobs. Right? Exactly. Who has the adoration of people, not the scoring. Right. Okay. For the time being, until we find out if there really is a store of antimatter at the center of the cosmos and figure out how to go get it, and when they're open, we have to create our own, which is what CERN is doing now. We can do it, but CERN is doing they're just not up to snuff. They're creating two to three pic grams a year. 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. Yeah, I've got a couple of realities for you here. Since the discovery of the anti proton in 1955, the total amount from lear, CERN, and thermalab that they've created amounts to less than 1,000,000th of a gram. Okay. And at the current rate and it's picking up the rate is and that's what we're counting on here, but at the current rate, it would take hundreds of millions of years and over 1000 trillion dollars to produce 1 gram of antimatter. Wow. So they got to pick up the pace. Yeah. Not only do they need to pick up the pace if we are going to use antimatter as a propulsion device, the ultimate propulsion device. Because like we said, this thing is thousands of times more, produces thousands of times more energy than oxygen or hydrogen combustion, which is what we use now to power rockets, outer space interplanetary rockets like the Mars rover. That was hydrogen, oxygen and combustion. Right. This is thousands of times more potent, more powerful than those engines. If we're going to use that, we need to figure out how to make these engines more efficient. I got stats on that too, if you want. Let's hear 1 antimatter a kilogram annihilating ordinary, like colliding with ordinary matter can produce 10 billion times the amount of energy released with a kilogram of TNT. That's a lot. And a single gram of antimatter, the one that is going to take hundreds of millions of years to produce, would get you as much energy as the fuel tanks of two dozen space shuttles. A single gram. It is nuts. The problem is we're going to need tons of the stuff to make it to another star, which, you know, we're going to want to do. We'll be like, oh yeah, mars, who cares? About 10 grams they think could get you to Mars in one month. Whereas right now it takes about eleven months to get there with regular fuel. Right. Exactly. So finally we have at our fingertips the way to get from one place to another very quickly throughout the universe without having to take theoretical wormholes or use warp drive or anything that hasn't improved. This is possible if we can figure out how to store it and how to harness it correctly. Yeah. Create it, store it, use it, use it. Right. So there's three big components to an antimatter. A matter antimatter engine is what we should call it. The magnetic storage rings. Remember, you can basically tell particles to do what you want and that's just travel around in a circle by using electromagnet. Sure. So you need to store the antimatter that you create until you're ready to use it. You need to be able to feed it efficiently. So basically you need like a particle accelerator and then you need the magnetic rocket nozzle thruster, which takes that energy and uses it efficiently to propel through a thruster. The spacecraft forward, right? Or backward, I guess, if you want to go backward really fast. Very true. There are some problems with it, right? Well, yeah. Notably the fact that they can't create very much of it right now, even though that's speeding up. They have as of May of this year, CERN has stored 309 anti hydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds, about 16 and a half minutes, which is huge. Yeah, and I think they said like four years ago it was like nothing. So it's not growing exponentially, but they're really gaining steam with storing it and pretty soon they hope to be able to store these anti hydrogen atoms long enough to see how it reacts to gravity. Like do these things fall up or down? Nice. Which would be pretty amazing, especially if they fall up. Robert Hume would be very pleased. But that's still only 309 antihydrogen atoms, which is nothing. No, but you said four years ago, this is theoretical. 70 years ago. Four years ago we were just starting out, so I imagine we're going to have some sort of breakthrough. This is why we need a population boom. The more people there are, the more geniuses there are. They did think about they could storm in magnetic bottles, but because like charges repel though, that's a problem. So you can't just say, let's load this thing full of positrons because they repel each other and it's going to start leaking or something, so they can't store a ton of it at a time. And did you hear the Steve Howell guy? No, he's not. Steve Howell from yes or Asia. I think he's in Asia too. Wow. He was in yes. And Asia. That guy's like a Prague rock god. And GTR. I think too. Grand Theft. Terrible. No, the terrible band called GTR. What does it stand for? Guitar. It was like three incredible guitars and one band and they had one album and some cheesy lead singer. Anyway, different Steve Hall, but he has an idea for a vision based antimatter sale. So like a 15 foot diameter sale coated with uranium. And basically he said the key is to store anti hydrogen in the form of a frozen pellet. They'll evaporate slowly and create this reaction that hits the sale to propel it forward. It's like a time release. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Who knows if that's going to work? Another big problem is that anti protons release high energy gamma rays, which can penetrate you and your entire family and dissolve your molecules back into atoms. Isn't that kind of the key though to the propulsion or no, the radiation. Okay. The problem is, unless we figure out how to protect the astronauts, they're going to be exposed to it too. Well, and my question too, which I didn't see anywhere in any of my research, was can a human go that fast? That was my next question too. Remember Colonel John Paul staff from the Murphy's Law office and other things. He survived up to 46 jeep. That was the peak. But he also suffered red outs and lifelong trauma. Yeah, apparently right now if you're on a rocket and you're being shot up into space on a hydrogen oxygen combustion rocket, you experience four GS, which is substantial, but it's certainly not life threatening or anything like that. Right. But if this produces ten times the amount of thrust, is that what the GS this is my own envelope. Yeah, because remember, you can get there ten times faster. Maybe it produces ten times more thrust. Sure. It's still 40 G's that you have to insure the whole time. A month of 40 GS of just under. The most any humans ever survived. So why are they even wasting their time with this? Because they could send like a robot or something. But the thing is, can a space shuttle even withstand that? The textiles that we have? We have no idea. That's another whole aspect of this that's going to need to be worked out. Maybe we need to be stored in some sort of liquid for a month. Who knows? That's why this one's in the GWiz folder. I love it, though. I need to pretty cool. So I guess the point is you can look for antimatter spacecraft in the next couple of years. Way too many go by. That'll be cool. I can't wait to go see one of those launches. NASA will be over like that. Didn't they say that possibly in the next few decades? Yeah. So they must be ramping it up here soon. Yeah, it's true. Good for them. 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. If you want to know more about the promise of spaceflight, the dream of man and bird alike, you can type in antimatter spacecraft pretty cool stuff in the search bar@howstepworks.com. That's right. And Star Trek fans we know, we know. I think I said search bar. Athousepworks.com. Right, you did. Well, that brings up then listen or mail josh, you can be pretty excited because we get periodic updates from our amazing fan, Sarah, the eleven year old who is now 14. Yes, we've watched her grow up before her very eyes. She's awesome. She acts now, I believe, and plays at school. Yeah. She's become a very cool person, in my opinion. All right. This is from Sarah, the amazing 14 year old fan. Dear guy. Oh, God. Really? Another letter from Sarah? Well, that's not you. Boring. I did not expect this. John Hodgman? Yeah. How are you, Bob? Hi, guys. This is me, John Hodgeman. I'm surprised you didn't see me sitting here the entire podcast. Well, it was weird. You literally materialized in front of our eyes. Yeah, well, I was wearing my cloaking mechanism. Okay, well done. Wow. Yeah. You've been here the whole time? Yeah. What did you think? It was good. I was satisfied. Fair to Midland. Long. So long and getting longer. Yeah. We don't know when to stop talking these days, John. Well, it was an extremely interesting topic, but I feel like you guys went off into some weird, pop cultural rat holes and stopped talking about the topic for a while, and then you came back to it in a mostly satisfactory way. So I would say right down the middle for you guys. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. No, it's just this letter column thing. Yeah. The last few letters, I just realized that I don't have a lot of me in them. Okay. Sure. You know what I mean? They're, like, from other people, and that's not really what I want in a podcast. Sure. I just took the chopper down and I landed on the roof here at How Stuff Works Tower. Great. And I thought I would just come by and see you guys. All right, look, I just finished this new book, okay? Here we go. There we go. You don't get the chopper out for just anything these days. Well, almost anything. Okay. But it was the easiest way to get to Atlanta from Sri Lanka, where I was at my compound. But I'm a deranged millionaire now. Yeah, we've heard that. I've written a new book. This is the last book in my compendium of complete world knowledge, and it's called that Is All. But is it the last book or, like, The Last Crusade kind of confusing last book. Oh, I see what you're saying. No, this is the last one. Because not only is it called that Is All, and I don't have anything else to write about, but also, as you know, in about 13 months or so, the world is going to end. Okay. Or at least a Mayan long term calendar ends, and probably will. Look, we don't really know what's going to happen. I'm not saying that the world is going to end in fire and flame and famine and flood and all the other FS, leaving only John Cusack alive. Yeah, that's the ancient minds were saying that. Blame those guys. That's not me. But I am keeping John Cusack prisoner in my home, just in case because it just seems like something's going to happen, don't you? I feel a lot better knowing that those minds will say anything. You just stick close to John Kusak. I think you're going to be okay. That's the lesson that I took from reading the ancient mind text. Okay, good. Well, I mean, you're here. Yeah, well, see, that's the thing, because I used to be in all these ads and on television all the time. And remember, the ads are over now because we sold all the computers, I think. Are they done? Yeah, why else wouldn't we be doing the they must have sold them all. Okay, so good work for us. But that sort of left me just this idol deranged millionaire. Right. And so I wrote the book and I arranged for a major publishing house to publish it. And I can just afford to take myself on book tour wherever I want. And today I decided to come here. So you have a shopper now, if I may call it that. You can call it a chopper. It's more like a helicarrier. Okay. Yeah. What happened? Your zeppelin, it's great. You're talking about my Speed Zeppelin. Yeah. Hubris. Yeah, the Hz hubris. Right. Hodgman Zeppelin hubris that I bought off of Emo Phillips a few years ago. Yeah. Not only did that crash, it crashed and burned. Was it something ironically given the name? Yeah. Was it something that had to do with Emo Phillips uptake Maintenance, caretaking of this zeppelin nominated? It was in perfect condition when I got it. Okay. Do you know what I mean? But I just like when I'm having a zeppelin party. It's not a zeppelin party unless you have a fire breather. Someone should have warned me that zeppelins have this problem with fire. If this were a known problem, this was a known issue, as they say in the software development game. I wish I had gotten that memo. You know what I mean? It's not a bug, or at least in the zeppelin. The radiogram that I should have gotten. About that, we should probably tell everybody this is not a video cast, so we have to often describe things that are going on. John looks great. Yeah, sure. And he's holding in his hand a hardcover volume of his third book. The third and the trilogy. That is all. And it's handsome. And John, we do want to mention in all earnest here that the book is coming out November 1. That is so. It is called that is all. Yes, it is. By John Hodgeman. Correct. Available. Where would you like people to buy their local bookstore? Well, they should buy wherever they would like to buy. They should support their local bookstores if they like. But it is available for pre order now at this moment, even though it is not November 1. Amazon Barnes and Noble indie bound Powells. Great. All your major book selling websites. Be smart, buy this book. Because if you get the first two, you got to have the third. You're not going to know how everything is. I want to say be smart. I think it's more like stop being a dumb dumb. Okay. Fair enough. And buy my book. Fair enough. And if you would like to know what it sounds like, it sounds like this. I think your audience will enjoy this. I'll just read the entirety of the book. Good evening. I write to you now from my secret retreat in the Internetless hills of rural Massachusetts. Or else I am in my custom built survival brownstone in parksville Brooklyn. Or else I'm on the high seas, cruising on the luxury passenger ship Hodgemanic. I'm sorry. I can't tell you where I am. For reasons of safety, my location must be kept secret, even from myself. But it is good to write to you again. So much has changed in my life since I wrote my first book. The areas of my expertise, if I made what? Sorry. I love your book. Yeah, I've read your book. You don't mind hearing it again? I would want to hear it again, but I don't know if we have the time to read it in its entirety. This is a podcast. Pretty good. Yeah. What are you saying? There's no rules? Yes, I know. It's not like you got another podcast coming on after this one. We want to sell some of these, though. You don't want to spoil it. All right. But everyone's bugging me for the audiobook, and so I just figured this would be the easiest way, really. Okay. Podcast. So don't give it away. Interesting. All right. We're delighted to have you here, John. I'm delighted to be here. I'm drawing pictures, read some words. I could talk all day long, but we've beefed up security here recently, I noticed, and you just appeared. They waved me through. I don't understand how that happens. I got a ticket. A ticket? A ticket to your podcast. Live podcast taping. We don't have tickets. Oh, yes, you do. You do. I got it through my credit card. I know. Yes. My credit card for all kinds of perks. I'm not a sporting fellow, but if I wanted to go see a sports sports thing exhibition, like a sports contest, do you know what I mean? Where guys throw things. I just call up my independent concierge at my credit card, and they get me a ticket. And you know where my ticket is? Where is that? Well, let's say I go to New York jets game. Okay. All right. You know where my ticket is? Where? Nick Mangled shoulders. He's a player on that team. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. He's in your book a lot, too. I get to watch Narak. Can I stick around until next time? Absolutely. All right. Maybe we can talk about the coming nerds convergence then. Okay. But right now, look, I don't know if you guys mind a little plugging, but I'm doing some you know me, I love the advertising, but I'm doing some work with this company, this credit card company, and it's really amazing. Jeff, do you remember what page it's on? You said on the Diners Club it's not just a Diners Club card, you understand? It's the Diners Club Posh nine times diamond card because you had the Amex black and you said, forget that. You had the literally platinum card, which you put your gum on. Right, because it's platinum. Sure, because you can put the gum on it, get it off very easily because of the nature of platinum. But now you have been upgraded to the nine times diamond Diners Club card. It's not even a card. It doesn't even take the shape of it. I know what it is, but I'd like you to explain it. It's a feather. You actually get this beautiful feather in the mail, and you carry it around with you. Here. I have mine here. It's spun from gold. Is that right? Yeah, that is nice. Yeah, it's nice, right? Yeah. And then when you want to make a purchase, you don't have to hand over your card and have the guy put it in the thing. Do you know what I mean? Here's the thing. You go into a store now and you want to buy something that's very expensive, and you want to treat the person like their human garbage. You used to be able to just toss in their card and then look away like you don't care. Now you have to swipe your own card. Like, I can't live like that now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's why I have this nine times diamond P-O-F-H card. That isn't a card. It's a feather. This is a beautiful golden feather, and I just carry it around with me, and the purchases are, like, automatic, so if I want to buy something with it, I don't have to give them a card or anything. I just take the feather out and I just lightly touch their cheeks with it two times, and then it belongs to me. And you point out that some men have even met their wives this way, correct? Yeah, exactly. So because the thing about it is the thing about having a feather is not only is it beautiful and thus reflecting you as a deranged millionaire's love of beautiful things in the world, but it allows you to treat other people in the most humiliating way possible, which is really all a deranged millionaire really wants, you know what I mean? So it has these amazing perks I told you about watching The Jets. Came from the shoulders and mangled the ticket to anything. The ticket to anything. Obviously, you have a lot of travel services because deranged millionaires like me like to travel around quite a bit. So if you go to the airport, you have access to special lounges. Well, like what? Well, not like the Admirals Club, right, but like a really special lounge. Like all you have to do is you wouldn't even know that it was even there. I'm not even familiar with the Admirals Club. Oh, really? Yeah, that's where the Admirals go before flying the plane. And they drink Croc and they sing Sea chanting, and then they fly. Really? Okay, this is super secret, like, super exclusive lounge. And you just go up to you have to find a Chili's to go. Yeah, chili's Express. The Chili's Express or whatever it is. Which one? Those are two very different. The important thing is don't go to the seating area. Go to the big refrigerator bank where they have all of the different tacos and quesadillas. Like the pre made one. Pre made stuff. Right. And then you just gently brush your feather across a particular quesadilla. I can't tell you which. And then that slides back and there's a secret door into the special lounge. Did you know that? I did. And they have leather chairs, a full honor bar, a Japanese soaking tub, and all of the Chili's Express food you can eat. Oh, wow. Yeah. But this time it tastes like actual food. Wow. It is a special club. Yeah. What else does this card get you, John? I could go on and on. There are just so many perks. If you are a fan of the theater, who is it? Yes. And you have a hard time getting tickets to the Broadway Theater, right? Right. Well, let's say you get tickets and the show is terrible. Now, you're not going to go back, but what if you could call your concierge and have them call Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay a bear and make him write a new play to your specifications, maybe even starring a character based on you? Wow. Right. All of a sudden, that's in the Broadway Theater. Wow. And not only do you get the best seats in the house to that particular show, you get to watch as the ushers kick out the people who are sitting in your seats before you. Wow. Yeah. That's gratifying. And are we talking about a good theater or theater? Oh, the best. Oh, the best. Only theaters that are named for corporations, so we're talking about the good ones. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. American Airlines Theater, Foxwoods Theater, Chili's Express Theatre. Right. Yeah. That's where Book of Mormon is moving to. What if you don't have someone to go with you? Well, you just call a concierge and they'll set up someone to go with you. Could be Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC's. Last Word. Could be James Spader. He's huge right now. Could be Lonnie Anderson or anyone of a number of stable celebrity pals that will go with you to see the show based on your life that David Lindsay Bear had to write for you. So do these people sign up to be appal, or are they kind of corralled into this credit card? Usually they've done something in their past that they would rather not got. You sure they've racked up terrible debts, or maybe they're just trying to plug the last word with Lawrence and Donald MSNBC. Former Deranged Millionaires. Some. Yeah, there might be people, but that won't ever happen to me. No, that will never happen to me. What are you saying? I'm not concerned about that. Here's the best thing, and I'll leave it with this. After five years of membership in good standing, premium feather holders will be visited in their bedroom by an old man. He'll wake up and he'll be a dude. He'll have long white hair, and I'll be wearing, like, a white suit and a white tie. And he won't be wearing any shoes because he has bird feet. And he'll invite you to go with him, and he'll tell you to become naked. And then he'll give you a robe to wear. But the robe is, like, a little too short, of course. And then you go on a limousine and you go to a high rise, like a skyscraper in New York City that you never noticed before. Was that always there? Yeah, it was always there. You're not allowed to see it. It's actually a cigarette in the middle of Manhattan that you were not allowed to see, but now you can. And then you will go in, and you will go in, and you'll see all the other five year golden feather holders there. They're all wearing golden robes. You probably know them from the Chili's Express Lounge or whatever. And then the old man will encourage you to bathe in special waters and be anointed with special oils. And then you'll be told that you are among the very, very few to ever see the Ziggurat and be given the very rare opportunity to apply for the Diners Club Premium Excelsior POS D Card, which costs $2 million a year to join. Wow. And it's not in the form of a feather. It's in the form of a talking milksnake that you carry around on your fingers on your forearm all the time. You ever see how like an old Marx Brothers movies or whatever, how the really rich people are walking around and their hands are sort of, like, out in the air as they're holding a cocktail, but there's nothing there, right? Yeah. They're holding an invisible milk snake that they can talk to and can talk to them, but they're the only ones who can see it. Wow. And the other card holders as well. So just another four years for me and I won't have to ever see you back again. I was going to say, do you think you'll still drop by? Yeah, I'll drop by, but I'll keep my closing mechanism on so I don't have to drink. No, I'll drop by for the next three weeks. Maybe even yes. No. I'd like to come back and talk to you more about what's going to are you leaving and coming back? Can we have your word that if you do leave, you'll actually have left? You won't be hanging around with invisibility on it? No. I had them set up an office here at How Stuff Works as a safe room for me, and I'll just go over there and you want to stay here? I'll just hang out, and then when you guys are doing it again, I'd love to come back and prevent you from reading more reader mail. What is it? Is it tuesday. Listener mail. We'll be back in here Thursday because we record and then publish immediately. Okay, great. All right, we'll send you an Outlook invite then. That'll be terrific. Okay, good. All right, let's do this at least one more time, maybe. So that's it. We'll do it one more time. Yeah. Okay. That's it for this show. All right, well, our apologies to Sarah, the amazing 14 year old fan. Yeah, we'll get to that. If you are an amazing fan or how about this? If you have a question for Hodgeman, we want to know it. That sounds great. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can also tweet directly at hodgman. But don't you can visit us on Facebook at facebook. Comsteno. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@househoths.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House department staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-08-19-sysk-exploit-films.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Exploitation Films Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-exploitation-films-work | In today's SYSK Select episode, we learn about exploitation films. During the 1930s-80s, the work of directors operating in the shadows of Hollywood led to explorations in sexuality and violence that mainstream cinema wouldn't touch. Join Chuck and Josh a | In today's SYSK Select episode, we learn about exploitation films. During the 1930s-80s, the work of directors operating in the shadows of Hollywood led to explorations in sexuality and violence that mainstream cinema wouldn't touch. Join Chuck and Josh a | Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:37:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=16, tm_min=37, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=231, tm_isdst=0) | 46516442 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. 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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. Hey, everybody. This is Chuck. And welcome to this week's edition of The Stuff You Should Know. Saturday Curated Selects. This week, I decided to go with How Exploitation films Work from April 14, 2011. And this one was an easy pick because I like all of our movie episodes and I think Josh might have put this one together way back in the day when we recorded it, and it was just a really cool one. Not only do we get to talk a lot about just some of the great exploitation films, but just a little bit about the history and how they came about. So I just remember really enjoying recording this one and got great feedback on it. So give it a shot. And if you've already listened to it, give it another shot is what I suggest. Enjoy. 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 Stuff You Should Know, the podcast and kind of a special edition. Frankly, I am a little excited. Chuck I'm a little giddy. Shut your mouth. Yeah, okay, sure. All right. This is our first ever movie centric podcast, right? Movie centric, for sure. Yeah. We've mentioned movies, of course, all the time. But this one is like this is all about movies. Yeah, this is by popular request to an extent. People want to see like they want to hear us talk about movies and just do a movie podcast. So we decided to focus on exploitation films. This is also probably the first podcast. So we're going to say if you are a teacher of children in 8th grade or younger and you're using this as a teaching tool, you might want to go to the one before this or the one after. We don't generally try to alienate audiences. We're not attempting to now. It's just a natural byproduct of the exploitation film. Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid subject matter. Yeah. You can't say exploitation without Ployd. Yeah. They weren't exploiting just people being nice. Right. Nice floatation. So, Chuck, I went and saw a movie the other day called I Saw the Devil. It's a Korean movie. It's by the guy who did A Tale of Two Sisters, I think he said. More violent than old boy. Yes. Old Boy is one of the main characters. And I've seen old boy. I've seen what's the other one? He did the vampire movie. Yeah. Thirsty? I think it's pretty good. It was okay. This one, it's the most violent thing I've ever seen in my life. It's the most graphically violent movie I've ever seen in my life. The only reason I was able to complete because I'm like, this is a movie, right? But I walked out of it like it's so over the top. It's so gory. It's clearly an exploitation film. Yeah. Alive and well. Yeah. But the problem is, really, if you start to look around, john Hughes films technically are exploitation films. The Breakfast Club is technically an exploitation film. Yeah. There's a big wave of teen exploitation films, and we'll get to that, but, yeah, you're right. So one of the broader definitions of exploitation films is basically anything that's really, like, over the top, that is beyond reality, or that maybe focuses on people's fears, their sexuality, and basically just kind of serves it up in a larger than life manner. That's one way of looking at exploitation. Phillips yeah. Basically, they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects of humanity most times. Sure. Like murder or sex. Like weird sex, that kind of thing. Yeah, sex. Weird sex. Teenagers rebelling against parents. Sure. Like weird science. Have you ever been to a party where a couch shot out of the chimney and into the pond? It's a pretty nice party. I don't think it's ever really happened. So that's the vast definition of exploitation. But you and I are kind of qualified to teach a cinema class at maybe a low level community college at this point. After the amount of research we've done in this. And we found that academically, there's a much more distinct definition for exploitation and it's seemingly interchangeable term grindhouse. Right? Yeah. Is there a definition? Definition? It's more like a time frame. Okay. So from like, 1919, when they really first started making movies, to, I think, 1959 when the Hays Act went away, that was exploitation. And then after that, it became grindhouse. Okay. Got you. It's my understanding. Okay. So let's do this. All right. Well, that's the old joke, was that in the awesome documentary American Grindhouse, which documents this era of filmmaking, the old joke, one of the guys says is that exploitation films began five minutes after the camera was invented, the motion picture camera, because the director was like to his girlfriend, hey, would you mind taking your clothes off of the camera? Exactly. So it says something about the human condition that you invent the film camera. And the first moving images were often lured. Edison's film, it showed clips of decapitations and violence and guys fighting and naked women as film tests. So that says a lot about people. Like, all right, now we know how to capture things, so let's capture sex and violence right first. Right. And although that really kind of jived with public taste or at least public fascination, it didn't jive with the prevailing standards, the agreed upon standards. Right, right. I think you said 1919. But the first exploitation film was Traffic and Souls or While New York Sleeps. Right. And that like you said, exploitation often plays into fear. Is that played into the fear at the time of the white slave trade budget of 57 grand and gross $450,000, which, 1913, is a lot of dough. That is a ton of dough. And that was Universal Pictures. And they went, hey, got onto something here. Right after that was released, the Hayes Code. Will Hayes, the postmaster general and Presbyterian elder, and he was making 100 grand a year during the Depression. Unbelievable. Right? He basically said, look, we need to apply some moral standards to filmmaking. There's decapitation, there's naked breasts, there's white slavery. We need to cure this up. Right? Well, actually, there was a nudity yet, like those early test films. There were, but nudity. We'll get to that later. Okay. But yes, that's what Hayes tried to do. And like, prohibition didn't exactly quell drinking. The Hays Code actually sort of gave rise to the exploitation movement. Yes. It's like prohibition, just like marijuana prohibition, just like any drug Prohibition. Anytime you say you can't do this, you can't have something that you want, somebody else is going to operate in a black market. A black market is going to spring up. Simple economics. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. And that's where exploitation cinema came up. It's like, you can't get this from Hollywood because Hollywood has to play by the rules. But my production studio is my Model T, and let's go make this movie. Give me some money. I'm going to film a child being born close up and put it in the movies. Yes. And you can do that. You can make your movies all day long. But if they're never exhibited, then what good are you doing or not? Like they were trying to do some good, but you're not making any scratch. So the 40 thieves they talk about in the documentary were these filmmakers and exhibitors, basically, that traveled around like carney's, setting up these sort of gorilla film screens and some places sort of out of the way where they can't get caught and that was for the first time, they were taking films outside of the mainstream. Sometimes they weren't even theaters. They would show them in, like, VFW halls. If you want to go see Birth of the Baby films, apparently they were popular. Yeah, that was a whole genre. Early genre of exploitation. Well, and so was early on. A lot of the film centered around, like, how to wear a condom and sex hygiene films. Yeah, because there was no information about that out there. And so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, we're presenting their stuff like, this is a public service. People need to know this. Right. And making movies about it. And people were going on that excuse as well, like, well, I need to know about this. But at the same time, it's like, I want to see the craziest thing I'll ever see in my life, actually, on screen. Or they argued a lot of times that they were cautionary tales. If they were about drugs that are violence, they would say, hey, this could happen to you, so you should educate yourself. But what they really want to do is get the movie scene and make some money. Exactly. Paramount decision of 1948. This is pretty big. The supreme court voted that movie studios could no longer own their own movie theaters. At the time, there would be, like, the Paramount theater in Hollywood from the Paramount film production company. They would show their movies. Supreme court said, no more. And all of a sudden, exploitation films became a little bit more legit because the Hays Code kind of fell apart. Yeah. And this is postwar'war two. So people had seen a lot of death recently. Well, a lot of death. A little more. They thought ladies and suggestive roles were good for morale. And there was a little bit of loosening on the sex thing, a little bit post World War II. That led to another subgenre of exploitation film, the nudist colony film, which were pawned off as documentaries. Most of these were pawned off as documentaries, which legitimized them. But really, maybe it actually was filmed that in news camp. Probably not. Obviously, there were actors and actresses just engaged in archery. Naked or long walks? Naked. There could be no sex still. That was still no taboo. But it was just like naked pretty people. Right. Edison calling you. Which is interesting because you're not a nudist. So come learn about them. Exactly. Yeah. After that, through the history, we had things like the teen like you said, the teen rebellion of the 50s with rebels out of college and blackboard jungle and movies like that. All of a sudden, we're targeted specifically at teens, which was new, and then driving theaters were built so teenagers could see movies where their parents weren't going to be. Apparently, the adults didn't go to drive ins a lot at first. Oh, yeah, it's all kids. I didn't know that. So they showed exploitation films and then later the beach films, which were marketed as it's silly, it's Frankie Avalon, but they were decidedly weird and overtly sexual sometimes. And then, Chuck, if you'll notice, we're kind of progressing along in this chronological order, and each thing is kind of being built on the last. It was very much a step process. Right. And apparently that was kind of the form that exploitation filmmaking followed until 1960. It was centered around drugs, violence, sex, and in a lot of ways, they were presented as documentaries. They might not have a plot. Basically, one person would make some film and it would just break all the rules, and then a bunch of other people would make similar films. And that was the way it went. And then in the 1960s, things just started to go every which way, all sorts of directions. Right. So nudity films were a long standing thread of exploitation films. And then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Meyers. Right. King of the Nude is what he's called. Yeah, he was the first guy to he's significant because he was the first director to have films featuring nudity that actually were dramatic narratives and had plots and characters, and they weren't classified as documentaries anymore. And then the Ruffies came along and they offered up violence. Not the first time, but big time for the first time. Right. And that has a lot to do with the fact that it was the Kennedy was shot and the United States was just becoming increasingly violent. America lost its innocence. Yeah. And the other thing that really happened in the 1960s was the Hays Code officially went away, was replaced by the MPAA, and I guess the longstanding prohibition on Hollywood producing exploitation films, it was lessened decreased. And so studios were like, oh, we can make money over here too. Well, let's start making exploitation films. Right. And this is where Grindhouse is born. So my cinema professor definition of Grindhouse is big budget, studio backed exploitation films. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's mine. I like it. That's going to be a quiz question later. Yeah, I'll go with that, actually. Back up 1 second. We got to mention Herschel gordon Lewis. He was a director who had a co director. I can't remember the other guy's name. Do you? Anyway, he was a co director. And he was one of these exploitation guys that was getting frustrated because there weren't a lot of places to show your movie. So it was a pretty crowded marketplace. So he said, what's the one taboo that people will pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters, but that studios won't make? And it was gore. Oh, yeah. He was the first guy to start showing really disgusting bloody scenes in his movie, Blood Feast. Blood Feast? Yeah, which actually was three years after Psycho. And Psycho also did a lot for the mainstream assuring in of a little bit of gore. In that. But there's a shot of Blood following Janet Lee's murder, which I imagine it's pretty graphic for Hollywood, right? And that's what you think of you're like, oh, those stupid 60s, but they're so naive. And that was controversial. Not really, though. Like, if you stepped just slightly outside of Hollywood, you ran into things like Blood Feast or Last House on the Left. Yeah, well, that's West Craven so that was important because all of a sudden, a drug started well, three things. Political themes started popping up. Sexual freedom, the youth generation. Drugs started popping up in movies for the first time. Drug use. Well, not for the first time. We'll talk about reformatted, but teenagers were depicted as victims of violence for the first time. Like, Last House on the Left, I believe, is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film. Yeah. West Craven it was almost a snuff film. It was almost regarded like that. It's pretty hardcore. But yeah, Blood Feast definitely allowed Last House on the Left to come around, but it also probably more directly form the foundation for slasher exploitation, like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely. My bloody Valentine is another big one. The Crazy Grace. Yeah, that was an original right there's. A remake now, I think. Remakes. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. 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And all of a sudden, we had black exploitation or black exploitation movement starting exploiting the civil rights movement, basically. But the cool thing about black exploitation films is for the first time, you had African Americans as heroes. Yeah. And not heroes in a typical sense, not even antiheroes, but heroes that were like, they didn't ride into town on a white horse or wearing a white hat. They very clearly wore black hats if need be. Like, they would engage in crime. They would murder people if need be. They were basically like the face of black America coming out of the civil rights era. We're ticked off, and we're going to stick it to the white man. Stick it to the man. And we're going to do it in these movies. Chuck, I know the movie you're about to mention. This is it. You keep the faith in me. You my man. You're my favorite man. Can you take it, baby? So, yeah, that was a landmark film for a lot of reasons. One, because it grossed $4 million, and it made the major studio say, hey, you know what the black hero is marketable. Yeah. Well, you haven't said the title yet. Oh, I didn't? No. Okay. You got to say it right, too. Melvin Van People's film. Sweet sweet backs. Badass song. Nice. Yeah, that was well done. That was Melvin Van Peebles, whose last name may sound familiar. He's the father of Mario Van Peoples. For you younger cats listening to this one. Cats our age actually younger cats because he's kind of like, okay, so cats are aged up. Yeah. That's Mario Van Peebles dad. New Jack city. Yeah, exactly. So Melvin Van Peoples made this movie. He produced it, he raised the money for it. He wrote it, he directed it, he starred in it. And it was the beginning of the black exploitation subgenre, which is one of the most important genres of any American cinema absolutely. Ever. Absolutely. And so considering how important that subgenre is, this quote from Time magazine's film critic Richard Coralis should really hit home. Sweet Sweetback is, quote, without question or competition, the most influential movie by a black filmmaker. So this is a really big deal, right? Yeah. And it was just quickly on the plot. It was about a black man who was a gigolo, who had which is a male prostitute for you younger cat. And he had a deal worked out with the cops where he said, you can arrest me as much as you want. Release me right afterward, fill your quota. It's all good. And then one day, while the arrest is going down, the cops attack a black panther. And Sweet, Sweet back kills one of the cops. And then he just goes on a rampage against the white man after that. Yes. So you've got prostitution, tons and tons of nudity and sex, loss of violence and other crimes all wrapped up into a black power theme. That's right. And then to top it all off, you have what is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario Van Peoples, melvin Van people's son at, I think, age six. Yeah. He's a kid having sex as Sweet Sweetpack. It's his first sexual encounter with an older person. Right. And in the Cold podcast, if he became a cult leader, he would have taken a younger bride. Remember? That's right. So if you're interested in that movie and you can't get enough of Sweet Sweet backs badass song, you could also check out Badass Exclamation Point, which is Mario Van Peebles biopic about his father making that movie. That's right. And I have not seen that, but I wanted to at the time, and it just sort of slipped into the cracks. There's always Netflix, baby. That's right. And what happened with Sweet Sweetback was that, like I said, they told the studios that we can market this. And so they got a little more mainstream with movies like Super Fly, which were a little safer. Shaft movies that wide audiences would enjoy as well. Yeah, the ones that didn't scare the man. Exactly. Like Shaft is a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from the man. But the people he's not taking guff from are the cops who he's really on the same side as. That's right. So Chuck Black exploitation obviously huge. It affected everything from menace to society to blacklist. All of that came from Sweet Sweet back. And we mentioned the guy who directed this next movie, Russ Meyers. This is probably a seminal work. Let's listen to this clip from the trailer. If you want, ladies and gentlemen, go for a wild, wild ride with the Watucy cats. But beware the sweetest kittens. Have the sharpest claws for your own safety. See Faster pussycats. Kill, kill wild women. Wild wheels. Race the fastest pussycats and they'll beat you to death. Superwoman belted waffle and spoken yourself on this kid and hanging it up for nothing got nothing to do with the money. Cheers. The money. Jack and Jill. They make the mafia look like brownies. They make the mafia look like brownies. That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So that was faster. Pussycat. Kill, kill in 65. Russ Myers, basically women exploitation film, nudi film. Remember, Russ Meyers is king of the nudities. He made 26 movies. But this is probably, at the very least, is his best known, if not like his masterpiece. Yeah. And he hatched a slew of I mean, not that he wasn't legit. He was, but what mainstream people would call legit filmmakers came up through the Rustmeier film camp, basically. Yeah. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. And Russ Meyer, also, little known fact, another movie that's mentioned in this article there's an article on the site, by the way, called Ten Noteworthy Exploitation Films that this is based on. Yeah. Written by you. Yeah. Which I strongly recommend going to read because it has a lot of extra stuff we're not going to cover in this one, or at least extra movies. But Russ Meyer directed a movie called beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Too right. Which was the bastard son of the legitimate film. But beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a jiggle fest written by none other than Roger Ebert. That's right. The movie Roger Ebert ever wrote. Yeah. It was a very brief career, but that's an illustrious one. Really? Yeah. So if you're going to talk about the plot of Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, and I say that because there's three exclamation points. Faster. Pussycat. Exclamation point. Kill. Oh, no. Is it three exclamation points? Yeah. Okay. I thought it was a comma then. Two. All right. Either way, that's a lot of punctuation for a film title. Right. And it was about three bisexual go go dancers. They go on a crime spree out in the desert, and what do they do? They end up killing a man. And they kill the man and a couple keeping hero they basically empower her yes. Come on. With her by murdering her boyfriend. And she ends up on the crime spree with them. And they basically end up going to an isolated house with a wheelchair bound old man and his sons, who's a lech. They're all leches. They want these women. Yeah. But they don't know that these women are tough. No. Tough ladies. And the man and his sons, apparently, are allegedly have a large amount of cash stashed in this house. So it's kind of like a standoff of gall to see who will come out on top. Well, you know who comes out on top. Yeah. And this film was noteworthy for one big reason, was that there was a lot of dualism toward gender. So, on one hand, he's exploiting these women, and apparently he got women in their first trimester of pregnancy, so they were more voluptuous. Yeah. Not in this film, but in his other film, he would hire I can't remember the lady's name, but the star of Fester Pussycat Kill Ko was in other Russ Meyers films, got you. And he made sure that she was well into her first trimester to enhance her natural bustiness. That's right. Yeah. Her bosom, if you will. But the script, like I said, it was dualism because while he did that, it also empowered women because the women in his films bowed to no man. No, they were the champs. They were heroines, really, for the first time, but they were objectified very clearly. But at the same time, if you follow the script and really look at their characters, then yeah, they're powerful women. And this kind of kicked off a big slew of women exploitation films, sex exploitation films. Women in prison movies. Yes. Which leads sisters very big. At the time, women were lead actors for the first time. They were aggressors for the first time, still nude, often while they were doing this stuff. Spawn the television show The Facts of Life. But the interesting thing is they found that these movies appeal to men and women because men would go see it for obvious reasons. Women would go see it because it was empowering. And they didn't mind looking at the naked ladies because women are much more grown up than men are. Yeah, but Josh, the 70s also got a little schlocky, which in a sense was true to the exploitation model. They really went over the top. No more political statements, no more advancing of women's, gender or African Americans. It just got really shocking and outrageous at that point. Well, what happened starting in the sixties, it really took hold in the then from that point on was exploitation cinema early on showing a live birth, nudist camps. These are all geared toward adults in the then later on, big time in the audience became almost exclusively teenagers. Like those driving teenagers or teenagers anywhere. Who cares? But the audience was teenagers and the cast started to become teenagers. So it had a little more of a bent on what teenagers are having to deal with, like bullying. Like the kid in this next clip. Right. Which is, I have to say, one of my favorite movies from way, way back. Here we go with Toxic Avenger. Yeah. Meet little Melvin. He's a 90 pound weakly. Everyone hated Melvin. Yes. I'm going to take this map and shove it down your throat. They teased him. I'm going to do it with you. Okay? They taunted him. They tormented him until he had a horrifying accident and fell into a VAT of nuclear waste, transforming little Melbourne into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman side and strength. Melvin became the Toxic Avenger. So Josh, the Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that its film production company, Trauma, is very popular in their own right. Have you ever seen surf? Nazis must die. I haven't. But I know about trauma. They are master self promoters and marketeers. They were one of the first production companies to have a website, like a really comprehensive website. You should go on their website. Their whole catalog is really just well done. It's schlocky, but it's well done. Right. And Toxic Avenger follows the story of a 98 pound weakling who is picked on release seniors ghostbusters. Do you notice that 1984, right? Yeah. So it occurred at zero year zero. Yeah. We'll just put the null set represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of a window into a VAT of toxic sludge, which that's beyond bullying, really. Yeah. Basically it's a more twisted version of modern problems. The Chevy Chase film from a couple of years earlier. Okay, I haven't seen that one. Oh, You never saw modern problems. No, it's very silly. But he got Toxic Sludge dumped on him and had special powers from years early or prior or after. When was the movie? Yeah, it was two years before Toxic Avenger. But Toxic Avenger took it into a gore special effects way that Modern Problems never did. So the janitor, Melvin I believe his name becomes toxified. It becomes Toxic the Toxic Avenger, who beats the tar out of people at the health club where he was abused and mutated and has tons of sex as the Toxic Avenger because his newfound manhood is just irresistible to women. And one of the things that's noteworthy about the Toxic Avenger is that they actually tried to make decent effects. Yeah, it wasn't horrible, I guess you could say. Well, for the time it wasn't bad. No, they remain bad. And they probably were kind of bad even back then. But for Grindhouse films, yeah, they were great. Right. And it was also noteworthy because it came out of Troma Productions or Trauma Studios, and it led to a whole line of Toxic Avenger movies and schlock in general, which is basically like some crazy, horrible thing has happened. But we're not going to dwell too much on that. Let's see where the action takes us. Exactly. Like bad taste. The Peter Jackson's first film, right? Is a great example of schlock that came out of Toxic Avenger. And he had the film that followed Peter Jackson Dead Alive, which was at one point supposedly the goriest film ever made. Really? Although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that. Yeah, I think it probably has. I haven't seen that. A lot of seeing. Bad taste. And bad taste was horribly gory. But I think this has a beat. Yes, but I bet you, if anything, I mean, I haven't seen the one you're talking about, but is it more realistic? Gore? Yeah, with Bad Gore, these are aliens that are having their heads blown off. It definitely takes you at least a degree away from caring. Right. This is happening to human beings. I saw the devil got you. So it definitely has driven home a little more. Well, and the violence, even the gore back then, it was so over the top. Right out of Fangor magazine. It's like, dude, Fangoria is still around. Is it? Yeah, I figured it was. I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed. Oh, we do? Yeah, like a head will explode in scanners. And it's not disturbing because it's so clearly over the top. But these new movies are much more disturbing, if you ask me. I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic. So carrying on with Chucks and my siscal and Eber act, this is the second to last movie in our little list today. And this one's from way back from the 30s. So let's talk about reefer madness. These high school boys and girls are having a hop at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance, innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. Marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell. Or watch case. If you want a great smoke, try one of these. You will meet Bill, who once took pride in his strong will as he takes the first step toward enslavement. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? 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It even shaped the drug culture and how people looked at drugs. Marijuana at the time is this really evil thing that can make you crazy and kill people. Yeah, and actually, in very much the vein of early exploitation films, it was produced and distributed as a public service. The alternate title for it was Tell Your Children. And the whole thing is set in a PTA meeting where this guy is relating the story. And it's a story about lost lives, about murder, about guilt and paranoia, and all of it is fed and based on rampant drug use, which is really just a lot of pot smoking, which can turn you into a theme. And apparently the director, his name is dwayne esper. He did other exploitation films from the 30s, like Sex Madness, Psychotic Connections, and he made a name for himself, basically taking these things that may have originally been written as a public service and making them so outlandish that he exploited the people who were making these movies and created this legacy of just insanely, over the top exploitation films from the 30s. Well, and ironically, Reefer Madness, years later, would become not so much an anti drug propaganda film how should I say this? But a film that college students would sit around and watch while partaking and laughing at this whole thing. Yeah. And a cult film. Yeah. Because it puts drugs so far out there that if you, despite all the warnings, take drugs anyway and you realize that you don't turn into a fiend and murder somebody, reefer Madness basically dares you to go further. So it has the opposite effect of what I think its original intent was before Dwayne esper got his hands on it. And as a side note, I had trouble deciding between Reefer Madness and another 1930s film by a guy named Todd Browning called Freaks. Oh, yeah. Well, that was huge because it was the first big exploitation film prehaze Code and Last and Last. And it was an MGM film. Yeah. And it's widely considered a masterpiece. It looks great. It was well done. It's a huge it's a revenge movie, which is a very common theme in exploitation films, especially violent ones. But it featured Browning dared to have real freaks. I guess if you'll circus sideshow freaks star in this and they basically exact their revenge on people who have mistreated them. And I have not seen it. Oh, really? Yes. I want to. I hear it's just awesome. I can't wait. It ended his career, though, unfortunately. Yeah. And he was a popular filmmaker at the time. Well, hats off to him for staying true to his art. Chuck just took his hat off on the old cap. All right, Chuck, here's the last one that we've got a clip for which I think everybody will notice or recognize without even a word. There's not even a word in this clip. And you all understand what's going on. So here we go. So, Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of fist, of fury, of Mr. One, Mr. Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee kicking bottom. His first movie. Yeah. Which was originally titled well, it's still titled, I think, in Asia, the Big Boss. And in America it's titled Fist of Fury. Yeah, it was on the other night on cable. I saw part of it. Oh, yeah. I didn't realize it was his first one, though. I would have tuned in. Yeah. And it was first of what? Five major films. Right. And basically, it's the story of a martial arts student who's investigating the murder of his teacher. And it began the martial arts exploitation subgenre, which later would become just martial arts films, right, or was it still considered exploitation? It's all the same, okay? They're one and the same. Anything that even remotely resembles a Bruce Lee movie, specifically The Big Boss or any of them, is martial arts exploitation, technically, because, again, we arrive at that one definition. It's over the top. Like, Bruce Lee is taking on scores of anonymous thugs for 2 hours, one after the other for 2 hours, just beating the tar out of all these people without tiring, really. Everybody's kind of waiting their turn politely in a circle around him, and he has to beat everybody. Right. And then he works his way up and it's over the top. So it is exploitation, but it led to other films like samurai exploitation. Remember American Ninja? Remember the whole ninja film thing that came out in the mid eighties? That's from Bruce Lee's. That's Bruce Lee's doing well. Yes. And you go to the time when I was first going to New York many years ago, you go to Times Square, and this is still one. Times Square was kind of gross. And there would be just the martial arts movie store where it was all that stuff, man, like, thousands of movies about ninjas and samurai and martial artists and very big. Yeah. I was inspired by American Ninja to become a ninja member. I entered a ninja training with Tommy Roper, who had, like, more throwing stars than any kid I've ever met. What did you have, like, one throwing star? I borrowed his okay. I was not allowed to have throwing stars of my own. Oh, I wasn't either. Pissed. No, that was very violent. No nun Chuck. I think that transcends, like, religious background. It's like, if you're a good parent, you shouldn't let your kid have a throwing star. It's a good point. And as you pointed in the article, this actually led to another subgenre, which was Bruce Lee lookalike movies. Yeah. So he made five movies and then died at age 32 and 1973. So Big Boss released in 1971, he dies two years later. Everybody's like, no, so let's find some guys that look like him, which is really kind of stereotypical and racist for the west. Bruce Lee. L-I-E or l e? Oh, just l E? Well, Bruce l I or Bruce le. I don't think there was ever like, Bruce L-E-I-G-H-I don't think it ever got that far. But, I mean, they released dozens of Bruce Lee, and I just made air quote films. Yeah. So Bruce Lee created the martial arts exploitation genre and subgenre, and he inadvertently created the Bruce Lee exploitation subgenre of the martial arts exploitation subgenre by dying young and being very popular. Yeah. And which one was the one he had criminal Jabarin. Was that in the dragon? Yes. If you've never seen a seven foot plus guy do martial arts, you should check that out. And if you can't get enough bruce Lee. And you have a good sense of humor. Check out Kentucky Fried Movie, made by one Jerry Baker, who we met in Los Angeles recently and who used an expletive. To me, it was one of the high points of my life. It is. But yeah, Kentucky Fried movie awesome. Actually, when we met Jerry Zucker, we told him that our little speech we were given that night was one of the highlights of our career thus far. And he says, well, it doesn't say much about your career, does it? Like the first thing to do something funny. And we just kind of fond over imagine it. We should mention briefly, and it's in the article, but just as a teaser, the late seventies, we got Nazi exploitation movies. Nazi exploitation as a subgenre. Yes. And one of the major players there, movie wise, was Ilsa Shewolf of the SS. Yeah. Which led to Elsa Siberian tigris, and Ilsa Herring, keeper of the oil. Sheiks. There's a whole sex violence franchise, dominatrix franchise, that was based out of the Nazi exploitation film. One could argue that QT, Mr. Tarantino has made nothing but exploitation film since Pulp Fiction because the Kill bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. Definitely. Jackie Brown was a riff on Black exploitation. Death Proof. Obviously, that was what they were trying to do there. Death proof is car spoitation. Which follows in the tradition of Vanishing point. Right. Which was released the same year, is basically its rival to the founder, the founding movie of cardsploitation, tulane Blacktop. Right? Yeah. If you want to start an argument with an exploitation film buff, tell them Vanishing Point was the beginning of Cars, like The Task, getting mad at you. And then finally Tarantino with the Inglorious Bastards, which was clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation film. Yeah. Beaten Nazis to death with a baseball bat. About as over the top. And Lord Ash. Awesome. Yeah. And then Machete. I hated it. But, Robert, it was terrible. And of course, he was the other half of the Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terror of the Grindhouse double feature. Yeah. Okay. And Machete was born from one of the little fake trailers they made in that movie. Oh, is that right? Yeah, it was one of the fake movie previews. It is even as far as, like, a purposefully B movie. Not good. No. Well, death proof was okay, but I didn't like planetary that much. Well, first of all, before we get to today, we also have to give a shout out to porno's. Porno came out of the exploitation film genre, and it arguably had a lot to do with killing or pushing it into the mainstream, because once you had the movie Deep Throat and all of a sudden a pornography was on the screen, it's like you can't do an exploitation film about it anymore. If there's the real deal going on, it loses all its power and then a little movie called Jaws came along and all of a sudden a quote unquote B movie style movie made gobs and gobs of money. And that put a little bit of mainstream respectability on the map all of a sudden. So one might argue, Josh, that movies like Jaws and pornography kind of shoved exploitation films even though they still exist. They're sort of mainstream movies now. Well, yeah, I guess another word for grindhouse these days is blockbuster. Charles was the first blockbuster movie, summer blockbuster. And now you have to have summer blockbusters and they're always over the top, right. And exploitative of viewers taste. And not only Tarantino, there's other filmmakers out that are trying to capture that 70s vibe with overt exploitation films. Again, shot that way, shot on 16 millimeter film, stuff like that. Yeah. So, Chuck, I say our message to everybody is, number one, go onto the site, read ten noteworthy exploitation films. Number two, if that interests you. Like even the ten noteworthy exploitation films I chose don't cover even, I think, a third of the exploitation subgenres. So there'll probably be another article forthcoming at some point. If there is, we'll let you know and then go watch some exploitation movies and enjoy them. Yeah, watch the documentary American Grindhouse too, if you're into that. Yeah, that's a great one. It's free on Hulu. Actually, there's ads, but Hulucom has American Grindhouse for free. It is not safe for work in no way, shape or form. I was watching it at work and I was like, whoa, okay. Not really. Yeah. If you are watching it at work, tab browsing is what you want to be doing, right? And keep your finger over the mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab, right? And stay sharp. Or in our case, you can just say it's research. But you can't do that if you're an accountant at JPMorgan. You're just a sicko, a weirdo. That's right. That weird guy in accounting. So look up ten noteworthy exploitation films. You can type that into the handy search bar@howstuffworks.com. And now, at long last, it's time for listing or mail. Joshua, I'm going to call this it's a Small World after all. Dear guys, I'm a longtime fan from Minnesota and enjoy spreading stuff you should know. Goodness. Wherever I go, my coworkers at a local coffee shop know me for the trivia and information I abound in. He says he abounds in. I guess he's proficient in. Did he misuse that? No. I don't know. It sounds hilarious. It does. After giving credit where credit is due, which means us, several of them decided to subscribe to your podcast. Listening to the podcast has also given me an advantage. At work, we're thinking of the coffee shops daily trivia question, which saves people $0.10 on their drink. That is awesome. After relisting to how logos work, I set the trivia question for which company produces the most tires on a yearly basis. A Bridgettone. B goodyear. C lego bricks. You know the answer to that. Most people were surprised and pleased to find out it was Lego bricks, reminding them about the little playsets that their kids enjoy. This is where it gets weird. One of the customers read the trivia question, looked at me and said, it's a Ponzi scheme. No, that's awesome. And the best Italian accent he could muster. Everyone else gave him an odd look. I started laughing. He apologized and said he just heard it on a podcast. He had just listened to Legos, followed by Ponzi schemes. Long story short, we were both pleased to find out that we were both fans. We are now, on a first name basis, eager to discuss the most recent episodes. So these dudes in Minneapolis daniel. That's awesome. Thanks, Daniel. And his friend, now his new friend, his unnamed friend. He didn't name him. You wouldn't know him. He met him at camp. That's right, band camp. Thanks, Daniel. That's really awesome. Wow, that's really cool. Let us know if you tweet those daily facts for your coffee house, because we will start following you. Indeed, that would be very cool. If you want to follow us, we have our own Twitter feed. Seriously? It's called SYSK Podcast. 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What's up with competitive eating? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-up-with-competitive-eating | Competitive eating is a modern "sport" that's very popular in the United States. Join Josh and Chuck as they delve into the fascinatingly gross world of competitive eating in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Competitive eating is a modern "sport" that's very popular in the United States. Join Josh and Chuck as they delve into the fascinatingly gross world of competitive eating in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:27:38 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=16, tm_min=27, tm_sec=38, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=218, tm_isdst=0) | 27837839 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Everybody loves Altoids, the little mints that come in tens. But once again, if the men's are gone, you can do some really neat things with the leftover tens. People have made MP3 players, cameras, even stoves. Check out Househopworks.com Tennovators to find out more. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Tucker's, chucklehead. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck Bryant. You can just call me Kobayashi. No. Okay, good. That was a great setup, Chuck. Let's talk about it. Competitive eating go. Wow. You had something better than that planned out, did you? No, not really. Okay. Talking about like oh, I'm all full. I remember in high school, back when I was a younger man, there was this place do you remember Buffalo's? The chain? I don't think it's around anymore. I think they are buffalo's. The Wings cafe or whatever. Yeah, they used to have like an ongoing hall of fame or whatever. Wall of fame. It was plaque with people's names on it. It was like eating X number of wings. Right. And I had a couple of friends on there at the one by Spraybury High School, marion, Georgia. I think 50 or more got you on there. Did you go to spraybury? Yeah, I went to Spray Berry. Did not know that. Did you know anybody who went to Sprayberry besides Travis Trit and some guy who was on some reality show that I'm not? No, I did not realize that they went there. Yeah. Let me see. I think I had a cup. Chris Gardaki went to my school. He's an NFL punter. And where'd you go? I went to read Ann over in the cab. Yeah. Is it possible that I'm the most famous person that went to my high school? Holy cow. How cool would that be? Chuck. Weird. Well, Chuck, what's the most you've ever eaten? I have no idea. It had to be some, like, Chinese food buffet or something. I'll just say. Yeah, those things will kill you. Especially the big ones. I have, like seven buffets in one restaurant. One of my friends had to be helped out. I had to help him out with Hippie Robert, hippie Justin. Okay. Yeah. Close. Really? Oh, yeah. That was close. Yes. I don't do the buffet thing anymore. I learned that from my dad. How to master the buffet when I was very young. To get your money's worth. Yeah. And I've since learned my dad was busy gorging himself. My mom was stuffing things in her purse. How things were in the 70s when you went to a buffet. Yeah. Well, buffets have come a long way since then. They have. And why does anyone go to any cafeteria style restaurant? Especially there's usually a buffet across the street. It's like all you can eat or very tiny portions for the same exact price. I'll tell you where I'm going, buddy. I'm going to the place where people with oxygen tanks and rascals who are sweating grease are coming out of the doors. That's where I'm going, because that's where you're going to get your money first. Agreed. So, buffet. We've both eaten too much of buffets. That's our set up. Really? Yeah, but no more. Let's talk about competitive eating. There's nothing competitive about a buffet except vying for the white meat. Sure. That's the only competitive. That's your thing. There are people out there, as you may have guessed by now, that eat competitively. A lot of people. You've got rugby, you have hilie, poker, dolphin, lassoing, and competitive eating. Yeah, those are pretty much the top four or five sports. I don't remember how many I just said. Okay. Yeah, I would agree. I can't think of any other sport that would top those. No. I would put highlight in the first position, though. Would you really? Oh, yeah. Okay. So I guess we should just go ahead and say that there is an actual federation called the International Federation of Competitive Eating. The IOC e. It's been retitled. Major league eating. Did you know that their organization? Really? I think they still go by the IFOE, but they also go by Major League Eating. Yeah, it sounds more official the other way. I like the first one more, too. Just going to go ahead and say it. Did you know it was founded by Nathan's Hot Dog's publicity wing? It does not surprise me. I didn't know that, though. The rumor has it that the famous Nathan's Hot Dog Stand in Coney Island started competitive eating in Nice with four friends who sat down together and challenged each other to outeat hot dogs. And whoever ate the most was the better patriot. So if you can eat more hot dogs, you are better patriot. Yeah, it was, I think, 4 July, right, that they did it. I think so. And then I think one of mate, like, 13 hot dogs, and he was the better patriot. And since then it's been a thing, which is peanuts. It's measly. Can I stop doing that accent now? No, I'd like you to continue for the rest of the podcast. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. Are you going to? No, it sounds very Coney Island. Chuck. I appreciate that. Very Coney Island. I mean, you nailed it. So I think Nathan continued this for all 4 July after that, or probably the vast majority. Probably not during World War II. Nobody did anything during World War II. The thing is, people were still just kind of eating 12, 13, 16 hot dogs, right? Yes. Which is nothing compared to what they do now. Right. And there were other eating competitions. There was this one between a guy who played outfield, I think, for the Yankees, Ping Bodie. Okay. He was an Italian American, and in 1919, he engaged in a spaghetti eating contest with an ostrich. I challenge you, ostrich. Yeah, but I think that's exactly how it went down. And the ostriches was like, what's spaghetti? The ostrich just ate whatever was placed in front of it. Exactly. Eleven bowls, apparently. Really? Ping Bodi was declared the winner because apparently the ostrich either fainted or died on its 11th hole, depending on who you ask. The proud tradition of the Yankees. Exactly. The dark side. And Ping just probably ate the unconscious ostrich and then smoked five cigars right afterwards. And then you got in a drinking contest with Beef Ruth. Right. That's probably how that went down. Yeah. So there's also pie eating contests, a staple of country fairs. Sure. Yes. Back in the day, I think in the article at least, it said that that was more along the lines of, hey, let's tie your hands behind your back. Not necessarily see how many pies you can eat. It was a little more I wouldn't say challenging, but I think the fun gross. Yeah, more gross. Chuck, we have been organically and irresistibly led right back to standby management. I know you're going to say that. How could I not? Yeah. The great story that young Will Wheaton says about that he makes up, as the young riders the pie eating contest. Right. Wide load. Great scene. Fantastic scene. But yes. So that was a county fair pie eating contest. It just kind of goes willy nilly all over the place. Anybody who wanted to get 50 people or so to their store with all the needing contest. Well, in the 90s, as we were saying, I think George and Richard Shay, who I think may still run publicity for Nathan's famous hot dogs, took this whole concept and really drummed it up. They took it to the next level and then some. And they were answered by some people who have dedicated their free time, at least to competitive eating. I don't know exactly how this symbiotic relationship came about, but these guys put the call out there and some people answered it. What do they call Chuck? Gergitators. Gergitators. That's right. Gross. It is gross because you slap re on there and you're talking about someone who pukes. Exactly. And we'll get into the puke thing. I know. I can't wait just to warn people. It is coming. Yeah. So since the late 90s actually, since the 21st century, because I think for a few years it took a few years to catch on and people were still just really phoning it in, eating 13, 1518 hot dogs. Right. And then I think starting in about 2002, a little fella, I think, \u00a3160 out of Japan, 160 named Takaro Kobayashi. Which is why you said, Call me Kobayashi. Sure. Not to be confused with the attorney and the usual suspects. Okay. Diehard. I'm an idiot. Diehard, Kobayashi. The usual suspects. Yeah. That's Nakatomi. Yeah. Nakatomi Tower is what I was thinking. Yeah. No, I'm talking kobayashi and the usual suspects. I feel like a heel now. It's okay because I'm a movie guy. Do you want us to edit this part out? No. Okay. Thanks for leaving it in, Chuck. I'll be wrong. So Takiro Kobayashi hits the scene. \u00a3160 shocking red hair, can eat 50, 60 hot dogs in, like, eight minutes. Ten minutes. So all of a sudden, all these guys who were just like, oh, check me out. I ate 18 hot dogs in ten minutes. They're weeping at home in their garages. Right? That's it. They're done. They're over. Their careers are done. Kobayashi rocks the competitive eating world, and he attracts more and more people. Oh, yeah, big time. He owned it for many years. He did. And actually lost only because of a jaw injury. Really? Yeah. We'll get to that in a few. Okay. He's at the Nathan's Hot Dog 4 July hot dog eating contest. And that's the biggest one. There's all kinds of eating contests, which we'll get into that too. We keep teasing. Are we ever going to yeah, we're not going to get around to any of this. The Nathan's hot dog contest is easily the most famous and I mean, it's broadcast. The World Series is the Super Bowl of it. Yeah, it's broadcast on ESPN. Right. Have you actually watched it in full? I wish you wouldn't ask me that, because I did a few years ago. I don't remember why I was in front of my television at the time, but I did, and it was disgusting. It was really gross and hard to watch. And actually, I got to source this openly and honestly. I read this on Crackedcom. Okay. But there's this stuff called side food. It's the stuff that comes out the sides of the mouth that's kind of half chewed. I guess just through physics, two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time. So I think the rest of that law ends with so some of that stuff comes out of your mouth, kind of chewed up the sides of your mouth. I guess so. Yeah. I understand. It is very gross. Yeah, I had a hard time watching it. Yeah. You didn't make it through the whole thing? No, I watched it because I wanted to see if it was the big matchup between Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. Okay. So we've arrived at Joey Chestnut. That must have been 2007, buddy. I think it was the first year he won, which was 2007. That was the year that Kobeachi had a jaw injury that supposedly healed. And apparently during the competition, chestnut beat Kobayashi 66 to 63. And Kobayashi says, no, I had a jaw injury. And Chestnut says, eat it, buddy. I beat you, and I'm now the champion. And Kobi, she said, Dunk it in some water and I will eat it. Yeah, because that is a technique that many competitive eaters use. It is. And actually, almost all of them. Ed, grabanowski the grabster. Who wrote this article, and actually, for this article, went to an eating concert in Buffalo. Yeah. He describes it clearly. He didn't read the last two pages. I didn't. He describes this visit to it, and several people are there. Sonia Thomas, the Black Widow. \u00a3100 dude. \u00a3100 of Korean ancestry. Fury. Can we just go ahead and mentioned a couple of records she holds? Yeah, because she is littered over the Ifoc e record book. Sonia Thomas has eaten 35 brought worst in ten minutes. She's eaten 167 chicken wings in 32 minutes. She's eating \u00a34 of fruit cake in ten minutes. Can I say my favorite? Yeah. She's eating eight point \u00a331 of Armor Vienna sausage in ten minutes. Wow. All right, I'm going to go with this final one, unless you have one. She ate 44. 44 main lobsters, dude, in twelve minutes. And that's the meat, obviously, only, which is that was \u00a311 of meat. Also, you left out probably our most famous one, which is that. So, have you seen Coolhand Luke? Yeah, sure. The egg you know, the hard boiled egg eating contest. So Cool Hand Luke tries to eat 50, I think, in an hour. She ate 65 hard boiled eggs in six minutes, 40 seconds. \u00a3100 of woman stuff in this food down the throat. Yeah. She eats once a day, one large meal a day, usually from a buffet. Sure. In the article, she's shown helping herself to some sushi. I saw that. And, yeah, she's \u00a3100. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and she dominates right now as of what's the date today, Chuck? The 31 July. Sure. She is number six in the Isoce rankings. I bet she's the top female in G. Yes. I imagine she destroys the female competition. Yeah, it's good for her. Right. And again, like you said, she's \u00a3100. It's awesome. And she goes by the Black Widow, so it doesn't get cooler than that right now. Not any cooler. We talked about Kobe Ashi, who for, I think, from 2002 to 2007, held all the major records. Right. He just could not be stopped. Yeah. And so competitive eating. He's from Japan. The Japanese just dominated competitive eating until 2007. And Joey Chestnut shows up. Joey says, this guy has put the SmackDown on absolutely everybody. He holds some crazy records. He ate 103 crystal burgers, which for our friends in the Northeast are the same thing as White Castle. Pretty much, yeah. Sliders. And I don't know if they would be out west. Any clue? Are Jack in the Box small in square? No. Okay. I don't actually remember ever seeing any little sliders out there. I'm sure they have them. Now, if you go onto the IFOCE website and you click on Joey Chestnut, if you dare, everything that comes up. He just got this laundry list of records that he holds. Right. He's a champion eater, for sure. And he has kicked Kobayashi's butt in 708, and then just a month, or not even a month ago and set a new world record, right? That jaw injury excuse only goes so far. Yes. 68 hot dogs is what Joey Chestnut ate this year, and that's including buns. And let's talk about how some of these people do this. You talked about dunking in water. Almost everybody uses mostly water, but you're allowed to with any dip your food and a drink. I would use Guinness. He would get so full. You abuse everywhere. Have a Roman incident. Is that what you mean? That's what the IFOCE calls it. That's right, yeah. They call it a Roman incident. If you vomit, and I believe if you vomit on the table or on the food, then you're disqualified. But apparently, from what I understand, if you puke and it doesn't touch the table or whatever, you can proceed, I guess. But at the same time, they probably count that as Eaton. I think in 2002, Kobayashi had a little controversy where he vomited some up and it was counted as Eaton. He held most of it back, though, right? Yeah, he put his hand see, that's what's so gross, man, is these guys and ladies are eating the stuff, and they're just stuffing it in their mouths, and you can see this look on their face like they're going to die. And all of a sudden you see one of them like yeah. They put their hand over their mouth, and you know what's happening. Can I tell you a little story? Yeah. God little story from my past. Let's hear it. So imagine Josh Clark, aged 21, on July 15. Okay. Sleeping in a field behind a Home Depot. That would have been July 15, 1997. Okay. I'm in Athens, Georgia. Go Dogs. Right? And I'm at what was the I guess the Half Moon pub. Yeah, it was downstairs. Yeah. I had friends that work there. Downstairs from the Athens Coffee House, I think. So it was so I'm down at Half Moon hanging out with some friends, and I see a guy who I'm mutual friends with, or we have mutual friends. I'm sorry, but he and I don't really like each other. Okay. He comes over and he goes, hey, I hear it's your birthday. Let me buy you a shot. I'm like. Sure, no problem. So he buys me a shot of 252. Is that Bacardi? Are you ready? It's a shot of bacardi 151 and Wild Turkey 101. There is no reason for the shot to exist in the universe, right? Yeah. So the guy buys me the shot. I take it, not wanting to look like a coward and already kind of ripped, I take the shot, and I feel it immediately starting to come back up. And not just that, everything started to come back up. I throw my hand in front of my mouth and stop it just before it comes back up, wipe my mouth, put the shot glass down, look the guy in the eye and say, thanks for the shot, and turn around and walk away. Because he was trying to get me to puke. Right, right. I showed him. That's what happened in my head. You want to hear what happened in reality? The guy buys me the shot, I take it, throw my hand up to my mouth, puke everywhere, including the bar, on the guy, on myself, put the shot glass down, looked him in the eye and say, thanks for the shot, and turned around and walked away. You're kidding. No. And you were disqualified? I was disqualified because it would have gotten on some food or something. Oh, yeah. 21st birthday. I had friends at work there at the time. I bet they remember that night. I'm going to ask them. You should ask my buddy Clay. Have them sending some list in the mail. We'll read it. Okay. All right. So, Chuck, let's talk about I think we're going to talk about how people do this, right? Yeah, I think we're on the water thing, and we got really sidetracked by vomit. Kobihi has a little technique called Japaneseing or Solomoning. Yeah. Breaking the wiener in half. Separating the wiener from the bun. Breaking the wiener in half. Stuffing the wiener in his mouth with both hands at the same time. At the same time to get the whole thing, and then dunking the bun very quickly in the water. And at that point, the bun is just like a soppy mess. It goes down pretty easy, I mentioned. Right. I was doing a little research, dude, and I got to tell you, crystals is mixing it up. Their hamburger eating contest in September coming up. They have a no dunking rule. Really? Yeah, and they're introducing their big burgers. Wow. So it's going to be all crazy. It's going to get messy. Yeah, but yeah, they won't be allowed to dunk, which is actually a radical departure from standard rules. Yeah. I prefer to see a straight up contest. I mean, if it's not 68 hot dogs, who cares? What if it's, like, 40? But it's genuine hot dog eating? No dunking, no water, lots of vomiting. Yeah. That's what we all want, Chuck. We should probably put, like, a needle coming off of a record at this point. Right. Thank you. We've gotten kind of all Delta Forcey on this competitive eating. Even though I think it's disgusting, not everybody thinks it's good or great or whatever. A lot of people, including the fine, fine actor star of Van Wilder, Ryan Reynolds, thinks that basically it's a real symbol of America's obese wastefulness. Sure. And you know what? That's not an argument that's easily defended. No, it really isn't, because you think, well, this guy just ate how many? 68. 68 hot dogs in eight minutes. Right. How many kids died in that? Eight minutes from starvation. Right. And some of these competitors, you're allowed to make yourself throw the food up afterward. Right? Yeah. Whatever you do after it's done, however you get rid of it, is okay with that. So that's straight up bulimia. It is. And that's no one is encouraging that by any means. And it's dangerous. Some of these people, too, when they train, they'll drink like a gallon of water in a minute and they try and do these things to expand your stomach. That's dangerous, too. It is. There's actually water intoxication, which can be fatal because it screws with the dilution of electrolytes in your body. Right. Which is bad. That's bad news, dude. Right. And a woman died a few years back from water intoxication from a contest. I had heard that. Well, not only that, you can actually get gastroporiasis, which is stomach paralysis. Right, right. And basically, after your stomach is stretched out enough times, it will stop contracting and you won't evacuate your stomach to your small intestine any longer, which is not good when that happens, actually. Yeah. I don't know if you knew that. It's not good. The dark side of competitive eating. The people who endorse this are going to say that they just have a lot of fun with it and then it's a tradition and it's kind of a big joke. I know. When you see it on TV, they look like they're taking it really seriously. Apparently, that's all kind of part of the act, and they all think it's kind of funny. But dude, 20 grand on the line. Yeah. There's some serious prize money for Nathan's hot dogs. It's $20,000 prize. And the mustard belt. So that's a nice little chunk of change for stuffing down hot dogs. Plus, also, I think the IFOCE does not endorse or support anybody practicing or training for it. Yeah. But the gertitators actually do train very hard. Actually, I think I was reading about an interview yeah. With Joey Chestnut. And dude, he drinks like a gallon of milk in a single sitting to expand his stomach. He eats actually, he goes several days without eating and just subsists on protein supplements. So his weight will vary radically, like in the teens and low twenty s of pounds within a couple of weeks, and then afterwards he gains a lot of it back. Because if you eat \u00a38 of food, you just gained \u00a38 pal until you pass it, it's there. And your stomach is in big trouble. Yeah, I can't imagine. I hate feeling full. For God. That's, like, overweight. You would think that I'd just gorge myself, but dude, I hate feeling full. Yeah, it's the worst. I agree. It's my stupid metabolism. Do you know why you feel full? Well, I know you've got a little science here. Okay. Trying to legitimize this thing. Really? Yeah. So when you're hungry, a hormone produced in the stomach called ghrelin sends a signal to your brain via the vagus nerve, I believe. Okay. And as you eat a hormone produced from the same DNA, the same genetic code called Ovastatin. Kind of like obese. Right. Imagine that. That goes to your brain and says, hey, dude, stop eating. Right? Well, apparently a physiologist who's studying this, his name is David Metz from the University of Pennsylvania. Right. He can't say how they're doing it, but from studying a guy called Eater X, he's figured out that these people have figured out how to block the signal from their brain. Really? It's highly dangerous. Aka Kobayashi. Probably not Kobayashi. Right. But I bet he uses those techniques. I think they all do. They have to you have to expand your stomach. And actually, you notice a lot of these people are very small. And there is a theory that kind of came about that said the less fat you are, because you'd think, well, if you're a big fat guy, you're going to be able to just gorge yourself. They said the smaller people, like the Black Widow, \u00a3100. Right. She can put it away, like the best of them. And they think that the reason why is because there's less resistance for the stomach to stretch. It's not pressing up against fat, which doesn't give as much as air. Sort of makes sense. Can I mention the paper that was written yeah. By Ed Kratchy. He's a competitive eater himself, and he wrote a paper called can Abdominal Fat Act as a Restrictive Agent on Stomach Expansion and Exploration of the Impact of Adipose Tissue and competitive Eating. So it sounds very intelligent. Unfortunately, the medical community rejected it, and they refused to publish it and said, go eat your hot dogs, buddy, and leave the medical journaling to us. Right. But Popular Science had an article that supported it in 2003 that said, this basically checks out. True. So legitimate, maybe, but not as far as medical science is concerned. I do want to talk about one gross thing, since this hasn't been gross at all. Right. Olig Zernitsky. He's very fashionable. Apparently. He's known for his fashion sense. Ukrainian competitive eater. This is the worst one to me. Chicken wings. I love all that stuff. Brought worst. Give it up. He ate 432 ounce bowls of mayonnaise in eight minutes. Yes. And I love mayonnaise, and it makes me not want to eat mayonnaise. 432 ounce bowls of mayonnaise. Can you imagine that? Mayonnaise is definitely something that you should eat in moderation. Okay, I'm not feeling so good now. Did you mention the cow's brains? No. Kobayashi. Kobayashi. He holds the record for eating cow's brains. Do you know how many? Yeah, I think it was like \u00a318 of cow's brains in 15 minutes. It was. I could not eat 1oz of cow's brain in a lifetime. So Kobia, she hasn't done that one, especially not with this hoof and mouth thing that they've got going on. Seriously. So if you want to learn more about competitive eating, including aggraviuski's, first person account of what an eating contest is like you can type in competitive eating, appropriately enough, in the handysearchbar athoustepworks.com. And since I just said handysearchbar@housestepworks.com, that means it's time. Thank God for Listener mail. Josh, I'm just going to call this we are banned in classes. Yeah, I saw this one. It's from Sarah. And Sarah says I love the podcast, but I recently got it banned for my AP Biology class. And did you take AP classes? You probably did. You're a smart guy. No, really. I took AP English and AP History, actually, but science not my thing. She is a senior in high school and for the past year she has spent every day in biology lab poking dead things and staring at cell walls in a microscope. You can imagine it gets a little boring, even for a biofanatic, ignoring the stench of fetal pigs and memorizing the function of cell organelles. So during study hall, I would take out my ipod and listen to your podcast. Some of the subjects we would cover overlap with podcast episodes I just listened to, so I would mention what I had learned in essays, for discussions and even on an AP exam while using us. Anyway, my teacher discovered this. She was thrilled that I've been doing research out of class and she asked where I was learning all these odd but accurate facts. When I let her listen to the ipod, she called it a utensil for cheating or tools the devil, and subsequently banned it from our classroom. I really think she was more upset about not being able to answer my questions about alien Hans syndrome than she was about my listening to the podcast. But either way, thanks so much for helping me answer essay questions. You guys are the best. For the record, I never used your podcast as Sarah. Fantastic. So we are educating and getting kids in trouble all over the world. I like that our listeners are generally moral people. I think so, yeah. Good folks, at the very least, there is if you've ever been told that we're a utensil for something, let us know. Send it in an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetopworks.com homepage. Hey, if you're a fan of Altoids, the curiously strong Mints, you probably have a lot of empty tens laying around. You can do some pretty cool stuff with them. You can make survival kits, flash drives, even robots. Check out Altoids on Facebook to find out more. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, 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 Amazon Music. You can access new episodes early. 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8dab3300-ba8a-11e8-a624-1fabe06576f6 | Short Stuff: The Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-disappearance-of-ambrose-bierce | Ambrose Bierce was a journalist and writer of short stories. He also disappeared rather mysteriously. Listen in and learn of the various theories on what happened to him. | Ambrose Bierce was a journalist and writer of short stories. He also disappeared rather mysteriously. Listen in and learn of the various theories on what happened to him. | Wed, 16 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=289, tm_isdst=0) | 12122134 | audio/mpeg | "Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry over there. Everyone be quiet. Let's get started. Ambrose Beers goes missing. This is a good one. This is so Ambrose Beers was a writer, and he's described in this article and this is from the old friends@housestepworks.com. Oh, yeah. Good plug. Yes. They still have some great short content out there that we can mine for these short stuffs. Sure. But he's described here as equal parts Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe. That's pretty good. Yeah. He was born in Ohio in 1842, and he was a journalist and like one of the big sort of early journalists, supposedly one of the first ones to really make his byline a brand in and of itself. Oh, yeah. But he also wrote horror stories. He wrote short horror fiction. He was kind of his generation's voice about how the Civil War really was because he was one of the few writers of his day who had actually fought in the Civil War. That's right. I remember. The one that comes to mind for most people, probably, that you read in school was An Occurrence at Al Creek Bridge. Great story. Yeah. One of the classic American short stories of all time. Yeah. He also wrote The Devil's Dictionary, which was his own take on words like ghosts are outward and visible signs of inward fears. Or peace is just a period of cheating in between two periods of fighting. Just kind of scathing, sarcastic, bitter takes on humanity. And to kind of make it more succinct, I saw a Poetry Foundation description of him, said he was a committed opponent of hypocrisy, prejudice, corruption, and had contempt for politics, religion, society, and conventional human values. So he's our kind of guy. Yes. You should go get some coffee with him. And he would have been one of the great American writers. A lot of people say he is, but he would have been one of the widely known great American writers had he ever gotten a novel together. But he didn't. He never wrote a novel. No. He was a columnist. He was a short story writer. He was a correspondent. But he never became a novelist. And he was partially bitter. He was bitter in part because of that. So when this article says he was a novelist, that is a lie. Yes. Okay. So this dude named Don Swim wrote a book called The Assassination of Ambrose Beers. When is someone going to write a book without a colon? I think we need to colon a love story. And he seems to be sort of the guy who really is. I think he runs a website on Ambrose Beers is really carrying this torch forward for this person. And what's interesting beyond the life of Ambrose Beers is the disappearance and mysterious death of Ambrose Spears. Yeah, I was reading an La Times article about this very thing and they said that Ambrose Beers would have become a totally obscure American writer. I'm not sure if that's true had he not made a great career choice at the end where he put a shroud of mystery over his own demise. Wow. That's what happened. No one knows what happened to Ambrose Beers. He disappeared and was never heard from starting in December of 1913. Yeah, there are a bunch of theories and we're going to throw some of them out there over the next seven or eight minutes. One of them is that he loved the Grand Canyon and he loved it so much he loved it like airwolf. He loved it so much that he wanted to become a part of it and leap to his death and went there to leap to his death and die by suicide. That's one which is believable, as we'll see later on. It's plausible. But the main story. The one that most historians will point to as the story of what happened to him. Is that in December of 1913. He left California to go down to Mexico to find Poncho Villa. Who was one of three leaders of the Mexican Revolution down there at the time. And that he either wanted to write a book about Poncho Via. Write some articles about him. Or he wanted to take up arms alongside Poncho Via because he was an old Confederate war vet who had nothing to lose at this point. He was a bitter old drunk who had an acerbic wit and bitter take on everything. And that is actually not totally out of the realm of possibility for why he was going down there. But the common general story is that he went down to Mexico to hang out with Ponchovia for one reason or another, and that he was never heard from again at the age of 71. So should we take a break? Yes. Alright, we'll come right back and talk a little bit about what people speculate happened south of the border. 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. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes. LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right, it seems like it's really hard to get a beat on this a bead it's been a long day. Because everything that seems like it might have really happened is disputed by somebody. It's not just that, Chuck. In addition to that, or the reason why it's disputed by somebody is because you get the impression that he went to the trouble of setting it up so that his disappearance would be a mystery, that no one would ever be able to figure it out. Perhaps. And it's also clear that in 1913, it was a lot easier to disappear. And no one ever knows what happens to you. Right. Then he's gone. So it is generally believed, though, that he did go to Mexico and he did ride with Poncho via 71 year old Civil War veteran. It's just not proven out exactly why he was there or how he necessarily died there. Right. Some people say firing squad. Yes. Which is supported by this letter. So his last letter was posted from Chihuahua, Mexico, which is where Ponchovia was stationed and carrying out his arm of the revolution. That's right. So we made it as far as Poncho via his home territory, supposedly. Some people don't even believe that that's true. Right. But that's where the last known letter from Ambro Beers was postmarked with Chihuahua, Mexico. And in this letter, he says goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up against the Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age disease or falling down the cellar stairs to be a gringo in Mexico. That is euthanasia. So this is the last letter he has, and he's in Cho, Mexico, and then no one ever hears from again. And he was going down to hang out with Ponchovia. That would support the idea that he died at the hands of either Ponchovilla or maybe the federal who Ponchovia was fighting. Right. There are also people, skeptics that say, you know, there really was no letter and there was a notebook that belonged to a secretary that had a summary of a purported letter. Oh, really? Yeah, I heard that one. I think the man who wrote the book, Mr. Swain, says there was a literal letter. Right. That's what I've heard. So I'm not sure how that can be up for debate. Some people say that he had somebody take the letter down to Chihuahua, because you can give someone a letter, give them some money to take it down, and then have them mail it from Chihuahua. Just because that last letter was posted from Chihuahua does not indisputably prove that Ambrose Beers was in Chihuahua at the end of 1913. That's right. There are some other people that said there's a priest named James Liner who says that he was executed by firing squad and this was in Sierra Mojada and that he never made it to Chihuahua. Yes. And that would have been the federal troops in a mining camp who found out he was going to aid Ponchovia and kill them. The idea that he died at either the Hands of or the Order of Ponchovia came from a guy named Adolf Danziger de Castro, who wrote a very obscure biography in 1928 on Ambrose Beers. And in it, de Castro was one of Ambrose Beer drinking buddies. He said that he went down to Mexico and had dinner with Poncho Villa to find out what had happened to Ambrose Beers and eventually coaxed from Ponchovia that Ambrose Beer had died because he had gone drinking and criticizing Ponchovia. And Ponchovia didn't like that, and so he was killed because he shot his mouth off with junk. It's very believable. Yeah, it's entirely possible. And the fact that this guy knew him, a lot of historians say this seems authentic. That's really possible that that happened. There was also a journalist named Jake Silverstein in early 2000s that said he got into this theory that he never made it to Mexico and he died in Texas. He dug up a letter to the editor of a little newspaper in Marfa, Texas, from a man who said he's buried here in an unmarked grave, because I picked up a hitchhiker once who fought for the Federal Forces, the Mexican Federal Forces, when he was a teenager. And he said that he picked up an old gringo who called himself Ambrosia, and he said, hey, can you pay me to get me back into the US. And during this trip, he talked about books that he had written, and one had the word Devil in the title and that he died of pneumonia in 1914 and was buried in Marfa, Texas. Okay, that's just as legitimate as anything else. What about the one that he actually like? Somebody was saying that he gave the letter to somebody else to post from Chihuahua and he went to the grand Canyon and died by suicide. That was how he died and that he was throwing everybody off the trail. This one is actually supported by a couple of things. His son died by suicide. He spoke of suicide as a noble out, that it was somebody's right to make that choice. And then also he did a tour of Civil War battlefields in the United States before he went to Mexico. Right. Right before he went to Mexico. So it's possible that he was in the kind of mindset that he would have been in to take his own life. Who knows? That's why we'll probably never know what happened to him, because each of these is really plausible, and each of them can be not deconstructed, but arrivald by the next theory, too. None of the theories are just like outlandish. They're all pretty reasonable and supported by some factor other. Yeah. And there was one final one that this is from Swims book, that Beers actually went to Mexico and fought and lived and then retired to Saratoga Springs, New York, where he fell in love and then died of asthma. And that was, of course, entirely fiction. I think so. Right. Yeah, because his book was that Ambrose Beer's love story was fiction. And I think that's what happens to him in the book. Got you. You know the movie Old Gringo with Gregory Peck? That came out in Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda and Jimmy Smith. Oh, wow. It reimagines Amber's Beers death at the hands of one of Ponchovia's generals, shot in the back and supposedly from Dust Till Dawn Three. Not supposedly. No. I never saw it. But that tackles Ambrobias. He's a character in it. Yeah. And I think he lives in that in Olgreno. He dies. Wow. Well, if you know what happened to Ambrose Beers, we want to know about it. You can send us a message to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com, and I think that's it, right? That's it. Well, then, short, stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts to My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
3a3b5c38-361f-11ea-91d6-539a8ef0e740 | Short Stuff: The Great American Coin Shortage of 2020 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-great-american-coin-shortage-of-20 | In addition to all the lousy things that’s come out of the Coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. is also experiencing a coin shortage thanks to a stalled-out economic system that normally circulates coins. | In addition to all the lousy things that’s come out of the Coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. is also experiencing a coin shortage thanks to a stalled-out economic system that normally circulates coins. | Wed, 19 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=232, tm_isdst=0) | 11899784 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the Short stuff on Josh. There's. Chuck jerry's over there. Let's get going. This is Short stuff about shortages of coins shortly now. Hey, can you spare some change? No. Why not? What was it? I can't remember who said I think the line is, haven't, yours is a coin shortage. Okay, let's try this again. Hey Mr. Can you spare some change? No. Why not? Haven't you heard there's a what line? Coin shortage. There's a coin shortage. And that summarizes our TV show success quite nicely. And seen. And seen. So there really is a coin shortage. Or dramatization was a real one or based on real life, a true story in the United States. Our listeners in Australia and New Zealand and UK and Germany. Who knew? Yeah. Did we hear it from a German? Is that what happened? They said, yes, we're listening to you in Germany. Okay. And they said cryptically and watching. What some of you guys who are in America might not realize is that if you went into a store, the stores that are open right now during the pandemic here in the United States, you might find a sign that says, please pay with exact change or use a credit card because we ain't got no change for you if you need it. And it's actually kind of becoming a bit of a problem and a conspiracy theory over here. Yeah. So there are coins out there. The US Treasury says that there were almost $48 billion worth of coins in circulation in April of this year, which is about 400 million more than last year. But the deal is those coins aren't moving. They got no movement going on like they usually do for a few reasons. Obviously, when businesses closing and banks sort of closing and reducing their hours and things like arcades and laundromats and public transit where you use a lot of coins and convenience stores, when all that stuff closes up, it's going to put a serious dent in the coin flow. It is, because, I mean, all of these businesses that are especially coin heavy, they act as kind of like part of the circulatory system that moves coins through the economy. And if they're not closed, meaning they're not accepting coins, you can't let the coins pass through them. So instead, they go back home to people's houses, which is where a lot of them are right now. Also simultaneous to that, Chuck, the US Mint was like, well, we don't want to put our people at risk, so we're actually going to slow production and furlough a bunch of people because we don't want them on the job giving code to one another, which is kind of sensible. And then beyond that, even if you do have a business, a lot of people are saying they want, like, contactless. They don't want cash passing back and forth. They'll maybe shove a credit card reader in your face from a pole that it's attached to. And they'll say, stick your credit card in. That not doing a lot of cash or asking for exact change. And again, that just means there are coins out there, they're just not flowing through the economy like they normally do. Right. So for all these reasons, there is an actual coin shortage. Not a coin shortage and that they don't exist, but a coin shortage and that they're not flowing through like they're supposed to. Like you were saying, which, I mean, if you were a thinking person, you might by this time have thought, who cares? It doesn't matter. But it does for a lot of reasons. And up first is that there are a lot of kinds of stores, like you said, public transit, the public transit store where you go to buy public transits and coins and then laundromats. There are certain kinds of businesses that heavily rely on the free and open flow of coinage for their businesses to function. And if you go into one of those businesses and they say you need to pay with exact change, is that okay? Some of their customers are going to be like, no, it's not okay. I don't have exact change and I want my change back. Some of those stores have tried to get creative and have said, how about rather than us give you change back, we donated on your behalf to a charity. Like you kind of round up your bill to have some of that donated. That makes sense. But if you're kind of going through hard times, which a lot of us are, you want that change back. So then some stores have said, okay, all right, we don't actually have physical coins here to give you change, but we can give you a store gift card with that amount on it. How about that? And some customers said, that's fine, whatever. But I can't imagine how much of a dent in a store's efficiency stopping and adding like thirty eight cents to a gift card for every third customer who wants to pay with cash. Doing to the stores in the United States that are, by the way, already struggling because they have opened up in this pandemic simply because they need to keep the lights on. Yeah. Or some stores are saying, how about in lieu of the, compose a poem in which I integrate the words $0.37? Right. And I will sing it to you. Right. That takes a lot of time. Maybe our head cashier bucky will give you $0.38 worth of pot from his stash. I wonder what $38 for the pot looks like. I don't know. Probably. That's a lot, right? Sure from everything I've read. Should we take a break? Yes. All right, we'll be right back with more Coin Shortage. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It all right. So we got a coin shortage, it ain't flowing. The National Groceries Association and some other retail trade groups sent a letter to Jerome Powell, the Fed Reserve chair, and Steve, how do you pronounce that? Haruchin Nukin. Oh yeah, manuchin, the Minuch. No, that's Scar moochie that you're thinking of. Oh, that's right. He's the Treasury Secretary. And they sent a letter in June saying, hey, you're rationing these coin shipments to the banks. And that's really threatening our business because we come from a place of privilege to be able to sit around and joke about this. Because I'm like, oh, I just put everything on my Amex because I get sky miles that are now useless. But here's the deal. If you have a household income below $25,000, you're paying for 43% of your transactions in cash. Right. This is why finally we reached why it really actually matters, because there's a significant number of Americans out there who depend on having cash handy because the banks have said, we don't think you're worthy of having a bank account. And the credit card companies have said, we're not going to extend you any credit. So all you got is cash. That's your only option. And so if the store is trying to give you some business or run around about donating your thirty eight cents to charity, no, you probably want that $0.38 back. And not having that $0.38 in circulation is a big problem for a large number of people. Yeah. Here's a couple of other stats that may be surprising if you always just throw down your credit card. 45% to 60% of sales at all grocery stores and convenience stores are cash. And for $10 or less, about half of all transactions, period, in the US. Are paid in cash if they're $10 or less. Yes, and also there's a plenty of gas stations and convenience stores out there that have a longstanding policy that nothing under $5 or $3 or whatever can be put on a card because those credit card fees can really add up for a store like that. So now they have no choice. If they don't have change to give out, they have to take that credit card payment. So that's denting their bottom line to the little small business owners as well. It's just a huge cluster that needs to be fixed. Chuck yeah, and the fix sort of there isn't a real fix right now because everything that's going on, you can't just put some artificial you can't just like flood the market with coins because the problem is they're not flowing anyway. It's not that they aren't there. So the real solution is just eventually things will slowly return to normal as far as coincirculation goes, just like everything else, returning to normal. But they are ramping up production of coins because they, I guess, heard the letter and they don't want to shortchange the banks, at least. And I think the usual is a billion coins a month they're now producing 1.2 billion coins a month, at least in June, and then 1.35 billion a month for the rest of the year. Yeah, that's a substantial increase, for sure. Yeah, we're talking about 350,000,000 additional coins a month for the rest of 2020. That's a huge uptick. So they're definitely responding. But it seems like what everybody's saying is, hey, you with the coin jar and you're covered like you're the problem. Like, go take your coin jar to the Coin Star. I think the Fed actually specifically named Coin Star as a place where you should take your coins and trade them in for a gift card or some cash or something like that. Or if you don't want to pay whatever fee coinstar charges, you can actually go into the bank, take your coins, they will be happy to see you for the first time in their entire banking history, showing up with a jar full of coins, being like, can I have this in exchange for some bills that will help get it back into circulation as well? Or you could just start spending them, like pay in coins out of your coin jar that you have at home. Reintroduce it into the economy, in fact, is another way to put it. Yes. I can't remember when we talked about this, but we talked about coins before and taking them to the bank, and the fact that Emily and I, when we were first together and just broke, as you could imagine, would go on change dates because we would go to that Coin Star machine and dump them in there. And I think that's when you said that you didn't do Coin Star because of the fee, if I'm not mistaken. That sounds like something I would say. Yeah. That was a long time ago, though. Yeah. Still don't pay the fee. Still the same. It will be etched on my tombstone. Yeah, he wouldn't pay the fee. So you can do something by spending coins. It's a big one. And there's actually a hashtag that this coin task force that got put together came up with called Get Coin Moving. Not even coins getcoin moving. Brick love lamp. It's pretty bad. And here's a little tidbit for you to chew on while you're going through your coin jar, trying to figure out what you're going to buy first with it. A coin in the United States remains in circulation for up to 30 years. So all those coins they're pumping full of the economy with, they're going to be around for a while, whereas the paper bills that we have usually only last about a year and a half. Wow. That's it for short stuff, Chuck, don't you think? I think so. Well, then short stuff says everybody giddy up. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Thoroughbred Horses Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-thoroughbred-horses-work | It's been just 300 years since the Thoroughbred breed has been around, but it has produced some of the most storied animals humans have ever loved. Chuck and Josh dive into what makes these horses special and the controversy around racing them. | It's been just 300 years since the Thoroughbred breed has been around, but it has produced some of the most storied animals humans have ever loved. Chuck and Josh dive into what makes these horses special and the controversy around racing them. | Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:16:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=19, tm_min=16, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=328, tm_isdst=0) | 35175942 | 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. Hey, friends. Dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure, but all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted in compatibility, Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship, and it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Nice. That's a pretty good horse. Was that a mayor? Philly Cole. Yearling gelding damn horse stallion. Do you know a lot more about horses after reading it? I do, and I was going to ask you if we could open up with a little definitions with Chuck and Josh. I think we should, but do your thing first and then we'll do that. I was just going to mention Uncle Moe. All right, let's hear it. Uncle Moe is the favorite at the upcoming Breeders Cup. By the time this comes out, the Breeders Cup will have come and gone. Okay. Because it's November 4 and fifth, which is this weekend. It is, isn't it? And Uncle Moe is the favorite for the Breeders Cup, the real one, because, you know, for something like a breeder's cup, and it's four or five the fourth and fifth. So two days they're going to have, like, 50 races because on a race day, there's usually like ten to 13, right? So they'll probably have 20. And the big one is the last one in this case. And the breeder's cup is going to be at Churchill Downs nice. In Kentucky where they hold the Kentucky Derby. And Uncle Mo's favorite, he's five two choice by odds maker Mike Battalia, who I'd not heard of until I read this article about Uncle Mo. But he scratched. I was going to see him at the Kentucky Derby and he scratched with a liver problem, so he didn't make it to post. That's sad. And I can't remember. I think Animal Kingdom ended up winning, but I went to the Kentucky Derby. You me. And I did. And then we went to the Preakness. That's right. And after that, I was like, I have to know more about this. So I came back and started researching and wrote this article, how Thoroughbreds Work. And now the next horse race you go to, you'll be the most obnoxious person there. No, I'll keep my mouth shut. I bet a lot of people know a lot, and I bet a lot of people know nothing yeah. At the big ones like that. Yeah. I would say most of the people there know nothing at the big ones because it's just filled with tourists. Sure. And for some people, it's like, hey, I come here every day. It's just another race day. Get out of here. Right. But ultimately, and because of mutual betting interesting. Perry Mutel. That's what it is. But it's a French word. Your odds go up and down depending on how many other people are betting on a horse or betting against it or whatever. So I imagine if you are, like, just one of those people where the Kentucky Derby is just another race day for you, you hate that day. The first Saturday in May, you probably skip it. Maybe you got a line. Well, yeah, true. Yeah. His mutter is a mudder. So let's do your definition, Chuck. All right. Occult is a male under five years old. Philly is a female under five years old. Right. But from age two to age five, the yearling is either one or two years old. Okay. A foal is newborn. Yeah. Correct. And it's also a verb. Being fold is being born. Right. Asia is the father, which is a stallion. Yeah. Stallion is an adult male horse over five years old. Right. But also a stud. If he's doing that for money or is he a stud no matter what? He's a stud no matter what. That's what I like to think. And then the dam the dam is the female, which is a mere right. She is a breeder over five, and she produces a female. It's a brood mare. Or is she a brood mare? She's a brood mare. Okay. So a brood mare and a stud are one and the same, but different breeds, different genders. Or genders, yes. But that's all the act of doing it. After that, when reproduction takes over, they become a sire in a dam okay. In relation to the full. And a pony is just a small horse, which is very disappointing. Yeah. Well, unless you meet one, then you're like, I'm not at all disappointed by this Shetland pony. Yeah, shetland ponies are awesome. All right, so that'll help you out here, going through this excellent article, I might add. Thank you. It's very good. Well, third, Brad horses are really interesting. They're really new. And it's one of those that if you don't know anything about something, you can sit down in 30 minutes and read this and know a lot about something you never knew anything about, which is our goal. Yeah. All right, so let's go. Okay. Well, like I said, their breads are pretty new. They just came about within the last 300 or so years. Like they're an entirely new breed. Do you know that? I do. Well, you want to talk about the beginning of it? Yeah. The History of Thoroughbreds by Josh Clark. Every thoroughbred alive comes from one of three bloodlines, which is really remarkable. Right. Well, here, you give me a little background, then we'll talk about the horses themselves. So this breed has three foundation sires is what they're called. They're three stallions that all belong to the Oriental group. And the Oriental group are Turks, Barbs and Arabians. Very fast. Like, these are the ones that you see in Lawrence of Arabia. Holland through the desert. Exactly. Very muscular and fast. Yeah, exactly. Fairly light, too, right? Light, yeah. I thought you said light. I was like, how do you want me to finish that? Yes, we like them. The Arabians, for at least a couple of thousand years, have been prized for their quickness and their courage. They're very courageous horses. So they war horses? They serve as really good war horses. Yeah. And because they were quick and because Bedouin Shake used to like to make money however he could, including wagers, they would be raised in match races. Match race is just one horse against one horse. Right. In about the 18th century, the late 17th, early 18th century, three sires arrived in England and those became the foundation, sirs, for the third breed. That's right. Each one has a really cool story, if you ask me. I agree. In 1688, Captain Robert Byerley captured a Turk very fine looking horse from the Turkelman horse in the Middle East. Right. That's part of the Oriental group. The Turk. The turkeyman. It's an Oriental horse. Yeah. These are all Oriental horses. Right. And he captured this in a battle in Hungary and was like, you know what? This horse is really fast and it's really brave. I'm taking it back to England. Right. And he did. Yeah. And that was number one. Number two was the Barley Turk. And this was a stolen barb, another Oriental, obviously called the Darley Barb, or the Darley Arabian, purchased by Thomas Darley. And he was a diplomat to Syria, and he said, hey, I love that four year old colt, Mr. Bedouin Shaykh, and so I'd like to purchase from you. And then the sheik reneged, and he said, Well, I'm going to go steal it from you then, if you're not going to give me the horse. And in Darley's defense, I believe he had paid for it already. So it was just outright theft. He was claiming the horse he purchased. Right. He paid somebody to go steal it, and they smuggled it out through Turkey back to England. And that became the darly Barb. So now the darley barb is there. And then the third one was a little less interesting, but sort of interesting in an underdog sort of way. Yeah, in a Dickensian sort of way. Yeah, exactly. The godolphin Arabian is from Yemen and was given to the King of France along with three other horses. And being the king of France, he said, I shall set them free and set these horses free. It ends up being a Cart horse in Paris, which is kind of cool when you think about it. This was like one of the three sires and eventually was bought and sold and bought and sold until it was finally purchased by the second Earl of Godolphin in 1733. And I guess that must have been a heck of a horse by that time. Yes, it had seen the ups and the downs. And so these three horses were bred with English mares, and I guess the English horse that they were bred with was a lot bigger, a lot stronger, but a lot slower. And so you took these Oriental group horses and these English horses, english draft horses, maybe even. And what you had was a very strong, muscular, but extremely quick horse, which was the thoroughbred breed. It's a 300 year old breed of animal, which is really cool. And that kind of enlightens us to a characteristic of the breed that from the very beginning, it's interactive with humans. Like it owes its origin to human interaction. Stats. Okay, what you get with the third bread, josh, if you want to throw down a couple of $100 on one, can you get a third bed for $200? No, you can't. You could, but you'd have to stand outside of the slaughterhouse and just offer some okay, spoiler alert. You're going to get a horse that weighs about \u00a31000. Very light and fast. Light bones will be 16 hands, which is a hand is four inches, what you just said. So it's 64 inches, about 25 years old. 66 inches. 64. 64 inches. They'll live to be about 25. They can take about 150 strides per minute and race up to and over 40 miles an hour. Yeah, that's a cooking horse. And we should say that a horse is measured from the ground to its withers, which is a ridge right behind the shoulders withers. Oh, and you said that they can run 40 miles an hour. You know why they can run 40 miles an hour? Tell us. Because of its stride length. Let's talk about a stride length. It's pretty remarkable. The average stride length of a third bread horse is 20ft. Okay, that's long. So you say your subaru is 15ft long. My subaru outback is 15ft long. So stride length is the distance between, let's say, the moment the right hoof, right front hoof, any hoof, but let's say the right front hoof touches the ground to the next point, where that same hoof that, say, the right hoof touches the ground again. So on a third bread, an average third bred horse, it's 20ft. That is long. That's very long. Longer than a subaru wagon. Yeah. And then some other horses have had even longer stride lengths, like Manawar, he had a stride length of 28ft when he was in full gas. Crazy. Eight and a half meters. That's really long. He was taller, too, I guess, huh? Maybe. He was a very tall horse. And also so you've got a stride length of 20ft. Right. They can run up to 150 strides a minute, which means they can go up to 40 miles an hour, but they can do this for like, over a mile, which is amazing. And the reason that they can do this for over a mile is because they're freaks of nature as far as breeds go, breeds of animals go, right? They are. They have very special internal organs, specifically, a very large heart and a very efficient spleen. So while this heart is able to pump out 70 I'm sorry, circulate 75 gallons of blood a minute when running, that's a lot of blood. The spleen all of a sudden says, you know what? I'm going to kick it into turbo and I'm going to get a bunch of oxygen rich blood cells and shoot them all over the bloodstream. And in the end, it's going to increase the total red blood cell count 35% to 65% of the total blood volume. So the red blood cell count, or percentage, is normally 35 while it's running, it goes at the 65. Crazy. So it's just delivering oxygen to every part of the bot running machine. And the third bridge has a couple of other unique characteristics as far as its run goes, all horses can only breathe through their nose. Did you know that? I did. Okay. I did not until I wrote this article. And then they breathe in while their legs are extending, and then they exhale when the legs come together on the ground. So it acts like a bellows. So they're breathing in tons of oxygen very efficiently. And then its legs do something pretty spectacular. Well, its neck does first. Yeah. The neck moves in unison with the front legs, which is going to just give you more propulsion. You need to explain the rear hind legs. Okay. So Chuck and I had a little atypical discussion because we normally don't discuss things beforehand, but the back legs of a thoroughbred create a spring like motion. They basically pump up and down right. Which gives the horse a lot of thrust, it produces a lot of GS. Chuck showed me a video, the very same video I looked at to make sure that I knew what I was talking about when I read that and then wrote it, that it's not the legs necessarily just staying in like a stiff up and down motion, it's the overall motion that is being created by the legs, the spring like back legs. Springing, springing. What I noted about the hind legs is that they stay almost completely straight. So it's just like boring spring, springing down, springing down. However you look at the back legs create, like, a spring like motion very much that propels the horse forward. So that's why thoroughbreds are so prized for racing. That's right, because they take all the speed and the agility of the Arabian and the strength and endurance of the English mayors that they were bred with. And you got the third bread. They had a very special horse. Josh it wasn't just those three, as you point out, that created the whole bloodline. There was a lot of hanky panky going on with Oriental group horses that were brought over during wartime from the Middle East, and they really helped the bloodline out, obviously. But a lot of them were lost to history because maybe they had only female daughters, and that means that's the end of you, or at least your bloodline. Or maybe you got it on with a different breed, and that means you're a dirty, dirty horse now, and you can't be counted as a throw bread any longer. You could be, but your offspring is not going to be. Even if they say, all right, fine, I'll go back to the thoroughbred, they're like, no, you did it with that other kind of horse, so you're done. No, I don't think so. Oh, what? No, it's just your offspring. Okay, so, like, if the horse never mated with anything but non thoroughbreds, then it's bloodlines lost. I thought you were saying that if it no, okay, well, that's good to know because I thought it was a little harsh. Yeah, no, it's not like that. But all of that is based on a decision that was made in 1791 by a guy named James Weatherby, who created this thing called the General Stud Book, and that is that all thoroughbreds are traced through the sire, so they can be traced back through the three. And all thoroughbreds alive today can be traced back to the three foundation sires. And this General Stud Book is a closed registry, meaning only thoroughbred, full thoroughbred horses that are born to full thoroughbred parents can be included in this general study book. That's right. And more than 100,000 are fold worldwide every year. And so that's a lot of horses to keep track of. Right, and trace their lineage. Although once you have it done the first time, the General Stud Book serves as the mothership of which all other stud books are based. So you've got the foundation there. You do. So it's not like you have to keep tracing back to the original three. No, once you can link it up to, say, the last one in the General Stud Book exactly. It's last ancestor, then it takes over from there. So thank you, Weatherbees. Oh, yeah, well, they still do that. Weatherbees limited is still an incorporated company in the UK. I think they have a nice box there at Churchill Down. Oh, yeah, they do. Anywhere they want to catch. Yeah, anywhere. James Weatherby in 1791 was actually the second Weatherby. His uncle climb. No, also James. Okay. He was the first secretary of the Jockey Club, and he was hired to keep track of purses. Chuck. A summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music. That's so good? It's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah. From the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between, hosts Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this charttopping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, 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 podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. What's a purse? Well, a purse is the winnings. The total amount of money that a horse can win for its owner, I should say. Horses traditionally don't get to keep the money themselves. It goes to the owners, who in turn pay the jockeys and all those other people. But the first James Weatherby was hired in 1770 to basically keep the books for the Jockey Club. So the Weather bees are like a family, a long line of accountants, basically. And the reason why the first James Weatherby was hired was because he was hanging around at a time when they really needed to start keeping track of the incredible sums of money that were being bet on these races. Yeah, what happened was as soon as two rich people get something fast, they're going to want to race against each other. So that's what happened and they were just like, let me race my horse against yours. And then that became like, well, let's have a few races and let's add even more horses. And horse racing very organically. Thoroughbred racing was very organically born. And like you said, then once things are racing, some dudes going to want to bet. And then all of a sudden, it's a huge cottage industry that the Weather Bees were put in charge of. Yeah, exactly. Back in 1770, when he was hired, the purses were reaching something like \u00a32000. A lot. A lot. I didn't see a conversion for today's dollars, but it's a lot of pounds. Yeah, it's a lot. So they hired the Weather Bees, and ultimately James Weatherby the Younger created the General Stubbook, which, like you said, is like the central stubborn for all the others. America has its own. The American Stud Book goes back to 1868, and Thoroughbreds in America go back far earlier than that. Yes, 1730, I think was the first one. Yeah. Bull Rock, which is a pretty cool name. That's a heck of stallion, bull Rock. So Bull Rock was here and apparently there was horse racing on Long Island as far back as the late 17th century. Oh, really? Yeah. But thoroughbred's bloodlines are kept, such exact records are kept of the bloodlines that they basically said, you guys had a civil war, we're not sure of your records any longer. Start over. So the American Stud Book goes back to 1868 and that's it, as far as anybody's concerned, the beginning of thoroughbred horses in America. Yeah. And then in 1913, the Jockey Club passed the Jersey Act, which basically said a lot of these American horses don't count because unless you're in these other books, then you can prove that, then your sol right. If your parents don't show up in other general stubborns that were previously published, then whatever. And since there was a break in the records, a lot of American horses couldn't get in there. That's right. Until 1949. And they felt bad for them and say, you know what? We're going to let you in. And you're now in the stud book. So if the stud book says who's in and who's out, and the Jockey Club controls the Stubbook, that means that the Jockey Club basically defines what a thoroughbred horse is. And when I say basically, I mean in every single sense of the word. Sure. So color. There are nine colors. They cover everything, though, don't they? Like, what colors are horses that aren't listed is what I wondered. Any kind of neon is left out. They also determine whether the name is appropriate, which you've seen some pretty silly horse names, but you noticed that you've never seen one that was a slur, like a racial slur, social slur? No, never one that's offensive. Never one that was named after someone famous. Unless they said, hey, you should name this after me, the WC. Fields well, no, if they're alive. Still. I thought I had to have consent of a living famous person, I think you can't get consent from a dead person. No. Interesting. Not without reanimation. I just thought, like, the estate could give consent, maybe, but I think I remember seeing that part of the rules. It's a live person. Interesting. And the name cannot consist of entirely of numbers, which makes sense, I guess. And you can also name, like you can't name it after another winning horse traditionally, unless it's, like, a play on it. Like, Sea Biscuit was a son of, like, hardtack, I think that type of bread that sailors ate. But could you name one like Tea Biscuit? You could, but I'll bet everybody thinks you're a jerk. Tea Biscuit. 90, 9317, eight, nine, four. Well, and it says the Jockey Club has the final authority, so they might just shut that down on hinking us alone. Yeah, and they can say, Name your horse whatever you want, but it's not coming in the register. And you're like, okay, all right, I'll let you all right, josh, we were talking about purses, and it is big money. Now, in the US. Alone in 2010, the gross purses totaled more than a billion dollars. That was actually a pretty big decline. Well, not big, but it was worth more even earlier, like 20 04. 20 05 was a huge peak for purses in the US. For horse racing. Yeah. Well, that means if there's a lot of money to be won as a horse owner, that means there's a lot of money to be made as a horse owner and paid as a horse owner. It's very expensive. In fact, I looked into this when I wrote that article on unusual investments for Sunny Paper. One of them was investing in horses, I remember, and it didn't seem like a very good idea at the time. This is before the horse bubble, though, because of how much it costs to maintain a horse. You can buy into it without owning a horse, almost like stock in these operations. I think the problem is then would be, like, the chance, the percentage of a chance that you have of that particular horse really bringing home big money. Well, you've got the chances in here. 60% to 65% of all yearlings fold in a given year will be trained to race. So almost all of them are trained to race. You're almost literally born to race, and only about 5% of those will win any kind of substantial purse. And I think you said was it like, .2% of that 65% will ever win a grade one stakes race. And grade ones are the big ones, like the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Zero 2%. Man, that's very low. It is extremely low. And, I mean, if you have a horse that wins, like, a daily race couple of days a week, and it's 40 grand, and it's just a reliable winning horse, you're still going to make some money off of it. But still, the big problem that all third red horse owners face is you have a very limited time to race your horse, like all prime athletes, except even shorter, very much shorter. Cigar was a very long lived or had a long racing life. He had 16 consecutive wins, but he raced until he was five. He was five when he raced. So he raced even longer than just his fifth birthday. But for the most part, like I mentioned, man of War, he raced like 18 times, I believe. And it was over the course of 1919 and 1920. It wasn't like two full year. Yeah. And he is one of the greatest racehorses of all time. Well, the window, I mean, just to be at that peak of physical condition, the window is just so small because they're the best of the best. So if you drop off by what are the links called? Like a head length, a furlong. A furlong. It's an 8th of a mile is a furlong. If you drop off by just the tiniest bit, you're done. Yeah. So that's why, I guess most of the Colts and Phillies are two to three, even though all the Triple Crown races are three years old only. Right? Yeah. And fact of the show, they're all born on, while they're not all born, but they all have the same birthday to help keep track of bloodlines. And what is that? January 1. January 1. But that means that the horses racing could potentially be 364 days apart from each other in age. But they're all considered one year old. They're all considered one, which is a problem if you are a horse that's born on December 31, 2011. On January 1, 2012, you're considered one. Yeah. And if you are going to race, you're going to have to race horses of your own age. For, like, the Kentucky Derby is only open to three year olds. So yeah. The other horses in your class have a whole year's worth of training ahead of you, and they're going to dust you, which means that if you are a dam and you're pregnant and you're about to give birth on December 31, your owners are probably injecting you with drugs that are going to keep you from going into labor. Yet another example of how humans have, like always, they play an interventionist role in the thoroughbred breed. And if you are a little baby born fold that's born in, let's say, June, you're not going to be very valuable. They want horses that are born probably in the first couple of months of the year. Right. Usually the first half of the year. I guess here now we kind of reach like the somewhat depressing part or the extremely depressing part of thoroughbred racing and why I don't go to horse or dog races any longer. Well, so we talked about injecting Dam. With drugs to keep her from going into labor. If you're a sire, it might sound cool at first, right? But having a lot of sex, I'm sure it adds up, especially if you're a study. If you're collecting stud fees, that means that you're probably owned by a breeding syndicate that just makes their money, like an investment group that makes their money by hiring you out for stud. Called covering. That's what it's called when horses do it. And they're going to make you do it very frequently. Yes. As many as three females a day for six months, stretches for 20 years or more. And if things don't go well, you will be killed. Slaughtered, for the most part. In Great Britain alone in 2011, the observer reported that almost 8000 horses were slaughtered there in 2010, which was a 50% increase over 2009. And they don't let you slaughter horses in the United States anymore since 2007. So we ship them to Canada to do it. Right. And then in Canada, about two thirds of all thoroughbred race horses are euthanized, slaughtered or abandoned from racing. I'm sorry, not in Canada, but in the United States after they retired after they retire from racing. In Canada, about 120,000 horses, including thoroughbreds, not just for thoroughbreds, were slaughtered in 2009. So it's a big problem. And we actually know where this problem came from. You said it earlier, it's a horse bubble. Yeah. I mean, it was literally almost the exact same scenario as the housing bubble, except we didn't go out and kill houses. No. So basically what happened was there was a lot of money to be made in horses. People started getting their sires to cover more and more frequently, which means that more and more foals were born. And the number of foals born in a given year is called the full crop. More and more foals meant the market was saturated, which meant that prices dropped finely normalized, which meant that there was a lot of and I'm making quotes here because I don't actually think this, but surplus foals, which led to an increase in slaughter, euthanasia and just generally abandonment of foals that didn't quite meet the requirements. It couldn't be sold very well, which meant the horse bubble burst, which is good in one way, because it means that the breed is no longer being rampantly abused, as it was a couple of years ago. Right. It also means that if you're an enthusiast or a breeder, that the breed itself is going to get better. Because apparently rampant reproduction led to kind of a decrease and emphasis in quantity over quality. That's going to change. 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 Hardstarke 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, only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. But the problem is whether or not anybody will learn anything from it. Well, yeah, and the problem, too, is this breeding, very specific scientific breeding of the horses, even when they do it perfectly right. You've got a scenario where you've got a horse with very light bones, but this one rider said, the heart of a locomotive and champagne glass ankles. So as we all saw in 2006, when Barbara very gruesomely broke his foot, they tried to fix it, but I think that was I don't know, they didn't fix it. Euthanized in 2007, and then eight bells, they just euthanized her right on the track, which was very sad at Churchill Downs in 2008. So Animal Aid, if you want to look into organizations like that, they do a good job. They documented 729 horses that were injured and euthanized from March 2007 to August 11. And depending on which way you fall on that fence, the information is out there. Yeah, there's also a ton of thoroughbred and just horse in general, but there's a lot of thoroughbred rescue organizations that take in abandoned or retired or whatever thoroughbred horses that aren't wanted any longer and care for them. Get one, ride it around your property exactly. Real fast. Keep it as a watch horse. Also, I want to mention something before anybody writes in January 1 is the universal birth date for third bred horses in the Northern Hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere is august 1 horses. Lovely, lovely, lovely animals. They're beautiful. They are. Let's see, there's a pretty cool documentary. It's sad because Barbara is in it. Oh, man, it's sad. It's called? I think, the first Saturday of May. It's documentary about the Kentucky Derby and specifically the 2006 Kentucky Derby and all the horses that are starting to make their way toward it. It's really neat. And then, of course, you can read my article on thoroughbreds. If you want to learn more about thoroughbreds, go read that article. Type in thoroughbred. T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H-B-R-E-D-S in the handycearch bar@hamptonforcecom and that will bring up this article. And I said handy search bar. So it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm with all this cool kid from Minnesota. It's from Gage. He has a cool name. Yeah, it's a pretty cool name. Hey, guys. I'm 15 years old. I am from Moose Lake, Minnesota, where it is winter for about nine months out of the year. I play hockey, golf, and I water ski. Water skis. In those three months, I'm in the 10th grade. I'm on track to be one of the youngest graduates in school history. People are starting to ask me what I want to do when I'm older. I usually say doctor because I find the human body and especially the brain extremely fascinating, mostly to save time and the explanation of what I really want to do. Guys, ever since the first episode okay, maybe not the first. For a long time, I've wanted to work for housetuffworks.com. So neurologist or write for House stuff work. Yes. I'm wondering what kind of qualifications I would need and if there's any way to get a leg up on the competition. I'm a major fan. I won't say biggest because I know you wouldn't believe me, but you two have been big role models for me, and I hopefully will continue to look up to you. No pressure. Hopefully, as long as you're going to screw it up. So please write back with any advice, and good luck to you. I did write Gage back. Did you tell him that a good way to get a leg up over the competition for his parents to give us money? Yeah. And then just to submit your letter and your portfolio and your goal try out article. It's really easy to get a job here, or it was. Now we're not hiring a lot of full time writers anymore, unfortunately. What advice can we give them? I think we should make him a blogger for stuff you should know. Oh, that's a good idea. In fact, our boss even mentioned I showed him this email, he was like, what if we get some work? I said, sure, he can block for me. So what did he say? He kind of died there, but it could be resurrected if Gage was up or something like that. I feel like you really just applied the pressure. Maybe so. All right, Gage, let's get this ball rolling. Why don't you write us back after you hear this and take a nice little victory lap around your high school wearing a parka because it's going to be cold. And if you think Gage should blog, we want to hear about it, right? I think you should under the name Charles W. Bryant. If you want to see if you can tell the difference between a Chuck blog and a Gauge blog, let us know. We'll get this started. We'll figure out what shape is going to take eventually, but just show us some support so Chuck can get out of blogging tweet to us. Maybe pound go Gauge or something like that. That's S-Y-S kpodcast. You can do something on Facebook at facebook. Comstuffyshow. And you can send us regular old emails at stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcasts, Stuff from the Future. Join House department staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. 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4013923c-121b-11eb-ba6a-cb86ce1497a6 | Short Stuff: Dingoes! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-dingoes | Are dingoes dogs? Not really? Then what are they? Listen in to find out. | Are dingoes dogs? Not really? Then what are they? Listen in to find out. | Wed, 06 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=279, tm_isdst=0) | 12251674 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck and Dave's here in spirit, of course. And this is short stuff on dingoes. And I can bet you a trillion dollars the next thing that Chuck is going to say. It could be one of two things. No, it's just the one. I met Dingoes in Australia. I just lost a trillion dollars because of you. Were you going to say a dingo ate my baby? I was going to say that. You were going to say that. No, I really was going to save that and talk very briefly about when we went on our tour of Australia and my buddy Scotty met me over there, and we were able to take a couple of days and go to this, and we did a lot of stuff. But one day we went to this, I guess, a game ranch. I don't know what they call them over there, but we hold koala bears and all that stuff. And we got to have a dingo experience where we got into a dingo pin yeah. And fought them. Yeah, fought them to the test. It was cool. And did you see things when you were over there? Did you meet any? No. And it's weird because you did something like that, too, right? Yeah, I don't think I saw dingoes. We went to one of those things, we hung out with kangaroos and hung out with koala and all that stuff, but I don't remember seeing a dingo. And I looked up dingoes and I was like, that is not what I had in my head. And I realized I've been thinking hyenas this whole time. Yeah. Because as a dog owner for my whole life, you wanted to be like, oh, it's just a dog. But it's not just a dog. It was different. It had a different disposition. They walked a little different. It's sort of like when you see a coyote and you're like, oh, no, that's not a dog. Yeah, it's a wild dog. Yeah. And Dingo actually, in 2014, got its own designation as Cannis familiaris. And this was all in my research to find out, like, is a dingo a dog, really? And I think that they are descended from the same line, but they have their own distinction now. Well, keenes familiaris is the dog that's the domestic dog. Like momo's, keenes familiaris, Lucy's Akin is no, there was another one. Then they came up with a new name altogether. Okay. So it is its own species, because I saw somewhere that a host on a I think it was called animal Logic did a YouTube video I watched on them, and she said that they may be their own species. So that's a new thing then, I think 2014, I'm double checking now because I feel like a dope. It says dingo declared a separate species. I think I just got the name wrong. Look at those cute little guys. I know, they are cute. You know what? They look a lot like a sheba enews. Yes, they totally do. My friend Meredith has those and they look a lot like those. Yeah. Which would make sense because they have definitely connected, I don't think definitively, but let's say that they definitely and that somebody carried out a study. So they definitely carried out a study. But they connected dingoes to Southeast Asian dogs and she'd be a Yinu are definitely Asian, East Asian. So it's entirely possible that they are highly related. At the very least, they look a lot like shiba inu and we can at least leave it at that. Right. And of course they are still in Asia today as far as their distribution. But you think of Australia when you think of a dingo. Yeah, they've been around for thousands of years there. They are, I think, the largest mammal carnivore in Australia. And depending on where you find these guys in Australia they might be different colored. What you usually think of is that sort of like the sheba, those sort of ginger coats with the little white feet, little white feet, socks. But apparently they can be a little more gold and yellow in the desert, I think. Yeah. And they can also be the ones that live along the edges of a forest are usually a darker brown or even almost black too. And they can live wherever. Apparently it's a source of water is the thing that really limits them because they will eat just about anything and they're opportunistic feeders. But depending on where they live their coats will develop different color. That's right. They breed once a year and they have five or six little pups and they'll raise them cute. And they raise them in protected areas like a sheltered rock area. It says here that they can be raised in warmbat boroughs or rabbit warrens or hollow logs. And I believe they wean at about two months and they could either be left behind there the mom and the dad both helped raise, which is kind of cool. But at that two month period when they're weaned they can either be abandoned or they might hang around for about a year and freeload on the couch. All right. They're cute too, man. Have you seen, like, little dingo pops? Oh, boy. They're the best. They're really something. But I saw that between six and seven months they're basically totally equipped to be on their own if they need to be. That's right. They can wreak havoc. They're kind of known as a pest in Australia. Yes. Especially if you're in the livestock industry. Yeah, they can recab it on the livestock. And I don't know if it's still the biggest fence in the world but at least at the time, the largest fence on planet Earth was erected to protect grazing lands. Protect those sheep from these dingoes. 5000 km long. I bet it's still the biggest one it's got to be. It's still up for sure. But it was raised in the 19th century by the livestock industry saying, like, dingoes, you stay over here. And it worked so much so that they're finding that dingoes are an apex predator. Like you said, they're the largest carnivore on the continent in Australia. And as an apex predator, they kind of keep populations in check. And there's all sorts of knock on effects, like they hunt kangaroos. And apparently they found that kangaroos that aren't predated by dingoes tend to overeat, and the population can actually starve because they eat too much vegetation and strip the land of its vegetation. And dingoes actually helped keep that in check. So there's supposedly, according to animal logic, at least, a debate over whether to let dingoes back over the fence. But the livestock industry is like nay, not like a horse. Yes. And if you're wondering if those dingos you're seeing are part dog in Australia, there's about a 30% chance that it has been doing the deed with the dog. Wow. I think a third of southeastern Australia is dingoes are hybrids. Right. Okay, so, Chuck, let's take a break, and then we'll come back and spit some more dingo facts 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? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page, and enter code stuff. Okay, so we're back. I have one. Dingoes supposedly don't bark. They can howl. They communicate by howling. It's not like they just sit there quietly and just shrug. They don't bark is the thing. Which is kind of interesting because well, I don't know why it's interesting, now that I think about it, but it seemed interesting at the time when I first heard it. Yeah, I think they can bark, but they tend not to. They tend to communicate with those little holly sounds. Right? So that was really, I think, the last great dingo fact leading up to the big finish. Don't you think? That's a big question. Did a dingo eat that baby? Well, tell everybody what you're talking about, especially the ones who haven't seen Seinfeld or aren't fans of Meryl Streep. Yeah, there was a movie called what was it? A cry in the dark. Just cry in the dark in 1988 where Meryl Streep played Lindy Chamberlain with the very famous Salacious murder trial. That happened in the 1980s when, tragically, her young daughter, Azaria Chamberlain was nine weeks old and disappeared when they were camping in Australia and she went to prison for murder. They said they concluded. And this is without any kind of evidence whatsoever. They concluded that it was actually sort of a lack of evidence that helped convict her. That she. Like. Slit her baby's throat in the car and then went back and was with her camping with her family camping. And then went back into the tent and started screeching out the famous lines that dingo either took my baby or dingo ate my baby. Yes. Australia didn't show its best face on this initially. There was, like, basically Australians just didn't believe at the time that dingoes would UN prompted or unprovoked attack a human and carry off even a nine week old baby. It just didn't make sense. There was no record of them ever doing that, so it seemed unlikely to begin with. But I read also that there was apparently a bit of xenophobia against the Chamberlain family because they were 7th day Adventists, I think. So, like, there were rumors that the daughter's name meant sacrifice in the wilderness and just weird stuff like that. Nothing pretty. And the idea that Lindy Chamberlain was actually put in prison on just total circumstantial evidence is pretty significant. She was finally released, and I think the family was paid by the state because she got railroaded and everyone knew she didn't actually do it. But there was just never any conclusive evidence that a dingo did eat her baby until another kid got attacked. Right, well, I didn't hear about that. One of the big pieces of lack of evidence was the fact that she said that her baby had on what's called a matinee jacket. It's like a little sort of like a little cape cardigan thing that you put on a baby, and they didn't find that thing anywhere. So they were like, she's lying, because the mother knows how they dress their babies. And they recovered the baby clothes, which had some blood on them around the neck, which is why they thought she slit her throat. But they didn't recover this matinee jacket. And so that helped convict her. And then in 1986, a guy was climbing in that camping area, fell to his death, and when they discovered the remains a few weeks later, they found that little matinee jacket. No way. And that helped spring her from prison. Okay, well, then maybe it was the popular public opinion changed when it emerged that other kids had been attacked by dingoes or were later on. And then finally, I think in 2012, you dug up a New York times article that the fourth coroner's inquest into the death of Azeria Chamberlain. Finally. Vindicated lindy Chamberlain said that dingo did kill this little girl and definitely not her mom. And they amended her death certificate. Finally. Final, like true vindication yeah, but apparently Lindy Chamberlain was like, I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep agitating for these corner inquest until I'm finally exonerated. And she finally was. So that stingos. You can try and snug on them like dogs, but the ones at this game ranch weren't dogs. They didn't want to snug as much. Okay, good advice. I pulled out all the stops. I know all the tricks you tried to give him, Paparoni. Yeah, I gave him all the scriptures in all the right places. They were just like, okay, I'll be over here. Yeah. Thanks, human. Let's stop doing this immediately. And speaking of, let's stop doing this immediately. 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, you." | |
210ac34c-121b-11eb-85ed-b704a80f3e72 | Short Stuff: Parachute Emergency! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-parachute-emergency | Your parachute won’t open – now what?! Listen up to Josh and Chuck and you may make it out of this in one piece. | Your parachute won’t open – now what?! Listen up to Josh and Chuck and you may make it out of this in one piece. | Wed, 26 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=146, tm_isdst=0) | 12310200 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Dave's here in spirit. So it's Short Stuff. Let's get it started. I know we've talked about whether or not you have skydivitis. Skyde, yes. All of them. And I think that you have. Right. Didn't you do a tandem job? I did one time, and I think I said before, and I'll say it again I blacked out the first 2nd or two out of just sheer terror. I've never blacked out from terror before, but I did that time. And overall, you did it and you were okay with it. Or when you got to the bottom, you were like, that was actually awesome. Yeah, absolutely. But I wouldn't do it again. There was a period where I would have and then you me was like, no, I've done it too. We both done it. Let's just leave it at that and not press our luck. Yeah, I still have not and I was thinking about it today and I'm not scared to or anything. I don't have a problem with heights. I think it could be fun. But I'm also just kind of like, well, why bother? There's a lot at stake now. Well, yeah, that's one of those, like, early 20 something. That's when it's best to do. But then there's plenty of people who are like, I'm a middle aged skydiver. I've been doing it forever. The key is to never jump 1000 times. You just need to jump 999 times and just stop right there. Apparently. Yeah, because if you ask Ron Bell, who is a certified USPA. United States Parachute Association member, I guess. I don't know what they're called. Dude jumper dude. He's made 13,000 jumps and had 14 malfunctions. And he said that's about on target. About one and a thousand jumps. Something could go wrong. But part of the reason for this episode is that doesn't mean certain death just because there is a malfunction. No, there's a lot of ways that your parachute could malfunction. And it basically has everything to do with your shoot not deploying correctly. Which the appropriate thing to say when your shoot doesn't come out is shoot. Oh, shoot terrible. Thanks. But the problem so you're going about 120 miles an hour. Just to put this into perspective, that, by the way, is terminal velocity. After falling for 12 seconds. A human being won't travel faster than that no matter how far they're falling. Charlie Sheen taught us all that. Totally did, back in the 90s. Imagine how much cocaine he was on when he was filming that movie. It must have been mind boggling. Like, literally mind boggling. So you're traveling 120 miles an hour straight toward the Earth and your shoot doesn't go out as it should. And there's a lot of different things that can happen with what's called a partial malfunction. And a partial malfunction means the shoot tries to deploy but something happens to keep it from deploying correctly. Absolutely. So there's typically something like your line getting messed up where the shoot comes out. Okay. But the two sets of lines on either side of the chute might get kind of wound up. Kind of like how when you were a kid and you spun around on a swing set, the chains would twist up ahead of you, above you. That same thing frequently can happen when you're parachuting. Fortunately, it's kind of easy to do. You just kind of twist the other way, and it will untwist, just like with the swing set. The key, though, is to not go out of your mind with fear and forget how to turn one way or the other. Yeah. I think don't panic is the number one rule of all of this stuff. Was that a Hitchhiker's Guide reference? Yeah. Plus general line. Okay, good. As long as it was in there somewhere, it's good. Yeah. So that's called a line twist. The other partial malfunction is known as a line over, which means that your shoot tries to deploy and maybe does deploy, but one of the lines has crossed over where the shoot is. And so the shoot is sort of if you can imagine a parachute with one of the lines kind of running through it instead of where it should be, which is dangling down from it, then you've got a parachute that's sort of working, but not like it should. No. And that can be a real problem when your main shoot doesn't open. But luckily, people who jumped out of planes plenty of times have figured out that it might help if you have a second shoot. And we're going to talk all about that second shoot and how it probably will save your life after this message. What do you think? Sounds great. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. Okay, Charles, your main shoot is deployed and not functioning. Either you've got a line cross that won't undo. You got a line over, or in some cases, your shoot just hasn't deployed at all. What do you do, big shot? What do you do? Well, that's called a total malfunction. If your shoot just doesn't come out or doesn't open at all, it's a complete failure. You have a reserve shoot. You've always got another one in there. And the good news is that any old well, I don't know about any old, because I'm sure they make sure the most experienced parachuters pack that main chute at wherever you're going. But you do not have to be a certified FAA operator to pack that main chute. You do have to be that to pack that reserve shoot, though, right? Which is like an extra level of protection because those people are very sober. They know what they're doing. No nonsense crew cuts, every last one. Of them and they will pack your reserve shoot very well. The thing is, if your reserve shoot doesn't open, this article points it out pretty plainly. God wanted you dead, your number was up. Yeah, I mean, reserves are not supposed to fail because they are the redundancy, but it can be a manufacturing mistake. Whereas the chances of the reality is when your main chute fails. It could just be that it was packed wrong or that you came out of the plane funny and your body is at a weird angle and it sounds kind of funny to say. But if you are going to have a parachute malfunction rather than a line over a line cross. You are actually better off if your main chute doesn't deploy at all because that cuts down on the chance of your reserve shoot getting entangled with your main chute total. So if you're going to have to use your reserve shoot, it's better if the main shoot isn't deployed. But if you're worried or whatever and your main shoot is not working, don't hesitate to deploy that reserve shoot. Just go ahead and use it. That's what it's there for. That's right in this house Stuff Works article, bell is quoted as saying, when in doubt, whip it out. That is so bell. Funny guy. That is so bell. So Ted Nugent too. We had a guy put in floors at our house once and he was a naked skydiver and he said, and he said one time he got blown off course and this guy was not there was nothing about him that made you say like, yeah, but you were a pretty handsome naked skydiver. Whatever. The point is he was blown off course once and he had to hitch a ride back naked except for his parachute. What's the point? I don't get the naked sky down. He said it was a very freeing sensation. You can imagine. I mean, that's what they say about being naked doing anything, right? This is like wind whipping pasture. Gentelia. Your gentalia. Yeah, it's like s'mores. It's a contraction. So the other good thing about the fail safe these days is that if you, let's say you go out of like you, you blacked out. Let's say you didn't regain consciousness and you weren't doing a tandem jump and all of a sudden Josh Clark is just hurtling to the ground, passed out. You will probably still be okay because these days they have these modern devices called automatic activation devices. AADS. And they use computerized sensors that basically say, hey, if you're falling below 1000ft and you're going at least 78 mph, then something's wrong and we're going to automatically deploy the backup parachute, this little computerized thing, right. So as like you said, it's not a death sentence if your shoot doesn't open. There's a lot of ways that you can resolve this, but there are some instances where your shoot just doesn't open. What's crazy is that people die from those very infrequently, or I should say, taking into account all jumps, there are very few people who die. Parachuting. I think in 2032, people died out of 2.7 million skydive jumps, and then in 2020, just eleven out of 2.8 million died. And that's not taking into account people who actually have survived these things where their parachutes just didn't deploy and they hit the ground and they actually live, which does happen from time to time. Yeah. And I guess just some back of the envelope math, which I'll probably get wrong, if Bell is correct, and that about one in 1000 have some sort of partial malfunction, at least that would mean out of those 2.8 million total jumps, there were about 2800 malfunctions and only eleven deaths still. Yeah, I think you're right. You know me in math, too, so that was impressive. No, that one's pretty straightforward, I think. So out of the 2800 ish malfunctions, there were only eleven deaths. So your chances of surviving a malfunction are still really great. Yeah. So there were a couple of people that kind of famously survived. There was a woman named Victoria Sealers whose nefarious evil husband tampered with her parachute to kill her, and she survived a drop from 4000ft a few years ago. What happened to him? He went to prison. A guy named Michael Holmes jumped 2 miles, 3.2 km. That's how far he dropped to the Earth without his shoe deploying. But he happened to land in some BlackBerry bushes and he lived. Do you feel bad for the BlackBerry bushes? No, I thought that was a very sweet, nice ending. And I'm just picturing this person landing and reaching over and picking a BlackBerry and enjoying nice. For some reason, that all sounded like you were sympathizing. What the BlackBerry bushes do to deserve that? And now, of course, this guy's probably listening. He's like, yeah, ate a BlackBerry with my stomach collapsed. Right. But then the queen of all this, Chuck the Queen champion, was a woman named Vezna Vulevitch, who in 1972 was a flight attendant on board a Yugoslav Air flight that they suspect had a bomb. In any case, it came apart at 33 0ft. And she kept in the tail pinned between the wall and ant or the back of the plane, and a service cart dropped 33,000ft out of the air and survived. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Wow. That is startling. Can you imagine, like, her just shakily, putting a cigarette in her mouth and walking away from the landing? Holy cow. Because this was Yugoslavia in 1072, there's 110% chance that she smoked cigarettes. Yes, of course. Unfiltered. You got anything else? Man. I got nothing else. Pull that shoot, whip it out, and when it doesn't work, be sure to say shoot. Well, that's it for shorts of everybody. We're 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." | |
Does smiling make you happy? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/does-smiling-make-you-happy | You smile because you're happy, yet happiness research suggests the opposite can also hold true. Smiling may actually improve your mood. Open interpretation make for the best SYSKs, so prepare for an old-fashioned academia studyfest with Chuck and Josh. | You smile because you're happy, yet happiness research suggests the opposite can also hold true. Smiling may actually improve your mood. Open interpretation make for the best SYSKs, so prepare for an old-fashioned academia studyfest with Chuck and Josh. | Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:56:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=18, tm_min=56, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=200, tm_isdst=0) | 27192922 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey, friends. Dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted in compatibility, Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this stuff you should know. Hi. Hey, man. How are you doing? Good. You're all smiles, aren't you? I am. Is this article that we're about to talk about that it makes you smile reading it like the contagious yawning one? No. I'm pretty smiley, though. You're fairly smiling. Unless I'm actively pissed off about something, then I'll probably be smiling. Okay. But you see me upset too. That happens. I've never seen you upset. Hey, you just smiled just now. That made me smile. Was that a fake smile or was that what's called a Ducane smile? That was Ducane, maybe all the way. So we're going to go with Ducane. But it could be Duken. There's two NS, so I think it may be Duquen. Duquen smile. It's French. It's named after Frenchie Guillaume Duke, and he's a neurologist, one of the early ones where it was basically like, oh, there's a brain there and it's in control of everything. So let's test all sorts of crazy stuff and we'll begin the field of neuroscience. Right? Yeah. And in 1862, sort of oddly at the time, I think there was so much more interesting things going on to study. He figured out that there's a natural smile and there are facial muscles involved in that that are involved with the brain. And so he said, I will name it after myself. Well, he was kind of an interesting guy and that he was, from what I understand, somewhat obsessed with the idea that muscles were connected to the soul. Okay. Which is weird because that kind of provides the basis of later research into facial expressions and specifically smiling. But he was kind of on to something in a weird, roundabout way. But the way that he isolated, he was famous for isolating the facial expressions involved in the smile. Right. But he did it by taking emotion out of the equation. And he did that by shocking the facial muscles of patients in his hospital. That's how he identified what muscles were involved in a smile and a genuine smile. Wow. Yeah. And he was known to basically shock people's faces. There's a picture of them with the patient, these two basically rods that you would use to shock somebody, and the person is going like, I'm not doing this on my own. Right. Yeah. Wow. Let's do Ken. Okay. And that was some pretty shocking experimentation. So Ducan, right, comes up with the smile, and that's the genuine smile. There's also a fake smile and the Duke's smile. Also, if you're interested, Chuck, I didn't send it to you, but there's this thing called Spot, the fake smile on BBC. It's like 20 different pictures, and you pick whether it's fake or genuine. I can pick that up. Apparently, people stink at it. I didn't have time to really do it, so I don't know what my scores I did, like, four of them, but they were kind of hard. But the key is, when you're looking for a genuine smile, the eyes are involved. You get the crow's feet, right. You get kind of squinty. That's a real smile. Yeah. Big smile is just the mouth. Yeah. I have jokingly doctored up photos of Emily and myself, like, smudging away, wrinkles and stuff and crow's feet just kidding around me and pictures. I don't care. No, that's my bag. But Emily always says it looks like we're, like, smiling without our eyes. It looks like that fake smile, like you've been Botox, which will come up later exactly in this discussion. So fake smiling, real smiling. Obviously, the one you want to go for is the genuine smile because you can feel it. It's, like, kind of starts in your gut and comes out of your heart. Right. Like when you see a guy fall down on the street, and you just like you feel that sense of happiness, right? Yeah. You just start whistling, maybe as you walk along your way, you're like, Sorry, Mr. Need a hand? Yeah. No. And then you happen to have your prosthetic hand in there, and you let them pull it right out, and you're like, Whoa. Did I ever tell you about the guy in college that fell off his bike and his books played out all over the street in front of hundreds of students on campus? Oh, wow. And he just put his arm on his chin and started throwing through one of the boats while he was laying down. That's awesome. One of the better reactions I've ever seen. That is awesome. Wow. I think that would have emotionally crippled me. I was so self conscious in college. I would not have liked that either. I would have been like, well, that's it for me in college. Transferring to a tent exactly. In my dad's backyard. So, Chuck, we've got the difference between the fake smile and the real smile. I don't know if you noticed this, you're a little older than me, but in the were you aware that there was a lot of, like, this is the heyday of smile research. I didn't know that. It sort of makes sense just because that's when the whole happy face boom. Once. Forest Gump invented that right. With that smiley face T shirt. Yes. That was a big deal. Smiling was a big deal. Okay. So people put funding into figuring out just evaluating smiles. One of the things they found that was kind of surprising is that fake smile we were talking about, the one that just has to do with the mouth, and it's not necessarily connected to any emotion. The fake smile actually can lead to more positive feelings or a better sense of well being, at least in these studies that came out of the yeah, there's been a lot of studies, as it turns out. But that's kind of weird, because the way we've always thought of smiling is your smile is the result of positive feelings, not you can generate positive feelings from smiling. Right. But there are a bunch of studies, as you say, and they found this body of research is surprisingly consistent. Right? Yeah. In the late eighty s, the psychologist named Robert Zejan, I took it as Johnic, I think. There's no falcon. I know, but they add like oh, do they? Invisible. It's not silent. It's an invisible vowel. All right. This doctor from the Falklands where balkans. Balkans from the Falklands. From the Falkland Islands published a study. This smile stuff is making us so silly, dude. It is. He had subjects repeat vowel sounds, obviously, which would mimic either a smile or a frown. So if you're going to mimic a smile, you would do like, an E, right? And you would do a frown. You would do a long U and even your brow furrows, even though I think you're exaggerating. But that's sort of what happens naturally to your face. Right. But he was making them use these vowel sounds because to find out whether it has an effect, positive or negative or none, you have to take emotions out. You want them to be emotionally neutral to begin with, which is kind of hard, because I would be sitting there kind of giggling anyway at the silliness of the whole thing. But it's similar to Duke Ken using the shocks. You're trying to keep emotion out of it to see if you can generate, like don't think of something happy, just go, Yee. Right. And they in fact reported the subjects reported feeling better with the long esound and feeling bad with the U. So there you have it. Cast closed, right? Yeah. I have problems with studies like that anytime they base everything on a measure of reported well being, objective well being. Sure. Like, we've talked a lot about happiness, right. We've got an audiobook just sitting there that we've never released on happiness. Just gathering dust. Yeah. So we know a lot about this, and we know that there are a lot of studies out there that are just kind of like, yes, and if it were just this one, I would be poopooing it. But there's a bunch of other ones that have kind of followed similar methodology, have come up with let's see similar results. Well, rather than making vowel sounds, there was another study that had people hold a pencil in their mouths, either sideways or which sideways smile or sticking out, which makes a pout out. Makes a pout. Always remember that there's your mnemonic device. Right. And they found the same thing that people who had the pen sticking out of their mouths were unhappier afterward. And people who are holding the pencil or pen lengthwise were happier afterward. That's right. Again, self reported. But this is kind of strange that people are still coming to the same conclusion. Yes. And yet another Josh, had three groups of people. One was shown pictures of facial expressions, another group made those facial expressions, and yet another made those expressions while looking at themselves in a mirror. And then they were asked questions that pinpointed their emotional state before and after, and overwhelmingly, they scored happier after smiling. And the mirror subjects saw an even more pronounced change in mood than those who didn't see the mirror. So it went to people who just looked at pictures of people smiling, didn't have much of a change. They didn't have any at all. That's what it says. People who smiled but didn't look at pictures and didn't look into a mirror had some change. Yes. But the people who smiled by they looked in the mirror head through the roof change. Right. That's the jackpot. That's when you're looking, you're like, hey, look at that guy. He's smiling. I'm smiling right back. And it's just the love fest. That's fine. I'm always disappointed when I look in the mirror, even when I'm smiling. I don't even look in mirrors that much anymore. I think we've talked about that. Yeah, we have. And probably in the How Mirrors Work episode, I'm going to suspect that one. Although that little trick mirror, we were on that film shoot not too long ago, and they had one of those mirrors that makes you all squatty. A fun house mirror. I think you and I, like, five year old stood in front of that thing for 30 minutes laughing. Yeah. The funniest part is you and I are, like, going up and down like we're playing in the mirror, but then the crew was just walking by and they looked really deliberate. They look like Lollipop Guild members. Little person there carrying that light, but with big feet. That's pretty cool. Fun house mirrors are the best. But this kind of raises a big question, like, why would looking in the mirror increase your happiness more than just smiling? Right. Unless you love yourself or think about looking at yourself, sure. But you're probably going to lose your funding if that's what you come up with. Instead, these researchers who conducted this particular study suggested that there's a self conscious aspect to smiling, right. In the group that just smiled. If there are people who were introspective, who thought about their feelings, who were aware of their changes and emotion, those people would have had the most boost in happiness from just smiling. But looking in the mirror. You take all those people who aren't necessarily introspective and force them to confront their change in emotion by making them watch themselves smile. And so that almost as a supplement to self consciousness. If you're not self conscious, this simulates that phenomenon. Indeed. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, you don't have to just sit there and think, oh, I'm smiling right now. You can see it, you're taking it in. So they think that there's a psychological aspect to it. But this guy, Robert Zajanak, that's what we concluded his name is, he suggests that there's a physiological basis for it. Right. So there's maybe both. So the only thing we're missing now is what you can, though, which is that they're all facial muscles are connected to the soul. That's right. And then everybody will just be happy and covered. That's right, yeah. And interestingly. Josh this goes back to one Chucky Darwin. Yeah. He actually thought of the stuff back in the 19th century, that facial expressions don't only reflect emotions, but could be the cause of them. And then he got busy with the whole other stuff that he did, that little matter of the galapagos, and it kind of sat on the back burner until the 80s when these new dudes started studying it. And Dr. Zejanak looked at the research a little further and basically said, you know what? I've got a physiological reason, I've got a hypothesis here why a smile might trigger happiness. And it has to do with the temperature of your body parts change when there's activity there in the muscles, and there's chemical activities that happen in that area as well because of that temperature change, just like in smiling. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because adventure is around the corner. And there's a card that's going to get you closer with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you advantage miles and loyalty points and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations, so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to builtin travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs and with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. 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Right, well, there was other research I don't think had anything to do with Smiling that found that changes in temperature in the brain led to biochemical changes. Right. So, like, maybe more of an endorphin was released when it's cooler. Or basically what they found was when you can connect emotions to temperature. A warmer brain is an anxious brain. Yes. Maybe it has to do with fight or flight. Sure. A cooler brain comparatively, is a happier brain. And Zach said, okay, well, how does this relate to Smiling? And what did he find? Well, the answer is in the carotid artery. That's right. Not the car toid artery, as some people mistakenly say. And that is the pipe that delivers most of the blood to the brain flows through an opening called the cavernous sinus. And that's got a lot of facial veins there. So when you smile, those muscles tightened, those veins are constricted. It's going to cut down the blood flow going through the car toid carotid artery, and you're going to get a cooler brain. Right. So it's going to make you happier. But he said, also, conversely, when you frown, it actually relieves even more pressure on that carotid artery. So more blood flows more blood flow equals a higher temperature in the brain. And I mean, we're talking about such a minute change, but it certainly makes sense that if our brains are sensitive, if the chemical processes in our brains are sensitive to very minute changes, which I imagine they would be, then this explanation is perfectly rational, reasonable. It's not supported in any way. None of these studies show definitively that, yes, smiling makes you happier, but they suggest that the results suggest that there's a pretty good chance that people become happier just from smiling, even faking it. Yes, but you found a study that refuted that. Josh well, let's talk about the Botox first. Yes. Two more studies, both very interesting. So the Botox one, remember, kind of supports this. We were saying, like, with the shocks. Duke's shock. Or using the pen, you're trying to take emotion out of the equation to see if facial expressions can create emotion. Yes. With Botox, it's doing the opposite. You're taking the facial expressions out to see how that affects emotions. Right. And what they found there was a study from 2010 from Barnard College in New York that found that people who have Botox botox, we should I'm sure most people know, but it's a toxic protein spotulin yeah. That they inject into your skin to basically paralyze it. So, like, you don't have that troublesome space between your eyes when you frown or your forehead doesn't crinkle up or your crow's feet don't crinkle up when you smile and paralyzes the nerves. Yes. And it's sort of creepy looking sometimes, especially. Right. It's not too bad. Right. But it's super popular these days. It is. To have Botulum injected into your face is very popular. Yeah, it is pretty neat. We have finally arrived at the dystopian future that's been predicted forever. Wow. But what they found was that people who had Botox injected reported they showed them basically, like, tearjerker clips from movies or something like that. Like a net banning is on a couch and she's, like, crippled or something like that. Yeah. Like sweetheart Alabama or something. Yeah, exactly. Like at the end, when things turn out right for everybody. And the people who had received Botox injections reported less of an emotional response than people who have been given Restylene, which is another injection. But it's a filler. It doesn't paralyze anything. Yeah. So basically, the idea is it matched their face. The results were that if you can't produce a facial expression, then your emotional experience is slightly lessened. It's muted. So this shows both ways. Facial expressions are somehow connected to emotion, true to producing emotion. The other study, which I like, talks about fake smiling, like, turn that frown upside down and you won't be so gloomy. Not true. Fake smiling can actually make things worse. So Walmart greeters when you're being told to smile on your job. That can actually bum you out more. That's the reason. Didn't you intuitively know this already? That that Porsche know whose job it is to smile at everybody is probably the one who wants to punch you in the stomach most yeah. By the end of the day. Sure. Yeah. But it's just interesting because all these other things say, like, a smile can actually increase your emotion, but it's got to be a real smile. A fake smile has the reverse effect. And they actually did some research on this. Yes. Michigan State 2011 study. Ghost Spartans'it was in the Academy of Management journal. And basically, this professor, he's a professor of management. He studied a group of bus drivers over two weeks and found that the ones who fake smiled the most had more withdrawal and emotional exhaustion and had less hemorrhoids, probably. So basically that's surface acting fake smiling. Yes. But he did find also that deep acting, which is where you're trying to cultivate a more positive outlook inside yourself, like thinking of a really pleasant memory that genuinely makes you happy. Right. Doing that can lead to actual more positive feelings and better performance at work, because, again, it's a management study, so that's what they care about. But you actually do experience better feelings. There's a positive effect rather than an emotional withdrawal or waste that comes from fake smiling. Which makes sense to me because, I mean, think about it. Facial expressions are, we've always assumed, designed for another person. This is how I'm feeling right now. Respond accordingly. If you are misleading everybody, you're going to, at the very least, feel like you're not connected to anyone because there's no one who is understanding you. Yeah, they said it causes feelings of inauthenticity, which makes sense. And they also found that women, who are typically viewed as more emotional than men got in worse moods with the fake smiling and reacted even more positively when they were deep acting and really able to conjure up those pleasant feelings. Puppies. Yeah. So men are just apes. Well, another study 2005 menu at University study found that women are likelier to smile whether they feel like smiling or not in almost all social situations compared to men. Yeah. That explains why women are often emotionally exhausted. Yeah. My mom was much more inclined to put on a happy face around other people than my dad was. My dad would literally just, like, go off by himself and sulk in front of everybody and just be like, here's me. But still, in 2011, the point that we're at is putting pens in people's mouths and telling them to make e sounds in our smile research, this is where we are. But at the very least, the findings are interesting. And, man, it has been forever since we've done, like, a study fest. Yeah. This feels like 20 08 20 09 crazy. Yeah. You know, we've been doing this for more than three years now. Really? Yeah. That means Sarah our fan. She's, like, 90. She wrote recently. I think she's 14 now. She's 1514. Is she 14 now? Yeah, she's 14. She's on the Facebook page now. No, I haven't hits the darn button. Well, that's great. Well, that's it for smiling. I'm done smiling for the day. Yeah. I don't feel like being emotionally withdrawing and exhausted. Although our next podcast that we're recording is pretty fun. It is. But that'll be a genuine smile. Yes. Okay. So, Chuck, you got anything else? No. Just to plug the fact that we're on the radio now. You can listen to us on Friday nights from seven, eight if you're in the New York area, New Jersey area on WFMU 91.1. As a matter of fact, we cover the whole Hudson Valley like a wet blanket that's been left out in the street for a couple of days. Hudson Valley. You can find us at 90.1 Fridays from 78. And big thanks to Ken Freedman. Yeah, huge. Thanks. Ken Friedman. He should wear a cape. Yeah, he might. He probably does. But Ken is at WFMU and he's like everyone we've talked to in public radio because we've talked to other folks has said, boy, Ken is like one of these stand up guys. So thanks, Ken. And if you're listening to this right now in WFMU, we'll bet you appreciate Ken yourself. Yeah, they know. Okay, so what do you want to do? Listen to mail now. Oh, if you want to know more about smiling and happiness, type Happy in to the search bar at our beloved, venerable websitehoustuffworks.com. And it's going to bring up a ton of stuff. Yeah, there's a lot. There is so much happiness stuff that we wrote like last year. People love studying emotion. Yeah. Yes, they do. The psychologists, that's their thing. It certainly is. Let's make people cry and then ask them about it. Let's make people a shock people in the face. We got to get that happiness audiobook released. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you advantage miles and loyalty points and two times advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. 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It helps improve circulation, offers better rehabilitation through pain relief, and activates the recovery processes, giving better patient outcomes. Visit Neogenrelievespane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen system. Come chat with us. That's Neogenreliefspain.com. Your patience will thank you. Is it still relevant? Sure it is. Okay. It was evergreen. It was timeless. Classic. Anyway, I said how stuff works in handy. Search Bar so listen or mail. Should we go with Underground Railroad or fear Orgasms? I got permission to read this, by the way, as I do all of them. Hi guys. Love the podcast. Thanks for making me learn and laugh. I swear the following story is true. Bizarre, but true. So I'm listening to Fear podcast at the gym today and you gave an example of men asking women out after experiencing fear because they feel invisible or sexual. And Josh said something like if you've ever had a strange reaction to fear, let us know. Invincible. Invisible. I think she meant invincible. Maybe. So last month I had a truly bizarre experience related to Fear. My boss was out of town. He put me in charge of a webinar he had planned to do and I've moderated them before, but this was the first time I had to make sure all the mechanics worked correctly. About 50 people were expected to join. I practiced thoroughly, going through it a few times to make sure I had it down. When the day came to do the webinar, I loaded it up 2 hours beforehand to make sure it was all ready and it did not work correctly. I read through my notes and tried again. I could not get the slides up and started to panic. I can't get the phone lines to work. All of a sudden I try again and again and I am panicking. Now I call the client to let them know my difficulties. At this point I am really panicked. It's been 2 hours. Folks sending me text while they can't connect, sending emails. I like the build up here, especially if you know it's coming. Two phone lines went down, no way to reach the software support line and 50 people waiting for me to connect them to the webinar that is supposed to start right now. I'm shaking with anxiety and guess what my body does? I have an intense orgasm. And then another one, she doubled down. Yeah, I'm thinking my body was trying to get rid of extra energy so I could focus, which kind of makes sense, maybe. Or it's just like enough of this, right? Let's party. Who knows? It was so unexpected that I almost started laughing. And no, I have not told many people about this. I'm not sure how 100,000 people you can share it if you find it of interest, but please only use my first name. And Julie, I wrote her back and said, yeah, I really would like to read this. And by the way, good for you. And she said, yeah, right now she goes into Bear Dens and she hang glides and does all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah, exactly. Crazy. Julie Beckon, by the way, I just made up that last name. Literally. She didn't send her last name in. So for all those years that I was stumbling around in the dark not knowing what. The heck was going on? I should have just mounted a webinar. So I don't even know what to call for. Now, let's see if you have ever encountered a bear, let us know. Yes, we don't get too many outdoorsy emails these days. How about that? If you've ever encountered a bear, tell us about it and you can tweet to us. Right. SYSK podcast. Which, by the way, I should tell you, we have a little campaign going that started last night. Oh, really? A guy named OMG Chris. That's his Twitter handle. O-M-G-C-H-R-I-S-S right. Okay. He asked us to take a vacation because he wanted to catch up. And I tweeted that many other people have caught up and succeeded. You need to. So I asked all of our fans and followers on Twitter to let Chris know that he can do it. And there's a hashtag now it's Pound Chris can do it. And all these people sending these words of encouragement and tips on how to catch up. Some people listen to us at 1.5 or two times and they say your laugh is very funny twice the speed. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of people that said they do that. So if you want to encourage Chris, I've been retweeting a lot of words of encouragement. You can send him a tweet and CCS on it and then make sure you use the hashtag Pound Chris Cando. Right. Is it? C-H-R-I-S-S-S. No, it's just C-H-R-I-S can do it. Okay, good thinking. Awesome. And then also we're on Facebook. Facebook. Comstuffynow. Yes, indeed. And you can send us your bear stories at stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House of Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, 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 at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | ||
c3c01608-5460-11e8-b38c-fb314f3c4cb7 | SYSK Selects: How Salt Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-salt-works | A Roman senator once said, "Mankind can live without gold, but not without salt." Right he was. The human body needs salt so much we have developed a taste for it specifically. But too much salt can be toxic. Learn about salt's role in human history and how we get it from the Earth in this classic episode. | A Roman senator once said, "Mankind can live without gold, but not without salt." Right he was. The human body needs salt so much we have developed a taste for it specifically. But too much salt can be toxic. Learn about salt's role in human history and how we get it from the Earth in this classic episode. | Sat, 16 Nov 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=320, tm_isdst=0) | 41721601 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout, process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carryon for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select Card so you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage Miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the city Advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at citi. Comeventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Hello, everybody. Charles W. Chuck Bryant here on a lovely Saturday morning in Atlanta, Georgia. We're going back in time to February 18, 2014 to talk about salt. Our episode How Salt Works is one of my all time favorites. I love salt because I'm from the south, probably like, a little too much. You ask my doctor. But that salty. Salty goodness on food just makes it all pop for me. But has a really cool, interesting back story how you get salt, they harvest salt, and how salt works on food. Learn all about it right now. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Tuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Oh, yeah. Jerry's over there, she's all laughing today for some reason. Old salty dog. Why did salty calling someone salty? I wonder where that came from. I meant to look that up. The one I didn't look up. Yeah, because you're in a salty mood. Yeah, I said that plenty. And what if that comes from, like, a salty dog? This is my idea. Okay, so salty describes somebody who is a little coarse, a little rough around the edges, a little upset. Hear me out. Because their face is usually puckered into, like, a sour, puss face. And what makes your face pucker? Eating salt. So they're a salty person. Okay. I would call them lemony. Well, so take something with a grain of salt. Nicely ancient. That's from the Romans. Okay. They would take poison with a grain of salt or something that was hard to swallow with a grain of salt to make it go down more easily. Okay, let's go ahead and cover these, then. Somebody not being worth their salt. Yeah. In this article, it says that slaves were traded with salt. And if you got your hands on like a slave, that wasn't worth much. Like he wasn't worth his salt. Is that not the origin I found? The first reference in print came from an 1805 description or book about an expedition to guinea bison. And it mentions a guy who wasn't worth his salt. He's a good man. Peter Hale. H-A-Y-L-E but he wasn't worth his salt, the guy said And I looked it up and I couldn't find that, whether Hale was hired or was a slave. But I got the impression that what the guy was talking about wasn't that he had traded salt for hail, but not worth the salt in his body. No, he was not worth the salt. Meaning a salary, which supposedly salary is rooted in the idea of paying someone in salt. Same with soldiers. Saul Dari and to give salt salad, too. The word salad comes from the word salt. Really? Yeah. So salt is an important thing, historically speaking. There's been economies largely based on salt. There have been cultures rated by other cultures because of salt. If you were an ancient salt producing area, probably the rulers controlled with the tight grip that salt production and salt distribution. And that actually carried on into the modern age. When Great Britain was occupying India, they had a tight control on salt production there. And actually, Gandhi started a revolution, or helped along the revolution, to overthrow British imperial power through a salt protest. He walked 240 miles to the coast where the salt production facilities were, and grabbed a bit of salty clay and boiled the salt out of it, which was an illegal act. And that protest spurred other similar protests. And the British were like, hey, you can't do that, mate. You can't mine your own salt. Right. But he did, because he was Gandhi. It was called the Salt March to Dandy by Gandhi. Yeah. Salt dates back to 60, 50 BC. And they actually have found evidence of salt trading in prehistoric times. So obviously it's used to spice food is great, but it's used to preserve food was super valuable back in the day and still today, because salt is one of these things, you remember, nature loves homeostasis, it loves balance. Oh, yeah. If you introduce salt to the mix, it kind of throws off that balance. So to gain homeostasis, salt is introduced into, say, meat. It likes to go into the meat. Yes. But it also draws out the moisture, whether it's blood, water, whatever. So it dries out the meat, it introduces the salt and it draws out the moisture. That's right. That's called curing, which preserves things, because anytime bacteria comes in contact with that salty meat, from that point on, the bacteria boom. Gets dried out and dies. Yeah. That's why packaged foods are still loaded with sodium, unfortunately. I got some stuff on that later, but it was used as a currency in Ethiopia up until the 20th century and was used as a form of suicide in China for nobility. They would owe on salt and kill themselves. Oh, yeah. Because it was expensive and very valuable. So nobility, that's like that was like a noble way to go out. We'll talk in a minute. Like what happens when you have too much salt? It's not very pleasant. It's not very pleasant. But, you know, in medieval Europe remember we did the ten medieval torture devices episode? Well, we skipped one called the Goat's Tongue, and it was apparently a real thing, a tickle torture. They would dip your feet in front water, bring in a goat, and the goat would lick the bottom of your feet, and then they would dip it again. Is that in the article description? No, I'm saying, like, it wasn't in there from the description. Apparently being tortured, tickle tortured, was not pleasant. I would love to have my feet looked by a goat. They would do it until you did not love it. That was the point of the Goat's Tongue tour. Sounds like fun to me. Yeah. In the Middle Ages, salt was transported along the notorious old Salt Route in northern Germany. I know what I'm going to get you for Christmas now. A goat in some salt water. I've had both at the same time. I don't know why I didn't think about it. It played a big role in early America as well. Massachusetts Bay Colony had the first patent to produce salt here in the colonies. Yeah, salt water. And they did so for 200 years. The Erie Canal opened primarily to transport salt. Yes. They called it the Ditch that salt built. Really? Sounds like something you just made up. No, I swear. I've been on the Erie Canal. Oh, yeah. They have this nice system of locks. Sure. And there's still, like, donkey trails where the donkeys used to pull these little flat bottom boats that would carry salt and whatnot. And now yuppies. Walk along those trails, jog yuppies. Are there still yuppies. Oh, yeah. Dinks. Yeah, I heard one the other day. Dual income, large dog owner. All right. In the early 1800, salt was apparently four times expensive as beef, because salt was valuable, obviously, and we were lousy with beef. And in civil war, salt played a big part in the Union strategy. There were quite a few battles fault over capturing saltworks and salt mines. Yeah. In Saltville, Virginia. Yeah. Salt. I wonder what they do there. And it actually had a big effect on the salt shortage, on the Confederate troops. Yeah, not just the troops, but the people behind the lines back in the Confederate States were like, we want our salt. And it had a huge impact on morale. Apparently. I would say so. And the reason why salt is so important, if you haven't gotten the impression that it is important by now, you should rewind the podcast and just listen to the last several minutes over again. Salt is extraordinarily important because the human body requires it. It's something that we need to survive and to live. So much so that we actually have a taste sense for it. Yeah. You don't need bitter to live. No. Or sour or umami as a matter of fact, things like bitter and sour are there, I think, to detect things that we shouldn't be eating. Sure. Salt is to detect something we need. That's right. And we can actually this is so mind blowing to me. I love the human body. I think it's amazingly wonderful in ways that we don't even fully understand yet. But consider this. When you need salt, your body produces a craving in you for salt. That is awesome. I'm one of those believers. I don't follow it necessarily myself, but in a diet well, no, think about it. In a diet where you just eat what you crave. Right. I think you can go off the rails, because I think that we crave the wrong things. Now. Yes, now. But if you could go back 150 years, maybe sure. I would bet you could survive pretty easily and thrive on a diet where you were just kind of led by your cravings, like, oh, I need some eggs. I'm going to eat a couple of eggs. Like that. You should pay attention to yourself. Listen to what your body is telling you. And I'll bet you find that you do have specific cravings for specific moods, for foods that are, like, very simple, like meat, like, Chuck, go eat a steak. Chuck, go eat some eggs. Like things that are basic staples. I'll bet you'll notice you have cravings. Salt. Let's break it down chemically. Okay. It's sodium and chlorine are the two basic elements, and salt I think we all know this. Which are electrolytes. That's right. And we'll get into that in a minute. Sodium is silvery white metal, and neither one of these are super friendly independently of one another. No. Especially chlorine. Yeah. Sodium reacts violently if you mix it with water and oxidizes in air. Chlorine exists in gas at a room temperature. They're both really volatile, but when you put them together and you have sodium chloride, they make beautiful music, makes beautiful highlight and beautiful music. And sodium chloride is about a 60 40 mix sodium to chloride, by the way. Is that right? Yeah. Nice. It makes little cubes, right? Yeah. The molecules are cubicle, right. The sodium packs in pretty tight, and then the chlorine fills in the rest, and they make tiny little cubes. It's actually reversed. That's what I said. Yeah. The chloride is packed, and then the sodium fills in. I would have thought the sodium was bigger. Oh, well but what you have is NaCl. That's right. And you mentioned electrolytes. Those are minerals that conduct electricity in our body, in our fluids and tissues, which is very important. Super important. Like muscle movement we run on electricity. Heart contraction. Yeah. Involuntary muscle moves through electrical impulse. I guess all muscles do. Yes. You want your eyes to blink, buddy? Yeah. Eat some salt. Right. And so there are two conditions that you can have conceivably. Well, three would be just all systems are normal, but the other two is too little salt and too much salt. Too little salt is called hyponatremia. Yeah. That's what that lady died of. The hold your wee for a wee contest. Is that right? Yes. You can OD on water, and I guess that's what you would ultimately die from is hyponatremia. There's water toxicity. If you have too much water, you probably have too little salt, because water flushes salt from your system. It's the method that your kidneys use to maintain the balance of salt and other electrolytes in your body. And that's why you might drink Gatorade if you're working out, because it has electrolytes in it. Right, exactly. It tastes salty. You don't want to water your cropland with it, though. No. As we found from the movie Idiocracy. Yeah. And I actually found, too, that in the 1980s, there was a lot of controversy over salting roads killing roadside vegetation. Well, yeah, for sure. If you were into conquests and that kind of thing, and you wanted to make sure that the land you just occupied couldn't be used to grow crops to feed the opposing army, you would plow the land with salt. You would salt the earth, which is not the salt of the earth, because that means you're a good fella, right? Yeah. But not a good fella, because those guys are salty. Wow, look at you. That was a team effort. That was clever wordplay, my friend. If you take diuretics or you have, like, massive diarrhea for a period of days or vomiting or some sort of stomach bug, you might be at risk for hyponatremia. Yeah. Because good. You're flushing out all of your electrolytes. Yeah. This is salt that your body needs, so if it's out of balance, you're going to suffer things like, well, an inability for your heart to beat, which is often fatal. Yeah. Kidney problems. Yes. On the other hand, you can have hyper neccremia, which is too much salt. And like you said, if you're a Chinese aristocrat, you may die from hypernatremia. Yeah. They even had a man, sometimes a blanket, on the word how to manual. Well, it's sort of like how many grams of salt you needed per pound in your body. Like a chart, I guess. If you want to kill yourself in China yours. I'd do it. Here's how much salt you need. I bet that was rough. Did you like that? Yeah. I'm off today. No, you're not. I'm a little off you are on my microphone. Just swerved to the left. That never happened. There's a ghost in here. So too much sodium, I think you said already, is hyper neutralia instead of hypo. Yeah, hyper hypo. Exactly. It's like glycemia but with nitremia. Exactly. And with hyper neutrimia, basically. Remember how salt, if you introduce it to, say, a jerky of some sort, it will dry it out or slug. Yes. Which is a shameful thing to do. Don't do that. If you introduce it to a meat or something like that, it's going to dry it out. Because through Osmosis in Search of Homeostasis, it does the same thing to your blood and your extracellular fluids. That salt will draw out the fluids in your cells, but will maintain it in your blood. Yes. It's water retention, basically. Yeah. Your kidneys, when it has too much salt to deal with, kicks it around the blood supply. Just like remember in the Hangover episode why drugs are so fatal when you drink a lot of alcohol because your kidneys are trying to process the alcohol, so it keeps the drugs just going around and around in your blood supply. Right. Same thing with too much salt. If your kidneys have too much to deal with, they just keep the excess going around in your blood. And since that salt is drawing out all the excess moisture, it increases the volume of your blood, which makes your blood pressure rise, which makes your heartbeat harder. Yes. Which supposedly, logically, would put you at risk for a stroke or heart attack. And that's how you would die from hyperinatremia. Yeah. Add high blood pressure. Well, supposedly sodium cutting your sodium down isn't going to help. Yeah, there's a lot of conflicting data on that, for sure. We'll get to nutrition soon. We'll cover that. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals and probiotics for digestive health. Our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find Halo Holistic at chewie amazonandhalopeets.com 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 Barretun de Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, Doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast. Force multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Chuck, like you said, there's a lot of controversy over how much salt or how little salt you should have on a daily basis in your diet. Yeah. The National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute say no more than 24 grams of sodium. It's about a teaspoon per day. Americans, they found, consume an average of about 3.4 per day. So that's 1 gram too much on average. And you actually don't need more than about a half a gram a day if you want to maintain that stasis. Yeah, just for your electrolyte intake. The thing is, though, there was for many years, because it makes sense that if too much salt increases your blood pressure, then too much salt should put you at risk for strokes and heart attacks, right? Yeah. Well, the CDC panel surveyed material and all sorts of studies that found no, cutting your sodium intake doesn't decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke. And as a matter of fact, there is. It just more hereditary. They don't know what it is, okay. They just know that basically below 3000 grams or 3000 mg of salt and above 7000 mg of salt a day were two groups that were at higher risk of heart attack. So if you have too little salt, you're at higher risk of heart attack, too. Okay? So try to keep it between 3004 thousand mg. 3007 thousand, 7000. The thing is, they weren't comfortable making any recommendation. They were just scared. This is what we found. Everyone scared to go on the record. Yeah. Because we just don't know. It doesn't make any sense that you would have a heart attack if you ate less than 3 grams of salt a day. That flies in the face of conventional wisdom and nobody's figured out why yet. Interesting. Well, it's something you should monitor, at the very least, because I think a lot of people look at fat grams and calories and all that stuff is great to look at nutritionally. But when you start poking around on the soup can and you see, wow, this chicken noodle soup has 890 milligrams of sodium. That's so good. And this one little can, which is almost a gram of sodium yeah. Close to it. A quarter pounder with bacon and cheese. You didn't do Big Mac. No. I should have done Big Mac. You're a communist. I think Big Macs, actually, I did see, this is 1440 milligrams. A Big Mac, I think was around 10 00. 10 00, wow. It encounters more with the bacon. I think they have, like, a whole bacon, onion, ranch or something topping that you can put on Quarter Pounders. Now, I've not yet tried this, but I think about it from time to time. Like right now? Yeah, right now especially. So, at any rate, just give it a look. Like, soups are notoriously high in sodium. Packaged foods are notoriously high in sodium. Don't just think about the table salt that you use. Like, oh, I didn't salt my food that much today. If you eat a lot of packaged food, you're eating a lot of sodium. Yes. And nobody can tell you how much you should be eating or shouldn't be eating. But like you said, it's good to just pay attention to that kind of thing, because you probably are eating a lot more than you realize. Yeah. And you shouldn't be eating a lot of packaged food anyway. I'll just go ahead and say that. So, Chuck yes. What kinds of salt are there? Well, first of all, I should say I love salt. I do too. Salt and pepper are my favorite two spices. I'm from the south. I have a taste for salt and pork fat. Yeah, that's pretty southern, too. Yeah, for sure. So I love salt. I like good Mediterranean sea salt. That's what I use at my house. And I'm going to plug this local salty a. I just made that word up later in the show. Okay. But I'm a big salt fan. I like salt too. I like sweet. I like, umami, I like sour. I'm training myself to like bitter through the use of Campari. Yeah. I found out that I'm a bitter super taster. So things that seem like normal to other people are, like, really bitter to me. Like, one example grapefruit. Grapefruit Campari. That's bitter. Yeah, but it's disgustingly bitter to me. Like, I can't understand how the rest of humanity eats grapefruit. I don't like grapefruit. Well, maybe you're a bitter super taster too. You and me, buddy. But I have to tell you this. I've trained myself to like grapefruit and Campari just by exposure. I've come to appreciate them more. Campari, it's a bar, like a bitter digestive for apertif. Okay, you do like, a Campari and soda it's in a Negroni, right? I think I've seen people, like, if their stomachs upset or is that bitters and soda? Well, compare is a type of bitters. Okay? It's not that super compact bitters angostura, but it is a type of bitter. I think it's a digestife. Okay. It's good stuff. Anyway, I like salt. What I'm really saying there is I like well seasoned food. And if you're a chef or a home chef, you know that salt is important to cooking. Super important. And baking, obviously. But bland food can't do it. No. What's the point? What is the point? Agreed. Types of salt. Let's start with table salt, man. If your doctor put you on, like, a bland food diet, I feel for you. But there's stuff out there you can eat. There's Spike, there's Mrs. Dash. You should be seasoning your food to some extent. Sure. Like bland food. It's bland life. Yeah. They even have the imitation salt and new salt. I didn't do any research on that, but I've bought it before. Do you like it? I didn't use it that much, but it exists in my home. I see. Next to the empty thing of Mediterranean Sea salt. I got you. Yeah. All right, so table salt is the first one we should cover. That's the traditional either iodized or noniodized fine grained salt that you see in many homes in restaurants. And it's iodized. I did a little research into this. Did you look up iodised salt? Yeah. Well, I mean, I know that they added it because at one point it was sort of like fluoride. They thought, well, we need this and a good place to put it is in salt. Yeah, because most people use salt and we'll just put it into table salt because it's an easy additive. But there was a real problem with hyperthyroidism, things like goiters, mental retardation, just poor fetal development linked to iodine deficiency. So they put it in salt and apparently it's considered to be responsible for this thing called the Flynn effect, which there was like a three IQ point rise in the middle of the 20th century in Western nations and nobody could figure out what it is. And they think now that it was because they added iodine to salt. Really? And so it had the aggregate effect of raising our IQ by preventing poor fetal development. Yeah, well, it's still a problem in other parts of the world, just not here in North America. Right. Other parts of the world that don't have iodized salt. You know how dumb they are? Oh, man, that was terrible. I'm just kidding. You need to apologize to the rest of the world for that. I'm sorry, everybody. So, like I said, table salt is the most common salt. They remove all the impurities. They have things in there to make it not clump and stick together and so it pours freely. So even when it rains, it pours. Well. Should we get to that? Yeah. Don't you have something on that? Yeah, I just for some reason thought of the Morton salt girl and like every great advertising story, they were like, how do we it was sort of a new thing at the time, in 1911, to package salt this way in a container with a spout. How did they package it before? I don't know. The blocks, probably. Is that right? Like in Deer Lick or something. I'm not sure, actually. But I know that this was a fairly revolutionary product to package it like this and process it like this. So the agency was NWA and Company and Don Draper walks in and says, I've got twelve proposals for you. Which one do you like? And Sterling Morton of the Morton Company, of course, it's always someone else, like his son or his wife or something. It was his son. And secretary pointed toward one of the ads with a little girl holding the umbrella and said, this is the one. And he said, you know what? I think you guys are right. The whole story is right there in the picture. Because the whole point was this salt doesn't clump when it rains. It pours. Right. And little girls can't be trusted to be sent to the store by themselves because they ruin all the salt by keeping the nozzle open on the way home. Some of the different slogans they had was flows freely, runs freely, pours. It never rains, but it pours. And then they finally settled on when it rains, it pours. Yeah, that's the best one. Because it never rains, but it pores. Doesn't make any sense. They probably fired that person, and she's been updated 12345 times. Oh, really? Yes. The last time in 1968. And she's been the same since then. Yeah. And there was never a real model for that girl. That's a question they often get totally made up. Yeah, because he was like, it's Morton's granddaughter, is what you want to think. Selma. Selma Morton. So that is the story of the, er, skiing. That's an old timey name if ever there was one. Erskine. Yeah. That's a college, right? No, it's a person's name. Well, it's a college, too. Okay. I had a friend who played soccer there. Erskine. E-R-S-K-I-N-E. There's a college name. Colgate, too. It's like crazy to me. Sea salt, sir is next. It's going to cost you some more money because of several reasons, one of which, if they go old school, and in some parts of France, they still harvest the stuff by hand, which is pretty cool. You might see it called flair Dasel, which is French for flour of salt. And it's not processed like table salt is. So you're going to have a lot of those trace minerals. It's going to be coarse and flaky and it colors it, too. It can, for sure. Like, you can have white sea salt, pink, black, gray, or combination of them. Pink salts are traditionally associated with Himalayan salt, and the pink is often the result of things like copper or iron or apparently there's a type that contains an algae, a salt tolerant algae, which would make it an extremophile that has the betacarotene pigment in it, and that gives it a pinkish hue at salt interest. You're eating algae, pink algae in your salt, which is pretty neat. That is pretty neat. That's Hawaiian, right? A lot of times, Hawaii has a different one. And aliya. Oh, I read that as algae. Yeah, I did two a couple of times and I was like, why would they separate these two out there's? No g. No. It's a Hawaiian alia. Salt has iron oxide in it from the volcanoes. Oh, that makes sense. And Hawaii also produces black salt, too, from the lava. Yeah. And a little bit of charcoal. I'll have to try some of those, actually. Yeah. And then there's gray salts. Too, which is there's selgree, which is from France. And then smoked salt is also gray, where they just take some salt and smoke it. They put it over a smoky fire and you have smoked salt. Do you like smoky foods? Sometimes, yeah. It can be a little overbearing for me at times. Yeah. In the hands of, I guess, somebody who knows what they're doing with the smoked I like a good smoked meat all day type of thing, but not necessarily when they add like, artificial smoke in the kitchen to a meal. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Although smoked cheese is good. Oh, yeah, man. Good smoke. Hey, and thanks to fan Hillary Lozar for sending us some great cheese. Yeah, it was very good to you. I had some of that smoke goo yesterday, actually, when I got home. I haven't had it yet. Is it good? As soon as I walked in the door, I got a knife out. It's like, I got to try this stuff. Yeah, it's delicious. Anyway, thanks, Hillary. You know you're a pet mom when your camera roll is all pics of your pet. At Halo, we get it because we are pet moms, too. And just like you, we know their nutrition is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Halo is natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science and thoughtfully sourced. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Find Halo at specialty pet stores and online. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the award winning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in Is, host Barrettunde Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. So chefs and gourmet's will say sea salt is what you want to be using because you're going to get a unique flavor from those minerals that are not in table salt. Sure. I agree with them. It's tough to bake with, though. Yeah, it's tough to measure. You get a lot more precise measuring for sure. From table salt. Right. And they don't recommend you bake with sea salt. No, because baking is a specific chemical reaction. Cooking is different. Yeah. They say that most chefs don't cook with sea salt, but they will just add it as a topper. But I've cooked with sea salt. And I know plenty of chefs that cook with sea salt. Yeah. So I disagree with that. Well, with the topper, they mean like it's a finishing salt. It brings out all the flavors if you sprinkle it on the side. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely used for that before you serve it, but I've also seen it used in the food. Right. Well, that leads us to kosher salt. Certainly some people like to cook with kosher salt. And if you are using following a recipe and you're switching out whatever amount of salt is called for, you want to double it, because kosher salt is larger, coarse grain salt. And here to me is a fact of the podcast on several kosher salt is not necessarily kosher itself. It's used to make things kosher. Oh, you didn't know that? I didn't. I thought kosher salt was like salt that had been blessed by a rabbi or something. Really? Yeah. I'd never understood it, but now I do. It's salt they use to make things kosher. If you use table salt to make something kosher, it's not going to work. Right. Kosher salt, because it's large and coarse grained, makes meat kosher by drawing the blood out, because eating blood ain't kosher. So if you salt it with kosher salt, it's going to draw the blood out of the meat, and bam, you have a kosher cut of steak, baby boom. And it's not iodized either. Right. By the way. And then we have the red headed stepchild of the salt family, rock salt, which is used it's got a lot of impurities. It's unrefined, it's very large grained, and it's used to melt ice on roads and sidewalks and to make homemade ice cream. Yeah. And probably some other stuff. But do you know of any other uses? I think rock salt is used in some chemical productions. That makes sense. Yeah. If you want to make a good industrial brine, rock salt your man. Yeah. All right. Salt mining, that's how you get salt because it is a natural thing that exists in the Earth. The largest producer of salt these days, no surprise, is China. In 2012, they produced about 65 million tons. The US. Is not too far behind at 44 million. Then you've got Germany, India, and Australia as the other leading top five salt producers these days. Yeah. And India gets the profit from its salt production, thanks to Gandhi. I guess so. Yeah. That's pretty neat. And think about that. They're number four on the list. Yeah. And they weren't even allowed to produce it not so long ago. No, they were allowed to produce it, but all of the money went to jerks. So there's three types of mining. Three main types. There's deep shaft mining, solar evaporation, and solution mining. And deep shaft mining is basically like any other type of mining, where you just drill a shaft down into a mine. Yeah. Which an underground seabed is where the salt is. Right. That's where you get your salt. Yeah. I think that's one of the facts of the podcast. Yeah. Ancient underground seabed, ancient sea beds that dried up and the salt remained and they formed these basically salt deposits that can be dozens or hundreds of feet thick and massively wide. And you drill down into these things, you create a couple of shafts, and then they usually use what's called a room and pillar system, which really helps. It's very difficult to explain, but if you see a picture of it, it makes perfect sense. Agreed. But you're basically creating a checkerboard pattern going down and mining the salt deposits. So you leave right? Yeah. You blast a room, but you leave a couple of adjacent rooms for support. Right. And then eventually you've mined out all the salt and then you fill it with industrial waste. That is one thing they do. So that's deep shaft mining. Yeah. And they'll remove the salt there and crush it and haul it to the service and further process it from there, depending on what kind of salts you want in the end. Right. And there's this awesome mine called the Wheelchair Salt Mine in Crackao, Poland, and it has a full on cathedral made out of salt. What amazing, they have several chapels, but then a full cathedral, and it's all made out of salt in this old salt mine. Wow. That's not a UNESCO site. And they went to the trouble of boiling salt. There was a table salt mine. They would boil this raw salt and purify it and then use that purified salt to make crystal chandeliers out of salt. Like the whole cathedral is just salt. It's amazing looking, man. Yeah. Check it out. No goats allowed. They would recap it or no chuck's allowed. I just walk around, like licking stuff. Right. They would ask you not to do that. A deep shaft mining, by the way, I think is usually rock salt is what they're producing there. Right. And then there's solution mining. Yeah. Basically, they take a well over a salt bed and then inject water in there and make a brine and then pump it up from the underground as a wet solution and into a vacuum pan, which is going to seal it up and they're going to boil it and then evaporate it, which is how they made salt back in the old days, too. They would boil it and evaporate it and then scrape the pan. Right. So it's kind of a modern version of that. Right. Then they dry it out and refine it, and then from there they're going to either add anti clumping agents or iodine, depending on what you want. And then with solution mining, you've got like a salt bed or a salt dome that's exposed because somehow, through tectonic action, an ancient sea bed or salt bed has been exposed to the above ground like the surface of the earth. Right. And then what's the last one? Well, the old school solar method, solar evaporation. This is when you have a salt lake or seawater and wind in the sun cooperate with the shallow pools and they leave salt behind. And you can only harvest it about once a year, once it reaches a certain level of harvest ability of thickness. And like we said, sometimes it's still done by hand, even although it is industrialized in other places, for sure. But they wash it, they clean it, they drain it, but they leave a lot of impurities in there. And this stuff is almost 100% pure sodium chloride. Got you. It's good stuff. And like I said, I use the Mediterranean version generally, but Australia is big on it, too, on this method. And we should probably mention also that salt has a lot of religious significance. Oh, yeah. It's an ancient important thing to mankind. Yeah. They would use it to seal important things. Yeah. In the Old Testament, which is pretty old. Sure. Lots wife, I believe her name was Sarah. Was it Sarah or Ruth, who was married to Lot, turned into a pillar of salt when she looked behind her, even though God said, don't turn around, I'll turn you into a pillar of salt. Yeah. And she did. And apparently there's a salt pillar at Mount Ararat that's called Lot's wife. People are like, that's her right there. Is that Buddhist that ward off evil with salt? Yes. Yuumi has a little shaker of salt that her mom put in her glove compartment of her car. Oh, really? Yeah. People, if they flicker off on the highway, it's just a protector. Yeah. That's nice. So I would have eaten it. That's why I don't let you ride in Yummy's car. That's right. One of several reasons they have the glove box. You got anything else? I do. This is a good thing. And there's a Roman senator named Cassio Doris, and he said, quote, mankind can live without gold, but not without salt. Wow. Who is that? Cassio ki Bordes. Yeah. Well, you got Jerry again. Yeah, she's giggly today. And I have a plug because here in Atlanta, there's a lady who makes salts. But if you go to Facebook and type in beautiful briny sea salt, go to her Facebook page and click on the about thing, you will see her lovely homemade handcrafted salts. And my favorite is the magic unicorn. See if this sounds good. Sea salt is, of course, the main ingredient. Smoked paprika, lemon, garlic, rosemary and celery seed. It does sound good. It's delicious. You get some broccoli and some cauliflower, some, like, beets and big chunks of garlic, throw it out the window, then buy a steak and put this magical unicorn on it. Some olive oil, sprinkle it with this stuff, bake it in the oven. Delicious to go with that steak. Nice. Magical unicorn. Yeah. Magic unicorn is my favorite. And the black truffle salt is delicious. And then she has one called Campfire, which is smoked salt with cumin and ancho chili powder. Nice. And if you email info at beautiful Briny Seafault.com, you can order some of this stuff. Very nice of you. And I told Emily. She's a printer. I said, Tell her I'm going to plug her so she better get her little fingers working. Nice. Start making some salt. Yeah. Because the stuff you should army is a salty crowd. So if you want to learn more about salt, I don't know how you possibly could, but if you want to look into it, you can type the word S-A-L-T into the search bar howstep works.com. And it will bring up this article, how Salt Works. And since I said search bar, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. We should apologize to cops. What do we do now? Well, this cop wrote in. Well, I'll just read it. Is it the police chase's one? Yeah, they didn't like that one. Hey, guys. My name is Glen. I'm a police officer in Southern California. I've been enjoying the podcast for years. I suspect our political leanings may differ at times, but I always enjoy learning and listening to different points of view. Listen to the December 17 Manhunt podcast. That's not the police chase one. You're right, but I think it involves something like that. I felt it was very accurate with the exception of some information you provided about the LAPD. We've bashed the LAPD before for their history of corruption. They have a pretty thick history of corruption, but they're not all bad ladies and men. Well, no, of course not. You mentioned that officers were super jumpy during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, which was a fair assessment. But here is where you got something kind of wrong. You stated that the LAPD fired on two uninvalled vehicles. It was the LAPD who shot at one in the Torrents Police Department, shot at the other. I could see how someone not from the area might think they were LAPD, so it's not that big of a deal. Okay. However, the bigger mistake is that you stated that these shootings killed two people. Nobody was killed. So I need to go back. I saw in several places that at least two people were killed. Really? Yeah, accidentally from those shootings. I'll go back and look again. Okay. But Glenn Josh takes issue. Sir. Well, he's not the only one who's written in. I just haven't gotten around to going back and looking and double checking. But, I mean, while we were researching, I came across that, and it wasn't like on a forum or message board or something. They were in articles. Okay, well, we'll get to the bottom of it. Glenn says, I'm very surprised you would make such a statement without doing your homework. I did my homework. You typically appear to go to great lengths to fact check. Sometimes I get the feeling you guys are not the biggest fans of law enforcement. Not even recognize my professional shortcomings, for sure. Just like you, though, I want facts influencing the show, not personal opinions. The email was not intended to justify the actions of those two police departments, just to set the record straight. Understood. And despite the goof and the cop bashing, I still love the show. That's from Glenn and Glen. I don't hate cops. I love cops. We've done a lot of super supportive shows on law enforcement. Sure, Chuck is like the law enforcement dude, but I don't like jerks. And I think a lot of times people's experience with cops are when they're pulled over and not being helped by a cop, which is unfortunate, sure, because they do so much great work. But when you get pulled over and you're hustled by a jerk cop, you think, man, what a jerk cop. It's like eating at a bad restaurant. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You tell one or two people you have a bad experience at a restaurant, you tell like 20 people it's like 50 full with cops. Yeah. So we have a lot of respect for law enforcement for sure, for all they do. So I hope that doesn't come across any differently. Nice, Chuck. Very thankful to you. Yeah, thanks, Glenn. Yeah, thank you, Glenn. I'll go back and double check. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. I just haven't had a chance to look again. We'll give them 20 licks off of a block of salt from a goat and I might die of hyper neutrimia. Man, that wrapped it all up right there. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck to correct us, take issue with something we said. Whatever you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast how stuff workscom. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.com. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog Halo. Elevate is natural, science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs. Better than leaving brands. Find Halo elevate at Tekto Petsupply Plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
8df061fe-5e7b-403e-97a0-aebb013a5b44 | Short Stuff: Do Fish Get Thirsty? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-do-fish-get-thirsty | One of the greatest questions we’ve ever heard, answered (in a roundabout way).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | One of the greatest questions we’ve ever heard, answered (in a roundabout way).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 22 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=173, tm_isdst=0) | 11314301 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and this is Short Stuff coming at you with a question I had never thought of until I was on our old site, how Stuff Works, and came across an article by Nathan Chandler which asked a surprising question that makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Do fish, which spend their lives in the water, ever get thirsty? It's a great question. And I immediately thought of possibly one of my favorite definitely one of my favorite all time comedies. Maybe my favorite the movie Arthur. I thought you were going to say family Time movie comedy Arthur. When Arthur says, I must think that fish get awfully tired of eating seafood, that's not even one of the good lines. I've never seen that one. You're talking Arthur? Yeah. With Russell Brand. Oh, God. You know how mad I am right now? Yeah, I know. You're a big Russell Brand fan. Even though Hodgeman was in that version. I think he really was. And, yeah, that's my big connection to it. That's his claim to fame. No, I haven't seen Arthur, but I will just to keep this one going. How about that? Wait, you haven't seen the original either? For real? I've never seen any Arthur. Dude, it's one of the best comedies of all time. Doesn't it have that song between the Moon and New York City? Yeah, one of the great movie theme songs of all time. It is a good theme song. I know it's crazy, but it's true. Nice. So let's keep going, though, because we need to get back to this question. Do fish ever get thirsty? Chuck right. And the first thing that Nathan Chandler points out, which is very easy, and I think Nathan interviewed some people that know more than we do about fish and their needs and wants. But the first thing they point out is that's kind of a weird question because you can't really tell whether an animal thinks I'm thirsty or not. The real question is basically, do fish drink and do they need to hydrate like we do? Yeah. And Nathan Shannon is like, come on. That's what I meant, pencil neck. Right. So that is ultimately the question that we're after. So if you are ever thirsty, it's kind of like hunger. Like, you have a sensation that tells you you need to eat food. We need energy. This is the same thing. Your body sends you all sorts of cues and signals that says you need to drink some water because we need to be hydrated. And the whole point of staying hydrated is not just to drink water, which is fun, but that's not the point. The point is that we have all sorts of, like, little minerals and salts and electrolytes, according to the good people at Gatorade, in our bodies that we need to keep at a certain level, and we keep them at a certain level, certain concentration by regulating our water intake. Right. So that's how we stay hydrated. And that's the point of staying hydrated. And it turns out that fish basically have to do the same thing despite living in water. Or actually, I guess, because they live in water. Right, yeah. This whole process is called osmo regulation. And fish do this. We're very closely related to fish, so it's not the most different process for them. Even though we don't have gills. It would be kind of fun if we did, but we don't. But their kidneys are a big part of this, obviously, in maintaining, just like with us, those salt levels. And then they do have those gills, and those gills have cells that exchange water and salt. And again, just trying to keep the right electrolytical balance. Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. Or I could just say electrolyte balance. Okay. I like the electrolytic. All right, so you're going to keep it in? I'm not going to cut it out. Okay, cool. I said much dumber things. I don't think it's dumb at all. I think it's neat. And Chuck, I have to say, if that isn't a term, you just coined a term, because I'm going to spend the rest of my days promoting electrolytical. Okay, great. So it turns out that this osmo regulation, I guess the process or the systems or the components for carrying out osmo regulation are the same basically across fish species. Similar enough that you could call them the same for our purposes today. But what they do or how they do it, or what their goal is depends on what kind of water the fish live in. Salt water or fresh water, or if the fish can kind of transcend both kinds of water. And I propose we take a break and come back and talk about the setup that I just did. That's great. All right, freshwater fish. Should we start there? Yeah, I think so. It's a good place to start. Your common large mouth bass, let's say. Sure. That can eat a squirrel during a squirrel stampede. That's right. I forgot about that. So I learned a couple of interesting things here. One is that freshwater fish don't drink, like, actively because it's just going to dilute their blood and the other fluids in their body really quickly. Obviously, what's inside their body, their tissue in their blood is going to be saltier than where they are because they're in fresh water. So they would just act as a big salt water or I guess salt sponge if they were to drink too much. So the other thing I learned is that they urinate. They're constantly urinating. Right. That's the only way to say it, and I did not know this. And the urine they pee out is super watery because, again, they're retaining and keeping a hold of as much of the salts and minerals and electrolytes that they possibly can because they're not getting it from their surrounding environment. That is the fresh water. So like you said, they are preventing from their solution in their blood from becoming too diluted. That's the point of their osmo regulation, correct? That's right. For the freshies. Okay. And so if they do it correctly, if their cells and their gills and their kidneys are working properly, they're streaming out. They're accepting salt for the body wherever it can get it, and they're peeing out tons and tons of water that they're taking on and keeping the salt. But if you go to a saltwater, like the sea saltwater area, you find pretty much the opposite process happening for the same reason. Yes. And the cool thing here is that saltwater fish actually drink through their mouths, and they drink through their mouths to stay hydrated. So they're drinking this ocean water. And so the big rub there is they have to avoid losing water too much to that salty environment out there. And they also have to keep from getting too salty, like they're drinking in the salt water, and they have to keep that excess salt out. So their kidneys are kind of not working overtime. They're doing their regular job. They don't know how hard they're working compared to other kidneys. Sure. But their kidneys are removing that salt and conserving the water, and then they have those salt cells in their gills pumping salt into the water. So again, you have that same exchange going on. It's just sort of backwards or the opposite. And you can imagine their urine is super salty urine and kind of light on the water. Right. Super concentrated solution that they're peeing out. I would think so. And then I said this earlier. There are fish that can exist in both fresh water and salt water. And now that you know, right, now that you know about osmo regulation, it's like, well, wait a minute, how does that work? And you can take the salmon as a really good example because when the salmon go to spawn, they go to spawn in freshwater, usually upstream in some river, because they like to make things hard on themselves, which means that when they come to spawn, they leave their saltwater habitat and enter a freshwater habitat. Yeah. And it was interesting when I was reading this, I was kind of like, well, how in the world do they have their organs evolved to be able to do both? And it kind of has in a way, but not both at the same time because salmon are really smart. So what they do is they don't go straight from the freshwater right into the saltwater. They hang out a little bit in what's called like a staging area before they complete their migration. And it's located in a space where they get a little bit of the fresh water and a little bit of the salt water, and they just hang out until they regulate. Right. And it's as simple as that. They use brackish water to kind of, like, prep themselves for the changeover, and I would guess they do the opposite when they go back into the sea again or the saltwater environment. The problem is, like everything, there's a conundrum that they're facing, thanks to climate change, where sea ice is breaking up more and more, traveling further and further south and into salmon's breeding grounds. And actually the fresh water that's melting off of the sea ice is affecting the brackish water so that the salmon have less chance to use that area as a staging area. Yeah, it kind of just screws up their staging area because they're used to that area being having a certain amount of salinity, and then when you introduce that melting sea ice, it just screws everything up. Yet another thing that's happening. It is. So, Chuck, how much sea water can you ingest at a time like me? Sure. I don't know. Three and a half percent of my body weight? Sure. No, three and a half percent salt, I think, by weight. If you're trapped we've talked about this before if you're, like, stranded out in the ocean, you will die if you just continue to drink seawater because you're going to dehydrate, but you can drink a little bit of it. Yeah, I don't know if we should advise anybody to do that, though. I don't think so. But you're not going to die like, all right, let's forget you're stranded, you're just on the beach one day, and you go get a small cup of ocean water and drink it. You'll be fine. I don't think we should tell people to do that either. Let's just stay away from the encouraging drinking seawater in general. All right, how about this? You're in your house and you take some very clean water and clean table salt and mix it together. Okay? You could drink that and a little bit of that and you'd be okay. No, I'm still not okay with that either. All right, well, then why did you ask how much we could drink? I just want to know how much you personally could drink. The short stuff out. Short stuff is out. Everybody 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." | |
8a68cb28-4a58-11e8-a49f-93ae926b9b95 | SYSK Selects: Was Malthus right about carrying capacity? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-was-malthus-right-about-carrying-capa | Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to this classic episode to find out. | Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to this classic episode to find out. | Sat, 22 Sep 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=265, tm_isdst=0) | 23949169 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. Chuck here. Good morning or good afternoon, wherever this finds you on your Saturday. Hope you're enjoying yourself. And I have a nice selection for you from July 2011. For this Saturday select was malthus. Write about care carrying capacity. What is that all about? You say, what am I talking about? Who is this malthus? Well, all the answers are right here. It's a really interesting one. Here's what I say. If you don't know what any of those words mean, aside from was right and about, then listen right now because you're about to learn something cool. July 9, 2011 was mathis. Write about carrying capacity. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me, as always, as Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. And that makes the stuff. You should know the podcast. There you go. The only incarnation thus far. Is there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now, huh? Yes. So Chuck right? It is Chuck. Yes. Have you noticed how often I say right? Yeah. It's mind numbing. Plus, someone will write in and say, do you know you say ride all the time, or it says, it sounds like I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's not the case. You've never eaten anything in here? I can attest to that. Yeah. I'm overly salivatory. Okay. Yes. Chuck, as you know, I was a student of anthropology. Still consider myself sure such. And I first came upon this term called carrying capacity when I took this life changing anthropology class. All right? And I don't remember the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time, the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Right. By Jerry Diamond. Awesome stuff by Dustin Diamond. By Mike Diamond. Okay. By Jerry Diamond. The guy who wrote Collapse and Guns, germs and Steel and stuff. That's required reading, in my opinion. Yeah. I just think you should that essay not necessarily his book. Okay. But I was also introduced to carrying capacity, and there was this really cool video he showed us to get the point across. And it's just a map of the world, right? And there's red dots. It shows population growth. Yeah. And each red dot equals, I think, a million people. And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I believe. The cradle of humanity. Sure. And it starts there very slowly. It's time to lapse. And obviously the years go by like that, and the red dots start appearing very slowly, start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, Europe, all that. And then it starts to pop up around North America and South America. And then all of a sudden, you get to the, I think, like the 16th century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution. And all of a sudden, this map just goes red, and it's really jarring. It really gets the point across how quickly population has grown in the world and the impacts of it. That's why he coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah, population growth, who cares? Then you say, oh, well, there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, and that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth, meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's supposedly a point to it, right? Yeah, I got some stats there's my intro. That's great. Take it from here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh. The United Nations Population Division estimates because five babies are born every second and eight right there. Oh, man, you're crying all that poop. The world is going to have 7 billion people by years in, they think. 7 billion? Yeah. We're at 6.92 and change right now. Yeah, we're close. And to illustrate your point, there about the red dots spreading like a disease. That is humans. Yeah. Fewer than a billion people in 1800. Yeah, it was like 800 million. 1800, dude, it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago. Yeah. 3 billion people in 1960 and only 6 billion people as recently as 1999. Yeah. Between 1950, Chuck, and 1990, the global population doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. That is Korra AZ, and behind this, that's what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like a million people a year, slow and steady. You're adding a fixed number. You're adding populations doubling in 40 years. That's exponential growth. And that is the basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus, an 18th century English clergyman, predicted in his essay on the Principle of Population, basically saying human growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the growth of food is not. It's linear, and we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at the time. He was debated by a lot of people, one of which is a student named William Godwin. And he had a theory called the perfectability of society, which is basically, we are humans, and no matter how much we grow, we will be able to counter that with advances in technology to allow us to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked about eugenics. Way back then, before it was eugenics, he said, I could see something like this being possible, but he said it's probably not something we should do. And he also, incidentally, was one of the first people to support or popularize the economic theory of rent. Really? Yeah. Well, he was just all over the place, wasn't he? Well, but it all kind of ties into population because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about controlling population. Sure. And rent, he theorized, was only possible with a surplus of resources, which allows you to own a second place and rent it, I guess, or rent a tool or whatever people rent it back then. So what Malthus is talking about is generally classified as economics. Right. But it stretches into all sorts of dirty, nasty little areas like greed, ecology, population control, so eugenics, family planning, abortion, infanticide, all sorts of stuff. It has a lot of implications, far reaching implications. Right, yes. And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who was a contemporary of him that argued like, no humans will use technology to outpace this malthusian curse, is what it's called. Right, yeah. There was more than God when there was a few people, too. I didn't realize that it was at the time, but I know that over the centuries people have been like, Malthus, that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark and we're going to use you as an example of how badly somebody can get it wrong. Right? Yeah. Because it wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the demographic transition, which is basically as we get better with this technology, one of the things we come up with is birth control. Right. And while our mortality rates are lowering, so too are fertility rates. Right. And we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate, which is 2.1 children per household leads to zero population growth. Right. And I think they said in Western Europe the number was 1.4 in the late nineties. Like, some people are afraid that Malthus was correct at this point and other people say that, like in Europe and Asia, they worry about the opposite because they have a problem over there that they're not enough young people to take care of their retirees one day. Exactly. It's negative population growth. So who's right? They do estimate who they is, I don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population is not going to level off until mid century at about 9 billion. Well, that's at best that's if we do level off, we could continue to keep growing. The rate we're at now, the replacement rate, that leads to zero population growth, which is 2.1. Right now, we're at 2.6 worldwide. And with Africa skewing us the other way, sub Saharan Africa has about a 5.1 fertility rate, which means for every household there's 5.1 children born, there's a .1 child. Always feels so bad for us to knee down on one leg, but if we can get the zero population growth and we're not going to really have to deal with the Malthusian curse possibly ever. Right, but we're not. But that's one thing that Malthus didn't account for is things like as societies become more educated, fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. Sure. So that's another way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at. Like you said, there's a lot of people out there who think he missed the mark. But people have been doing a little bit of math lately and have figured out that it's entirely possible that he's right. That somewhere down the line he's right, yeah. And at the basis, we should say, of Malthus's whole thing is a lack of food and water. Really? We need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff. But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the food growth will not match up with the population growth, and a billion people go hungry every day already. So some might argue that that's already the case. So let's talk about carrying capacity. Chuck. Yeah, this is cool. If we had not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the positivist camp that we can be technological, if we hadn't transitioned from huntergatherer to agriculture, the carrying capacity of Earth would have been reached at about 100 million people long time ago. Yes. Because there's just so many animals running around that we can kill. There's only so many berries that are going to occur naturally on the vine. Right. But we did transition to agriculture before we hit the 100 million mark, possibly, maybe not farming. And we began to use technology, which is growing crops to feed ourselves and animals. And then we reached another point, right. Where we hit what was called the Green Revolution. You remember that? Yeah. Remember Norman Borlaugh, where there was a lot of people who are saying about a billion people are going to die because we're not going to be able to provide food for all the people here. Right. We've come up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's lowering the mortality rate, but that just means people are living longer and they need food longer over their lifespan. Right. So what are we going to do? Norman Borlaugh comes along and says, you know what we're going to do? Tapioca pudding. Exactly. Tapioca pudding for everybody. For the elderly and a Care Bear in every garage. No, go ahead with what he said, because he was a genius. He said, we're going to maximize the yield that we get out of arable land. We're not just going to plant some seeds and be like, Hope you grow. Right. We're going to apply tons of pesticide, tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the size of your torso out of every plant. Right. Yeah. He wasn't some awful mad that makes him sound like some awful mad scientist, though, in the eyes of a lot of environmentalists. Well, I mean, think about all the run off, all the soil depletion. Didn't he also win a Nobel Prize? Sure. Yeah. He's credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to starve because he came in just in time because the Earth would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. Right. So we've had at least two different events where we were able to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right? Yes. So there are people out there who say, well, we're going to avoid it again, but what will that be? Sure and come up with another one. So, I'm sorry, Chuck, we would have hit the carrying capacity, 100 million where we hunter gatherers. Right. What are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is what I think is really interesting and completely sad is that we have a potential carrying capacity of 2 billion to 40 billion. We're clearly past the two. So one might ask, how can it be that big of a range? And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad stat. If the entire Earth live like middle class Americans, not the super rich, who probably consume more energy and the like than your average human, just regular middle class American folks consume about 3.3 times the subsistence level of food and 250 times the subsistence level of water. Clean water. Yeah. And that means the Earth, everyone was like us. The Earth could only support about 2 billion people. So what's going on is 25% of the Earth is consuming. I don't have the percentage, but the other 75% of the Earth is left with what's left. Right. Which is really crappy. It's just the disparity in the allocation of resources and what's consumed. So that's why it can be a range of 2 billion to 40 billion because of the different lifestyles. If everyone lived like the 25%, there would be plenty for everyone and no one would be starving. No. If everybody lived like the 25%, we would be like the 75%. Right. Sorry. Well, yeah, that's where the 40 billion number comes in. I've seen 30 and I've seen 40 on the high end for the carrying capacity. And that's where every square inch of arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield. And all people live in high rises that are as high as we can build them right now. Right. And we're mining asteroids for minerals and all that. We're no longer going to the Earth, we're going to outer space. Like to performing Mars, maybe. Possibly. Don't think that that shouldn't have started about 50 years ago. Right. But that 40 billion prediction is based on the absolute minimum requirements. And everybody 40 billion people living on the planet, all using the minimum amount, which is 400 liters of water a year and about 300 food a year, mostly grains. You can basically kiss meat goodbye, because we need that land to grow our grains rather than just grow grains to feed cows, which is another way that the west consumes resources more than its fair share through a meat rich diet, which is you're not only eating the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right. So, Chuck, let me ask you something. Okay? If you went home and turned on your tap and there was hot water and it was flowing and it was as much as you liked right. Would you care how you were getting that? What do you mean, how it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes. Is this a trick question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase. Okay. If you went home and I'm afraid I'm answering it wrong, and turned on your hot water and there's as much hot water as you wanted yeah. And you knew it was coming from a sustainable source, would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah, I guess not, but I'm kind of like a water saver. You're a water saver? What if you knew you didn't really have to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care? No one cares as long as we have the luxuries that were afforded. To your point, you don't care if it came from burning banana peels. Right. No one cares. The problem is that the problem with the course that we're on, apparently right now is that we are using technology not to get more from less, but to get more from more cheaply. Right? Yeah. It's a uniquely human thing. They call it in the article, which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this point, everyone would be on solar and the massive companies would be solar powered and all that kind of thing. That's another great point, is you don't care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of course you don't. You just want your electricity. Yeah. So if we had invested, or if we could invest our technological advances into getting what we have now from less, from g solar radiation or wind power, then that's true cutting edge technology, rather than figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which is the way we're going. Yeah. Like thinking of, let's say, a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient way of getting coal from a mountain, ie. Mountaintop removal. So they're using technology, but they're using it in ways that are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's the conclusion I came to from reading this, right. The argument from the positivist camp. I don't even think I'm using that word correctly, but the people who are the optimist camp. Sure. Duh. Right. They're saying no mouth was incorrect because he failed to account for human ingenuity. And as population grows, so too do the number of geniuses. Sure. And that's where innovation comes from. Right. I think the optimists are missing a point in their model, and that is greed. You can't really sway greed to benefit human ecology, can you? No. And you can't convince an entire population of people to change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's what I'm saying. You can't, because they don't care. Right. But if you could deliver them that same amount of hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from a sustainable or, no one's going to fight that. Right. It's having to get them to fight that fight to get the people who are controlling it to change over. They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp has over the optimist camp, and that they don't account for greed. Yeah. Have you ever seen who killed the electric car? No, I never did. I encourage people to see that. That's pretty scary. The EV One was I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the EV One was ready to go. There were TV commercials. You can look up EV One commercial on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric cars are here. They're not coming. They are here. And boom, it was gone. Really? Yeah. I'll check it out and I'll give you a few guesses as to why it left so quickly. Not only were they gone, dude, they literally gathered them all up and crushed them. Really? Like so many Et Atari game cartridges. Exactly. Yeah. Sad. But go rent it. It's cool and powerful lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man. This is a good one to chew on for people, I think. I think so, too. We just encourage people like we always do. We're not saying, quit your job and go, like, build solar panels for a living and live on a wind farm. You can do that. It would be awesome. But little things, little positive steps, save a little water, save a little power. I disagree, man. What? I don't think the onus is on the people. I think the onus is on the people who are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on both. I disagree. You don't think the onus is on the people that conserve? No, it is. I think we've put it on the people, but I don't think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right. I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I think it's on. I think it's on both. Okay. Well, that's a debate to be played out on the Facebook page if you ask me. Right? Yeah, man. We should set up a form. So if you want to learn more, type in has the earth reached its carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus. M-A-L-T-H-U-S in the search bar athowtofworkscom it'll bring up some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Well, then that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh. I'm going to call this how to make my teenage son listen to your show. From Portland, Oregon. Hi, guys. And Jerry, when you have a teenager, you will quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to do and expect them to do it. I remember those days. It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that your kid will love something and get lots out of it, but you can't come right out and say it, or they will never, ever try the thing you told them to try, for example, your podcast. I knew for a fact, like, I know that it will rain in Portland, that my 13 year old son Ethan would really love Stuff You Should know because I love the podcast, I've turned other people onto it and they love it. But I knew I had to be sneaky in order for my son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer and at the time was also working on a research project about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday, I was working in the kitchen. I played how nights work to catch his interest. Every time he came in the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he'd leave, I'd hit pause. I would figure he would just think, man, these guys take a long time to finish the dinner. He would hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time. And I could tell I almost had him on the line. Like I was noodling. Although you would say I had him on the arm. Yeah. There's no line. When it was over, he said he already knew everything you talked about in the podcast. But I could tell he was intrigued. Then I hit him with the Scooby Doo show, and that was it. You had another fan. Now he has downloaded the app for his ipod and listens each night as he's going to sleep well. And that is recruitment. Yeah. That's from Aston Inn, a very sneaky mom thank you. In Portland, Oregon. Thanks, Aston. That also kind of ties into the cult and brainwashing episodes, too, doesn't it? Yeah. And she said when she replied, I asked her if I could read this. She said, sure. And she said, I guess he'll know my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick out of being mentioned. Ethan the fencer. Yes. He will forgive that. Yeah. And at least he can rest assured that she's not like putting anything in his soup to get him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle tactics than that. Right? I wish you could put something in soup to make people listen to that. I'd be putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I put it in all soups. I'll tell you what. If you have any suggestions of what we can put in people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you should know and to get them to go give us a review on itunes. Yeah. That helps us out. When you do that, you should send us an email and you should send it to a specific email address. That is stuffpopast@howstuffworks.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-11-11-sysk-silly-putty.mp3 | SYSK Selects: How Silly Putty Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-silly-putty-works | In this week's SYSK Select episode, when the Japanese invaded Southeast Asia in World War II, they cut off America's rubber supply. Luckily, American can-do created a synthetic rubber and saved the War. Learn about the inventor, fluid chemistry and more i | In this week's SYSK Select episode, when the Japanese invaded Southeast Asia in World War II, they cut off America's rubber supply. Luckily, American can-do created a synthetic rubber and saved the War. Learn about the inventor, fluid chemistry and more i | Sat, 11 Nov 2017 14:00:03 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=315, tm_isdst=0) | 36306947 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's Saturday, select stuff you should know. I'm choosing how Silly Putty works. It originally ran in October 2011, and as I say in this episode, it has it all. It has all all six pillars of a great Stuff You Should Know, episode five maybe. I don't quite remember. Either way, you'll find out what they are in this thrilling app. Enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W. Chuck Bryant with me, as always. Looking good. I am, yes. Thank you, Josh. That makes this stuff you should know. And you were looking good as well, sir. Is that a new shirt? No, not brand new. It's less than six months old. I guess it's kind of new. All right. I'm trying to think of the most boring way I could start a show. Pretty high up there, josh is wearing a lovely striped blue button up, as he has wanted to do, and I'm wearing a Everything is bigger in Texas green T shirt. We're both in jeans. I have on my Last Chance garage hat. Yup. Anything else? I want to set the scene for once. I've got a beard now. You've had a beard? I'm clean shaven. Clean shaven? Yes. I started to do the clean shaven thing more than scruffy. I was doing scruffy for a while. Which one do you like? Hope for you? Yeah. I think whatever you and me likes, which is clearly not scruffy. She likes it both ways. Oh, yeah. All right. That is the most boring way to ever start a show. Yeah. We should all go to sleep now. I've got a story for you, all right. And you know some of this, so you don't have to pretend like you're surprised. Okay. Back in 1839, there was a man named Charles Goodyer, and Charles Goodyear, whose last name you might recognize for good reason, figured out a way to make natural rubber tougher than leather called vulcanization. Yes. Okay. So this process of vulcanization took rubber, which is naturally kind of stickier gooey at warmer temperatures and rigid at cooler temperatures, and made it much more pliable, much more flexible, but able to stand up to really punishing conditions like heat, lots of pressure and force, which made it perfect for car tires, hoses, fan belts. Sure. All of the stuff that we use rubber for today this guy. Is the reason we're able to right. The reason it's tough enough. Yes. Now, the fact that this came at 1839 means that this innovation came during the Industrial Revolution, which means that all that stuff that the rubber could be used for can be mass produced, which means that we needed a vast source of rubber as the raw material for this vulcanization process. And luckily, I guess you could say, at least for the Westerners, we knew where to get vast stores of rubber the Amazon, which is where this very specific type of rubber tree is indigenous and is found in vast supply. Right. All right. Are you with me so far? I am. So we went down to Amazon, and as a result, these parts of Brazil that were just totally impoverished suddenly found themselves at the center of a global rubber boom and just became decadently wealthy, like, almost overnight. Brazil and the Amazon was the center of the global trade in rubber for decades until 1876. These British guys snuck some rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and took them to the Botanical Gardens in London. Okay. And they started to work on forming a hybrid that was even better than the ones in Brazil. A hybrid plant, a hybrid rubber tree that could coincidentally thrive in British colonies in Southeast Asia. Perfect. It was perfect for the British. Yes. By 1910, the Brazilian stranglehold on the rubber trade was being challenged and was in real trouble by countries like Malaysia and Sri Lanka and Thailand. And by 1920, the Far East held basically the monopoly on the rubber market. All right. That's a good background. Thanks. I'm almost done. So, about the time Southeast Asia started to dominate rubber, we needed it even more than when Brazil dominated rubber, because cars were being mass produced in each of those required four rubber tires. Right. So Southeast Asia's. Hold on. Rubber was even stronger than the one that Brazil had, plus one in the truck. Yeah, that's right. And by the time World War II rolled around, we'd come to rely on rubber so much that it was calculated the US. Military, the Pentagon, needed \u00a332 of rubber for every troop on the ground for things like tires, boots, anything you need rubber for. Right. Every soldier, which makes it was a very big deal when the Japanese successfully invaded the Pacific Theater, including Malaysia, including Sri Lanka, including all these rubber producing places, and cut off the rubber supply to the US. And we're like, we need rubber. Yeah. We need it bad. And they were like, well, we've got it. Yes. And by the way, let's go. When you win, there's going to be stragglers on these islands. You will one day podcast about them. Hero. So what happened, Chuck? Well. Josh because the US Is industrious and bright and has a never say die attitude, they said, you know what? Why don't we commission some labs and academic institutions to develop a synthetic rubber? Right? So they put out the call because they needed this for the wartime demand, and all these chemists got to work on it and invented something called Gr S, which is government rubber styrene. And it turned out to be a great replacement for rubber. And by 1944, we were producing twice the amount of all the world's rubber combined, the synthetic rubber and synthetic rubber in the US. Well, so this is, like, one of the most this is one of the biggest ones chemical engineering accomplishments ever created. Absolutely. Ever undertaken, right? That's right. So GRS Huge still in use today, right? Yes, it's like the standard for synthetic rubber. It changed everything. I was like, bye bye, Malaysia. Sorry about your rubber monopoly falling apart. You shouldn't have let your pain invade. Well, I'm sure they still had plenty of customers. I'm sure they still do. They weren't like, we got all this rubber, right? What are we going to do? We chose the wrong team. So this synthetic rubber, this triumph of chemical engineering was not without setbacks, though, right? Well, no. Anytime you're trying to synthesize something like that, there's going to be some ups and downs. And this was a nationwide challenge by the War Production Board. It wasn't just like, hey, you five guys over here. It was like, attention all chemical engineers, all chemists, anybody who has anything to do with chemistry. We need a synthetic rubber and we need an abundant supply. So there are a lot of people working on this. Oh, yes. And one of those guys was James Wright of General Electric. GE. He mixed boric acid with silicon oil and said, you know what? This is going to be a great synthetic rubber. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great synthetic rubber. His quote unquote, bouncing putty is what he called it. But GE thought I had some promise. GE thought I had some promise. But it did pretty much wallow away in obscurity at first, right. For almost a decade, it just kind of made the rounds to other places like, hey, can you guys do anything with this? We'll share the patent, whatever, to figure out what we can do with this. And apparently, GE, it was so widespread that it made its way to a party that a guy named Peter Hodgson, who owned an ad agency in New Haven, Connecticut, attended a cocktail party. Remember Spam? That's where Spam came from. A cocktail party in New York's. Eve. Great things happen when you get together and drink. This guy was at a cocktail party and saw some people playing with this bouncing putty, as James Wright called it, and said, you know what? These adults seem fascinated by this. I just happened to be working on a catalog for a toy store, and I think this would make a great adult novelty. So he approached the lady who owned the Block toy store, right? Yeah. And there's varying accounts of this story. I think it's one of those deals because I saw somewhere where she was the one that saw it and contacted him and said, hey, can you put this in my catalog? So either way, Peter Hodgson and Ruth Fallgatter, who own the Block Shop toy store, they decided to put it on the pages of their catalog to sell as a toy. Right. And it was $2, not Chump change in 1940. $9. No, definitely not. And it was an adult novelty as they reckoned. Right. Sorry to say adult novelty. And a lot of things come to mind. Okay. Spits or gifts. I know. Is that kind of an adult novelty worldly? Okay. No, it was an adult diversion. It became a big seller is what it became. Yeah. It was the block shop's biggest seller. One of them. And then this I found a little hazy for reasons that remain unclear. Did you find anything out about why Fall got her stopped backing the product? I couldn't find anything on that, but I guess even though it sold big for her, she was just like, yeah, whatever. Maybe she just had her thing going, and she's like, Why do I want to start a new product? I'm a toy store owner. Yeah. Why do I want to be a millionaire? Exactly. Is the root of all evil. Good for her. Take this rubik. I have no plans for this. Exactly. The whole drive, the whole push to make this into something big, what we now know as Silly Putty fell completely to Hodgson. That is true. And he turned into a whirling dervish. Between 1949 and 1950, he borrowed $147, bought another batch from GE, hired a Yale student to roll them into 28 grams 1oz balls, packaged them in plastic Easter eggs, and sold them to Double Day Bookshops and Neiman Marcus along the way. He also took them to some chemical engineers and connected it. Right. Yeah. And said, hey, copy this, reverse engineer it. Yeah. It's like that website that has all of your favorite recipes from Applebee's and Kentucky Fried Chicken reverse engineered. You first get chicken from a sealed bag that's pretty sauce. Exactly. And put it in a pan. Yeah. They're like, do you have Cisco's phone number? So that's what he did. And you're right, he did make pretty quick work of it, because after he opened a manufacturing plant yes. All this is in a year. Yeah. He first encountered this stuff in 49. This is he believed in this what would be actually, he'd already settled on Silly Putty as the name. Yeah. Well, he was an ad agency guy, so he brainstormed some names, evaluated 15 of them, was like, this is the one he trademarked. It was Nuttyputty One. I think that was one of them. I think that would have sold, too. So he had the Silly Putty name at this point open the manufacturing plant in Connecticut, and soon after that landed Neiman Marcus and Double Day Bookshops and customers, which was huge. It was. But it became even huger when some writers from The New Yorker went to Double Day and they encountered do you want to read this part? I'm not going to read it. Scotch and read this one. All right. It was in the talk of the Town section in 1950 in the New Yorker. We went into the Double Day Bookshop at Fifth Avenue and 52nd street the other day, intending in our innocence to buy a book and found all the clerks busy selling Silly Putty a gooey pinkish, repellent looking commodity. The commodity I love that that comes in plastic containers the size and shape of eggs. We sought out Mr. Lee Weber, the manager of the bookshop, to ascertain the mysterious link between it and doubleday. He told us that Silly Putty is the most terrific item and that double day shops have been privileged to handle it since forever Amber. Forever Amber. I looked it up. It was a best seller from the 40s. Okay. It was about a woman in Restoration England, late 17th century England, who, through her sexy wit, went from rags to riches and became, like, the favorite mistress of Charles II was banned in Boston. Really? Yeah. So because of this pretentious bit of cynical whimsy that appeared in The New Yorker, the sales overnight for Silly Putty just exploded. Hodgson got 300 no, 750,000 orders. 250. Man. Why are they quarter of a mill? You're probably thinking three quarters. Yeah, I was. I was thinking about the orders that weren't there. Exactly. He got a quarter of a mill in three days. A quarter of a million orders. And at $2 a pop, that's a lot of money. Especially considering that he only half a million dollars. Yeah, I was thinking about the half a million he didn't make. Right. So it was like, basically an overnight success thanks to Neiman Marcus'books and The New Yorker and GE and the Japanese. But, I mean, again, this is all happening in a year. That's pretty speedy. This is a whirlwind year for this guy. I'm happy for him. Just looking back on this story. I hope he was a good guy and he didn't, like, beat up little kids on his way to work. He passed away in 1976. I hope before then he didn't do bad things, but he saw it become a huge success because when he died in 1976, silly Putty was in 22 countries plus the United States with sales exceeding 5 million a year. And that was in 76. Yes, which I looked it up. That's 19 million today. Real $2,010. Wow. I think Crayola owns it now, but it's pretty good. They seem to. They seem to, yeah. Well, he set up Arnold Clark Inc. And I never found out who Arnold Clark is. Maybe that was an alias of his. Who knows? But yeah, Crayola weird. Crayola apparently owns Silly Putty. Now, we've just described the history of Silly Putty. That should be enough. Surely there's no one out there who hasn't played with Silly Putty before. I used to play with it like crazy when I was a kid. And one thing I would do, which is something that they found out it was originally intended for adults and they were kind of surprised to learn that kids were into it. And it didn't take long for the kids sales to dwarf that of adults. It was 1955 when kids overtook it. Initially, he said he was like, this is great for adults because you can come home and unwind at the end of the day by squeezing it and just blowing off steam by copying newsprint with it. May I? And that's what I did with it, was copied comic books. So in that New Yorker article, they interviewed Hodgson and he had a quote. It means five minutes of escape from neurosis. It means not having to worry about Korea or family difficulties. And it appeals to people of superior intellect. The inherent ridiculousness of the material acts as an emotional release to hard pressed adults. So it obviously worked because we're not in Korea any longer. It's interesting, though, that he was wrong. I think it's funny how somebody can be wrong on something and still be right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, all the uses and the intent. He was completely wrong, but it's still skyrocketed. And he was like, oh, well, for kids, then, he kind of cast a wide net on a patent license. It was for stress relief hand therapy for people who needed it. It could be used to block out low frequency noises. Yeah. They still claim you can do all this stuff today. Like, it's good for therapy and for, like, gumming up holes and cleaning typewriter keys. Yeah. Which is a huge use these days. Well, computer keys. Oh, yeah. That's why I forgot about those tough keys. But yeah. So the guy was very much focused on it being for adults, but kids kind of took it for themselves, mainly because one of the great properties of Silly Putty is you can stretch it out, push it down on newsprint, and you have a mirror image of it. So I said that's what I used to do. Oh, you did say that. Yeah. Comics. Comics. And it's harder to do that these days because the print they use, like, you literally have to find, like, a newspaper in order to do that. Yeah, you can't do it on the Internet or magazine. Yeah, you can't do it on a Kindle. You could do it on a magazine. No, I think you can now. Dude, it's got to pick up the ink. I know. Can't do it on me. I can tell you from reading Harper's by the pool that that stuff smears. And if it smears, I guarantee you can get in on Silly body. Lucky for him, though, it was non toxic. So when kids started playing with it and inevitably putting it in their mouth, there were no issues with that. Right. Although you should not eat it. We should say that. Yeah. Don't eat anything that's not food or anything that has the name Silly in it or putty Silly String Silly, anything. So Hodgson made mention of its inherent ridiculousness of the material. Right. It has some really strange properties. He originally called it he described it as a solid liquid, right. When you stretch it, it's like taffy. It stretches very stretches slowly. Right. If you pull it, it just snaps apart. If you pull it quickly and with a lot of force. If you stick it to, like a bookcase, you come back a few days later, it will have very slowly moved down very slowly, which means it flows, which is weird, but we'll get to that in a minute. And when you roll it up into a ball, it bounces 25% higher than rubber. Yes. They did a test. They rolled it into, like, a perfect little ball and they dropped it with no force from 3ft and it bounces back two and a half feet, supposedly. That is dynamite. Not bad. Yeah. And if you throw it down real hard, you got yourself a super ball in your hands. Right. So what is this stuff? What's the science of Silly Putty? Chuck the science of silly. Well, before we get there, can I say about the egg, there are several varying accounts on why it was put in an egg. Oh, yeah. Some people say it was because his first batch went out before Easter. And then he just said, hey, it's actually a pretty good idea. Let's just keep it in the egg. Other people say he got the inspiration while eating eggs one morning. Eggs are good for you. And still other people say that he couldn't find another container in abundance. And he had a line on these plastic eggs and was like, I'll just use this because this is a pretty good way to put it in there. It's about an ounce, so let's just do that. Yeah. Either way, that became the signature that still used today. Silly Putty full of eggs. The egg full of silly, buddy. I feel silly. You could probably get Silly Putty full of egg, but you'd have to do it yourself at home. Yeah. All right, so back to what this stuff is. Yeah. Josh, it is a polymer, right? Yeah, it's a viscoelastic polymer. Basically, it's subject to the science of fluid chemistry. Right. And fluids are not necessarily liquids. Liquids are fluids, but not all fluids are liquids. Gas can be a fluid. Some semi solid substances can be fluid. Basically, a fluid is anything that yields to slight pressure and has no definite shape. Yeah. So I'm fluid. Your gut is at least okay. That's the science. That's the part of chemistry and physics that we're looking as fluid chemistry. And the ruling principle of that, of fluid chemistry is viscosity. Where do we talk about this? I know we've talked about viscosity. We talked about viscosity in quicksand, sheer, mayonnaise. Viscosity. Josh viscosity. It measures how much a fluid resist flow at a certain temperature. So viscosity is resistance to flow. If you're like me and you can never remember what's viscosity? What's viscous or what's high or low viscous. Viscosity is resistance to flow. Actually, the easiest way to remember is water is low. That pretty much does it all. Just sounds easy. Like peanut butter would have a high viscosity, water would have a low viscosity. That's pretty easy way to remember. It has a high resistance to flow or low resistance to flow, like honey or molasses. And viscosity is often measured in Pascal seconds, not so much anymore. Now it's measured by dine seconds per square centimeter, also called poise. And ten poise equals 1 PA second. What that means, I couldn't wrap my mind around before then. Yeah. Every site that I saw, I took it for granted that I understood what that measures, but it measures viscosity or flow, as far as I understand. What I love is that someone somewhere said Pascal seconds just isn't cutting it right. The guy whose last name was Poise or poisoned, I believe that's what happened. Came up with Poise. But yeah, so that's how viscosity is measured. And the more Pascal seconds, or the more Poise there are, the more higher the viscosity is. But the thing about viscous fluids, they all I should say most of them are subject to temperature. That's what affects their viscosity. If you have cold honey that you're trying to get out of the bottle, it doesn't flow very well. But if it's at room temperature or if it's warm, it's much less viscous. Right. It flows much more easily because it's subject just to temperature. That makes it a Newtonian fluid. That's also a pet peeve. When you go to a place and get pancakes or waffles or French toast and they have the heated syrup. I like that. You do? Yeah. I like my syrup thick. Okay, you like it thin and watery like that? Yeah, as long as it's warm. It's watery because it's low in viscosity and it's warm, but it's just temperature. It has nothing to do with force or pressure or anything like that. If a fluid is subject to not only temperature but also force, it's what's called a nonnewtonian fluid. Chuck, are we at the email point? I believe we are Chuck. This was pretty neato. We got an email from a young listener just a few weeks ago that seemingly had nothing to do with this podcast, but Josh and his wisdom looks back and says, hey, this kid actually described this Newtonian fluid very well. Yeah. And so let's just read his description. And it came before we decided to do Silly Putty. So it's all just serendipitous it's just sitting there. So I'm just going to read the whole email. Okay? And this marks the first time that a listener has actually contributed to the body of the show's information. And so he's a young listener, too? We'll find out. Dearest Josh, Chuck and Jerry. And he spelled Jerry's name correctly right out of the gate. Get on the ball. Hi, guys. I wanted to say how much I love your podcast and your soothing voices, which get me through long road trips. I may be considered one of your younger quote listeners. Since I am eleven years young, I needed an excuse to email you, so I'll tell you a little bit about nonnewtonian fluids. I love this kid. Sir Isaac Newton said that fluids such as water flow continuously regardless of forces that act upon it. So if you put your hand under a faucet, the water still flows no matter what, making it a Newtonian fluid. But non Newtonian fluids like ketchup, blood and yogurt behave differently based on the amount of stress added onto it. Try adding cornstarch to water. If you put your hand into it, it behaves like a liquid and allows your hand to go through it. But if you punch it with a lot of force, it behaves like a solid and stops your hand from entering. Cornstarch and water is called ubik. Like the Dr. Seuss book. Bartholomew and the UBIQU. Sorry if that was long, boring, or not entertaining. I don't write articles as well as you guys. Anyway, I love the podcast and keep up the great work. I hope to keep listening to the podcast and that one day we will hear Jerry speak together. We will find a way. Your podcast confuse my friends with amazing knowledge and make me sound like the smartest kid in 6th grade. And for that I thank you. Your SYSK superfan Matthew from New York. PS. What kind of music do you guys like? I like Pink Floyd, hughie Lewis in the news and weird Al Yankovic. Awesome. So there's nonnewtonian fluids for you. And dude, when you came to me and said, hey, are you cool with us reading this kid's thing to describe this, I went, yeah, because you know what that means. I don't have to do it. Yes, he saved me. Yeah, he did. Oh, he saved both of us, buddy. Our favorite little ubiquit, right? From New York. Basically, the nonnewtonian fluid, as Matthew points out, is basically it acts like a solid and a liquid all at once. So he was right way back hodgson was weight back in the day, correct. When he said it was a liquid solid or a solid liquid. Exactly. The reason why is because its main ingredient is polydimethylsylloxane, right? And that means that's what gives silly putty fisco elastic properties. So it changes depending on long flow time. Meaning, say, the force of gravity acting on it down a bookcase and temperatures, right? So a long flow time, a high temperature, it behaves like a highly viscous fluid. It will just kind of slowly flow, right? But at lower temperatures and when it has short flow times, high pressure is applied really quickly. It'll just break, which is why you can snap it. I wonder, I guess, if you heat it up, does it become liquid? If you heat it up, it becomes radioactive. It's like super happy fun ball. Okay? You remember that? No, you don't. To say live commercial for Super Happy Fun ball. It's just like a regular ball, but there are all these warnings, like, do not stare directly at Super Happy Fun Ball. The super happy fun ball begins to smoke. Run away. You got to look it up. I'll find it for you. Remember, we fought for that for the title of our audiobooks was like, the Super Happy Fun Guide to Happiness or whatever. I think awesome was in there somewhere. And they said no. Yeah. Simplified. So that's it. That's the science of Silly Putty. But let's say, Chuck, you don't have much money. You're down on your luck in this economy. It happens. You still want some Silly Putty? What do you do? You make it. Dude, you can very easily make your own. I don't know. This year you do. Okay. Because I don't have this. I know that there's probably some sort of Borax involved. There is borax involved. Or you can use cornstarch for this. I'm going to use Borax because I think we should support our friends at 20 Mule Team Borax. They've been doing it for 100 something years. And by the way, kids, even though this is a safe thing, you should always get your parents to help you when you're making stuff like this because you might just make a big mess, and then they would be mad at us and take away your ipod. That's exactly right. We don't want that. I was listening in an old episode, and there was one about a kid who wrote in and said that we got his ipod taken away because he asked her about Alien Hanson. I remember that. And his teacher couldn't answer, so she took his ipod and said it was a utensil for cheating. And he said, for the record, I never used my ipodcel for cheating. Yeah, he basically smoked her, so she was embarrassed. So if you want to go ahead and gather these things, there's a white craft glue. Elmer's glue will work. Any borax 20 mule team. Borax works very well. Some warm water and food coloring, if you like. And we'll wait here while you gather this. Okay. So you want to take your white craft glue. You want one cup of it 16oz 8oz. Sorry. Right. Which I think is the standard size of just a regular thing of Elmer's glue. You take your three quarters cup warm water and you make a nice glue water mixture, and you're going to find that the glue dissolves pretty readily in the warm water. Chuck okay. Which means it has a very low viscosity. That's right. Then you take your Borax, just a half of a teaspoon. I've also seen up to a teaspoon, one of those two all right. Slowly added. And you're going to find very quickly that the viscosity increases dramatically. Okay. After a little while, when you're stirring it, you're eventually going to have to get it to the. Point where you just pull it out and you rub it together with your hands or whatever. When you add the borax, you also want to add the food coloring, too. Sure. If not, you'll just have white silly putty. But you roll around in your hands. There's your silly putty. It's done. And what happened was the polymer chains, the molecular chains of water and the glue weren't sticking. They just slid right past each other, which kept them in the newtonian fluid category. But the moment you added that borax, it came in and said, hey, let's all just band together. And it took these polymer chains and linked them so they could no longer slide past one another. They were turned into a net or a web. And that's what gives the putty its elastic like qualities. And these long polymer chains just hook up and hook up and hook up. How long does that stuff last? You know, I don't think humanity has been around long enough to know how long silly putty will last. No, I mean homemade silly putty until your little brother eats it. Because I thought I saw something about putting it in the fridge. You can store it in a resealable bag or container to keep soft. And does it copy print the same way, I wonder, or just have the same elastic properties? I don't know. Let's do it. All right. Okay. That's what we're doing this weekend. Okay. I'll bring the aprons. Sweet. Bring the beer. So that's it. I would say that this podcast was a quintessential stuff. You should know podcast. It had an iconic American product. It had a lot of history. It had science, the chemistry behind it, and it had do it yourself at home recipes. The four tenants, oh, and a cute kid. Five pillars. Five pillars. We nailed this one. And a cocktail party. Six pillars. Awesome. That's it. All right. Go get you some silly putty. I know. They had, I think for their anniversary, they had gold silly putty for the first time ever. I can't believe I remember that. And I think they now have things like glow in the dark and it gets all wacky. It used to just look like, I guess, pinkish, but sort of a fleshy pinkish guy. I remember that. Yeah, I think they still have that, too, though, the original. They've got to sure. You can't forget your roots like that so dads can go to the toy store and say, no, you're not getting glow in the dark, you're getting this. You're getting pink. That's what I had when I was a kid, and I loved it. You're going to love it, too. Let's get some comics wherever they sell those and press it against they're online. All right, so if you want to learn more about silly putty, type in silly putty. It brings up a really cool article, including a recipe and extended recipe, even. So that's S-I-L-L-Y-S-P-U-T-T-Y-N in the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com since I said search bar, that means it's time for listener mail. The second one in this podcast. Indeed, Josh. I'm going to call this smart stuff from a lady in Columbia, South Carolina. Sometimes we just get these listeners that just send us really good, intelligent emails, and I think those are always worth reading. So here we go. Hey, guys, just finished listening to the future of the Internet cast. Had a few thoughts about the so called dumbing down of culture. First, I'm highly skeptical of any claims to assert a sea change in intellectual ability. Smart and dumb are culturally and historically relative terms, and it's also true that people have been bemoaning the intellectual poverty caused by new technologies ever since writing was invented. Secondly, I'm not actually sure the utilization of deep memory is a good one in and of itself. Yes, something might be lost with those AHA moments, but I'm much more impressed by someone's ability to make novel and surprising connections, something that the Internet actually facilitates than by the pedantic memorization effects. Okay. Which I would argue isn't pedantic. That's me. Third, and most personally, the ability of the Internet to store and offer up vast quantities of information doesn't necessarily wipe out sustained research or thought. I'm finishing up a dissertation that I couldn't have written without Google Books, and that would have taken me a lot longer without Google Scholar. Yeah, sometimes I find myself lost and then infinitely expanding morass of tabs as I disappear down some research rabbit hole. This guy is obviously putting off working on his dissertation by writing this email. It's a lady. But that's always been the nature of scholarship. You never know where a question will take you. And the ability to quickly pursue various strands and to figure out which ones aren't going to take you anywhere productive is, I think, transformative for academia. All of this to say the Internet might diminish our ability to store quantities of facts, but mourning that ability privileges facts. And quantities of facts are not necessarily indicative of a culture's intelligence. Sustained reasoning and interpretation is, of course, something else entirely. And that is from Josephine R of Columbia, South Carolina, via Los Angeles. Nice. Wait, I think currently in Columbia. Okay, from La. From La via Columbia. No, she's in La. From Columbia. You are right there, man. How funny is this? Follow up with Smart email. All right, well, that's it. Thank you, Justine, for that. We appreciate it. That was actually kind of a big topic of dissent, people writing in about that after that. Yeah, so thanks. I think she's summed it up pretty well. Agreed. Also, we should correct ourselves. Cheddar American cheese. No, English. After the English town of Cheddar. So sorry about that. England. Thanks for taking away one of our American cheeses, yet I can't think of any more corrections right now. But we will figure them out. Yes, we will. If you want to send us a correction, we're always open to that. You can also send us any cute Silly Putty stories that you've got. Let us hear them. You can tweet to us s YSK podcast. You can go on to facebook. Comstuffyshenknow. That's our fan page. Or you can send us an old email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
431a2eb6-53a3-11e8-bdec-27261e5f7046 | What's the deal with indigo? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-indigo | Indigo is a color with a rich past. Learn all about it today. | Indigo is a color with a rich past. Learn all about it today. | Tue, 25 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=56, tm_isdst=0) | 43849013 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts and you live out west, you can come see us in Portland, Oregon, or Vancouver, Canada. Yep. We'll be at the Chan Center in Vancouver on Sunday morning, March 29, and then we'll be at the Arling Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland on March 30. And if you want tickets and info, then the best thing you can do right now is to go to Sysklive.com. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there. There's, Jerry over there again. Gosh, feels good to have you back. Cheers. Cheers says thanks. And this is stuff you should know. The smell of miso is back. I love the smell of miso in the morning. I've been doing a lot of miso lunches, actually. Just eating balls of miso. No, I found a soup that's pretty good. Miso soup? Well, a ramen and Amiso that are a little because I was thinking, like, man, I used to love those little 20 cent ramens in college. Yeah. I wonder if there's an elevated version of that. Yeah. And there is. I'll plug it, Mike's. Mighty good ramen. Okay. It's a cup of soup, but it's just a little bit better. It's made from better ingredients, and instead of $0.20, it's, like $2. Oh, yeah. Still pretty affordable. But it is good, though. Yeah. It's worth the extra fast and get some low calories in your body to stave off some food craving. Stave off that cheeseburger craving. You know what I mean? Yes. Which can be substantial. And you know what? I'm also back on, and this is all just because of calorie crap. But beef jerky that's good. Is a nice little protein snack. I like beef. Not a ton of calories and assuages cravings. That one kid. Sorry. That one guy. But he started it as a kid. Our listener who makes beef jerky, he makes some really top quality stuff. It was good. But I had my moldy beef jerky incident years ago in La. Oh, that's right. This is the first time I've had beef jerky in 14 years because of that incident. Well, you're back on the train, though. I'm glad. Well, not like a ton, but a couple of times a week, I'll snack on some beef jerks. There it is. That's a lot. That's a lot of beef jerk. Yes. A couple of times a week is a lot. I mean, that's, like, right at my wheelhouse, but it's a lot. A whole bag of beef jerky. Once or twice. Okay. Like 2oz. I got you. Yeah. Do you weigh it out first? I do. Do you really? Yeah. I was on the food weighing thing for a little while, and you can get into it. It's kind of like a game. That's the only way to track accurately. Yeah. Good for you, man. Thanks. You're feeling good? Whatever. I've lost my will to live. Now it's weighing beef jerky. Now it's fine. All right, well, everybody, obviously, we're talking about indigo, the die in the history of it, which to me did you know any of this before we started? No. So this is kind of you're like, oh, that sounds interesting. Let's do one on indigo. And dug in and struck gold. You know how gold I was perusing the oldhouseuffworks.com website right. Which I know we have almost cleaned that website dry over the years, but this one popped up, and I thought, interesting, because this is one of those that is like, oh, indigo. Yeah. That's a color, but it's also a pigment, and it has an interesting history. And also slavery and race gets involved, so no idea. Yeah. It has a lot of tendrils that I found interesting. Yes. Supposedly, wherever indigo went, especially after the age of exploration and colonization, so too went slavery. Yeah. Because it's a really intensive process in crop to produce indigo, the dye. Very popular crop. Yeah. It was also worth a lot of money, which was like, oh, we'll just kidnap people and make them work for free, and that's how we'll produce and go. And that's how it went for hundreds of years, apparently. Yes. And we'll get to this. But there are some people that say the state of Georgia legalized slavery specifically, so they could kind of keep pace with indigo as a crop. Yeah. And those people who say that are historians. That's right. Okay. I knew zero about indigo, aside from the fact that they used it to dye jeans, and that was blue, basically. And I just found this ultimately super fascinating. Yeah. I mean, this beginning, though, I thought was even more fascinating, because I never really thought about the fact that if you look at any color up to a certain point about the mid 19th century yeah. Mid 19th century was any color you would see on a fabric or a textile was there because a lot of plants and insects were squashed like it was an insect and plant bloodbath for eons in the world. Because if you wanted something to be colored at all, then you had to find a bug or a plant that you could grind up into a powder, basically, or some other means. Yeah. Or an animal. Sure. Like sea snails and animal. Oh, yeah. And if you wanted purple for a very long time, you had to get the mucus gland out of a sea snail and desiccate it. And I'm guessing that didn't end well for the sea snail. No. And I imagine that's a super labor intensive thing to do, but who. Like, I guess I could see accidentally smashing a sea snail and be like, oh, that's a very pretty purple. I wonder if I can use it to do stuff with the stuff that gets me, though, is when you get into, like, indigo itself. Yeah. Because the fact that you can get blue out of indigo is not intuitive. No, because you look at the plant, it's not blue. No. You squeeze the plant. Not blue. No, eat the plant, poop it out. Not blue. There's nothing blue about it. You have to put it through this chemical reaction that's multistep to get it to be blue. And I'm, like, totally at a loss. What series of accidents had to happen so that somebody came up with indigo? The die. That's right. Because apparently it's one of the least natural dyes in the world. Yes. And for that reason, one of the most sought after through antiquity. Because if they wanted to make red stuff, it's pretty easy. There are a lot of things you can get read out of in nature. Sure. Or green, obviously. Yeah. But blue the old thing about there being no blue foods. What old thing? Well, the old adage, there are no blue foods. Have you ever had arctic blue gum? Well, I did look into this because this does make a little sense of why blue as a pigment would be more sought after. And I think it ties into the fact that it's just not naturally occurring. Really? Yeah. I had never thought about that, but yeah, now I'm just going to spend the rest of the episode racking my brain for a blue food. Well, blue corn, blue potatoes. Blueberries are the things that most people say. Well, what about that? I never would have thought of those. But those are technically purple on the Food Network a few years ago, and other people have done this, they used a spectrophotometer photometer to look at the true colors of foods, and even those foods are actually purple. They brought Cindy Lopper in to be like, yes, it's purple. I don't get it. She has a song, true Colors. Okay. I was thinking true blue. I was like that's Madonna. Did you just add an R on to the end of Madonna? Yeah, but that's the Rest of our Dog's reference. Okay, thank you for explaining it. I didn't have to see multiple emails two weeks from now with people being like, great, Reservoir Dogs reference truck. So the blue food thing, supposedly people think that blue light is one of the high energy wavelengths on the light spectrum, on the visible light spectrum, and that the guess is to grow more efficiently. Plants absorb that light and use that energy. Well, yeah, because the blue end is higher energy. Yes, I'm pretty sure. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah. And that was what we were talking about, about the blue blood. Yes, but that's the opposite of that. It absorbs more red, so it reflects more blue. Interesting. So if it was blue, it would absorb less blue light. I don't know. I know. It's kind of like a mind sure. A brain teaser. Right. Yeah. But at any rate, there are very supposedly no true blue foods. And that's probably ties into the fact there are not a lot of plants that were true blue. And if you wanted something blue back then, you had to get it from wood, which is, if you look at those, it's got yellow flowers. Again, not blue. If there was ever a medieval English word, I love it for that. It sounds like a little short, hairy, stubby. Look at that little woe man with big feet who wears, like, a tunic. That's a load. Or the prettier named indigo ferra, which is a family of plants in India and South America. Both of those that have, like, a pinkish flower, but both of those is where you used to get indigo. Yeah. And what's weird about this also, is not only like, does neither of these plants look like they would produce blue dye? Not at all. But neither one of them are actually particularly good at dyeing fabric. They both resist binding to fabric or dissolving in water. Hence the reason why you don't just, like, squeeze woad or an inigo ferra plant and get blue dye. You have to run it through this process that starts with fermentation even. Yeah. Squeezing your woad sounds like something else. Yeah. So we don't know for sure. We think they've been making indigo from wood longer than from the indigo FARA plant. I think now we can't say the word wode anymore for the rest of the episode. I think you're right, but we can't really tell sometimes whether it was wood or the indigo farah. But they do think because Egypt and Mesopotamia are close to Turkey, and they had a lot of blue, and in Turkey, they had more wood than indigo farah. So they think that was probably the first one. Yeah. So the upshot of all that is that they can trace blue die back to the third millennium BCE, 5000 years ago, or up to 5000 years ago, but they can't say whether it came from wood or indigo farah. Right, right. But they did find indigo farah in the Bronze Age and the Indus Valley civilization, and this was fascinating to me, just because the horupon, I guess it's one of the same, the Indus Valley civilization, and that what you just said. Yes. They're the same thing, right? Yes, they are. Okay. The Harpon civilization, though, was one of maybe the largest ever ancient civilization. And I'm just fascinated, any time we talk about these civilizations back then, add as many as 5 million people, it just blows my mind. They also had indoor plumbing, underground sewage. They had it going on. They apparently had a better standard of living than contemporary Egyptians at the same time. Yeah. And everybody thinks that the Egyptians having it going on, too. Yeah, please. Yeah, I guess not. Compared to the Indus Valley civilization. That's right. So there are lots of examples of this stuff, the indigo FARA. Yeah, indigo farah or wood, they kind of competed for a very long time, and Europe kind of went the woe way because wood grows in Europe much more easily. It's related to the cabbage family. They took the road, less travel. That was good. And then that was really good. Terrible. And then indigo farah grows better in Pakistan, India, that area, the Indus Valley. And so that was kind of like the split in blue dye. The thing is, there seems to have always been this understanding that indigo farah is just vastly superior to indigo. And so even in Europe, like, you would find worded like the Greeks, the Romans, and then up to medieval Europeans, if they could get their hands on indigo, indigo, they would pay through the nose for that and rightly so, I mean, it was really expensive because it's hard to produce, as we'll see. But also, at the time, you had to travel over land carrying this stuff. And so each trader that went along these trade routes just added more and more money on it. So by the time it reached, say, Western Europe, you were paying a lot for this blue dye. $1 million. That number doesn't even exist yet. So the Greeks, they called and this is going down a bit of a word origin, rabbit hole. But the Greeks called the blue pigment indicon with a K because it was from India, and they wanted it to sound sinister because things with a K, that became indigo in English. And then there's the word for die in ancient lands, N-I-L-I nili. And that was Sanskrit, meaning dark blue. Right. And then that became A-N-I-L in Spanish. And eventually that became indigo in Central and South America. And apparently, yeah, blue in Arabic is Al Neal. Right. And English Anneline is derived from that. And that is synthetic dye class. So it's all tied together. We got to climb right out of this hole. Yeah, that was a big one. So where are we in the ancient world these days? Well, I think we're at Marco Polo. Okay, good. So in the late 1000, on the 13th century, marco Polo made his way to China and was like, hey, get this. We forgot to say something. This is me talking, not Marco. Polo. But the Romans, the Greeks, the Europeans had no idea that indigo came from a plant. That's right, because by the time it got to them, it was like these little hard bits of dye that you would mix with water at about a 20% solution. And there you had your dye all of a sudden, but they thought it was a mineral. Marco Polo went to China, saw some of this stuff first hand. It's like, hey, this comes from a plant. Did you guys know that? And by the way, I got a bunch of in my boat if you want to buy some. That's right. And all of a sudden, there was trade now with China. Yeah. And it was still pretty expensive because there was no direct sea route to China until Vasco de Gamma came along and said, watch this. I'll sell to China in like 2 seconds. Everyone was very impressed. And this kind of cut out the middle man and all those hands, like you were saying, raising the prices along the way, you cut out a lot of those and you've got more supply. And even back then, those economics meant cheaper prices would follow. Right. Isn't FASCO de Gama. George Castan's, favorite explorer. I can't remember. I was just wondering that. I want to say it is, but I thought it was Cortez. No, everybody hates Cortez. Who was Jerry's? I don't remember which one. I think one of them was impressed about going around the Horn of Africa. Magellan, maybe. We'll have to do our seinfeld research on that. For real. So the cost of indigo dropped a lot because of the Gamma, but not like rock bottom. The 1% could afford it to the 20% could afford it. Kind of something like that. Yeah. But what that meant was wood was in big trouble because indigo from the indigo farah was the blue gold. Said, Wood is me. All right, let's take a break. Okay. And we'll talk about the synthesisation good God. Am I dreaming right now? I think so. Good night. Okay, so you said that they call it blue gold. Right. Or they did back in the age of Vasco de Gama. That's right. Because it was worth a lot of money. It lasted long, it had a good shelf life, and it wasn't huge. It was pretty compact as far as storing and traveling. Super compact. Yeah. So if you'll indulge me, like, I found a little bit about how that stuff that they used to travel with was made. Yeah. And if it's going to be made naturally, which it really isn't, this is how they would still do it. Right. Someone figured this out thousands of years ago, and still today, from what we understand, the process is virtually the same. Amazing. So the whole thing starts with a bunch of indigo Ferrari plant. That's right. And you throw it into a pot and you start to ferment it. Step one, somebody figured out how to ferment or that you need to ferment indigo. I bet someone drank it at some point. Yes. And they're like, Chuck out my teeth. Have you ever seen teeth like these? So here's the thing. The reason why you can't just squeeze an indigo ferro plant and get indigo out, because there's no indigo in the plant. It doesn't exist naturally. But there's a precursor to it called indican, and that is what you ferment out of the leaves with an enzyme, which kind of breaks it down, and all of a sudden, you have something called endoxyl and glucose that's. Right. So you're splitting it. This endoxyl is what you're actually after. And then after that, you drain the liquid into a second tank. You add that endoxyl with air, you stir it, basically, and all of a sudden, it oxidizes into indigotton. And then the end to gotten is actually what apparently is indigo, because there's no other steps after that except to let it air dry. Yeah. It like, settles at the bottom, and then they can get rid of the matter on top. Yeah. They filter it out, and you're left with kind of a sludgy paste, I think, right? Yeah. And then if you dry that paste in the sun, which I think is the traditional customary way, supposedly, that converts it into basically, like, blocky solid indigo dye. Okay. So it's not a powder. It says cakes. And then the fact that the but I've seen it as a powder, so I know what you're talking about. But I think the fact that the Romans and Greeks thought it was a mineral because it was hard. It must be hard. But surely, I mean, it's got to break down somehow. But what's weird about all this is if you take that indigo dye and you say, like, soak some denim in it, it's not just going to come out blue. Right. Certainly not after one. If you're using natural indigo dye, I've seen up to 40 times, you have to wash it in this indigo to get it to start to bind. Because one of the things about indigo is it doesn't like to bind with fibers. Right. And then even when it does, it's very superficial. So, like, if you took your jeans right now, cut it open, you looked at the crosssection, you'd see white inside. It's just the superficial top of the fiber of your jeans that have been dyed blue. Inside. The indigo hasn't actually penetrated. And I would be wearing some sweet Daisy Dukes with, like, the pocket sticking out the bottom. No, I never went that short. No, I went to a short cut off jean phase, but never the Jordan. It was always had the frayed bottoms, kind of country style, nothing hemmed. Yeah. Never owned a paradise. No, I know what you're talking about. George didn't either, actually. It's not true. But mine was at a time where they were acceptable. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I buy that. It's not like I was like, oh, I'm not going to wear those, because they didn't even call them George back then. I think I just didn't have them. What you're describing is not what I have. Mine were baggier, but they had, like, a hymn, like the bottom of jeans did, but they weren't at all the TiVo Jordan. Yeah, I didn't look anything like that. I need to see what that looks like. Just imagine, like, 90s jean shorts. Okay. There you go. You got it. Sort of. We'll just leave it there. All right, well, then let's just move on. Okay. So Chuck just put his glasses on everybody. That's right. Because I'm reading. Mine has gotten so bad. Mine have two Chuck. I can't read anything now unless I have them. I have to go like this. And it makes it really hard to underline and highlight when you hold, like, Josh is holding a page very far from his face, and then close and close and then far, it's really sad. So I guess we should get into the dark side of and I think this was one of the parts from the House of Works article. They said some of that. I had some NPR in there. Oh, nice. And I think a fashion website even chimed in. So when Europeans colonized North America colonialize, they started obviously, they needed to grow crops and sell them for money. That was a big deal, was farming. So they were like, what should we grow? Like, we've never been here before. Yeah, you don't think about that. But that's exactly kind of what they went through. They tried a bunch of different stuff, and they did grow a bunch of different stuff. But indigo is something that they tried to grow a lot of early on. They grew it. Yeah. In Jamestown, New Amsterdam, I think, in Louisiana. The French did an okay job of it. But it was a woman named Eliza Lucas in the 1730s, and more appropriately, Eliza Lucas's slaves that figured this out. Yes. She gets the credit. She's a pretty interesting person herself, though. She was 16, and her father boiled up, my voice has transitioned really weirdly. And her father owned at least three plantations around Charleston. Yes. South Carolina. Yeah. Again, a British colony at the time. And he said, hey, Eliza, you're interested in botany? Why don't you go take over these three plantations and see what will grow there? And he sent her some seeds, and she started growing stuff, and she found the indigo grew really well in the lowlands of South Carolina. Yeah. She grew ginger, cotton, hemp, alfalfa, and the aforementioned indigo. Eventually, for her efforts, she was inducted as the first woman into the South Carolina business hall of fame. Again, she's 16 years old at the time. Sure. She got married to a man named Charles Pinkney because she was an old maid of 16 and not married yet. Getting up there in years. I think a lot of the credit now is being shared. But for many years, she was like Eliza Lucas, the woman who figured out how to grow indigo. Right. Whereas the true story is Eliza Lucas had slaves on her plantation from Africa that knew how to grow indigo. She's like, how do you do this? And they helped her out. To their credit, they did share the plants, the seeds, the knowledge to all kinds of other farmers. And they are kind of looked at as being responsible for the indigo boom in the south right. So then you could extrapolate pretty easily that they were also responsible for the introduction of slavery into the southern california. Because the indigo started growing so well. And this indigo boom happened. And remember, this is still like a luxury item and in high demand. Everybody wanted everything blue, blue, blue, blue. Gave me some blue clothes right. Now, that was kind of the age in the middle of the 18th century. And because this crop started growing so well in the south, and because it was so lucrative, they think that Georgia said, charleston is doing really well with the syndico, we could be doing well, too, if only we would overturn our ban on slavery. I had no idea that Georgia initially had a ban on slavery, did you? I did not. And said, we're going to start allowing slaves to be held in Georgia, in the Georgia colony, so that we can grow indigo. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. In 1751, is when the ban in Georgia ended. And the revolutionary I keep saying that revolutionary, because it was truly revolutionary. Sure. The revolutionary war came along by that point, there were 18,000 slaves in Georgia. And the war, though, kind of put a dent in the indigo market. Yeah. In a big way. I guess. So the biggest consumer base of indigo for the colonies was britain. And britain said, you don't want to be our colonies anymore. You want to be independent, go find some other customers. And britain said, we're going to go take over India and get our end to go there. Right. Except they said, it all British. Right. They said, barbie god, that's pretty good. I don't know if that's pretty good, governor, accurate at all. And this tie to slavery and indigo was basically around until the early 20th century when synthetic indigo came along. Yes. So if Eliza Lucas PICNI kicked off the slavery boom in the southern colonies, you can make a really good case that Alfred von bayer, a German chemist, freed a lot of slaves when he found a synthetic alternative to indigo. Yes. And he followed a boy. Truly a boy. I know. A teenage chemist named William Perkins. What's up with all these teenagers? I don't know. Doing stuff. Well, they died when they were 27. We both know that's not true. Don't bother emailing everybody. 27. The 27 club. Great new show on our network. From Jake brennan. Yeah. From disgraceland Jake brennan. Catch it Sundays on Iheart. It is a good show, though. Yeah. It's about the 27 club, the musicians who died at the age of 27. Yeah. I think that's on our list of to do episodes. Although now it's done. Yes. Why are we going to rip Jacob? I don't know. He'll come after us. I know. So, British chemist, teenage wonderkind, William perkins, he was the creator of the first synthetic dye, which came about, as a lot of things do in science, by accident, when they're trying to do something else. In this case, a cure for malaria. Right. Which this teenage kid was doing, trying to find a cure from malaria. Pretty cool. And he came up with something called Malvine, which produces a bright purple. And so this was the first synthetic dye. Remember, up to this moment, when William Perkins came along, everything that had ever been dyed in the history of humanity had been dyed using naturally sourced, labor intensive, weirdo processed dyes. And all of a sudden, he's like, hey, this is way easier. It's way more controlled. And because it's controlled, you can put it into, like, mass production pretty easily just changed everything. Yeah. And we don't have to harvest billions of insects and grind them up into powder or poor sea snail. Yeah. And so again, a few years later, a couple of decades later, funny enough, alfred von Bayer said, I'm going to start working on one for indigo. In 1865, he declared that that's what he was working on. In 1897, he figured it out. Yeah, not bad. 30 something years, that's all. What's funny? He got the Nobel Prize, actually, for chemistry, for his work on organic diets. But also he discovered barbiturates. Oh, really? Didn't even mention it in the Nobel Prize. Wow. Barbiturates or synthetic dyes. We'll give it to them for synthetic dyes. Wow. Yeah. Chemistry. Well, it's still interesting, but back then, it was just like, I can make heavy duty drugs. I might make synthetic dyes. Yeah. And then I'll inject them both and see what happens. When that launched in 1897, the natural production of indigo was at about 19,000 tons. I guess annually. It doesn't save. Those look like metric tons, if you ask me. There's an extra and an e. Yeah. Let's say it's annually. And this was mainly coming from India. About 15 years later, after the invention of the synthetic dye, that natural number had gone from 19,000 Tonys to 1000 Tonys. Right. It's a pretty precipitous drop. It hit the natural indigo market pretty hard. And it had nothing to do with the demand for indigo. It was just the synthetic indigo stepped in and just took over very quickly. That's right. And so now it's like just a complete niche market to be like, this is actually naturally dyed with natural indigo kind of garments. You just don't find those. Instead, almost entirely, everything is made with synthetic dyes. And let's take our second break, and we'll come back and talk about how that's just ruining everything too. Because there's nothing good about indigo, apparently. Correct. Charles. Yes. You're wearing jeans right now, are you? Unfortunately, I am as well. That's all you wear? How many pair of jeans you got? Two. I have two as well. Yeah. One jean jacket. Show off. You throw on, like, a little jean vest. You got a Canadian tuxedo going. Yes. Emily made fun of me for buying a jean jacket, and I was. Like, I think jean jackets are kind of in. You're like jake Brennan thinks it's cool. Oh, I bet he can rock a Gene jacket. Sure. That hair. Yeah, for sure. And I said, no, these are in. Now she's like, I don't know. And I was like, no, they totally are. Like, I'm going to make it my business that they're in. No, they're in. You just don't wear them with jean bombs. What are you wearing with well, according to the websites I looked up to prove himly wrong, you wear them with, like, khakis. You wear it with a corresponding or a pant. That doesn't mean Jackie doesn't sound right. Yeah. Khakis are like, I have my maroon khakis. You can wear it with that. Okay. Anything that's not blue jeans. Okay. Basically. Because, again, you look like you're edging really close to a Canadian tuxedo. Yeah, but I've seen people pull it off. Will Ferrell. He wore a Canadian tuxedo. I heard a word. He's hilarious. He got up there do you see that jean jacket and blue jeans? Yeah, but he had a shirt that offset it. Yeah. Did you just say Forever in blue? J? Because he did that whole Neil Diamond thing, remember? No. One of his greatest characters from Saturday Night Live is Neil Diamond. Really? You mean Robert Gouli? Do you? No. Okay. This Neil Diamond makes his Robert Gole look like dog poop. Really? Yes. I don't think I ever saw the Neil Diamond. He did it multiple times, but there was one where he did a VH One storyteller as Neil Diamond. Neil Diamonds just off the rails on pills, and he's got stitches for some reason, and they come loose. Oh, my gosh. Beautiful. He's like a bigoted racist who's singing about how he can't really stand his keyboard player because he's black. And his keyboard player is like, what are you talking right now? It's Tim Meadows. So I demand that everybody press pause and go watch the Neil Diamond Forever VH. One storytellers. Will Ferrell. And we'll wait and we'll check that out. And we're back. Okay, so where the heck are we now? Is the environmental nightmare that is modern textile. Not just blue jeans, but textile dying, period. There's a documentary called River Blue that I have not seen yet. Sounds lovely, but it details the chemical manufacturing process for denim, specifically, where, like, you go to China and there are rivers that are running blue, which is not good for many reasons. No, some of the reasons are that the dye itself makes the river blue, which blocks out sunlight. So plants die, kills everything. Yeah. When they disintegrate, they are broken down by bacteria, which suck up all the oxygen, which kills the fish. It's just a horrible chain reaction. Again, remember, even with synthetic indigo, but with natural as well. But even with synthetic indigo, the dye doesn't want to stick to the stuff. So you have to use something called the mordant, which is a bleaching agent that actually will bind the indigo dye to the garment. I I thought the mordant was because the initial color that it gets is not the blue that you want. So you have to keep bleaching it. That's not my understanding. Okay. I think it's the thing that binds that says, hey, indigo, come on over here, and let's hang out with this denim. Oh, okay. And we'll stain it blue. Well, the wastewater, the leftover mortons, are terrible. They're either acidic or they're chromium or some other kind of horrible metal that kills fish and poisons the water supply. They spell it differently, which is why they pronounce it differently. Did someone send it in? No, I looked it up. How's it spelled exactly as it's pronounced, but we spell it aluminum in the US. And in Canada, apparently, the rest of the English speaking world spells it aluminium. There's that extra syllable spelled out. Oh, they say aluminium. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know that. I thought it was just aluminum. Right, but they're really saying aluminium. But they're British. Okay. So that would be an extra I after the niyam. Yes, exactly. All right. But isn't that fascinating? We spell it differently. Yeah. That's weird. I agree. But anyway, you don't want that stuff in your water supply. And it comes about in aces from the 4 billion pairs of jeans that are dyed every year in the world. Yeah, jeans and jean jackets and jean hats. Canadian tuxedos. That's right. But they are trying to work on this. There's a more environmentally friendly way they're trying to formulate I did not understand this at all. So I'm just going to say it's magic through chemistry. Okay. I have a feeling you're going to want to explain it well, which is fine. Here's the thing. Do you remember indoxyl is what you're after when you're extracting and fermenting indigo? That's right. Or indigo ferro plants into indigo. So that indoxyl is super unstable. So it likes to bind to something, and it becomes something else. You can't use that something else. You need the endoxyl. What they figured out is they genetically altered an E. Coli, a strain of E. Coli, and it secretes that precursor to endoxyl. Or they can make it secreted. Right? Yeah, they like, genetically engineered, so that precursor to endoxyl, when you put it together with some other natural enzyme, it separates that precursor into endoxyl and glucose. And then all of a sudden, you've got endoxyl. And what's neat is they found that with this particular type of endoxyl, when you expose it to air, it automatically turns into indigo. Well, it turns into luko indigo, which is the white indigo, which apparently is what you actually want to make things blue. That's right. It's really confusing. You just lost me with that one. Well, that's the deal. But they're saying, like, we've got this thing. It's like the system actually works. We've engineered this bacteria to produce basically the precursor to indigo. And then you scale it. That's always the problem. Exactly. Right. This big denim is going to say, great, show me the numbers. Tommy Hilfiger is going to be like, I can't make any money off this. And so will Antoine Bugleboy. They won't have anything to do with it unless it's cost efficient. Oh, that's good. And the good thing about this is it solves a couple of problems. The chemical synthesis of indigo is just bad. And then you also don't need that mordant bleaching stage either. Right. And all of this stuff is running off into the rivers in China and other places. But if you don't have that and you just have this nice little bacteria producing it on a massive scale, then the denim producers will say, we're on board and the world will be saved. Could there be anything more wrong with the world? I know, because you start to think about someone who's vegan, it's like really walking the walk and trying to do the right thing. And like, I don't wear leather. No belts, no shoes, all of this stuff. They say maybe while wearing their jeans or maybe not. Maybe they're like, oh, and I won't wear denim either. But I think it's all dependent on what you have researched. You could probably research everything on your body and find some awful practice along the way. Unless you're just sitting on your commute, making your clothes and weaving your loom and you're just wearing, like, tan linens. Sure. No colors, no dyes. Right. Because you're not going to smash up a Beetle to get green. No, because that's not environmentally friendly either. Beetle's got a right to live. Yeah. Beetle's got a Beetle. You got anything else? No, it's just sad. You're right. I know. I was hoping to end it on the upbeat thing, but not this one. Yeah. You follow the chain of almost anything used today and it's got some terrible thing. I got it. But that doesn't mean you should give up. No. Because any way, any choice you make that helps something continue to live that did not be polluted, it's still helping. No, you're still screwing up this other way. You don't mean to. But the other stuff that you are doing that is helping is still helping. It's still saving a life, it's still promoting some healthier ecosystem somewhere, and it's still worthwhile. I'm a big subscriber to this. You don't have to be all or nothing. Some people are that's great, but every little bit of good you can do is still doing good. Yeah. Because I've been taking the task personally over the years from listeners saying, how can you be an advocate for dogs and eat meat? Oh, yeah, they love that one. And I'm like, you know, I'm still helping dogs. I just really love 2oz of perfectly proportioned beef jerky. And maybe I should be vegan. But to call me out on saying you're a hypocrite because you're helping dogs. No, helping dogs is good, period. Full stop. Agreed. And they're like strangling turtles with a plastic bag while they're saying this, too. I know, right? Because I guarantee if you drilled in Chuck, you could find something, too. Yeah, but that's not a fruitful road to go down. No, it's not, Chuck. No, it's not. Agreed. Well, if you want to know more about being a better person, go back and listen to our catalog. How about that? Yeah, all of them. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. What is this? This is kind of a fun one. It's a correction for you, but no, it's a light hearted and fun one. Hey, you guys. Longtime listener, huge advocate for all you do. I live in Southern Maine and frequently make the long drives to Vermont, and your podcast helps me make that more tolerable. But I got a bone to pick with Josh. I know where this one's going. Whenever the state of Maine comes up, you guys always slide in a comment about our state's weird and independent nature, rightly? So, but I've now counted two times at least where Josh is misidentified Main as the slogan live free or die. The first time in the rank choice voting, and then more recently in AI facial recognition. I let it go then, but I have to say something now. Live for your die is famously New Hampshire state motto, Josh, not Maine. It's even on their license plate. Mainstate motto is DiRago. DiRago? Latin for eyelid. I have no idea. Dirigo. That suits us quite well, as our state leads as the first in the nation to use rank choice voting, having the most breweries per capita, and being the state in which the most Stephen King books take place. Again. I love the show. Always chuckle when you call us mayor's weirdos. Hope you enjoyed your time in Portland during your live episode last fall. Sure. Excuse me, I have to go ride my moose to the ocean so I can catch lobsters by my lighthouse. And that is from John Cunillo. Speaking of lighthouses, we both agree The Lighthouse was an amazing movie. I know. You just randomly texted me. It's just so good. Have you seen the lighthouse? I was moved to Robert Agar's. Just please keep making movies. Great. And I wish it hadn't gotten shut out of the Academy Awards. I thought, why would it have been? Because it was black and white? Because it was weird. It was almost an experimental film. But the fact that either or both of them did not get nominated for Best actor is just ridiculous. It is pretty ridiculous because they were both amazing. And production design everything. You ever seen a more, like, authentic looking film? No, that's absolutely true, Edgar. Robert Pattinson came out and was like, we basically lived like it was whatever year it was. I buy it. He was like it was awful. Yeah. He's like, all the stuff you see us doing is the wheelbarrow scene. Oh, yeah. It just looks miserable because it was. Yeah. Everybody, if you don't know what we're talking about, just go look up the lighthouse, man. It was so good. And watch it. I love it. And just watch it all the way through. Okay. Yeah. And then after that, if you're like, I really like this, then go watch The Witch, which is Robert Agar's first movie. That's right. His first movie was The Witch, one of the greatest films ever made. And Pattinson is just one of my favorite actors. He's so great. Have you seen Good Time? I couldn't believe how good that was. Amazing. Okay. John wrote that listener mailing, right? Hold on. I think it was John. Yes. John Cuno. John. I can tell you that definitely in the facial recognition episode, I was trolling. I know for a fact that it's New Hampshire's slogan. And if I know Josh John, you're going to hear that again. Yeah. I would also guess that when I said it before, in whatever other episode I said it any yes. I don't remember. That was probably me trolling, too. But if I was mistaken, I apologize. Yes. Live for your die. Everyone, if you want to get in touch with us, like John did, you can go on to Stuffychnow.com or you can just 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. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
9a4c8030-13ab-481b-aa1b-aec4000cccbf | A Dispassionate Review of Roe v Wade | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/a-dispassionate-review-of-roe-v-wade | Given the landmark undoing of Roe v Wade, Chuck and Josh lay out all the relevant facts of the 1973 case.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Given the landmark undoing of Roe v Wade, Chuck and Josh lay out all the relevant facts of the 1973 case.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 30 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=181, tm_isdst=0) | 57180665 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, but she's hiding behind us. And this is stuff you should know. That's right. Right. I think I have already titled this episode a Dispassionate Look at Roe v. Wade. Yeah. Akin to our episode on Kissing or Roller coasters. Right. Roller coasters is pretty appropriate. Yeah, for sure, because it's been a heck of a ride since 1973. That's right. So just so folks know, we're going to just sort of take a look at the case, the original case itself. And this idea was hatched quite a few weeks ago, and obviously we kind of sped that process along and we'll talk about that toward the end. Okay, cool. Does that sound good? Yeah. We're doing this episode apropos of nothing at all. We just decided to do it finally, right? That's right. So we're talking about Roe v. Wade. It's a Supreme Court case again from 1973. I think it was published at the very beginning of 1973. And it basically said all you states, which at the time, most of the states in the late 60s, early 70s had bans on abortion, some of them almost total. The Supreme Court said, all those laws are unconstitutional. We have to refigure this. And it was the culmination of, like, a whole process. A whole bunch of lawsuits were kind of filed at the same time about the same thing, but it was in no way, shape, or form less sweeping because it was kind of in the zeitgeist what people were talking about. I think it took both sides of the abortion issue by surprise. It was that kind of sweeping and that much of a complete course reversal for the United States as far as how we approached abortion goes. Right. I think it's a good way to say it. Abortion is nothing. And we'll probably do. I mean, I think we've long wanted to do just a full episode on abortion, and so we'll probably work that one in at some point in the near future. But abortion has always been around. It's usually always been regulated in some form or another, usually in what we'll call the third trimester. But we'll get to that stuff later as well, or later in this episode. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, there were no federal laws on the books, and it was left to states to kind of come up with their own interpretations of what was usually originally based on English common law. And beginning in the 1800s is when a lot of the states started really restricting or outright banning abortion. And I believe in the 1960s, there were not many states left at all that didn't have bans or restrictions on abortion. Yeah. And the 19th century was kind of a pivotal point for the concept of abortion in the United States for a couple of reasons. There's a historian named Leslie J. Regan, who wrote When Abortion Was a Crime, and she wrote that in 1857, the American Medical Association, which has just been founded, basically said, hey, we need to start a campaign to outlaw abortion, in part, historians say, to help wrestle control of women's health away from midwives and to help consolidate basically all aspects of health, including that under doctors. That's one thing that people say led to the rise of antiabortion laws in the United States. And then on both sides, there's allegations that some of the earliest proponents for or against abortion were racially motivated, too. On the proponent, the abortion proponent side, they say that some of these earliest laws were basically white Protestant Americans starting to get nervous at all of the immigrants that were coming over and saying, we need to step up the birth rate among white Protestant Americans. And one good way to do that is to outlaw abortion. And then the antiabortion side says, no, that may or may not be true, but you guys were Eugene and you actually wanted abortion so that you could control undesirable, meaning nonwhite populations in the United States. So both sides are slinging mud all the way back starting in the 19th century and just kind of gets worse from there. Yeah. And of course, you're using that terminology because they didn't have terms like pro choice and pro life at that point. Yeah, but I also see it seems to be more academic to call it pro abortion and anti abortion because prolife is such a loaded term. It's like, oh, you don't like life if you're pro abortion, that doesn't mean that you're against life. So I saw pro abortion and antiabortion kind of settling that dispute well. And both sides have also taken those terms and bent them to their own will in more recent years by saying things like, we're not pro abortion, we are pro choice, and other people saying, we're not anti choice, we're pro life. And then other people saying, you're pro birth, not pro life. This sort of leads us into what I like to call the central mess of this whole debate, really. And this is as it relates to legally speaking, there is a larger ethical and moral debate, which obviously plays a huge part. You can't remove that, but we're here to talk about the legal case. But legally speaking, the all caps huge mess, which has always been around and always will be around, is that doctors, and certainly lawyers and justices and judges have never been able to agree on what life means and when that starts, right. And that is the central crux and the central mess of it all that will never get solved and has never been solved because it's unsolvable. There is no definition that everyone agrees on, and even the justices in the original Roe v. Wade case admit to this and say doctors don't agree on this. We certainly can't decide this. Right. So that created this quagmire and this mini pronged debate over when is it okay, if ever. Is it a crime? When is it a crime? How severe is that crime? What about the mother and her health? What about the health of the fetus? And who decides all this stuff? Yeah. Despite not knowing and maybe not being able to know when life actually begins, there have been attempts over the years at abortion regulations that kind of try to take a stab at it, and one of them was quickening. I thought this was an early 19th century one. And quickening is a time highlander two. Yeah. For that moment when you first see highlander two and your life changes forever for the better. That's right. No, it's actually when the mother first feels the fetus moving inside of her, they call that quickening, and it's like a super 19th century agrarian farmy, kind of weird, almost animal term, but that's what they called it. And that's when they defined the beginning of life, and that's when they said, okay, after that, we're regulating abortion after a quickening. That was the first attempt. And that kind of underscores the attempts since then, which are basically based on this idea of Viability. Like, if that fetus was removed from the mom, what chance would it have to survive on its own? And if a doctor, a consensus of doctors, say, after about this time or at about this state or about this stage in pregnancy, a fetus could probably survive on its own, that has helped kind of define where abortion regulation begins and ends. That's right. So the Supreme Court back then in the 19th 70s, grappled with this. And like I said, they flat out said I mean, here's the quote. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus as to when life technically begins, the judiciary at this point in the development of a man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. So at least the Supreme Court has flat out said over the years, like, hey, we can't define this. That would have made it even all the trickier if they weighed in, saying, well, here's what we think. Right. So the upshot of all this is we don't know when life begins, but we do know that there are plenty of women out there who get pregnant and don't want to carry the fetus to full term. They don't want to have that child for one reason or another. So the government decided that it needed to step in and figure out how to balance those two things. They said that the state has an invested interest in protecting the life of the unborn while also protecting the interests of a woman's right to choose whether she has a child or not. And they basically took a bunch of plates. They put them on the end of poles. They started spinning them. They got on a unicycle and rode out on a high wire over the Grand Canyon. That's right. Yeah. I think that's a good time for a break with that image in people's heads. And we will talk about the case itself and who Row was and who Wade was 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? 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. Coms, 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 you're going to talk about Roe v. Wade, you got to talk about Roe and Wade. Roe. And I think I'm not sure that a lot of people have really studied this. They may know a lot about the case, but I had never studied it to this degree until we did this. And it's just good information to have, especially these days. So Roe was Jane Rowe. Obviously a made up name like Jane Doe. And they usually do use Jane Doe. But when there are a bunch of dough cases on the docket, and especially in this one, there was another dough on the docket that had to do with abortion, doe v. Bolton, which we'll talk about as well, a little bit, they just change it to Row. It's that simple. But we do know, and we've known for decades now, who Jane Rowe really was, and that was a woman named Norma McCorvey in her 20s in Texas. Yeah. So at the time, Texas had one of the most comprehensive bans on abortion. It said, if the fetus is malformed, their words, if the mother's life is in danger, or I think if what was the last one? I think if it's the product of a rape, then those are the three different criteria that an abortion could possibly be carried out under, performed under. And that meant that since Norman McCorvy didn't fit any of those criteria, but still didn't want the kid that she was looking for an abortion, but couldn't get one in Texas. She also didn't have very much money, and so she couldn't travel out of state, like a lot of more well to do women in her situation would have done. So she started to get desperate, because I didn't say this, Chuck, but she already had two kids. This is her third child. She wasn't married to the man who she had gotten pregnant by, and, in fact, it was a lesbian who was in a committed relationship, I think, at the time. So, yes, she really did not want to have this kid. Yeah. She had given the other two up for adoption, just so everyone knows. It's not like she had two kids at home. She had given the other two up, I think, one, to a family member, and I'm not sure about the other one. Definitely adopted the second one. The first one was raised by her parents. Right. Which is also adoption. But she is now in a position where she doesn't want to have this third one, and was put in touch with an attorney named Linda Coffee and coffee's partner Sarah Weddington, two recent law school grads who were looking for a case like this. And this is where I don't know if you've seen the great Alexander Payne movie Citizen Ruth, but it's a movie about, basically the Roe v. Wade debate with Laura Dern, and it's his first movie. And it's great. And it's a great comedic satire. But wait, what? You haven't seen it? No, it's comedic. Oh, yeah. It's Alexander Payne satire. Is it a musical comedy? No, it's just a movie. Basically, Laura Dern is the central figure who is a drug addict who is pregnant and gets co opted by both sides. Like, they both think they have found the golden case to make their case. And in true Alexander Payne fashion, both sides are played rather satirically, and there are no winners. Really? This one? That sounds like real life, for sure. Yeah, but that basically is what's happened. Later. Says that she was kind of co opted and manipulated, which we'll get into by these two women who are her attorneys. Later in life, she became a bornagain Christian, and this is when most of that stuff out about the attorneys manipulating her came out, and after being pro choice for her whole life, was pro life, and then came out later, almost like a deathbed confession, and said, you know what? They paid me. The quote was, It was a mutual thing. I took their money. And this is to be clear, the pro life side paid her to reverse course, is what she says, at least. It was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they put me in front of the cameras, told me what to say, and that's what I said. I did it well because I was a good actress. Yeah. And there's a lot of people who argue that she wasn't ever really pro choice either. And Ed helped us with this one, that she was basically more of a mercenary who looked out for herself. And I've read quotes from her that basically say as much that she didn't really care about this whole huge case that she was the center of. She just wanted an abortion. And that was the thing that she said, that she was manipulated about that coffee and weddington. Basically talked her out of getting an abortion because they were worried that if she didn't have the child by the time the Supreme Court heard this case, she would no longer have standing. Because at the time, the courts used to rule that if you weren't actively pregnant, if you'd already had the kid, your case would just get thrown out because you weren't pregnant anymore, so who cares? We'll talk a little more about that in a minute. But that was why they supposedly talked her out of it. They said they definitely didn't talk her out of it, but at the same time, they didn't help her find an abortion, which is what she was after when she contacted them in the first place. Right. So if you're wondering why this happened, she was, I believe, pregnant in 1969. And this case wasn't rendered until 1973. It's because a lot of stuff happened in 1971. They were going to begin hearings in December of that year when both Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II retired from poor health. They both died before the end of 1971, so they were definitely in poor health. The prophecy turned out to be correct. Well, and just crazy timing. We definitely haven't seen anything like that since then. But for two justices to retire within days of each other is pretty monumental. And so President Nixon, of course, was looking at chops and appointed William Winquest. I always have trouble with that Winquest renquist. I know. I just go pretend like the h is in there. I go all Princess Pride in that moment. And Louis F. Powell, Jr. Nominated on the same day in October 71, came in. And because the Supreme Court cases take so long to get through, they decided, basically after a lot of handwriting, that even though they had begun hearing arguments on that case, that they would redo it all with the nine justices instead of the seven. Yeah. So this was October of 1972 when the case that was eventually decided started in earnest. So, yeah, by this time, Norma McCorvey had already had her child. Her child was two and a half years old and already had been given up for adoption, but they still ruled that she had standing. That essentially it was not moot, right? No, it wasn't. So let's just talk about that real quick. So, like I was saying, like, courts used to rule that if you weren't actually pregnant, you couldn't have standing in a pregnancy related case even if you'd filed the initial lawsuit while you were pregnant, you weren't pregnant any longer, so whatever. So the Supreme Court, one of the things they did in Row was established that pregnancy could not be rendered moot because, as they put it, pregnancy provides a classic justification for a conclusion of non mootness, which apparently is a real legal term because it says it could truly be capable of repetition, yet evading review. Meaning that any time an appellate said, hey, these guys passed me over for lack of standing because I'm not pregnant anymore, following the letter of the law, the appellate court would be like, well, we can't hear you because they're right. You don't have standing anymore. So the Supreme Court finally said, forget that. Pregnancy is a recurring thing. It's a transitory thing, but it's actually a thing, so we need to be able to review it. So they said, yes. If you are a woman who has been pregnant or even could be pregnant, you have standing in cases like this. Yeah, because basically they would never hear a case because it takes way longer than nine months to get this thing up to the court system and review it. Yeah, and I mean, all the initial prosecutors have to do is be like, file a bunch of motions to delay it for nine months, and then the case gets automatically thrown out. And they even say, like, our law should not be that rigid. So that was a big thing that they did in the Row opinion. For a brief sidetrack into Levity, I cannot hear the word moot without thinking of that great Saturday Night Live sketch with Jesse Jackson years ago, the Question is Moot. Did you ever see that one? No. It was a game show called the Question Is Moot. And Jesse Jackson was the game show host, and basically he would lob out a big question, and anytime someone would go to answer it, he would just interrupt them and say, the question is moot. My brother and I said, the question is moot to each other over and over for a period of years when we were kids. It was pretty great. No, I've never seen that one. All right, so back to Roe v. Wade. Funding is now over. We have to talk about a few of these cases because we tend to think of Roe v. Wade as sort of this vacuum single case. But there were many cases that went into kind of shaping what ended up happening, the first of which was probably United States versus Vuich, which was when a doctor in DC. Doctor Vouch, was performing abortions and was prosecuted for doing so under DC law because DC law said it can only be done if it was necessary for the preservation of the mother's life or health key under the direction of a competent, licensed practitioner of medicine. And he said, this is really unconstitutionally vague of what that means, like what does health of the mother even mean? And a really key thing came out of that, right? Yeah, they said, no, it's actually not overly vague, it actually makes sense. But they ruled in their opinion, so they ruled against voyage and in favor of DC's. Abortion law. But they did say, but we could see how health could include something like a mother's psychological health or the impact an unwinded child might have on a family. That was new and that was huge. So that was a precedent. And we saw in the freedom of the press episode that sometimes justices will rule against the person, but then we'll establish a foundation for a later case by just mentioning something like that. And that's what they did in that case. Another few cases that had a big impact were the first two were meyer versus Nebraska in 1923, which was post world war one. There was a large anti german sentiment. So they basically enacted laws that said you can't teach foreign languages in school anymore. Only English is the only language you can teach. And then pierce versus society of sisters, which was based on in 1925, based on an Oregon case where the state of Oregon said all kids have to go to public school. You can't go to private school because of the Oregon compulsory education act. So those two factor in and how they affected how the 14th amendment and the 9th amendment were framed in terms of row. And again, a little confusing, but it's a little wonky. Yes, but the upshot of it is that in 1923 and 1925, the supreme court established a precedent by saying we're going to start interpreting the 9th amendment, which basically says, even though we've mentioned some stuff in the constitution and the bill of rights specifically, that doesn't mean that other stuff isn't constitutionally protected. Like there are other rights, too that we didn't mention. Figure it out. Supreme court. Basically what the framers were saying are the 9th amendment writers, and then the 14th amendment grants equal protection under the law with due process. It's called the due process clause. And so they put these two things together and they basically said that the court now has the ability to interpret whether something not mentioned in the constitution is a constitutionally protected right. That's what those two cases did, and that established a longstanding precedent that gave the supreme court that ability. Sure. Because the constitution was written in the 18th and 19th centuries, and obviously there were not things like the internet back then and all kinds of things that we have to decide upon these days. But if you're an originalist, then that's great, because that just means that you can overturn the existence of the internet by outlawing it. If you're a supreme court justice. That's right. What did Thomas Jefferson think? Griswald versus Connecticut was the other case in 1965, and they used that. I don't think we said that the doctrine was ended up being called substantive. Here we go. Substantive due process. Can I take a crack at it? Sure. I would say substantive due process. Substantive? Yeah. You know why? Because that's correct. I knew I was tripping over it a very obvious thing there. Substantive due process. Let's just call it SDP. So in 65, with Griswald versus Connecticut, they use that SDP doctrine to say that Americans also have a right to privacy, because that's not mentioned in the Constitution either. But this kind of opened up on what you call the bedroom cases, which is, hey, we can't legislate what happens in someone's bedroom. That's a right inherent right to privacy. And that covers and that ended up covering, according to Scotis, marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education, which was sort of the basis of everything in terms of row. Yeah. Griswald versus Connecticut was not really the first case that tested that. I think Loving versus West Virginia, which the Supreme Court overruled laws that kept interracial couples from marrying. But Griswell versus Connecticut was short on the heels of that, and it was over birth control rights, but also that led that right to privacy. That substantive due process doctrine kind of led to the creation of led to everything from the support for gay marriage overturning laws that ban gay sex, I mean, all sorts of different stuff. It just basically said there's really private things in people's everyday lives that the government has no business or no say in, so we're just going to leave that alone. But there's a big problem with that, Chuck, and this is a huge problem, at least as far as law goes. The idea that Americans have a right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution is technically a legal fiction. If you're an originalist and you read the Constitution literally, and you say, okay, what would the founders think about this? What were they thinking at the time they wrote this document? Then they would say they didn't put right to privacy in there, and maybe they do have a right to privacy. Americans do, but it's not in the constitution, meaning that it could be overturned later by a court because it's not constitutionally protected. That is what put Roe v. Wade on shaky ground from the beginning, is that it was argued and decided as a right to privacy case. And again, privacy in this sense is not privacy like you and I would think of nobody looking over your shoulder, but more an American's ability and freedom to make decisions about what affects their own personal life without government intervention, that term of privacy. But by basing it on that, it set Roe v. Wade up on rather shaky legal foundation. And that was actually kind of a pet argument of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yeah. I mean, she was on record as saying that she thought it was on shaky ground and for good reason, and that it should have never been decided on those grounds, and was certainly not saying that she was pro life, but was on record as saying that it tried to do too much, too sweeping, too fast. And the way it should have gone about was XYZ. Who knows what happened? What would have happened had she had to cover one of these cases. What she was at the time, one of her cases was on its way to the supreme court and it was an abortion case. It just got decided, or it was resolved because the air force changed its policy. So she could have been the one who argued the abortion case in front of the supreme court. Yeah, I'm really curious how that would have panned out, but the way that she suggested it should have been done is rather basing it on the right to privacy. It should have been based on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment right, because her logic was that by forcing women to be pregnant, the government is forcing a condition on women that men are not subject to, and that is by definition, gender discrimination, which is protected against by the equal protection clause. So that's in the constitution. So what Ruth bader ginsburg was saying, if you had argued and decided roe on the basis of the equal protection clause, it would have been virtually ironclad from day one. And it wasn't. It was on shaky legal ground, and anybody who knew the law knew that it could be challenged. You just had to chip away, erode at it, make all these different arguments, and sooner or later a changing court would start finding holes in it because they knew the law, too. That's right. Great. Time for another break, I think. So let's come back and talk a little bit more about Roe v. Wade. Yeah, sure. It's a good idea. I was thinking we changed to zeppelin's mid episode. Led zeppelin. I would do that, actually. All right. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long. Term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page, and enter code stuff. So, Chuck, I think you said that Roe v. Wade was just one of a number of cases that were making its way to the Supreme Court at that time, around 1970. I think there was something like 18 cases. And the reason that America went from abortion laws starting in the 19th century to all of a sudden, a bunch of them being challenged from different states all at once was because in the 60s, there was so much social change. And one of the big changes is that women were getting out from under men's thumbs. They were going into the workplace, they were taking birth control pills, they were taking control of their lives in ways that they never had been before. But they saw very clearly and very early on and long before the 60s that one of the major paths to self determination was their ability to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or not. And that's why all at once, there are at least 18 cases coming to the Supreme Court that sought to overturn abortion bans. That's right. And all of these cases sort of played into it. Some were actually joined to Roe. Some were decided alongside Row. One of them was John and Mary Doe. They filed a complaint because the wife Mary, of course, that probably wasn't her real name. Right. It would have been a heck of a coincidence. Well, I mean, Mary, they couldn't use Jane anymore, either. Oh, yeah, I guess not. They went from Jane Doe to Jane Rowe to Mary Doe. And maybe there would have been a Mary Row eventually. Who knows? Maybe. But she couldn't continue to take birth control pills for health reasons. And so they argued that the government was infringing on their right to have sex as a married couple without getting pregnant, basically. James Hallford was a Texas doctor who was arrested for violating the Texas abortion ban that was tagged on. And then we mentioned Doe versus Bolton earlier. This was a Georgia case which was really similar to Roe v. Wade. Georgia just had a bunch of hoops you had to jump through to get illegal abortion, and they decided that at the same time and we could be talking about Dovey Bolton more. It just kind of went the other way. And we talked Roe v. WadeMORE, but it was the same kind of deal, equally as important. Yeah. The thing is. I read that Bolton went way further. That the case was they were both published on the same day. But that in Dovey Bolton. The Supreme Court essentially said a woman should be able to get an abortion for basically any reason she wants. That they couldn't see any genuine reason why the government should be able to tell a woman that she couldn't terminate a pregnancy. That there just wasn't a good reason. And I guess that factor, that argument didn't come up in Roe v. Wade, but it did come up in Dovey Bolton. And you mentioned that it was a Georgia law and that there were some hoops that basically the Jane Doe in that case was saying, like, Georgia is just putting up obstacles, barriers, just to keep making you from getting an abortion. And there were a bunch. Your doctor had to agree to it in the first place. They had to go consult with two different doctors who both had to agree that you should have the abortion. Then your doctor had to go get permission from a hospital review board where the abortion would be performed if it was because of rape. You had to produce proof of the rape to get an abortion. So you basically had to bring a note from the local police saying, yes, this woman was raped and became pregnant as a result of it. That's nuts in and of itself. And then also your family or even a court attorney could block it, could petition for you not to have the abortion, and it would come before a judge to hear whether it should proceed or not. I would say there's a lot of obstacles mixed up in there in that Georgia law. I would agree with you. And that was decided, like I said, alongside Row. And in the end well, the end at the time at least. Supreme Court ruled. Seven two in favor of Jane Rowe. January 2273. Justice Blackman wrote the majority opinion. Did the same for Doe versus Bolton, also a 72 decision. And Byron White and William oh, God. William. Rehnquist. Nice water. Thank you very much. They were the ones who did not join the majority in those cases. And again, it was based on those 9th and 14th Amendments. And they basically said that an unwanted child can be a serious problem for both the physical and mental health of the mother and the family and even the child. And the government forcing families to take this burden on violated the right to privacy. Do you want to hit us with a little bit of the majority opinion? Yeah, they were saying it could be harmful to the woman's health, and you could diagnose that even early in pregnancy. So why should the government block that treatment from a doctor? Or it might force a stressful life onto a woman. She might suffer psychological harm by it just from even raising a kid, especially a kid that is unwanted, which is going to have an impact on the child itself and how the child is raised. They basically said. And also, don't forget the stigma of unwed mothers. Are we going to also force the woman to get married to because she's an unwed mother? No, we're not going to do that. But there is a social stigma. They called out like, a pretty decent handful of reasons why the government saying, no, you cannot get abortions, was unfair to women and unconstitutional as a result. And a lot of that has been, well, basically proven in what's called the Turnaway Study, which for some reason I was calling the Takeaway study. The Turnaway study is a longitudinal study that was performed. They basically took 1000 women from three different groups. Women who sought an abortion up to three weeks over the limit and were denied. They're called Turnaways, which is where the study gets his name. Women who sought an abortion up to two weeks under the limit and did receive the abortion, and then women who received an abortion in the first trimester. And we'll talk about all the trimester stuff here in a bit too. But what the Turnaway study found was a lot of things. Women who were denied abortions were more likely to experience complications from the end of pregnancy, including death, more likely to stay tethered to abusive partners, very big one, less likely to have aspirational life plans for the coming year. What else? I mean, there's a lot of financial burden too. Being denied an abortion was linked to a lower credit score, a higher amount of debt, and increase in the number of negative public financial records like bankruptcies and evictions just from being denied an abortion. And 95% of women reported that having the abortion was the right decision over a five year period after the procedure. That's a pretty key finding. Yeah. And that Turnaway study has been like, widely lauded as a gold standard study because these researchers figured out how to create an experiment under natural conditions. Like the women involved in the experiment in the study, essentially the only thing that differentiated them was if they had gone to the abortion clinic just before the cut off or just after the cut off. That was it. Except the first trimester group. Okay, but the first two groups, that was the only difference. There was a follow up study that looked at the methodology that they used and found that analyzing the different participants credit scores showed that they virtually have the same credit scores. They were that similar economically, education wise. And that where they diverged was when they were either granted an abortion or turned away for an abortion. And the turned away for abortion groups, life started to go downhill. The receiving and abortion groups suffered a slight dip in mental health that recovered, they recovered from, and then apparently over five years. The thing that they most frequently expressed as an emotion or thought about it was relief for having been able to get the abortion that they'd wanted. So that's a turn away study. Like, I encourage people to go check this out and read more about it. Back to Roe v. Wade. One of the crucial parts of the decision was this legal term, strict scrutiny. And that means that if it is a right that you're deciding upon, this guaranteed by the Constitution, then any restrictions on any laws that you're going to put down or put forth have to be narrowly tailored to only limit the right in that case where the government thinks we should get involved here. So that's why the Second Amendment is in the Constitution, that you have the right to keep and bear arms. So any restrictions placed and this is why it's so hard to get anything passed on gun legislation. Any restrictions on that is protected by the Second Amendment. So it has to be narrowly tailored to serve just that case. Yeah, because the government has an inherent interest in protecting human life, but they also have to protect the Second Amendment's guarantee to bear arms right to have a gun. So they have to figure out through their laws how to say, like, prevent mass shootings without infringing on people's right to have a gun. That's why this is so hard and so pernicious. Like you were saying, that's just gun rights. I mean, the abortion issue makes gun rights seem like a walk in the park. Yeah, absolutely. Because in the case of Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS determined that laws restricting abortion had to be narrowly tailored to that state's compelling interest to protect the health of the mother. And this is where we get back kind of full circle to that central mess with this quote. Some argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this, we do not agree. And in that quote kind of sprang up this central messaging, which is how do we define life and how do we define where life starts? Again, everyone has their own opinion. Some people say from the second two cells are joined together, then that's a potential human life. Other people say that is not the case. So they had to come up with what ended up being a pretty initially arbitrary system of deciding this. So they invented trimesters, which is months one through three, four to six and seven, eight and nine during a pregnancy. And in terms of Roe v. Wade, the first trimester, you could get an abortion, and it was legal. And second trimester, there were restrictions if your state wanted to have them. And in the third trimester, you could ban an abortion outright if you wanted to in your state. And the quote here is that's the point where Fetus quote, presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. And what I thought when I was hearing this was, I'm surprised that hasn't been challenged, because that would be the stickiest of all cases if someone really wanted to throw a wrench in. This whole idea is for a woman to say, I've just entered my 7th month and I want to have a C section today because you're telling me that I have a viable human being growing inside of me at this point, and if you don't agree with me, let's take it to court and let them decide. That person would be the most reviled person in America for trying that. But, yeah, that would definitely be a messy test case, for sure. Yeah. But the problem with this Trimester framework, like we said earlier, with Quickening, with the idea of viability outside of the womb, science doesn't know. We just don't have that information right now. And so the whole idea is kind of arbitrary because science is actually advanced by leaps and bounds in its ability to keep a baby alive way earlier than the third trimester, which led antiabortion groups to say, well, wait a minute, if we can do that and it's before the third trimester, we should be banning abortion earlier than just the third trimester. And that led to a bunch of challenges against Roe v. Wade, because, again, like we said, it's widely considered to have been based on shaky legal foundations. So there have been challenges of plenty. But the thing is, up to this point, the Supreme Court has always overruled those challenges to a large degree, or at the very least, in every single case, upheld Roe v. Wade and its ban on full bans on abortion. That's right. And Planned Parenthood versus Casey is a shining example of that. This was the 1092 case where the Supreme Court upheld almost all of the 1982 Pennsylvania law. That was kind of like the Georgia law in Dovey Bolton, where they had a series of obstacles. I believe in this case it was spousal notice, parental consent for minors and a 24 hours waiting period. So in this case, it was decided on plurality. I can't believe I can say that word. There was no majority that agreed to one specific verdict in this case. That's what plurality now, see, there you go. Jinx myself. That's what that is. Substantive plurality of rehnquists. Oh, my gosh. So in this kind of case, you don't have, like, a majority opinion and a dissenting opinion. You have a bunch of several opinions that are written with different parts, agreeing with different elements, basically. Yeah. And that's what happened. Apparently, four of the judges wanted to overrule Roe v. Wade or overturn Roe v. Wade entirely in this case. Two wanted to uphold it entirely and just throw the Pennsylvania law out. And then three of them, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Suter, and Anthony Kennedy, I think all of them were appointed by conservative presidents, basically took the middle ground. And they said, you know, we're just going to say the only part of that Pennsylvania law that should be struck down is spousal notification, because that is onerous undue burden. But we're going to tinker with the law a little bit. And one of the things that they did, they got rid of the Trimester framework and they instead said the viability of the fetus as determined by a doctor should be when abortion restrictions can begin. So you take I mean, as unscientific as the Trimester system was, Chuck, at the very least, it provided objective guidance for women and abortion providers. They threw that out with Casey in 1992 and replaced it with viability of a fetus. Right. And they also downgraded that strict scrutiny that we talked about, that standard that came along with row of undue burden. So a law could be unconstitutional if it placed a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus. In, quote and long and short of what all of this did was it made it easier to put more restrictions on abortion without overturning a row. Yeah, because the Supreme Court didn't say, and here's what an undue burden is they didn't at all. Which means that it's open to state legislatures to start passing more and more restrictive abortion laws to test where that boundary is. And then that's how we got here. Casey opened the door for that to basically say, let's find out what is an undue burden. Let's see what you got. State legislatures. And they started tripping over themselves to come up with the most restrictive abortion laws that they could and get them into the Supreme Court in the hopes of eventually reaching a court that would say, you know what? Let's just forget about this whole thing. We don't think that Roe v. Wade should stand at all. And that's exactly what happened last week. Of course, it was leaked earlier in the year, but officially the Dobbs case was rendered last week, Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and said it's now up to the states. Many states had trigger laws in effect. Many more had laws that are soon to follow. And this is just the beginning of what is to come, which is a lot of uncertainty, including people like Mike Pence saying, even though we have long said it should be states. Right. What I really think we should do is make a federal ban. People on the pro choice side are obviously very upset for a lot of reasons, but namely because of a few specific things, first of which is Brett Kavanaugh, Justices Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in particular led people to believe under oath during their confirmation hearings that this was settled law and, quote, precedent upon precedent. People like Alexandria OCASIOCORTEZ have said just in the last couple of days, like, hey, that's impeachable. They were under oath. But when you look at their quotes, they didn't say they would not overturn row. They use that very slippery confirmation language. It's misleading under oath, but that is not going to end up being an impeachable offense. I have the quotes, but you can read them. There are all kinds of articles out there. Yeah, when you read them, you're like, no, they didn't. And that was a huge failure on the Democratic senators who couldn't bring themselves to apparently ask them directly, would you overturn Roe v. Wade? They wouldn't answer, though. They asked Amy Kony Barrett, they asked Clarence Thomas, and they literally didn't answer. The other thing that the pro choice that is pretty upset about is the idea that five of these justices were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote. So we're in a situation where five of the nine justices sitting on the Supreme Court were decided by a minority of Americans voting, and people like Elizabeth Warren are calling for the end of the Electoral College as a result. Man wouldn't that be a gift? The third thing that is upsetting to the pro choice side how two of these justices were confirmed, with Mitch McConnell not allowing the Obama nomination, merrick Garland to even go before committee because it was eight months before an election, in an election year, whereas Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in the 35 days leading up to the election. The shortest gap between the confirmation and election in US. History. The third thing or is that the fourth thing, maybe the fourth is that people like Elizabeth Warren are rightfully bringing up the notion that the Constitution was written at a time when women not only had no vote, but they had no voice. And it was written entirely by men in the 18th and 19th centuries, white men who they believe that the Constitution is a living document and those things need to be taken into account. Like, have women been able to have their hand in the Constitution? Things might have been written differently. And we're in a different world now where women do have a voice and they do have a vote. But this is a decades long victory for conservatives that started long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Far, far away. Like when Trump had his list. He doesn't come up with a list, he gets handed a list. And this list of justices, potential justices, were hand picked by the Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers run by or at least the list was basically tailored by men and Leonard Leo. And I think there are people on the left that say these Justices were handpicked because they absolutely knew that they would overturn Roe, and that was always a part of the plan, and that they were coached to be as vague as possible in the confirmation hearings to what people on the left they would fool people like Susan Collins and what's his name? Mansion. Mansion, yeah. Mansion. RenQuest so that's what has really upset people on the pro choice side, those specific things. And that has nothing even to do with the ethics and morals of abortion, even. Well, plus also there's some other things that people are really, really concerned about. One is that the Supreme Court just basically said that Roe v. Wade was based on that right to privacy. Which is. They decided was a legal fiction created by activist justices back in the that they overturned that and since not just Roe v. Wade. But also gay marriage. The ability for a married couple to access birth control. Gay sex. A whole bunch of different privacy issues are based on that same legal fiction. Then all those things are up for grabs too. So a lot of people are worried that this Supreme Court will overturn gay marriage and all of a sudden your marriage will be null and void. If you're a gay couple who was married in the United States, that's incredibly scary as well. Piled on top of a ban on abortion, essentially is what's happening now, or at least in some states. And then, like you said, Mike Pence was calling for a federal ban. And that's another thing that are making people on the pro choice side really worried that essentially personhood will be granted to fetuses, that some state somewhere, I would guess probably in the Midwest or the south, would come up with an abortion ban or even a resolution that they adopted the law that says life begins at conception in the state of Oklahoma, right. And that somebody would sue them and it would go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court would say, you know what? Oklahoma is right. Fetuses are people and they deserve all the constitutional protections under the law. If so facto, you could not abort any fetus anywhere at any time. There is now a federal ban on abortion entirely. That's something that's scaring proponents of choice as well. Yeah. And just a can of worms that's been opened up now as far as enforcement. And are you going to send police after people? Are you going to send police across state lines if people are able to get the funds to travel across state lines to a state that still allows abortion? It's just the beginning of a lot of uncertainty for a lot of people. Well, plus also if you are prolife or you're anti abortion and you have a problem with the decision of Roe and say that it was judicial activism, you have to admit that what just happened in Dobbs was judicial activism. It just went the opposite way. And there's a lesson in there. Judicial activism is bad on either way. We're supposed to leave it to Congress to create laws that say this is the law, not the Supreme Court, to come up with laws on its own and then overturn those same very controversial laws 50 years later. That's not what's supposed to happen. It completely erodes any trust in the Supreme Court and its ability to be like the final arbiters of what's right and what's wrong in the United States. And that's what's going on right now. But that's just because the shoe has changed the other foot to the other foot. There were plenty of people who live from 1973 onward with that same view of that Supreme Court and are perfectly happy with this Supreme Court. And that's the big problem, not just with this issue, but with America. I feel like today is it's just all tit for tat. Yeah, maybe there should never be lifetime appointments. Oh, definitely not. If there's one thing that's just a no brainer as far as American law is concerned, lifetime appointments to the panel that decides ultimately what's law and what's not in the United States is just a bad idea. Yeah, let's have term limits, too, while we're at it. It's too much power, man. I think people are supposed to have that much power for that long. It creates a really screwed up system. Yeah, it definitely does. All right, since I said screwed up system wait a minute, wait a minute. That's my part, though. Anyway, since Chuck said screwed up system, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to end this on a lighter note that might bring a smile to people's faces. Hey, guys, a few years ago, on one of your numerous and wonderful tangents used the phrase, don't yuck someone's yum. I love how simple this was and summed up an ethos of being kind to people no matter their beliefs and opinions. Fast forward to now, and I've used this simple saying when bringing up my two daughters who have just turned five and three, as a way of teaching them manners and kindness. Yesterday I had a message from my three year olds child Minder, saying that my daughter had told another child not to yuck someone's yum and how great that was. She liked it so much, she's going to make it a saying that she used when teaching the children that she looks after going forward. It was then passed on to the parents of the other kids who all reported back that they would also be using it and passing it on. Nice. And by the way, Matt, we didn't invent that I believe that came from a listener, right? Yes, definitely. So hats off to the anonymous listener. That's right. Some people might wish you stay on topic more, but I'm here to tell you that even your off the cuff comments can educate others and you can be safe in the knowledge that you've helped instill good manners and a growing number of children in Berkshire, England. Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting that. Oh, Barkshire even gave me a pronunciation key. So you said sheer, right? Sheer, yeah. Bark. Barkshire. So it's Barkshire but it's spelled Berkshire. Oh, okay. You get my drift? Yes. That's why I'm going to start calling upstate New York now. Barkheers. Let's go. Weekend in the bar. Cheers, everyone. Let's do it. That's from Matt Walford. Thank you, Matt. That was very kind of you to let us know. We're glad that we're enacting really positive change in your kids'schools, and that was kind. So thanks. Keep it up. If you want to be like Matt and get in touch with us and tell us something kind that we helped you. We love to hear that stuff. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcasts 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." | |
What happens to abandoned mines? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/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 these places go from money pit to death trap when mine companies simply walk away. | 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 these places go from money pit to death trap when mine companies simply walk away. | Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:15:53 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=17, tm_min=15, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=236, tm_isdst=0) | 25789837 | 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 charlie was w Chuck Bryant. Damn, this makes it I just had some of my notes mixed up. Like criminal records of stuffed in the middle of this one. Wouldn't it be funny if I was talking about abandoned minds and then just, like, a robot 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 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 1000 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. 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 mines. That's the high end. Yeah. But the low end even is still, I think, like 300,000 abandoned minds, abandoned mines, and 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 minds. And I did a little looking. Yeah, I did too. Apparently, they include Corey's. 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 quarry. 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, like, a buzz cut and more like a big watch and everything. Yeah, he was. 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. Really? That's awesome. All right. So, sadly, like I said, about 30 people die each year. Many of them are drowning. I think number two on the list is ATV accidents, which then surprised me because too long on 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 are 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 minds. 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. Yeah, that's another I think it's way down on the list. It's like a distant third, but I think it's being overcome, unable to breathe, asphyxiation. 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. Right. From people either trying to get old ones started up or more likely, adventuring to abandon mine. 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 minds. No. They're very dangerous. Yes. I mean, it'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. But it's not a good place to be, not a good thing to do. So what's crazy is we said, like, 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 think it's of the ones they found, they said 20% to 30% have physical hazards, and five to 10% have environmental hazards. Is that right? 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 the mind collapsed some, they're called glory holes. Did you know that? That was almost a spit take, wasn't it? Yeah, that's not true. 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. Mind 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 addits and other mine features yeah, 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, it produces acidic groundwater that can pollute an entire water system downstream. And then also, chuck. Mercury tailings are a big problem, especially with gold mine, 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 so 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 in the atmosphere and everything. But those kind of tailings are especially problematic in old gold mines, too. Does that end up in cold 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 gold slogan. 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. Yeah. 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 not answer no, is 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 pre what? 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 a short answer. 2006, congressional testimony said it would cost $72 billion to clean up only the Hard Rock mines, like 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 the 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. Yeah. And even if they do know, the mine owners can be like, do you have documentation that's on that mine? And the government goes, now, and the mine owner says, See it, or 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 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 you 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 from 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. Was 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 do 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 or whatever, you are automatically exempt from the Clean Water Act. Got it. 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 mineshaft, 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. The problem is, when you build a mine, in a lot of cases you've disturbed the bat population. Yeah. 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 that 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 couplers vertical shafts, which is basically just like a little roof that has slats to let the batch 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 back 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. Yeah, that'll mind my tax money going toward that. So apparently nowadays, since 1977, part of the abandoned mine Reclamation Fund is that if you are 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. Oh, 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 in Reclamating. I think it's called the Mining award. 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, it 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 planting 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 and rock cory swimmers. Yeah. If you see a mine, stay away. I believe it'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'll be helpful. You'll save some money, save some taxpayer money if you report to mine yourself. Agreed. If you want to know more about abandoned mines and reclamation and all that stuff, you can type it into the search bar@houseupworks.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 Hodgkin. I was going to say the same because he has a full podcast on, I believe, chilis Chowders, stews and Soups and the Differences. Right. This is the first one. It was pretty early on. Judge John will break it all down for you. Nice plug, Chuck. Thank you. Ryan Taylor. Question. What time is it? A, hammer time, b time to make the donuts, or C, bureau clock, time to make the donuts? We got one from Jeremy Glover. Did either of you grow up watching Andy Griffith show? I think he meant the Andy Griffith show. Yeah, I certainly did. I did, too. In reruns. Yeah, same here. Is there anybody who is alive today that 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 two big characters. Denny the third. Those were the two big ones, like The Landlord and Three 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 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? Well, 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 duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? I love these questions. One horse size duck. I don't go for the one horse sized 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. Yeah, 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, like, 1ft tall horses coming after you? I find the horses duck creepier. I don't mind that. I have some good eating, too. Oh, yeah. Micah. Mia. Mia. Mia. Paul Cannell 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. Atlanta's great. Robert Casey is Jerry as smoking hot as we think she is? And more. That's all I'm going to say about that. Have you ever gotten a threatening listener mail from Nathaniel Jager? 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. Do you 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 for cilantro. Yeah, that's pretty good. Thank you. It's 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. Me too. 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 of 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. Yeah. 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. 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 go to Guacamole. If you have questions for Chuck and I, you can tweet to us at Syscape podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychannel, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-10-31-sysk-2016-halloween-special-final.mp3 | SYSK The Podcast: Special Halloween Bonus Episode 2016, The Sequel – From Hell | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-the-podcast-special-halloween-bonus-episode-2 | Lock your doors and grab something heavy to defend yourself, like a candlestick or something, because Josh and Chuck are going to scare the wits out of you, courtesy of a story from The Grabster and listeners who submitted two-sentence horror. Scary! | Lock your doors and grab something heavy to defend yourself, like a candlestick or something, because Josh and Chuck are going to scare the wits out of you, courtesy of a story from The Grabster and listeners who submitted two-sentence horror. Scary! | Mon, 31 Oct 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=305, tm_isdst=0) | 37084814 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast from Hell. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's. Over there, there So that makes the stuff you should know the Podcast special Halloween bonus episode 2016 this sequel, I think we've called this something different every year from Spooktober to Spook Tacular. That was a good one. I think you're going to probably title this one, so I can't wait to see myself. Yeah, I'm going to have to give it some real thought. How about live from hell? From Hell? Speak for yourself. You're feeling good about this one? I always feel good. I've got my traditional Halloween hot toddy. Oh, nice. Made with candy corn sprinkle on top. Candy corn and corn whiskey. It goes well together. Heat it up. Yeah, you heat it up with some margarine. Oh, man, you're making me cry. Here some pine nuts. It's delicious. It's straight out of a Georgia mom's kitchen. I wish, man, you would get arrested if you tried to give that out to Trickortreaters. Yeah, rightfully. Yeah. So, Chuck, as we usually do, this is a special bonus episode. It's an extra episode so it can come out on Halloween. Beautiful. It's a gift from us, I guess you could say, as we do every year. And what we like to do is read a couple of short stories, scary stories, classic horror fiction, usually. But this year we're doing something different. We're doing something contemporary, like your story last year. And the other little land gap to that is that this year's first story comes from The Grabster. Yeah. The great Ed Grabinowski, who has written many of the House of Works articles over the years that we've based our episodes on. And we've met Ed. He's in Buffalo, right? Yeah, he's in Buffalo, and he wrote a great story. And I just want to warn I feel like we need to warn this year parents. This one is pretty legit, scary and creepy. So maybe you might want to listen before you round your kids around the fire to enjoy a Halloween hot toddy. Yeah, it's a pretty good one. Again, I think the Department of Family and Children's Services should come to your house if you're giving your kids Halloween hot ties. Yes. And just as a preview to after this, we did something else a little different. We sourced some two sentence horror stories from listeners the other day, and it was the thing that I found is a thing like the two sentence story. How creative can you be? How creepy can you be in two sentences? And we picked out 20 of the best ones. And so big thanks already to everyone who contributed and sorry to the ones who did not get picked because a lot of more jokes. All right. We appreciated those. Yeah. But we tried to keep it real and creepy. Yeah. We want to scare the pants off of people this Halloween. Yeah. So that's the plan for the next, what, 40 minutes? Something like that. Probably not even yeah, around there, we make that time promises. So without further ado, we're going to start with the first story by Ed Grabanowski is called Extraneous Invocat. None of these little incidents meant anything to me at first. I drew no connections. It started in the middle of a fall afternoon, sunny and crisp. We were packing up the apartment to move after two years in the same tiny space, we were making a little more money and moving to a slightly nicer neighborhood. The living room was a maze of cardboard boxes, stacked and taped and labeled, or hanging open, half filled with the bits and pieces of life we collected over our few years together. I walked in from one of the two bedrooms with an armload of winter scarves and hats. Should we keep these out, or do you think we'll manage to find them before it gets too cold out? I looked at Laura, who has bent over a box with her back to me, sunshine through the wide front windows onto her long, dark hair. She shuddered then. Not a physical shutter, not like a seizure, more like the twitch you see when the film is about to break at a movie theater. She flickered. I blinked, thinking something was in my eye, but she was silent and oddly still, crouching low over the box. Then I noticed her hair. Just a second ago, it had been swept sleekly across her neck and shoulders, soft and curled, but now it hung in thick, wet strings, hiding her face from my view entirely. It was all so strange. It happened so quickly, I don't really remember what I was thinking. Mostly I was mildly irritated that she hadn't answered my question. But a numbness crept up my spine as I realized something was not right. Laura louder this time? Perhaps she moved slightly, I wasn't sure. But she remained silent, and my vague feelings of strangeness escalated quickly. A note of panic crept into my voice. Is something wrong? She let out a sound that I hesitate even to think about. The closest I can come to describing it is a sort of clicking sigh. At that moment she shuddered, twitched again, and it seemed as though the room brightened without realizing there had been a change. I saw that her hair looked as it had before, and she was busily wrapping glasses and tissue paper and lining them up in a cardboard carton. My rising wave of dread crested then, and when I called her name again, she mistook the note of urgency for anger. She turned, frowning, and snapped, what? I think I just stood there blinking stupidly at her for a moment, and already my mind had rejected the entire experience. I just zoned out there for a minute. Sorry, I said. Should we pack these? A few days later, I called her at work. One of the other women in the office answered no, Laura wasn't in. Yes, she was a little late coming back from lunch. No, they didn't know where she'd gone. She didn't usually leave the office for lunch, and she was hardly ever late for anything. But I didn't think twice about it at the time. Later that week, I happened to thumb through a local newspaper, and a small article in the city news section caught my eye. Witness claims stranger walks downtown streets. A homeless man was attacked on the city's west side yesterday afternoon, although police are having trouble getting a description of the attacker. Hale Thomas Donovan, 52, of no permanent address, reported the attack at 130 PM. After passersby found him huddled on Dearborn Street near the Cray Island Railroad bridge. He was yelling incoherently and was visibly terrified. According to the police report, he was treated for trauma and released from Sisters of Mercy Medical Center. Although witnesses believed the man was not physically injured, in his statement to police, Donovan only said that he, quote, met a stranger under the bridge. Police confirmed that they received two other reports that day of a strange person in, quote, on the city's west side. Nice. Thank you. The apartment was mostly packed up at that point. We were living on frozen pizza, eating off of paper plates for the next few days. Every night we went to bed exhausted from packing and lugging boxes around. That night I read in bed for a short while as Laura fell asleep beside me. She lay on her side or back to me when I set down my book and turned out the light, I leaned forward to kiss her good night. She made a soft, happy sound and snuggled back into me briefly. I was soon as sound asleep as she was when I awoke. I had no idea what time it was. Our alarm clock had long since been packed, and Laura was using her watch alarm to wake up for work in the morning. It was still extremely dark. The only light of feeble blue glow from the streetlight outside filtered through shade and curtains. Guessing it was about 03:00. A.m. I stretched sleep stiff muscles and turned over to face Laura. She still had her back to me, sound asleep on her side. In the dim light, I could see the slow shallow rising and falling of her breath. I reached out to gently stroke her hair until I fell back asleep. It was ice cold and soaking wet. Oh boy. I frozen place, my body instantly rigid as the memory of the afternoon packing incident flooded me with terror. My throat was tight and dry, adrenaline surging through me as I tried to keep my hand still, plotting how to withdraw without letting her know I was awake. I pulled my hand from that clammy mass as slowly as I could, fighting the urge to recoil in a panic. My fingers were tingling from fear, and another, stronger numbness that spread down my arm as I tried to pull it back beneath the cover. Silently, just then, she made that chittering sound again. This time I realized what it was. She was laughing. I pressed myself hard against the wall on my side of the bed, heart slamming and skittering, arms pressed tight to my sides. My eyes were wide open, glaring into the darkness, watching the shape in the bed beside me for any kind of movement. I didn't know what was lying less than 2ft from me. I remained that way, rigid with terror, for quite some time. I didn't sleep. I don't think I even blinked. I never noticed a change. But at some point I heard a soft snoring, a familiar loro sound. I relaxed somewhat, but a few minutes later, when she stirred and rolled over, my every muscle pulled taut with apprehension. But it was just Laura peaceful and sleep. My fear ripped away, and in the absence of adrenaline, my eyes refused to stay open. Although I slept soundly, I woke with stiff, sore muscles. My shoulders ached, and I remembered vaguely that I dreamt of being chased through my childhood neighborhood, desperately hopping fences and cutting through yards to escape some unseen pursuer. Laura came back into the bedroom just before she left for work. She looked down at me with a look of concern. Did you sleep okay? She asked. You look pale. She reached out a hand to touch my cheek, and I flinched. Looking confused and hurt, Laura stepped back. What? She smelled the sleeve of her shirt. Do I smell bad? What's wrong? The unconscious jolt of fear brought the previous night's encounter back to the forefront of my mind. But already the defensive mechanisms of the human psyche were at work, diffusing the memory as I convinced myself it was part of my dream. No, it's not you. I think I was having a nightmare when I woke up, and I'm still a little foggy. She gave a half smile and leaned down to kiss me goodbye. I reached up to give her a quick hug, feeling the warmth of her body and her soft skin against my face, and she was gone. 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 homepage and enter code stuff. All right. Bad things are happening in this relationship. Starting to pick up, isn't it? Yeah. Every man's worst nightmares. The wife becomes a shape shifting ghoul. Right? With wet hair that you can't get your hand out of. They don't call ed the Grabster comma master of Terror for nothing. All right, here we go. That night, Laura left for a two day conference in Memphis. I dropped her off at the airport and got back to the apartment around nine at night. There wasn't much to do, since most of the packing was finished and we were just waiting for the occupants of our new apartment to move out. I had a TV and a couch. Everything else was sealed in boxes. I ordered a pizza and settled in to watch a baseball game. At about 01:00 a.m., I woke up with a stiff neck. I'd fallen asleep at an odd angle on the couch. The game was long over. An infomercial bathed the room in flickering, bluish light, but I turned the volume very low so I couldn't hear what they were selling. Some kind of exercise equipment. It wasn't the infomercial or sore neck that awakened me, however. It was the early autumn chill that pervaded the apartment. Puzzled and still groggy, I sat up and realized that the door to the apartment was open. Not good? No. At that moment, I also noticed a foul odor, like rotted meat. Very bad. Yes. Who wants that? I walked to the door, seeing that the outer door was also hanging a jar. It was gusty out and the night air was blowing straight down the hall. I closed both doors, certain that I hadn't forgotten to latch them shut earlier. But I could come up with no other explanation. Neither could I find any source for the smell, which was fading quickly. There was literally no other food in the house, and the garbage was outside in the dumpster. My 02:00 Am sleuthing skills. Exhausted, I gave up and went to bed. The night sleep was uneventful. Maybe he farted. I think that's the subtext of the whole story. I think so. They're both just farting on each other. On Saturday morning. I picked Laura up at the airport. That night was to be our last at the apartment, but we were still in limbo. Everything packed. Nothing to do but wait. Even the cable had been shut off. We spent the afternoon and evening seeing a movie and having dinner at a nearby restaurant. The televisions over the bar, usually tuned to a ballgame, were buzzing with news about a recent murder. An old woman had been found mutilated in her home. They kept showing footage of a man in a suit, a detective, I guess walking out of the house with his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with shock. Our spirits were subdued when we got back home and before long we went to bed. That night, that unbearable, unthinkable night, started out much like before. Something woke me in the deepest hours. I had no sense of time, but it was very dark. I immediately knew something was wrong. I'd been having tense and disturbing dreams partly from the news stories about the murder faceless men in suits knocking at my door, walking around the house, peering into the windows. But something other than a nightmare was contributing to my malaise. She made the sound, that laughter that hideous, mind wrenching sound no human could make. My body went numb with terror, and I gasped out loud again. I shrunk to the far wall, pressed against it, my eyes frantically scanning the blackness for movement. I couldn't imagine passing another night like that straining to hear, praying that nothing happened. But I felt the bed shift. A gout of cold air reeking of rot bathed my face. The shape in the bed beside me rolled over. Yeah, this guy is good. Yeah. If I live for 1000 years, I will never forget that face. It was my wife's face, but corrupted as though my wife was being worn by something that was not the same shape as her. The mouth was stretched in a wide rickness, literally from ear to ear. An inner set of black, oily lips curled back in a manic smile uncovering a row of impossibly large teeth. I could see things caught in those teeth. The eyes were huge, glistening black. No iris or pupil. The nose was distorted in a thin, ridge bone with narrow slits. The scalp and hair seemed to hang loosely as if partially detached from the skull beneath. And yet the mottled grey skin of the thin neck disappeared into my wife's pale blue night shirt. It was an obscenity. It crawled across the bed toward me, unnaturally agile. Those eyes widened, the grin somehow stretching the jaw working at a bizarre speed. Still, that sound issued from its throat. I tried to scream, but my throat was clenched in terror. A hand gripped my shoulder, terrifyingly strong and cold as ice. Its face was inches from mine now, the mouth opening wide. It screams. It was a shrill, screeching roar of deafening volume. So loud it made my eyes hurt. As it screamed, it shook violently and fell in thick ropes across the face. But the cold, black eyes stayed focused on mine. That really paints a picture. It's going to take a lot of corn whiskey and candy corn to wipe this one from everybody's mind. But we can try, can't we? We met Ed's. Wife or girlfriend? A wife. Lovely woman. Yeah. Good luck. My hair is totally dry and of a normal temperature. And my husband's crazy, crazy talented. All right, here we go. When I awoke, the room was flooded with sun. I have no idea what happened. I can only assume that I passed out from sheer terror. Laura was already up showering. I went to the other bathroom to wash a strange chemical taste out of my mouth. In the mirror, I noticed that thin trails of blood had seeped from the corners of my eyes, then dried. Somehow I got through that day. I stayed busy with loading the moving van. Unloading at the new apartment. Unpacking, I avoided Laura. I didn't know what to think or what to do. I finally convinced myself that whatever had happened was probably related to the apartment itself. Since we were moving, I was escaping whatever it was. But I woke up in the middle of the night again. We were sleeping on the mattress, on the floor, surrounded by boxes. My heart was slamming in my chest as I looked at Laura. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, lying on her side, facing away from me. That made it even more of a shock when I heard the sound, the laughter, again. It seemed so loud, though. I tried to get up, get out of bed, and away, but I could not move my limbs. The clicking laugh sound came again, but this time I felt it. I felt it come from my own throat. My limbs began moving then, but I was not in control. I was a passenger. I put my hand on Laura's shoulder, squeezing hard. It was my hand, but not my hand. Gray skinned and clawed, it woke her up. Hey. Ow. As she rolled over and I began to pull out her shoulder, opened her eyes and screamed just as her arms were free. I could see clearly. Her eyes had gone glassy with terror and pain, and her scream was soon cut short. I can only hope she went into shock before most of what came next. I was not in control, but I watched it all happen. Wow. The end. All right, that is extraneous invoc by the great Ed Grabanowski. Chill bumps literally on my arms. Yeah. I wonder what that thing is going to do with the rest of its day. What comes after that, by the way, Mr. Protagonist, it's not the apartment. Right? Yeah, that was wishful thinking. Just moving with you to the new apartment. He's like, it's fine. The pure, dark evil will just stay behind this apartment for the next tenant to deal with. I'm sure it's just this crappy studio. This two bedroom we're moving into will be great. Right? And what is the spear that stabbed Jesus Christ in the ribs doing under the bed? So, by the way, we're going to get into our two sentence horror stories, but something jumped out at me. If you're into this two sentence thing, an inner set of black, oily lips curled back in a manic smile, uncovering a row of impossibly large teeth. I could see things caught in those teeth. That's how you do it. Yeah. I thought it might even be unfair to be like crabs. You got a two sentence story. He'd say, pick out any two sentences of anything ever written and light a cigar. Oh, wow. Boy, that was a good one. That was a good one, man. I'm pretty psyched we use that one. Does he have a lot of these? Yeah, one of the things he does is write horror. Well, he might just become our guy next year. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I found out that Stephen King has something called his dollar babies. Have you heard of this? No. He has a list of stories, short stories, like, probably 20 of them on his website called his dollar babies that have not ever been optioned for anything. And if you submit, apparently it takes, like, a month to get responded to, so we didn't have time. But if you submit and say, like, hey, I'm a student filmmaker. I'd like to make this as a project, he'll say, fine, give me a dollar and have at it. That's awesome. So I might see if we can do a legit Stephen King one next year for a buck. That is really cool, man. And we'll see. That's just neat that he does that now. Dollar babies. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's like weird Al Yankovic tweeting the phone number, the payphone, he's standing by it's along the same vein. When did he do that, in the 80s? No, not too long ago. He tweeted it and then whoever called first, he just sat and talked to us for, like, 20 minutes while he's waiting for a flight. That's pretty cool. Yeah, he's a cool guy. If there's one thing that everybody knows about weird Alex, that he is deeply cool. Yeah. Hey, everyone. 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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so like we said, we're going to finish up today with 22 sentence stories that people sent in. And we appreciate the creativity. We're probably going to critique them as we go because we're us. Sure. But I think everyone left the name for the most part, and where they were from. Some are abbreviated. Yeah, sure. Some have the pronunciation, even. Yeah. And we tried to I read a bunch of these on subreddits, and I tried to weed out the ones that were plagiarized. So if any of these turn out to be plagiarized, shame on you, and I'm sorry to the original authors. Yeah. Nice, Chuck. How's that? That's pretty good. A little shaming. Yeah. Pre shaming. You've not been found out yet, but shame on you. So, I believe we're also going to have a little creepy bed of ambient sounds here as well. If there's one thing Jerry does, it's horror. Yeah. I see her in the corner now. She's cranking up the ambient horror sounds. There's a monkey with the symbols, but it's a real monkey. But it's dead. It's weird. All right, you can go ahead and take the first one there. Okay. This one comes from Jamie Clark. No relation as far as I know from only Texas. Not related to that town either. Jenny walked into her home to see flowers on the dinner table with the note, I love to watch you sleep. She called to thank her husband, but was interrupted by the masked man's reflection in the base. Pretty good. Boom. I just thought it was creepy enough that her husband would say, I love to watch you sleep. Yes. Apparently they're into that kind of thing, though. They've got that and they're like a whole fetish of pretending you're sleeping or dead, and then you're revived by the person who you're having conjugation with. I'm sure that's the thing. Conjugation fetus is what it's called. All right, this one, it's from Canum. Trux or Trua? Trua. Truax. St. Cloud, Minnesota. Prua. That's a great name. Kanem trua. And this one is wonderful because it's nice and concise. Only part of my wife came back. I wish I hadn't stopped payment on the check. Boom. Not bad. A lot of violence against women in horror. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah. It's a safe yes. Let's kill some husbands. How about it? Right. You ready? Sure. This one comes from Murph. My buddy Tyler Murphy from Rapid City, South Dakota. Murph. Great guy, by the way, who we also met at the Denver show. Yeah, he gave me a ride home from the Denver show, man. Drove me all the way to Atlanta and then took a left and went up to South Dakota. Okay. You're ready for Murph? Yeah. As I sat there feasting upon my freshly made ham sandwich, it struck me as odd that I had no other name for it. I mean, it tastes like ham, but by what other name would I refer to the flesh of my mother? Woman. Violence against woman. That's right. Tyler Murphy, school teacher worker for now. All right. This one is from Sophie Court in Waterford, Ireland. And here we go. Sophie. She's been sitting in the same spot for three years. I dress her up and we mourn her anniversary together. Nice. So far. That one's my favorite. It's pretty good. All of them have been great. You did a good job curating these. That one's a good one. I appreciate that. Well, I didn't write it. Sophie appreciates that. This one comes from Donovan Stone from Sydney, Australia. But he includes the caveat that he wrote this. Well on holiday in Kyoto. And then we should add the caveat that holiday means vacation. Right? And on holiday means hopped up on sake. Tofu, are you ready? Yes, mom. What's that noise? Your mother is not coming home, the voice replied. Thought of that on vacation. Man dark days demented. All right, this one is from Scott W of unknown origin who may or may not exist, frankly. Yeah. The creepy clown eagerly fulfilled my request to make me a balloon animal. Then suddenly, his face broadened with a sinister grin, and in a swift motion, his razor like teeth burst my latex skin. Nice. You are the balloon animal. Right. He managed to insert a joke in there, but it remains scary still. What was the joke? Yeah. He wanted to be made a balloon animal and it made him into a balloon animal. Find that funny? That's joking. Sure. Okay. This one comes from Raimi fights from Indiana. Great name. Nowhere in particular in Indiana. Just Indiana. They are reproducing faster than anticipated with teeth fully formed. Unusual. Indeed. Sounds like a lab notebook. All right. This is for Mary Abel in Houston, Texas. I woke with a start, and my eyes scanned the room for the source of the crash. A man crouched in the corner, and although his mouth was stitched close, I clearly heard him hiss. Indeed. That was good. Voice acting too chuck. I appreciate that. This one is from Krista Corivo. We got the pronunciation included from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, currently occupied. Kneeling on the platform before my family and friends, I heard the sound of the guillotine descending, and I closed my eyes, bracing for impact. I feel no pain, and I'm relieved there was a malfunction. However, as I breathe a sigh of relief, I slowly opened my eyes and see the bloody stump of a neck where my head used to be. That one art podcast on that. Sure. Very topic. What was it, did you say? Conscious after decapitation? Yeah, apparently Christa thinks so. A lot of commas in that one. Yeah. Managed to extend it quite a bit. That's right. Way to go, Krista. All right. This is from Andrew Butler of. Unknown origin. I'm so sorry, he said as he released pressure from her neck wound. Thanks to the blood loss, she was gone before the stake entered her heart. I like how you made them sound almost sarcastic. Did I? Yeah. Okay. So sorry. Okay. This is from Thomas Berdino from Hutchinson, Kansas. After singing Happy Birthday, I told my five year old daughter to blow out the candles and make a wish. She sat frozen, unblinking, as she stared emotionlessly at the candle flames. And finally she whispered, I wish for gasoline. I like that kid. Oh, you do? Sure. Fire starter. All right. Lauren Helman from Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania. Nice. Her eyes fluttered, and the smell of earth pulled her further into consciousness. A scream welled in her throat as she realized that her arms were pinned beside her in the blackness and the air would not last. Man, nothing like a good buried alive story. No. And it was a her. I like that one. Do you ever see that? They remade Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the 80s. Did you watch it? No. Oh, man, it was great. It was fantastic, right? And one of the ones that I remember more than any other was one where these two prisoners had this deal where one of them would pretend like he was dead. Now, he was going to climb into the casket of a dead prisoner that's a great deal. Get transferred out of the prison, buried, and then the other prisoner, who was in charge of, I guess, yard keeping or whatever, would come dig him up, like, a half hour later, and then he would be set free. Right? Well, the plan goes according to everything's going according to plan. The guy crawls into the casket and encloses it, and then he gets buried and he's got, like, one match or something. And when he lights the match, he sees that he's in the casket with the man who's supposed to dig him up. Yeah. Love it. That old trick. Yeah. All right. You're right. I think I just used the term with that anecdote, don't you? Not enough. Go ahead. Okay. This one's from Dan Lewis. L from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Joan's heart was still racing, but as she jolted back to consciousness, she became aware that her feeling of sickening dread, of trying to get away from an evil, unseen force was nothing but a terrible dream. She was relieved for a full second before she realized the sound that jarred her awake was the sound a car makes as it breaks through Rickety guardrail before she drove off the side of the cliff, sleep driving. Quite a twist. Yeah. I didn't see that coming. I didn't either. Well, Dumb and Louise. Action. I've never seen that movie. Is it good? Yeah, it's terrific. Okay, I'll check it out. Talk about ahead of its time. Sure. It's a feminist fantasy. Nice. All right, moving on. This is from Hillary Lozar, our buddy Lose in Montana. Oh, yeah. Of the flat head lake cheese loses the cheese and the mic lasars. The whole los our clan find people. Also a teacher with a dark side. Nice. Here we go. With a horrible feeling of dread and a wretched, light hearted tinkling sound, I fumbled for what seemed to be an eternity, finally dropping the primitive key I'd worked so hard for weeks to fabricate outside my cell door, to be snatched and dragged down the drain by the hordes of rats waiting below. My execution is tomorrow at dawn. Bit of a run on Lowe's, but well crafted. Plus, I appreciated her word tinkling. Yeah. Gets the brain going. Sure does. That's one of those words that does it. Did you know that literally has an effect on your brain? In my opinion. Okay. This is from Brian Co of Lake Stevens, Washington. The monster hunter stared in shock as the swarm of ghouls raced past him, each bearing a look of horror as they vanished into the murky night. He slowly turned to face what had terrified them. I like that one. Yeah, that's good stuff. Scary things are scared of something else. Yeah. That's not good. Not good. It's not one of those situations where the enemy of your enemy is your friend. I think your toast is the ultimate outcome. You know what my brother used to do to me? We always hear great stories about Scott. This is how he tormented me. I think he still does this occasionally when he remembers, I would be like, our bedrooms are upstairs. We had a Jack and Jill scene up there. And Jack and Jill bathroom bedroom situation. Right? Yeah. When I would be going up the stairs, he would be at the top of the stairs, and he would look in horror at something behind me. And I would bolt so fast up the stairs, scared out of my mind, and I wouldn't even look back. And he did that to me a lot. You never caught on, or you just weren't willing to take the risk? No. One time it was true. As a kid. It scared me. That's hilarious, man. Scott is the bomb. Yes. It makes you like it even more. Where are we here? Matt. Sailor. All right. Sawyer. Is it mine? Yes. Okay. Yes. Matt Sawyer from Southwest, Kansas. Doesn't matter where you are in southwest Kansas. It's all the same. One giant town. They get it wrong. The greatest trick I the Devil ever really pulled was convincing the world that God exists. The undulating amoeba of despair and madness made what amounted to a cackle before it reached forward and I succumbed to the dark. Nice. Okay, I'm up. This is Taylor from Iowa. As generic as it comes, it wasn't the fact that he ate the meat that surprised Harold. Who knew that any other man would, upon finding himself in such a sorry state of affairs, also find himself thusly tempted? Now it was the fact that he enjoyed it that surprised him. That moonless winter night behind the medical lab. Yeah. That's where you get meat if you're a sicko. Jess G in Pittsburgh, and I think Pittsburgh I deleted it, but I had an exclamation point even. You deleted it from Pittsburgh. Thought it might ruin the vibe. But we've already done that. Yeah, long ago. All right, here we go. It didn't matter how fast or how far he ran, he always woke up in the same place, in the same skin and the same nightmare. It's appropriately vague. Nice. This is from Jacob Riley Graves, who is either an author or a serial killer. From Wellsville, New York. Another day, my pockmark teenage face behind a faint blue monitor reveling in the joys of the Internet safe and unaffected in my periphery the wall warps and lets out a pain scream my sense of reality is torn asunder and I am broken clever use of colons there. Instead of periods, it's like, don't put a period, just put another dot ahead of it. And it's not a period. That was good. I like it. Yeah. Way to go, Jr. All right, we're going to wrap it up here with Michael Maguire in Northampton, Massachusetts. Every year on the day, the whole town would gather to hear the song and the well. And every year on the day the song would grow shorter, the girl's voice faint, her boom. Sad. That is an amazing two sentence story, I think. Michael Maguire, did you purposely end with what is arguably the best of all that was Rando? That was really good. Nice choice. Yes. Very sad, too. And I agree with you, Josh. Too many women and girls getting punished here. Let's work on that and start cutting off arms of men. Yeah, it's true. The thing is, though, is it is a recurring theme in horror violence against women. Usually, though, you can make the case that it is only a woman that survives any given horror movie. Too true. Look what happened to Kevin Bacon. Skewered true. And what was that? Friday the 13th Part Three. Yes. And let's not even talk about what they do in minorities and horror movies. That's a trope beyond tropes at this point, right? Exactly. We should say the white woman survives. Yes. Crazy. Yeah. Well, if you have an explanation for this, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at Xysk podcast. You can hang out with me at Joshua Clark. And you can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with stuff you should know on Facebook. Facebook.com. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetoppers.com. And I guess before we sign off, Chuck, we should say, Happy Halloween, right? Yeah. Have a safe Halloween. Be careful out there and can't wait to do this again next year. Yeah, we'll see you out there on Halloween at our luxurious home on the web stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
How Internet Censorship Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-internet-censorship-works | Some of it seems innocuous enough: protecting kids from unseemly sites or intellectual property from piracy. But the tools to protect these things are the same that governments can also use to censor ideas and quell dissent. | Some of it seems innocuous enough: protecting kids from unseemly sites or intellectual property from piracy. But the tools to protect these things are the same that governments can also use to censor ideas and quell dissent. | Tue, 19 May 2015 15:55:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=15, tm_min=55, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=139, tm_isdst=0) | 40815885 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were an apparel company facing an avalanche of demand, so you call IBM to automate your It infrastructure, and now your ecommerce platform can handle spikes in orders? Let's create It systems that roll up their own fleet. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. With no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA member FDIC welcome to Stuff You Should Know from Housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with W Snow with Jerry. Depending where you are in the world, you may not be hearing us right now. Yeah, I've heard tell that we are banned in China. I don't know if that's true. I bet it's true. We're not feds in person. Yeah, but we can do that. I'll bet you couldn't find a Chinese pollution sniffer episode, though. Well, that's what I'm saying. I bet there's certain things. Or the one child policy episode. Yeah, but you couldn't find out. Which, by the way, probably bandage. It's a little weird that we didn't even mention that episode in the zero Population episode, did we not? Not only did we not mention that episode, apparently we didn't even mention China's one child policy at all. I thought we did. It doesn't seem like us. Actually, it seems exactly like us. You know what I did, though? Public service announcement. I said it was okay for poisonous spiders to bite your dog, and that's not true. I don't know where I got that. I definitely didn't make it up. I read it and I couldn't find it, and it's wrong. So it is not good for your animals to get bitten by poisonous spiders. And of all people, for me to say that I was shamed. It's okay. I'm sorry. I just want to correct that upfront. I think that's good, as long as you correct yourself when you find out. That's great, Chuck. Yeah, it just bothered me that I couldn't find out where I did it, and people just thought I was just freewheeling. It doesn't matter. Okay. You feel better now that you got that off your chest? I do. Are you ready to talk about Internet censorship in all of its vicious, pernicious nefarious forms? Sure. Okay, let's do it. In researching this article fine article by John Strickland, host of Tech Stuff, who is probably covered this eight ways from Sunday. Probably. So if this floats your boat, go check out Tech Stuff as the podcast. It's good stuff and it's Tech stuff. I found that I knew most of this stuff already, but I also found in doing external research that he followed pretty much the standard of explaining censorship on the Internet sure. And that it takes a number of different forms, but ultimately its goal is the same. It's just restricting access to information, whether that information be in the form of a nudi picture or a nudi picture yeah. Or an essay that contraverts some sort of official policy of a government. Sure. There's all sorts of different ways that you can restrict access to information, and we've been doing it for a very long time. Like, this is nothing new, it's just censorship in a new form, in a new medium. That's right. Because we did one on book banning. Pretty old white form of censorship. Sure. The MPAA, that was another censorship episode. And so now that we have the Internet, there's a big struggle over just how much access should people be allowed? Yeah. And a lot of people say, unfettered 100% total access to everything all the time. Everyone should have. If you don't want your kids looking at stuff, buy a web filter, do it yourself. But it's not the role of anybody else besides parents specifically with their children, to better access on the Internet. And I kind of agree with that. Well, yeah, as a parent, I wouldn't want to leave that to someone else. Anyway. Great point. I think a parent should decide when and where their kid discovers certain things. Right. Just have that in their control. So I get that part of it, for sure. So I guess we should go ahead and start there. That is one form of Internet censorship, is a parent saying, I've seen the web, I know it's on that thing. It gets kind of dark. It gets super dark by accident sometimes you've typed the wrong thing in in Google Images before right. And been shocked at what you found. Imagine having a ten year old kid seeing that kind of thing. Yeah. No good. And you can't stand over your kid and put your hand over their eyes or hand over their ears or anything like that all the time. So there's software for this kind of thing. Yeah. And again, I don't think it's about like raising your child in a bubble where they think that the world is roses and rainbows. Right. But as a parent, you probably want to be in control of what kind of disturbing images they see at what age. Right. So, yeah, there's things cyber sitter, there's programs called Net Nanny. And I know what they do is they have a series of options generally that you can select as a parent on what sites that your child can access, and then those options sell the program to enable certain filters. Then all of a sudden, your kids goes to type in YouTube and a big frowny face pops up like a crying baby's face. Pop. Shame on you. What did you want to do on YouTube? And busted. So what you're talking about is a web filter program. Yeah. It's a software add on. Right. And web filters use one of two techniques to censor the Internet, right? Yes. They use blacklists, which is a list of specific domain names that you are not allowed to access. Yeah. Keywords. Right. And then there's also well, no, that's different. That's the other one is keywords. Okay. So a blacklist is like housetopworks.com on a list, and so if your kid tries to go to How Stuff Works.com or any of its sub domains, it's going to be blocked. Yeah. Those are the filter options that I was talking about. But with the keyword, it's a different type of filter option where there's keywords that when the kid tries to go to a website, the web filter scans the page to see if there's any of these keywords, and if there are, then it'll block that site. Yeah. Because those keywords are put there so you can find those things. Like, if you see the keyword to, like, some porn video, right. It'll have a whole list of words describing what you're seeing. And so if you have those keywords, it'll root it out and say, you can't go because that site said I had the keyword. Ejaculate. That's probably why it's funny. I meant to tell you, when we did the male puberty episode, I went on to the computer, the public computer at the clubhouse. At my clubhouse. Right. Why don't you do that? It's a print. I don't have a printer at home. You still don't have a printer? No, that's a good printer. At the clubhouse. There's a big difference between printer at home and, like, a good printer and a clubhouse printer. Sure. This printer is a good printer. You know what they say can't be the clubhouse printer. Right. But I tried to go on, and it was like, no, you can't open this web page. Oh, really? Because I'm sure it was erection is what blocked it. And it said Josh Clark and unit. Right. Can't go on to read about male puberty. Wow. But then I tried it again. I refreshed, and it's like, okay. And it let me. Oh, really? So it wasn't the best web filter ever, and you didn't get a strongly lettered worded letter shoved under your door that night? Not that night. All right, that's good. So, yeah, blocking out these keywords, these blacklist keyword blocking, it's a great way to filter out Nefarious website. There's also firewalls, and I've been trying to get to the bottom of the difference between a firewall and a web filter. I heard you in Strickland talking about it earlier. Oh, yeah. You had to ask the pro. Yeah. And yeah, it's pretty cool. I can go to the author of the article and ask. Yeah, I almost went down there and I was like, yeah, Josh will tell me. So a firewall basically protects the computer or the local network from the rest of the Internet? Yes. Not just websites, but Internet Relay Chats, like instant messaging, email, all that stuff. It protects it and it says you can come through, you can come through, but you can't come through and protect from viruses and malware and attacks and that kind of stuff. Whereas the web filter is it more says you can't go onto these things. They still exist, like technically on your computer. Right. Is that the difference? Like the firewall is further upstream? No, no. Am I misunderstanding it? Yeah, the nuance is difficult to understand. If you go and type in difference between firewall and web filter, it doesn't bring up a lot of stuff. And the stuff that does bring up, it's kind of hard to understand. So basically the firewall protects your entire computer or network from the rest of the internet. Okay. A web filter restricts access from your computer to the rest of the internet. It's almost directional. It's the difference going out or coming in. We don't have to bring him in here, do we? I'm going to go get him. No, it'll be like the Necronomicon episode all over again. So one of the problems with web filtering software that opponents like to harp on is that it's just like keywords and things they can't talk about context and filtering context. So you might not be able to get a recipe for chicken breast because it has the word breast in it. Right. Which I guess if your kid wants to cook chicken breast, he's out of luck because it's only like doesn't it work? It's just for the kid, right? Like they have to log on and access the software. The software is probably on all the time and then if you're the parent, you can be like, no, I need this chicken breast recipe password or something. Right. Or you have it on the one computer that your kid uses. Right. And you trust them to not use your leapfrog, your filthy computer, it's got flies buzzing around. That's the home version when you're just trying to protect your kiddies from seeing the darkness that is the web. A lot of people can't argue with that. Sure. There's also business censorship, which we don't have really here because we have to research all kinds of things. Part of our job is to be on social media, but if you work for a big corporation, you may not even be able to get on Facebook at work. Well, from what I could tell, facebook is probably the most censored website on the entire internet. Yeah, I believe that like far and away. Yeah. There was this list from I think it was like 2011, which is just totally out of date for this kind of stuff. Sure. But Facebook was like 14% and the rest of the I think the next one was maybe MySpace or something like that. And like 10% of all businesses ban that or something. So far and away facebook is the most banned, which makes sense because it's a time slot. Yes, it is. And if your job has nothing to do with social, there's no reason for you to be on Facebook for any reason whatsoever. No, there really isn't. And since we're talking about Facebook for the Followers of Stuff You Should Know, who are listeners to the show, I apologize for all the nonlisteners that have invaded our Facebook page. What happened over there? Well, we really grew a ton, remember, in that one year span. And I don't know how, but we got blasted out. And a lot of people who have no idea who we are that we even have a podcast just started following the page. I guess it's like, oh, this is interesting things, you know. Okay. And just follow the feed. Are they a lot of fun to have on? They're jerks, man. And you can spot them a mile away. Because The Stuff You Should Know army is well known to be very understanding, smart, compassionate, forward thinking people. And these people are trolls. It's true. And it really stinks because I have to heavily moderate it now, and it just used to be a fun place for open minded people to exchange ideas in a respectful way. And it's just not like that anymore. No, that stinks. We should shut that one down and start over. No, shouldn't shut it down. But I was talking with someone on one of our fans on Facebook the other day because they were commenting about that, and I said, I wish there was a brief quiz you had to pass in order to, like, this page. Where's Josh and Chuck what's the largest manufacturer of tires in the world? No, even easier. Like what's a podcast? Because they'd throw up some meme that says, like, F you. Yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there. I'm sorry for people who've had a bad experience there lately. That was nice to each other. There's been attacks. That is why our fans are so nice to us, because stuff like that, we care. So anyway, it's a big time suck. Emphasis on suck. So that's the reason they shut it down. The other is to avoid harassment, which makes sense. Yeah, that's a big one. Your coworker might bring up a porn image. Some dude might say, who took this out? Hostile work environment. Hostile work environment. And a company cannot risk that at all because they'll get sued. Sued. Sued. Yeah. And so the easiest thing to do is just to shut it down. Yeah. Restrict access. Restrict access. That makes sense. In a way. It does. And if you want to know more about your employer governing your work computer yeah, go check out our episode, is Your Employer Spying on you? That was a good one. It was a good one. We're going to keep going right after this. Hey, everybody, if you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss, then there's nowhere else to look in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to Squarespace.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. 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 up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create, learn more@ibm.com It automation. So, Chuck, we've covered parents censoring the Internet for their kids, employers censoring the Internet for their employees. Kind of difficult to argue with either one of those, especially if the employer is censoring the Internet for their employee's work computer that the employer provided. Yes. You can't really argue during work hours. It's tough to be like, no, it's wrong, it's wrong. Yeah. But again, we're coming from a place where we have basically unrestricted access to the Internet, so it might suck to work under those Draconian measures stuff we look up. We're on some lists, man. For sure. Totally on lists. The third censorship, the third level, I guess, is much greater, and this is the one where people really start to go berserk, and I think rightfully so. And that's government control, government censorship of the Internet, and pretty much every country that allows access to the Internet, which is basically every country these days. There's some level of censorship to some degree. Some are much worse than others. But basically all governments in one way, shape, or form censor what their citizens can access on the Internet. Yes. And even before that, search engines themselves censor, because if Google and Yahoo didn't censor anything, the search results you would get would just be no good. Right. It would be like 1996 or something. Yeah. So they do their own censorship. But as far as the government goes, there's something called the Open Net Initiative on, and they're an organization that their dedication is to inform the public about web filtering and surveillance around the world. I want to dedicate this to the public. And they have four categories of web filtering political, which is when, let's say you want to speak out against your leaders, and your country may not allow that. If you have a blog, they may censor your blog. Yeah, there's a pretty good example of this recently. In China and India, they both followed the same trajectory, but to different ends. In China, there was a documentary about Chinese pollution called under the Dome. It went viral and it got 200 million views in the first day, or something like that. Yeah. And it was government approved. The documentary was right, but it took off, and the Chinese government took it down. And they did so successfully, like, you couldn't find it anywhere in China after that. In India, there was a documentary around the same time that was about that very infamous public transportation rape case. And it went viral and got a ton of views, too. And it also got people talking in India about this again. And the government tried to take that down, but in a very clumsy manner, and it was very ineffective as well. But both governments tried to do the same thing. There was something that was going on. It was stirring up the populace, and they tried to censor it by taking down or restricting access to it. Yeah, and the China one to me is just crazy because, like I said, it was government approved. The documentary was so they didn't even have a problem with the documentary. But in China, they will censor anything that seems likely to spur any kind of activism at all. Right, well, there was a study that found that if you have a couple of posts that are, say, critical to the government, so both are critical to the government, but one of them advocates collective action, like getting people riled up, like, let's go meet in Tiananmen Square or something like that, that's the one that's going to get taken down. So they're really concerned, not necessarily just with criticism, but more so about fomenting popular unrest. And China gets picked on all the time, and rightfully so. They probably are the world's most prolific sensor, at least biggest, because of the size of their population. Yeah, that's the measures they take. They have what's called the Great Firewall of China. But I think especially in countries, in Western democracies, it's a bit of a red herring because it's kind of like, god, look at what China is doing. Look at how much censor. It really kind of detracts from the censorship that goes on here. Sure. In the United States and other Western democracies, that's just as pernicious, if not worse, because this is taking place in what's supposed to be an open liberal democracy. Yeah, you're right. But it is kind of easy to pick on China? Well, of course it is. There was a post in 2011 that there was a rumor that salt could stave off radiation poisoning from the Fukushima reactor. And China quashed that because people were going out and buying a bunch of salt. I remember that. So again, they just squash that because people are buying up too much salt because it would supposedly pack your thyroid so full that your thyroid couldn't absorb the radiation. That was why. Yeah. And it basically just bounced off. If you're famous in China, you're going to be heavily scrutinized. You got to watch what you post. And if you're a Weiwei oh, yeah, that's a good point. And then the thing I saw said that small time users and bloggers that complain about the government, it's not like such a police state that they'll take down all of that. If you have some influence, you're much more likely going to be censored. Okay. If you're not getting a ton of web hits and you're speaking out about the leadership, then you probably will just go unnoticed. Right. So that was the Open initiatives. That was just one of the four. Yeah. Political the next one is social. And that's web pages that have to do with like, drugs, gambling, sex, porn, all that stuff that's very frequently censored. For example, like in a lot of Muslim countries, iran supposedly is working on what they're calling a halal Internet, which is very much sanitized version of the Internet, with all of that stuff, the social censorship being enacted. And from what I understand, Iran is not. So I don't know if ambitious is the word or diluted maybe, that they're thinking they can replace the actual Internet in Iran. I think their ultimate goal of what outsiders are thinking, their ultimate goal is to create like a side by side Internet. Yeah. Here's the Hawaii version that any practicing Muslim can access and feel good about. Here's the other one that is connected to the rest of the world economically and informationally. Yeah. And you sent this great article, web Censorship Colon the Net is Closing In, wherein the writer basically proposes that this is the future of the Internet, is a bunch of separate Internets. Yeah, it was Eric Schmidt from Google. Yeah, it's a really good article. His BFF, Jared Cohen. Yeah. And they basically envision a future where there isn't a World Wide Web so much as there is a Russian Internet, an American Internet, a halal Internet. And it used to be I didn't even know this, there was an English only language standard for a while. Yeah, but that's all changing now. And now you have internationalized domain names that they can have, a Sunni only Internet that they can read in their language and their characters and has no English whatsoever. So where are people going to go if they speak that language? They're going to go to that Internet. Right. And Eric Schmidt foresees this time when the Internet very much resembles the world. So if you want to go on to another country's website, you're going to need some sort of virtual passport, like an Evisa, something like that. Yeah, super interesting. And you may have to pay a fee to go on there, and you're going to be subject to that country's rules and laws and regulations just like you would if you were traveling physically to that country. And that all of this is going to arise from censorship from this society saying we value this and we find this evil. Some government saying this challenges our official stance, so we have to have that taken out. So all of these competing different international interests will ultimately fracture the Internet. It will still be interconnected, but it will be compartmentalized. Yeah. He even envisioned the future where someone would have to seek Internet asylum, which was? I don't know, man, it's crazy. I mean, he basically says this is already underway in some form or fashion, so where it goes, we'll see. Yeah, definitely. He was saying the ultimate outcome of this will be when some government or some country can figure out an alternate to the domain naming system, which is the directory for the entire Internet. Right. Now, if you can figure out a way to not have to use that, you can disconnect from the Internet, and you would basically create a separate Internet just for your society. And that would lead to the ultimate censorship. Yeah, it's not even the Internet at that point. It's like a set of widely published guidelines and things. That's all it is. It's just a big collection of articles and things they deem okay. Right. Because to me, Internet means access to whatever. Yeah, but you grew up as the Internet grew up, so you understood you understand what it was originally meant to be. Yeah, like you can't just publish the World Book Encyclopedia online and call it the Internet. That's just a specific set of information. You know what I mean? Good point. Now there's anything wrong with World Book encyclopedia. It's a great encyclopedia. They should sponsor us. All right, we're going to take another break, and right after we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the countries that are the biggest offenders in Internet censorship. 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. Yes. 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. Comssk. Squarespace. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. All right, before we left, we were talking about China. There's a group called Reporters Without Borders, and they cover much more than Internet censorship, but they do have a list of offending countries, and it reads like this. Belarus. China. Cuba. Which has some more stuff on Cuba. Iran, Menmar, myanmar. Myanmar. What did I say? Minimar. Minimar. Apparently, they've gotten a lot better. Burma has. Well, they opened up big time. Their society yeah. In September 2011 is when they really made a bunch of big reforms. But the problem there is only 1% of the country are Internet users to begin with. Well, supposedly those people that do use the Internet have screenshots taken of what their computer use every couple of minutes by government sensors. Yeah, I think that a lot of that is changing now, though. Great. Since 2011. A few more Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Avi, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. That's where you're going to find a lot of censorship going on. And Cuba is really interesting. They used to not have private Internet at all. Like, you had to go to an Internet cafe, government run Internet cafe, and everything was monitored. Cameras in there, even. Apparently Cuba is even coming into the new world a little bit because now 5% of Cubans have home access. But it is slow. Yes. This one writer went there and he said it took him an hour to upload a 30 megabyte image. That took like 5 seconds at home on Google Drive. So they don't have broadband. Obviously, for now, when that embargo gets lifted, there's no telling how fast things are going to change there. Well, the US and the UN are already working with them to try and improve their Internet and their Internet access. But as a nation, they rank 125 out of 166 in telecom development. So the nice way to say it is they're behind the curve. You know what I'm saying? Well, that raises a kind of a good point. You're talking about how slow it is. You. Couldn't even buy a computer there until 2007. Wow. You could not purchase a computer man a lot. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? But with very slow Internet, that in and of itself is considered a form of censorship. Yeah, I guess so. This whole thing about net neutrality that was going on yeah. That deserves its own show. Of course it does. But let's just briefly say yeah. With net neutrality, the telecoms, the Internet service providers manage to petition the Supreme Court to basically say, the FCC can treat you guys in the same way that you treat websites as information services. Yes. And an information service is basically like an independent business that creates or provides content for the web. Under the telecoms act, the Internet service providers were what are called common carriers and were to be treated just like a telephone provider, which is you have unfettered unrestricted access to the telephone lines. Yeah. Not like I'm At and T, I'm going to pay a lot for a phone line that works. But this other company, if they don't pay as much, you won't be able to get your calls placed. Exactly. Or I'm At and T, and I don't think you should be saying what you're saying or talking to this person. So I'm going to restrict your ability to call that person. Right. That's what was going on with the Supreme Court decision, with the idea that telecommunications companies were anything other than common carriers. Right, right. So they were almost getting to the point where they were going to be allowed to restrict access to throttle speeds so that you could pay for faster speed if you were, say, Netflix or something like that. Right. But then a new startup company wouldn't have that kind of money and would be strangled in the cradle, was how the idea went. Well, fortunately, the idea was overturned by the FCC. The FCC said what amounts to we're going to treat the telecoms like common carriers from here on out. And that means that they have to provide unrestricted access to the Internet for everybody. And it was a really big deal. It was very close. It may be the biggest thing moving forward, clearly, with the Internet right. But it touches all kinds of business and personal privacy and everything. We need to do a show on that. I agree. In full net neutrality. But the point was that if you throttle speeds, those things that load more slowly than others are going to, in effect, be censored. Because, I mean, how long do you sit around for a website to load before you just close the tab and move on? Six or eight minutes. What? No, okay, I'm at six or eight nanoseconds, man, you got me. So that in and of itself is a form of censorship that was avoided by the SEC adopting this common carrier approach to the ISPs. We would just create monopolies. People would be squeezed out, smaller companies would never have a chance. Well, I guess we should talk about some of the opponents of Internet censorship. The ACLU is a big one, obviously. They pretty much squashed the Children's Online Protection Act in its tracks. This was introduced it was actually passed in 1998, but it was never implemented because it just was pounded on year after year, basically as unconstitutional. And that was a law that made it illegal to present materials that were deemed harmful to minors, even if it was valid for adults. Right. And they basically, time and time again, it was taken to court and they said, no, you can't do that. No, you can't. Another one that they tried was called SOPA the Stop Online Piracy Act. Yeah, I remember that. And it basically said that if you even link to somebody that provides pirated material, your entire website can be taken down if you even link to that site. And that came very close. And you think, well, what's wrong with protecting copyrighted material? Sean Austin's in favor of it. Yeah, he was like, the face of that campaign for a while. He had a goony, right? Was he frodo? No, he was Samwise ganges, I think. Yeah, I think so. You had the SOPA you had Copa, you had SIPPA, you had all these things that were protecting the children or protecting intellectual copyrights. But a lot of people kind of saw through these as smokescreens and said, ultimately, what you're doing is creating a law that gives blanket right to government, to the US. Government, to police what we do on the Internet. You're dressing it up to protect intellectual property rights or to protect children, but ultimately, what you're doing is setting in motion government censorship of the Internet, and it got stopped. But from what I understand, there's no resting on your laurels kind of stuff going on. This fight is not going away anytime soon. Yes. I mean, that's how it always works, is that they'll sell it to you as something that you need and think you should have. Right. But what it really is is something else. Yeah. So, Chuck, there is this UN report recently, a special report that basically said internet kill switches are a violation of human rights. Yeah. That was two days ago, right, or yesterday. Hot breaking news. Breaking news. Hot breaking news. Fresh from the oven. So an Internet kill switch is kind of a misnomer because it's not like there's a button or a switch that any country or government can just turn off the Internet. What you can do is especially say, like with cell phone providers, it's usually cell phone and Internet access that's falling under this. And in the United States, there is something called standard Operating Procedure 303. SOP 303, you might not have heard of it because, boy, it didn't have much fan fair around it. No. And quietly passed. The Department of Homeland Security is fighting tooth and nail to keep the details of it under wraps. Yeah, completely. But basically what happened is, in 2006, the Bush administration, and it was later supported by the Obama administration, said the federal government needs to have the ability to turn off the Internet in some way, shape, or form whenever it deems an emergency. Yeah. And the whole thing was born out of these London bombings. Underground bombings. Yes. In 2005, when the subway attacks happened, we actually did this. We threw the kill switch in the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel in New York. On cell phones. On cell phones. Because these bombers used their cell phones to trigger the bomb. That's right. So the problem was but that didn't work. No. Even the Department of Homeland. It worked. They cut them out. But the DHS even said there was disorder for both governmental and private sectors at the time when the use of communication infrastructure was most needed. Right. So that is one very big argument against an Internet or cellular kill switch. Yeah. Makes more chaos. It does. And you really need to be able to get in touch with friends, family, coordinate absolutely. Get to a safe place, what have you. So to just cut out that kind of level of communication. That's one argument against it. Another one is that it can be very easily used by government to quell popular unrest, to protest. Which happened as well in San Francisco. Yeah. With the subway. The Bart shooting of Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station. They learned in August 2011 there was going to be demonstrations going on, so they shut off cell phone service at the subway station so people couldn't organize. Right. And that was supposedly just going to be a peaceful protest. Right. So that was the United States we're talking about. That same exact play was used by Hose Mubarak during the popular uprisings in Egypt. Yeah. I mean, like the same exact thing. So the upshot of this is that DHS is protecting the secrets of SOP 303, but it very much does exist, and the government does have the power and the capability to turn off the Internet in entire cities if it deems it necessary. Yeah. And there's very important, really, coming down here in the next couple of weeks, because in 2002, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a suit in federal court seeking disclosure about the basic guidelines and policies of this SOP 303. And they're going to be ruling on it soon. And they're not saying, open the books on everything because we want to compromise our safety. They're saying what triggers this decision? Is one big question. Yeah. And who is doing this? Basically right now, it says that it can come from a state Homeland Security adviser, their designees, or representatives of the DHS. Homeland Security Operations Center. Yeah. Not the president or anything like that. Yeah. And then there's a sub agency called the National Coordinating Center for Communications, and they are the ones that said that are tasked with a series of questions to determine if a shutdown is necessary and like, who are these people and what are the questions and what are the questions? And again, they're not saying this well, some people are saying this should never happen in any circumstance, including the US. And in the United States, it's a prior restraint on free speech. It's as simple as that. So it's automatically unconstitutional to do this. But the fight right now at least, is for more transparency and an understanding of the policy, at least. So we'll see where that goes. But man, that is scary. Yeah. San Francisco shutting down. I mean, it sounds like China or Egypt. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And no one knows about this stuff much because, I don't know, people are on Facebook. Publicized. Yeah, they might be. Where you learn about something like that, in fairness. Plus, I would say the national media is at its lowest point as far as being a public service in its history in the United States. It's just shameful where the popular media is. They're just lapdogs and stenographers. It's disgusting. Yeah, it's pretty bad scene these days. Really. It's chuck. I'm waiting for the pendulum to swing in the other way toward responsibility. Yes, that's happening soon. I detected sarcasm. You never know, man. Sometimes things go bad in one direction and people wake up and go back to farm to table. Now people ate trash for so long and now it's like the complete opposite. People really care about the food they eat and where it comes from. Some do. That's true. You got anything else? Internet censorship is just like the farm to table movement. Exactly, that's the takeaway. Did I just make that connection? And you're John Hawk and Berry. Yes. If you want to know more about Internet censorship, you should type those words into the search bar@houseofworks.com. You should just type those words into some search engine somewhere and learn more about it. Absolutely. You can visit Stephen Know.com and the podcast page for this episode. And it's got tons of links to good stuff about this. And I said, search bar in there somewhere. So it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. You saved the beginning of my honeymoon. Guys were from Seattle and we just got married a week ago. This is a man and a woman, he said. We left right away after the wedding for a honeymoon. Flew to Maui on a six hour flight. Well, that's not bad from Seattle, huh? No, that's nice. Like what do you got to fly? It's like 10 hours. Twelve. You got to stop in California, probably. I think there's direct flights from Atlanta. That's a long flight. Yeah, it's about like twelve hour flight. One of the many benefits of living in Seattle. My dad nice town. So we flew to Maui and during the flight out, seated in front of us was a russian family with three one year old triplets. I don't know why it matters. They were Russian. They were crying in Russian, I guess, and he said they were very disturbing. One would set the other one off and it led to the mom rocking the kids, and then the kids would start crying and kids didn't like being rocked and ended up kicking me in the head. Jeez, he said. Did I get mad? No, guys, because I was listening to you the entire flight. On the return flight, a woman in the row in front of us proceeded to get more and more drunk throughout the entire flight and ended up drunkenly shouting in other passengers, talking politics and religion, pushing other people's seats, and staggering to the bathroom every couple of minutes. What is wrong with people? Wow. You're on a plane. You're not in your home. Put your shoes on. Don't get drunk. Hey, there's nothing wrong with taking your shoes off on a plane. Yes, there is. You're not in your living room. There's nothing wrong with taking as long as your feet stay in your little section while your feet are off, you're fine. You should never take your shoes off in public. I do agree with you. All right, that's fine. My shoes are off right now. I'm disgusted again. My stress level is at zero because I was still learning about snakes and waterslides and clowns. Other than saving my sanity, I think he saved several lives. Without your calming voices, I would have undoubtedly thrown the woman from the plane halfway over the Pacific Ocean. It would have been like the good shepherd. What's that? That Matt Damon movie about the beginning of the CIA where he throws his sons soon to be wife out of the plane. And I was disturbing. What's wrong with that day? And that was disturbing. I hope you guys realize the public service that you do. Thanks, Jesse and wife. That clown episode was one of our better ones, if you ask me. Yes, I have it all. Agreed. Chills, thrills, clowns. If you want to get in touch with us, like Jesse and his wife, he didn't mention her because Jesse's selfish. Congrats to you guys. Yes. Regardless, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstevychano, especially if you're not a troll. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshnnow.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 four days. That's where True crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during lay time, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-10-18-sysk-fish-fraud.mp3 | What's the What with Fish Fraud? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-what-with-fish-fraud | Fish fraud, misrepresenting a fish as a more expensive one, costs Americans $25 billion a year. And because less than 100 inspectors check for fraud in the US and everyone from wholesalers to sushi restaurants are free to rip off their customers. | Fish fraud, misrepresenting a fish as a more expensive one, costs Americans $25 billion a year. And because less than 100 inspectors check for fraud in the US and everyone from wholesalers to sushi restaurants are free to rip off their customers. | Tue, 18 Oct 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=292, tm_isdst=0) | 39301203 | audio/mpeg | "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 the offer code work for 10% off your first purchase. Google and Squarespace make it professional. Make it beautiful. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's to my right. Everything is rolling, feeling easy. So this is what you know. Is that really Gerry? Jerry Jerry. Or is it just Jerry the toothpick? Perhaps? We've been fooled this entire time. Yeah. I mean, we'd have to do a DNA test. Yeah. Jerry. I just made air quotes, everybody. Can we swap your mouth? I don't think we need to. Her spittle is all over this room. She spits on our microphones when we leave every day. I'm sure she does. I've never been more convinced of anything. Some days more than others. Yeah, well, that was just a little play acting. What? I was all in. Jerry's a real human. She's not a tooth fish. Oh, yeah. But, you know what is it? Tooth fish. Yeah. Chilean sea bass. That's right. Dude, we just said that before. I feel like it was in the TV show. Yeah. So, like, eight people at least heard it there. Let's see. My wife. Your wife? Yeah. We for sure mentioned it on the TV show. And I feel like we've mentioned it before. Everyone knows by now. Right. Because that's one of those facts that people love to drop at a dinner party. Sure. Like, you know what you're eating. Yeah. Filth. Yeah. It's delicious. Toothfish is what it is, right? Yeah, but I mean, if a fish is called a patagonian toothfish yeah. But it tastes delicious, then yeah. There's really nothing wrong with just changing the name. Correct. The problem comes when people get ripped off for paying more money for something they think it is, and it's not. That is actually a surprisingly enormous problem, it turns out. Yes. It's called fish fraud or seafood fraud. And there are some sheriffs on the case. They're called Oceana. Yeah. They're a great organization, by the way. They're fantastic. They did this big study led by a woman named Kimberly Warner in 2012 because they knew, everyone knew this was no surprise that fish are purposely mislabelled a lot of times, right? Well, kind of depends. It could be the Fisher person. Could be the company they work for. It could be the people that they sell to at the Docs, the wholesalers. Yeah. It could be distributors. Could be the restaurant tour or the grocer you're buying from who goes in the back and stifles a chuckle because you just paid seven times what that fish is actually worth. Yeah, I'm sure it happens because you thought it was something else. It does happen. Like you said, everybody knows that this happened. But the oceana study was revealed just how widespread it was. Yeah, they reported that 33% of the fish it tested in restaurants and markets were not the fish that the fish said they were. It gets worse that's everything they tested. That was the average. Right. So fully a third of all the samples, and they took, like, 1247 samples. Not bad. 675 restaurants in 21 states across the US. They found that in sushi restaurants in particular oh, boy. 74% of the food samples were mislabeled. And if so, you say, well, 74% of sushi restaurants do that. No, 74% of the samples. 95% of the sushi restaurants sold mislabeled fish. Yeah. Like, this isn't mackerel, it's ground beef. Right. And 100% of the hamachi, the yellow tail was mislabeled. None of it was actually. Really? Yeah. And just as the sushi restaurants 100%. 100% of hamachi. Wow. Yeah. There's a new place in Atlanta that I went to recently called Brush. Did I already mentioned this? No. It's the best sushi I've ever had, probably. Really? And it's the most expensive she has ever had. It's called Brush? Yeah. Where is it? It's indicator. It's really pricey. Have you been to? Umi no. So I haven't been there. Okay, but I'd be interested to compare. A single piece of sushi is like $12 sushi for twelve sushi sandwich. Yeah. That's pretty expensive sushi. Yeah, we dropped for a regular meal. Way too much money. But when you walked out there, when you walked out of there, did you feel like you had gotten your money's worth or were you slightly irritated? No, it was the most delicious sushi I've ever had. Cool. But here's the deal. They just give you I thought we talked about this. Maybe not. You're confusing me with other podcast cohosts I love to over soy my sushi. Like it. Yeah, but they don't let you do that. They don't give you soy sauce at all. Oh, good. And then if you ask for it good. You know my views on taste. Yeah. Do it the way I say it. Right. But if you requested, they give you a little spray bottle. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, they're serious about it. This tiny little spray bottle that you can spray on your thing. So did you, like, get a cramp spraying soy sauce on your sushi? No, I unscrewed it. Did you really? Sure. That's awesome. If I'm going to pay $200 for a meal sure. You should be able to eat it how you want. I agree. Exactly. It's like, I don't know, go to a hot dog place. You're like, you really don't think you should put ketchup on there? So we're not going to have that for you. Or they give you a spray bottle of ketchup. It won't work. That's right. Okay, well, there's some good free buzz marketing for Brush frankly, I think you owe us both the gift card. Yeah, but my point was there wasabi was real. You would think that everything was as advertised. When you go to a place that night, the problem is, man, they may believe that, and the people that they bought it from may believe it, but I was reading the societal study, and they said that 50%, I think even more than 50% of the seafood imported in the US. And that's most of the seafood in the US. We import almost all of it 90%. Yeah. Is processed at sea. And I was like, what does that mean? And I went and searched. Like. Fish processing at sea. And I found this little twelve minute janky documentary about. I think. Norwegian or some sort of Scandinavian fisher trawler where they start with the catch. Have this huge net of I'm not quite sure what kind of fish it was. But it was generally the same fish they prey on that you didn't know what kind of fish it was. Right, well, yeah, I'm getting to that. Then they dump them into, like, the fish sorting things, right. And then they start processing. They have a whole processing plant on the boat. And so by the time these guys get to shore, these things are already frozen solid in blocks packaged in boxes. So the people who are buying it have to be like, okay, it says on the box this. I'm going to trust you and give me half a million or a million pounds of that stuff because I'm a distributor. And if they're not truthful, the fisher people aren't truthful, then the whole supply line is infected, and it's very tough to verify it is. Oceania has a map, by the way. If you go to their website and just Google fish fraud Oceania, it will go right there. And they have a handy map where you can click on it's all over the world. It's not a US. Problem. Right. And you can click on Atlanta, Georgia, if that's where you live. Okay. And what it will do is link to if they don't have a study from the restaurants, they will link to other source studies that they've compiled. And there was one that was a link to AJC or newspaper or had an article about local restaurants. When they do that, the expose thing, we visited eight local restaurants, right. And they called them out by name. And of course, these people are like, well, I didn't know. Right. So I think a lot of times they probably don't know. I would guess probably most of the time they don't know. Yeah. If you are dealing directly with the end consumer, you're probably going to be less likely to engage in fraud. Yes. And if this sounds like a not big deal, it's a $25 billion fraud. Say that again. $25 billion annually in fraud in America alone. Yeah. Just the United States. That's right. Yeah. And the reason why it's $25 billion worth of fraud is because we spend a lot of money on seafood. Yes. It's good for you. Right. And the number one driver of seafood fraud is misrepresenting something like as an expensive fish and replacing it with a fish that's much less expensive. Yeah. That's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. The FDA does have laws, but the problem is one of the problems is less than 1% of all the fish that are imported, less than 1% is inspected. So 1% of 90% of all the fish and seafood eaten in the United States is inspected for fraud. Yeah. One of the tips that we'll give you later, I'll go ahead and say now, is if you buy local fish or fish from the United States, you're far less likely to be frauded. Defrauded. Yeah. Defrauded. Which doesn't make any sense. It's like inflammable yeah. But apparently the US. Internally does a pretty good job of keeping it above board. But like you said, 90% comes from elsewhere. So that's the issue. And one of the reasons why the FDA or the United States, I should say the federal government, has so much trouble inspecting imported fish, because there's apparently, like, 90 agents tasked with inspecting all of the fish that's imported into the United States. 90 people? Yeah. And that's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA. Noah. Who's doing this? And they're doing the best they can, but 90 people? I didn't get numbers on how much 90% of our imported fish is, but it's got to be like, four or \u00a3500, maybe even up to 1000. So there's no way they can test all these fish. Right. What's funny in the Societa study and I should say this is from 2012, I think this made the news several years ago and we're bringing it back. The worst offenders as far as seafood fraud go were Thailand and Vietnam. But Canada was mentioned in there. What? Yeah. Oh, Canada. I know. That's what I say too. Yes. They apparently don't have nearly as stringent aquaculture laws as we do in the US. I know. That's what I said, too. They're such nice people, though I would have thought it be the opposite, you know? Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Maybe they're like, we don't need laws. Of course we're not going to defraud you. We're Canadians. And maybe it's just a mistake. They're like, looks like a cod to me. Eh? You know, like, they're not intentionally defrauding people. Right. Because Canadians don't do that. All right, well, let's take a break, and we're going to talk about kind of how this is done right after this. All right? So I promise to tell you how this is done. One of the big ways and reasons this can happen is that a lot of the time, these fake fish, they're real fish, fraudulent fish, unless it's that fake crab stuff. Right. Which is still fish. Oh, yeah, it is, isn't it? It's like whitefish, isn't it? Yeah, it's like string cheese crab. It's still delicious. I love it. Do you like it? I'm not big on it. Yeah. I mean, of course. I'd always prefer the real thing. I had too much when I was a kid, I think. Yeah. I do a pretty good kind of rednecky crab dip with it. Oh, yeah. Just delicious. Yeah. Just like mayonnaise and witches shirts and stuff. Sounds pretty good. It is good. I will say this is like rednecky as it is when I have it at places like parties, people like it's like crack, even high society types. Yep. They can't get enough of it. Well, they're like, what's in this? And I go, Duke's, mayonnaise and fake crab. What? All right. Chronicles pop out. They do, yeah. The reason why this happens is a lot of these fraudulent fish, they come to you as fillets. They don't have the head and the tail and the skin and all those things, and you can't or maybe the skin, but people don't know. This really just goes to that processing. Right. So these guys just dumped a net full of fish down the chute, and the first thing they did was the things went perpendicular down a conveyor belt. Right. Okay. So rather than facing the direction that the conveyor belt was going, they were perpendicular to that direction. And it just so happened that along that conveyor belt was a big circular saw that was exactly where their head was placed. So it just cuts their heads right off, right? Yeah. Can identify that fish very easily. Then it goes into the body, splitter and gutter, then the filetre. And seriously, I was watching this. I'm like, that is not the same kind of fish. Right. And yet they were ending up in the same batch of fish that was being sold and packaged together. So I was looking around to see who's keeping up with this. And again, at sea, nobody's keeping up with it. Of course not. Right. In the United States and in other countries, there are people who are overseeing this stuff and sorting fish. It's a big deal. But it's also a pain, right. Because you get what's called buy catch in your catch. Yeah. In your nets. Like, if you're shopping for tuna, you don't want dolphin. No. If you're fishing for tuna and you haul in a big net, you're going to have all kinds of stuff in there. Yeah. And apparently we read this little Mother Jones article, too. Do you read that? The XXX fish? Yes. So apparently this is a fairly recent phenomenon by catch. Right. Because in, like, the they started using much longer lines, so they were catching much deeper fish. And they were also by catching fish that they didn't normally catch before. Including the Patagonian toothfish. Yeah. So these guys are bringing up so much by catch, and it's such a pain to just sort this stuff and then basically throw it away. They're like, we should rename this thing and create a market for it. So they did. So they renamed patagonian, toothfish, Chilean sea bass, and all of a sudden there's a big market for it. The irony is now they're overfishing chilean sea bass, patagonia and toothfish. They need to change the name back. Right. Well, here's a list, and we're going to get to that other I know if you tease someone with something like Xbox fish, so it's good to come back to that. But we will list out a few of the things that are most often substituted. Pacific cod or Alaskan cod. A lot of times you're going to be getting Asian catfish or maybe a threadfin slick head or maybe even tilapia thread fin slick heads or a dime a dozen pacific alibate. You might get Atlantic alibet cod, you might get Pacific cod. Yes. Grouper is a big one. Yeah. Grouper is apparently the most swapped out fish, the most fraudulent fish of all. Yes. I think because the mark up is so great. The mark up is great, but also because the FDA is doing some weird stuff. So the FDA determines what's food in America, and there's like 1200 species of fish that qualify as food. That marketable food. Right? Yeah. Grouper, there's something like 66 species and twelve different geni of fish that can be sold as just grouper in America. So not only is it expensive, but there's a lot of confusion. So most restaurant tours won't be like, well, that's not Grouper. Asian catfish. Yeah. They'd be like, well, it's a type of grouper. Okay. But it's not right in that case. But yeah, you're right. If there are that many kinds of one fish, it's probably harder to regulate. Right. And I think the market, they said is like four times if you're selling Asian catfish, it's going to be a four times markup for Grouper. Right. So if you're impoverished fisher person, you'll say, yeah, maybe this shipment grouper red snapper. Right. You want to see if you see like a box with grouper and a question mark after it, be wary of that one. A red snapper. Be aware you might be eating crimson snapper instead. That's a big problem. Or tilapia. Yeah. And then salmon. Of course. There's a wide range of salmon and a wide range of prices according to what kind of salmon it is. And it's all farmed Atlantic salmon. It could be. Apparently that's what they switch all of them out with. Yeah. Like, if you think you're getting a Copper River salmon, it's probably Copper River salmon because that's in the US. Sure. But if you think, oh, look at that sockeye over there. It's beautiful. That filet. Don't see his face, but it's probably Atlantic salmon farmed. Yeah. And at first I was like, I don't understand how they could swap out salmon because it's so distinctive. But now I get it because you think it's like a wild caught Alaskan salmon, and it was farming in some guy's backyard in Louisiana. Yeah. And I was looking to see what the difference is between wild caught and farmed fish. Right. Apparently, for every pro on one side, there's a con as well. And if you kind of go down the list, they pretty much even out one another. A lot of the old unsustainable practices, like, get this. So to feed fish, they will go out and catch smaller fish and then feed the smaller fish to the bigger fish, which is stupid because you're going and getting all of the babies from fish nurseries, and they won't grow up any longer. So we feed them they figured out that you can feed them a combination of worms and algae. Okay. And they have basically the same amount of nutrients, but it's too expensive or not as easy or something. They're not I don't know. But similarly, right. They're like, well, there's a lot of runoff and farms and stuff that can pollute the fishery, but the same thing can be true for actual wild caught fish as well. So there's, like, this weird give and take, and they seem to totally equal out. Yeah. So as far as the most mislabeled in the Oceania study, at least 87% of Snapper samples that they found were mislabeled. And that was the number one mislabeled fish in their study that year. Tuna was number two. It was like 54%. Yeah. 59%. That's, like, close to 60% of the tuna almost there. Yeah. And white tuna is a big reason why we've all probably had albacore. Delicious albacore. Sure. And white tuna is not even a fish. So if you go to anywhere but a sushi place, it says white tuna. Say, like, that's not a fish. What is this? It'll be like a sweet tuna. Stop asking questions. Yes. And they'll take your soy sauce away, give you mustard instead of wasabi in a spray bottle. But yeah, it's not even a real fish. So Escolar is the fish that we've been teasing this whole time. The exclak fish. Yes. And I love this fish. I do, too. Didn't realize it was that. I've eaten it as butterfish many a time. Yeah. What are the other names for it? Butterfish, white tuna, hawaiian walu. Yeah. That is very misleading. Rudderfish. Rudderfish sounds inedible itself. Sure. I wouldn't need a rudder fish. I'd be like, get this off the menu. I think escobar sounds, like, very fancy. Yeah. Like, it makes your pinky go up when you say it. Yeah, like escolar. Yeah, because it sounds like Escobar. And he was the best drug king fan of all time. Sure. Yeah. He was the fancy drug king pen. But I guess ESCALAR people know it's dirty little secret, which is that there is an oil, this wax ester, that makes it taste delicious and is not digestible by us. So if you eat more like in little tiny sushi portions, it's okay. Right. But if you eat enough of it, you're going to have the poopy pants. Buy enough of it. Like a filet can do it, probably, yeah. Like anal steeped, apparently as a result of eating this stuff. Escalator. Yes. Had to say you didn't know. I did. People need to be informed, Chuck. Yeah. So what happened was people started bluefin tuna, as everyone knows, is very expensive now because there's not as much of it. So 1970, bluefin tuna was about fourteen cents a pound on the wholesale market. And it varies now, in 2015 it was eight to $12 a pound. And in 2014 it was actually higher. It was ten to $15 a pound. That's why you see these crazy reports. Like a fisherman catches a tuna worth like $10,000 or more because it's like hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Right. If you get a big one, like you said, they started going deeper and that's when they started getting this by catch. And apparently escort dwell on the bottom because they're poopy fish. They're called a snake mackerel. Yeah. That's a good name. I'd eat a snake mackerel. Would you? Sure. That made you poop your pants? That gave you anal sePAGE? Well, it doesn't say that on the menu. Although since I mentioned that, in 2004, the state of Washington, they issued a bulletin on it. And I think some restaurants, at least in the European Union, like, say on the packaging, it can cause poopy pants. Right. There's a picture of a guy holding the seat of his pants in alarm with a universal symbol, snake mackerel coming out of his butt smoking a cigar. Oh, boy. It is outright banned in Japan and Italy, so I love it in Japan. Don't mess with our sushi stuff out of here. But people stand by it. Chef Eric Repair, they mentioned this article, like world renowned chef. He loves the stuff. Well, yeah, he cleans them out, but I guess you just don't serve it like too much. He's like, you go spend a weekend and a chili cook off, pound some ESCALAR on Sunday night, an escalars shake. But you have had it before, right? Yeah. Butterfish is the perfect name. It is really delicious. It is amazing. Yeah. But yeah, apparently I get you. And for the part of the US. FDA, they said that they request manufacturers inform buyers about the purgative effect. Toothless. Tooth fishless. Yeah. Should we take a break? Let's take a break. Then we'll come back and talk about why this actually matters and how to combat this. So, Chuck, we mentioned the big thing, $25 billion worth of losses, or I guess ripoffs in the United States alone every year. Right. So, I mean, that's the basis of why people fight fish fraud. Somebody is getting ripped off, whether it's you, whether it's the restaurant tour you're buying from, whether it's the distributor, whether it's all of you combined, you're getting ripped off, and that's not cool. Well, yeah, because like we said, if you like the taste of the fish, just call it that fish. Set the market price appropriately, and maybe that price will go up naturally. Well, that's what happened, I think, with the Chilean sea bass. Yeah, they renamed it. But it wasn't fraud, necessarily. No. Demand drove the price up. Yes. No, that was just marketing. Yeah, but the demand was driven by the Bernasian marketing tactics. No, agreed. But they weren't committing fraud. Correct. They were just committing PR. Good one. So being ripped off is a big one. There's also health concerns, too. In addition to anal seapage, there are plenty of other things that can happen to you if you eat fish that is different from the fish that you're thinking. You're eating all kinds of seepage right eye, seepage gum, seepage? No, but people are allergic to certain kinds of fish, so you might not know that you're eating something that's harmful, too. You'd be like, this is wahoo. I thought it was tilapia. Good one. Huh? Tilapia is one of those that's very much under fire for the farm raised practices. Oh, because it's not very well raised. Yeah. I don't know exactly the deal, but I know that tilapia is a very controversial fish to buy right now here in the US. Or out of, I think, in the US. Because everything I saw said fisheries used to be farm raised. Fisheries used to be nasty in the US. But the Americans have really cleaned up our act lately. Yeah, I'll have to look it up. There are plenty of articles called The Problem with Tilapia and stuff like that. They don't call it the rat or the sea for nothing, do they? Sure. You just made that up. One of the other big problems is that fish are always being monitored for being overfished. If you don't know what's being sold and eaten, you can't get accurate numbers on what you're trying to protect. You might be eating an endangered fish. You might even be one of those people that carries a little card around your wallet that says, eat these responsible fish. I guess they're not responsible fish. Maybe they are responsibly. It's a family home that they provide for. But yeah, you might be eating something you might be eating something that is seriously endangered and you don't even know it. Yeah. And this article, I think, makes a pretty good point, that if you're pushing to save a fish species from being fish to extinction, you usually need public sentiment behind you in those cases right. To be effective. But if the public's out there like, dude, I'm seeing snapper everywhere. Everybody's got snapper. It's not endangered, you hippie. Yeah. Go home. Then your public relations thing is going to fail. Right. So that's another kind of indirect problem of easily overlooked problem. The perception that fish are healthier. Fish stocks are healthier than they actually are. Right. Apparently the bluefin tuna stocks are going up a bit, which is good news. Yeah. That was the good thing about the bycatch, like, starting to market by catch that it took the pressure off of the original Target fish that they were going after. Yeah. So what can you do? They suggest buying whole fish if you're not creeped out by that. You don't mind looking those little fellows in the eyeballs and dead eyes by the whole fish because it's much easier to tell what kind of fish it is when it has a face. The thing is, you have to know what a fish looks like then. Yeah. Or have a computer hook up an Internet connection, for sure. But I mean, you're going to take the fish home, look it up and then take it back and be like, this doesn't match the picture. No. You take out your phone in the store. Okay. Google Red Snapper. Alright. And if you think, that guy doesn't look like a red Snapper or it's a Crimson Snapper, you know what? I bet there's an app, or there should be an app called Fish Watch where you can take a picture of the fish in the store and then really annoy the fishmonger at your local market right. By challenging them with your app. When you catch them in the act of fraud, you go Fish Watch, spin and run off. The other thing they say you can do is if you go to a restaurant and you want to pretend like you're in a Portlandia sketch, ask them about where the fish was caught or raised, how it was raised, how it was caught, what kind of nets were used, what area of the ocean. What's the name of the man who cut his head off? Yeah. They say that's a legitimate thing you can do. Do you remember that song? Fish Heads. Fish Heads. Fish Heads. Heads. What was that? It was like this duo and I can't remember their names, but one half of the duo was little Will Robinson from what's the name of that? Lawson Space. Yes. Yeah. I think I went down an Internet rabbit hole on that song one time. It's a great song. Wasn't it sort of in the New Wave era? It was like late seventies, early eighty s. It was more like The Residence yeah. Than anything than new wave. Interesting. Did you ever see that episode of Chips where they basically spend the whole episode trying to explain the difference between punk rockers who are criminals and new waivers who are just there to have fun? You know the actor William Forsyth? Sure. Yeah. He plays a punk with like a green Mohawk who, like, I think is taking pot shots at people on the highway from an embankment with his rifle. Yeah. Because punks are snipers in the weight. It's pretty funny. Ponts trying to date. This new Wave girl who's explaining to him the difference. It's a good episode, as usual with Chips, there was some angle with punch and a lady, right? Yeah. Hey, I think you're kind of freaky, but what state? I told you I worked with him one time, right? Yeah. And he kept arresting people. Well, I asked him if he would arrest me for a photo, and he was like, yeah, sure, put me up against a car. Right. Like, Why are your handcuffs fuzzy? He very much enjoyed being punched, though. He was into it. Like, all the ladies came out in the neighborhood still, and they're like, Eric Estrada. He's like, that's right. And his hair quivered. He's like, do you have any punk or new waivers in the neighborhood? You got to see that up, man. It's good. That was a great show. Maybe the best theme song of all time, too. It's pretty good. Didn't we try to model our own TV show theme song after that, but then didn't wasn't that the original idea, was, like, to make it like chips? Oh, no, it was a different show. What was it? It was supposed to be like a take off on one of the great legendary TV shows openings. I don't remember what it was. We did do the Laverne and surely up and down thing. Yeah, but I don't remember what it was. Maybe Chad can tell us. Yeah, we failed on so many levels there, it's pretty remarkable. Chad is the director of the show, by the way. That's right, in case you don't know Chad. So there was a task force that President Obama put together in December of last year, and I always wonder about these when they say things like, I'm going to call for better international cooperation and collaboration. Okay. I know there are more details to that that probably make it seem like it has teeth, but when you hear that, it kind of feels like, is that really going to do anything? Sure. Like when rubber meets the road. No. And these people are out there fishing in the deep ocean, like, oh, they said we needed to cooperate and collaborate. Right. So let's do it. Yeah. Enforcement is what we need. Well, there's these guys who are trying to get the enforcement end down. Chuck down at the University of South Florida, they've come up with basically a little module called Grouper Check. Yeah. Their names are John Paul and Robert Ulrich, which I wanted to be robert Uric so bad. I kept thinking, wouldn't that the guy's name. But I was mixing up skeet old Rich with Robert Urick. This is a second career. Yeah. It might be the same person, for all I know. But apparently this little thing looks like an external hard drive plugged into a laptop. Sure. A module. And it can test four samples at a time, even if they have sauce on them already. Which means that you're sitting at the table running a test, a DNA test on your dinner. Yeah, that's what you do. You go in the restaurant and flip it. That's what that woman who led the oceana study said, that there was a great Atlantic article. She didn't sneak in. She goes into restaurants with little ziplocs and just puts little bits of fish in there. Right. But the people who are with her like, you don't have to put it in your mouth first. Spit it out. Just put it in the bag directly. So the grouper check machine works in 45 minutes, which is the only thing it checks for, is whether it's a grouper. It goes ding, it's grouper. And then you go, oh, no, my grouper is cold. Yeah, exactly. 45 minutes. Fish stew. That's your answer there. Oh, yeah. But they are working on many other types of checkers for other types of fish. Right. The big problem with DNA sequencing is it takes at least 12 hours to do it through DNA. So it's just not happening. No one's DNA sequencing for 12 hours on all these ships all over the world, like fish fraud. I don't see how they can fix it. Get it down to 45 minutes, get them in the hands of inspectors and just do some times more inspectors. We're going to bust you, buddy. You Canadian fraudulent fish guy. Is that the idea? Is that fear will be stricken into the hearts of these fisher people? I think so. And they will say, you know, them fisher people scare really easy. Yeah, that's true. I've seen Jaws. They buckle at the first sign of trouble. That's something else. No, I'm good. Man. That was fish fraud. Yes. And shout out to that great article in The Atlantic, appropriately. Yeah. Check out Bait and Switch, I think. Yeah. That's a very clever title. Yeah. Check out that oceana map, too, and go to your city. And they will have some compiled studies from all over the world. And you can avoid those restaurants if you want. Right. Or support it if you want. Sure. Be like, I love fish fraud. That's it. If you want to know more about fish fraud, type those words in the search bar, howstep works.com? And I said fraud. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Hunting response. Remember we talked about hunting and what was it? Polar bears. Yes. And we don't get it, but I certainly knew that there would be some good arguments from some of the Back to Nature folks. Sure. Back to Nature featuring guns. Hey, guys. Grew up in suburbia and moved to the big city for college and finally had the opportunity to move out to the six again. When my wife finished grad school and took a job, we were committed to getting back to nature, living more simply. So we raise pigs and chickens for meat and eggs in every autumn. I hunt for deer and elk going on my fourth year here. This is in Montana, by the way. The meat I hunt is 100% organic and free range. It lived one to three years as a wild animal rather than in a cramped pin with a dung matted floor. It was eliminated by a predator, albeit with the help of a rifle, but after pulling the trigger, it will stop breathing within two minutes. This is an extremely quick death for a prey animal that may otherwise be bled to death or jumped by a pack of coyotes. The winter will kill off many of these animals anyway via the cold, starvation, disease or infection. And the hunting license that allows me to take an animal indicates a gender and species so the fish and game can manage herd numbers. Fawns and pregnant animals are never taken. Most often young males are that they will have the least impact on herd population. It is a difficult thing to do to pull the trigger. I get the shakes every time still, but I'm satisfied that my family will have a healthy and natural meat for dinner for the winter and grateful to the animal that provided it. Suppose I could just go down to my local MegaMart and buy the sterile white package from behind the glass. That just doesn't feel right to me anymore. That is from Jason from Montana. And those are very good points, Jason. Thanks a lot, Jason. Although you could argue that he could just wait until winter comes and go collect the dead bodies of the deer and elk. I don't know that it works that way. I mean, they got to fall over somewhere, right? Then everybody wins. Blame it on Mother Nature. You just happened to be there when they fell over. Thanks a lot, Jason. And everybody who wrote in to talk to us about hunting, you can get in touch with us, try to persuade us to see things your way by tweeting to us at SYSK podcast. Or you can hang out with me at Josh Clark, you can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W, Chuck Bryant or facebookcom stuffyshenelle. You can send us both an email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshenoe.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Com." | |
0561bb6e-1731-433d-9537-ae7700deb97f | Short Stuff: Smelly Homes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-smelly-homes | Does your house smell? No? What if we told you it’s impossible for you to know whether it does or not?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Does your house smell? No? What if we told you it’s impossible for you to know whether it does or not?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Wed, 27 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=117, tm_isdst=0) | 14545118 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. This is Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's here. Dave is here. His heart is at least we carved it out of them like it was the temple of Doom. And this is Short Stuff about out one of my deepest fears. Your house smelling. Yeah. I'm worried it's a general concern of mine that my house smells, and I don't know it, but everyone who comes over knows it well. Can I start this off with a very quick little story? Sure. When I lived in La. Many years ago, my friends Brett and Stacy lived in a house in Pasadena that had a very distinct smell. It was a good smell. It wasn't like a bad smell. But all houses have an odor. Sure. Many years later, I went to the house of our mutual friend Andy Sierra, writer of the hit movie Palm Springs, and his wonderful wife Amanda and their two kids. And their house they lived in near Pasadena smelled the same way. And then last year, I went to La. And I went and dropped by our mutual friend Ben Harrison's house. Ben. And his lovely wife, Rachel. Ben of the Greatest Generation podcast. Right. And their house smelled the same way. And they live in Highland Park, not too far from Pasadena. I don't know if it's a Pasadena thing or that part of the valley, but all of these houses smelled exactly the same. And it was so evocative. When I walked in, I was like, ben, your house smells like my other two friends houses. It may be an la. Thing, it may be part of the products out there. I have no idea what it was, but it was identical and very, very strange to witness with my notes. Can you describe the smell? No, not at all. It's a house smell. It's not like it smells like cigarettes or dog poop or anything. Right. It's a house smell. It smells like radon. Yeah. I mean, it's a good smell. Like, their houses all smelled fine, but it was the same fine smell. So, Chuck, I'm a little disappointed in that story because of two things. One, I thought it was going to be apropos of my fear. Two, I thought that it ultimately is going to assuage my fear. It didn't do either of those things. No. Everyone's house has a smell. You just don't know it if you live there. This is just getting worse and worse for me. All right, let's talk about house smells. Because if someone's house smells, it is really possible, and more than that, entirely likely, that person really, genuinely has no idea that it smells. Even in some of the worst cases where it stinks and reeks of, like, set in pet odor. Like years and years of pet odor that has just not been cleaned up and is in the ductwork and is on the baseboards and is everywhere, that person genuinely probably doesn't know that their house smells like that. And the reason why is because we become sensory adapted to things like smells. We've talked a lot about this. Remember latent inhibition when we first ran into that one? Sure. I think that was in our schizophrenia episode, maybe. Yeah. It's basically that there is a point where your senses no longer need to tell your brain what they're encountering. Your brain is like, okay, got it. I've already determined the house smells like cat pee. Doesn't matter. Let's be on the lookout for threats or enticing things. And we become desensitized. And apparently we become desensitized to smell particularly quick. Yes. I think out of all the senses, smell is the first one that you get used to. There are experts that say just a few, and I think this came from our old colleagues at how stuff works. Right. And they, to their credit, like, would do interviews and stuff with experts. And one of the experts said it just takes a few breaths, sometimes even to get used to a smell. If you're gone for about a week, you can become desensitized. And then when you come back to your house, you could resemble that smell. And this horrifies me, because when we used to go on long trips, I would come back and think it was our house sitter would have this sort of funky, musky smell. And now I think it's just our house smell, which is to be man. We've always had at least four pets, always two dogs and at least two cats, sometimes three dogs. And our house has to smell. It has to. There's no way around it. Okay, I am going to demonstrate what a friend does. Chuck, I've been to your house multiple times sure. With your dogs there. And I can tell you that your house does not smell in any kind of offensive way or any way that people are talking about how your house smells behind your back. Your house smells fine. Well, I will say this to you, my friend. I know you, and I know yummy. And I know that you guys are very clean. Like, I wouldn't say clean freaks or obsessive, but you really are into having things clean and tidy. I guarantee you your house does not smell in some funky, terrible way. I hope so. I appreciate that it feels like I had to pull your teeth out to get it, but I appreciate it. But I guarantee you it does have a smell. Yes. I just hope it's a good smell, because it's true. Some people's houses just smell good. They smell like a mew mew or something. Yeah, I mean, we are pretty good about cleaning, but there's just only so much you can do. Like the front couch in our sunroom is the dog couch, and that thing stinks. Yeah, I'm telling you about it. Your house doesn't smell. You don't have a smelly house. Okay, all right. But yes, I know that fear, because I've come home after, like, a week and been like, is this where our house smells like this? I don't like this. What can we do about this? Well, just stay around for about an hour, and then it's like, oh, it doesn't smell, thank goodness, because yeah, exactly. And then step two is don't make any friends. Don't have anyone over. Then you don't have to worry about it. So the reason you become so desensitized to your house smell is because you're not only being exposed pretty quickly after just a few breaths, you're constantly being exposed to your house smell. So it's impossible for you to smell your own house. But if you are like, okay, there are some things that I want to do. I want to make sure that my house doesn't smell. There are steps you can take, and I think we should take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about them after this. Great. 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Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff if you want to know. So if you're like guys, I'm not convinced. I'm worried that my house still smells. We're here actually, our friends at houseworks are here to suggest some things you can do. And the first thing is just look for low hanging fruit. Like, do you have towels bunched up in the corner that have mildew growing on them? If the answer is yes, you might want to get rid of those because they might be making your house smell. Yeah, keep your ducks clean. Keep your litter box emptied. If you have mold and mildew, that's going to make your house smell. So get your sort of filtration system checked, that kind of thing. That is the lowest of the low hanging fruit is clean your litter box more regularly. Definitely. And then some people step it up and say, okay, I've done all those things. Not only do I want to get rid of bad smells, I want to make my house smell good. Well, there's an entire industry that's dedicated to that. I would recommend something natural, like a nice bouquet of dried lavender or bouquet of dried eucalyptus. Those are two of the greatest smells in nature. Those will certainly help. You can even go a step further and put them in your return air duct, which is pretty great because then it gets that sent throughout your house. Yeah, that's a nice I don't want to say hack. Don't say hack. I didn't. It's good. Certainly don't say life hack. But that also demonstrates smells get around your house through your HVAC system. Just FYI, good or bad, your house's HVAC system doesn't care. It's going to send them around your house. Yeah, I like a citrus smell, so sometimes I'll do a little lemon squeeze on a filter or something, and it's a pretty short lived experience. It's not like that filter just smells like lemon for months and months or anything like that, but it's a nice, like, citrusy blast throughout the house. Do you when you squeeze the lemon, do you say simple, simple? I do, actually. Okay, good. Simple, simple. Lemon squeezy. That's right. So you can also use one of the best selling products of the beginning of the 20th century, something called Fabrize. And we don't normally do buzz marketing, and we don't mean to do it here, but Fabrize actually has one of the most interesting stories of all time. It's actually taught in marketing classes in business school because when Fabrize first came out, it was a total flop. Yeah. And I remember this. When Fabrize first came out, it was marketed as hey, if you've been to a smoky bar or something, or if you have a couch like Chuck Bryant does, you can get rid of these foul odors and make your corduroy coat that was in that bar not smell like cigarettes anymore. And those were sort of the basis of the early commercials and they didn't work out very well at all. So they shifted very successfully to a campaign that was more like, hey, after you've cleaned your house and you're done, just let this product be sort of the final cherry on top. Right. And the reason why it didn't work at first is because they realized that people become desensitized to their house's smell. And so the people who needed to be Reeves to get the smellyness out of their house were the ones who weren't aware that they actually needed it. Which means you're not going to sell a lot of fabrize. So they changed it. Like you said to saying no. This is the punctuation mark on your cleaning. It's the last part you do. It lets you know the job is done. It's a little kiss of cleanliness and for breeze just took off like a rocket from there. That's right. And it's a very big piece of the market because they realized they could expand to all kinds of quote unquote air freshening products with that level. I was looking into it, I found a little thought co article on how Fabrize works. And basically it's a carbohydrate called Beta cyclodextrin and it's like a doughnut shape and it actually attracts odor molecules into the donut and basically wraps around them which means those odor molecules can't come in contact or when they do come in contact with their noses they can't bind to our odor receptors. So they're still there but literally we can't smell them. It's impossible for us to smell them. That's right. And if you look up stuff like our products like this toxic online, you're going to have a lot of opinions. One thing we should say is that the US law allows companies to basically hide things under the label fragrance. There's like 4000 different chemicals that can be included in the product as fragrance. Right? Some are safe, some are great, some are very much carcinogenic. The Environmental Working Group which we talked about before did a very famous study in I think 2009 where they found that Fabrize had 87 more chemicals in their product than they listed, some of which were highly toxic. I think they have changed things since then. But this was a big shocking report in the mid I guess mid ought, is that right? Yes, mid ought. I think things have changed since then. But in order to not get served divorce papers you know what I have to talk about for a second? What? Oh yeah, of course. My wife's company, Mama Bath and Body because Emily makes room spray and she makes soy candles. And I told her about this and I was like, well what's in your room spray? Name all the ingredients. She said water, alcohol and essential oils. That's it. That's when her room spray. And then her soil candles are soy wax, essential oils. And then here's the key. Well two keys. Soy wax is the key. Because most candles that you get in the store are paraffin wax, which is a petroleum byproduct. Gross, gross, gross. And cotton wicks. So the wicks are made out of cotton and most of the wicks and paraffin candles are not. So the smoke that is coming up, that black smoke from a candle is no good to be in your house. So if you're interested, you can go to Loveyourma.com to check out her room sprays. See, I told you guys we don't do buzz marketing. I have to, man. This is her passion and stuff. Like when I mentioned mass marketed smell good products in your home, that's a big as, you know, trigger for our house and our family. Sure. These fragrances that people think, oh, it just makes your house smell great. And to us it makes us sneeze and get allergies and stuff like that. Yeah, or like the clipon air fresheners that give you a migraine even though you've never had a migraine before in your life. The time you put on a cars air vent. Yeah. Part of the study from the Environmental Working Group studied a bunch of stuff like that. And they did tackle for breeze a little bit, but the real offenders were some of those nasty gelatin toilet things you'll drop in a toilet or plug into a wall. Yeah. I don't know if they've cleaned up their actor or not, honestly. But we don't use that stuff either. I mean, you can smell them. They smell like chemicals. It doesn't smell like an actual smell. Like, they have to make up new names for these things. They're not like we're not legally allowed to call the citrus. Yeah, I know. It's a problem. I really think that when historians look back, or even average people look back in 150 years, this is going to be one of those periods where like, wow, the federal government really did not protect the American people and, in fact sold them out pretty hard every which way. It's a shameful time to be alive. Agreed. And I get to be married another day. Good job, Chuck. And good job, Emily. With loveyma.com. Since I said that, everybody, that 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. Yeah." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-21-sysk-christmas-special-final.mp3 | The 2017 SYSK Christmas Extravaganza! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-2017-sysk-christmas-extravaganza | It's the most wonderful episode of the year! Join Josh and Chuck as they ride their sleigh through the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, the Rockefeller Center tree, a boozy holiday recipe and plenty more great holiday tidings! | It's the most wonderful episode of the year! Join Josh and Chuck as they ride their sleigh through the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, the Rockefeller Center tree, a boozy holiday recipe and plenty more great holiday tidings! | Thu, 21 Dec 2017 17:49:46 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=17, tm_min=49, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=355, tm_isdst=0) | 52955753 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should Know from Housetuffworkscom. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and we have a special elf with us this time this year for our Christmas special. Noel elf on the shelf. Noel Hark. Hear the bells. There go the bells. Where are the bells? I am the bells. It's pretty good. Thanks. Was that Tubular Bells? No, but one of mine that just reminded me of one of my favorite SNL skits of all time were the Sweeney Sisters. Was it Jan Hooks? Jeez. The late Jan Hooks. Man Very sad about that. And I think, Noradone, if I remember correctly, remember them. The Sweeney Sisters. Of course I do. So great. I think they did that for their Christmas episode. They did a great medley of Christmas tunes, and that one sort of went like that. Nice. So good. Well, you just nailed it, man. How are you feeling? Pretty good. I'm feeling great because this is one of my favorite episodes of the year. Me, too. And we like to point out, not to toot our horn, but one of the things we always fight for every year is that the Christmas episode, along with the Halloween episode, remains ad free. We fight for it to the death. There are so many dead ad sales people that are awake. But you know what? They deserved it. They shouldn't have crossed it. They should have just let us. Yeah. So this is an ad free episode, like you said, and I'm pretty proud of that, too. I think it's nice of us. This is just one of my favorite episodes of the year. It's fun. So as we do every year, Josh, I think we want to encourage everyone to light a fire. Maybe pour up a hot buttered rum. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Although we do have a good recipe for this year. Yeah, I guess they could listen to that and then come back to the beginning. Or rummy eggnog. Or just your favorite non alcoholic Christmas drink of choice. Sure. Get the family together. Like the Eulog. Hang that mistletoe. Right? And let's get this underway. So it's been an interesting year so far, right? Yeah. But I always liked these ones because they make me reflect on the year. And it seems like it was just a month ago that the year started. It has gone by fast. I feel like I'm speeding toward death, but when I think about being 46 years old and speeding toward death, I think, well, when I was a kid, that was a long time ago. So if I'm around middle ageish, I got a long way to go. And it just seems like it's that trick that your mind plays on you. Right. It seems like time is gaining speed as you get older. Right. I think there's some science behind that, too. I think there is, too. I think it's because you have less time to compare it to when you're a kid, whereas the older you get, you have more time to compare it to. Probably so. But I've had that same exact thought, Chuck, within the last probably two weeks. Oh, yeah. Towards death. No, the other one where it's like, Wait a minute, I've lived for a very long time, and I'm right at middle age, so I've got a long time left, and, baby, I'm going to make the most out of it. And I'm going to start with the 2017 stuff. You should know. Christmas extravaganza. I'll tell you what you shouldn't do, then. If you got a good feeling about the future and you're a long way toward death, don't then go down the road of, yeah, but I only got about 15 or 20 more good years right now. It gets really sad. I assume that medical science is going to advance by such leaps and bounds. We're going to be living healthy to, like, 150. That's my point. Yeah. We're going to be playing tennis at 149 when I finally just go over and unplug and drop dead right there on the tennis court. Yeah. After you've beat me in our final game. Yeah. And the simulation of Andre agassi. All right, so let's do this. Should we take an ad break? Pretty good, Chuck. Let's take a little jingle break. How about that? And then we'll get into it. All right. Happy holidays, Chuck. Thank you. All right, buddy, we're back. Speaking of jingles, big thanks to our pal John Bigen, who composed us for us. He's composed a number of stuff you should know abbreviate jingles. And we went to them and said, hey, will you compose for us this Christmas season? He said, yes, and it was a Christmas miracle. Agreed. And what should we start with? Oh, man. I think we have to start with Diehard is Die Hard a Christmas movie? You found that you put together most of this. This is a world class episode, by the way. I want to commend you for it. Thanks. It's not like I dug this up and almost got annoyed by this one because it's become a very trendy thing over the past few years to argue about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Yeah. It's basically the clear symbol that civilization is sliding into a reversible decline. The argument over there. So let's talk about it. Yeah, because I think the reason why I got jazzed about it, I feel very similar to you. It's kind of like, guys, this could not matter less. Stop arguing about this. That was my William Shatner impression. This article you sent by Art Tavana from La Weekly. I just think it really gets the point across. So well that it jazzed me. Yeah. You know what? Do I even have that one? Why don't you leave this one, then? Okay. Well, Jiminy Cricket. I think I might have sent it to you and then not even use that one. Oh, it's great, man. This one is like the best. I'm actually putting it on my website. Are you serious, Clark? It's going on the reading list. What's the name of it? It's called? Yes. Diehard is a Christmas movie. Stop debating it. Okay, I don't think I have that one, but I know Diehard inside and out so I can get in there. Okay, so Art says this he starts with a quote. Art says this is a quote from a BuzzFeed article, but from way back in 2013. This has been going on a while, but BuzzFeed wrote, quote, most prized among people of this opinion that Die Hard is a Christmas movie is the transgressive act of selecting a violent action movie over Home Alone or more classic fair. We get it. You're too cool for regular Christmas movies, right? So they lay down the gauntlet. I think they did a good bit of calling out and they probably got it right for some people. But Art says, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who's to say what classic Christmas fare is? If you say if you're talking about It's a Wonderful Life, you're being brainwashed like Frank Capra followed in the tradition of Norman Rockwell. And all of this is like some weirdo small town communalism utopianism that doesn't even really exist. And the whole reason that you're crazy for its A Wonderful Life is because it lost its copyright back in the seventies and the television networks around the country started showing it for free. So it almost was force fit into a Christmas tradition, right? That's right. And It's a Wonderful Life if we're really going to take this down that path, is not a Christmas movie. It's not even set at Christmas. There is a scene set on Christmas Eve, one scene in that movie and something I read because I was looking up whether or not It's a Wonderful Life as a Christmas movie or it's just got that by association and they said if it's a Wonderful Life as a Christmas movie, then Et. Is a Halloween movie. I don't know, man. I don't know. Because here's the thing and we'll just go reveal the end here. Then the one thing that Die Hard and It's a Wonderful Life have in common is getting your family back before Christmas morning. Like the whole thing that's driving the plot is a race against time to get everything the way that it should be before Christmas morning happens. Sure. And also is a Christmas movie one that is set at Christmas or one that is just filled with the spirit of Christmas? Are you asking what my opinion is? Sure. My opinion is that if somebody feels like Christmas Eve when they watch a movie and it becomes like a tradition for them to watch it or they have a good Christmas feeling from it, then leave that person alone. Well, but is The Godfather a thanksgiving movie because they showed every Thanksgiving on TV. Sure. And The Sound of Music is an Easter movie because they show it around Easter. If it is that to some people, then that's fine. It makes it that for those people. OK, so you're saying the setting of the movie and the contents they're in have no bearing on whether or not it doesn't even have to take place at Christmas or be Christmassy? No, I'm saying that, yes, it does not have to take place at Christmas. But I'm not saying that the settings have no bearing because I do think if Diehard wasn't set at Christmas, no one would be talking about whether it was a Christmas movie or not. Sure. So the time that it takes place definitely does have an impact on it. But that's not the only thing. And if it doesn't take place around Christmas, that doesn't automatically disqualify it from being a Christmas movie or make it a Christmas movie. Right. So those are our opinions. But let's get into what Art Chavana says all the reasons why a Diehard is a Christmas movie. Huh? All right. What's he got? So he says not only is it a Christmas movie, but he said that this is a, quote, one of the most carefully sculpted Christmas allegories in history. So either Art Tivana is totally mad or this guy's got something figured out that everybody else is missing. Yeah, I mean, he does make some pretty good points. One of the things well, I mean, we can just take through a bunch of these. One of the things is the name John from John McLean, he said, could be an allusion to John the Baptist for John the Apostle and also Holly Janeiro. The wife, her name is Holly doesn't get much more Christmasy than Holly. That's right. And so John, the premise of this is John has lost his wife or is in the process of losing his wife. Yeah. She's moved from New York, their home, to La. To pursue her career. And in the process, she's dropped her married name in favor of Janero, her maiden name, or generic, that's what she goes by professionally. Right. John is out there. The premise of this is what has brought John out to La. For Christmas is to basically reclaim his wife, as Art Tivana puts it. That's right. Okay. So that's the premise. And John's name can be an allegory for John the Baptist, john the Apostle. Something religious and Christmassy. Christian, I should say. Yes. And then Holly's name is that pagan plant Holly. And then he also says that there are 13 terrorists, which doesn't at first seem very Christmassy. Right? Yeah. But he says that very specifically, hans Gruber says that he is not a terrorist. And so then you have twelve. But see, this is where it falls apart from me. He says twelve card carrying terrorists like the twelve Apostles of Christ or the Twelve Days of Christmas. But none of them are terrorists. They're all robbers. Yeah, but only one of them said that they're not a terrorist. Right. I thought that was weak, too. But then Art wins me back with the very next point. He says that like Santa Claus, John McLean, it keeps a list, but he writes sharpie on his arm. And rather than it's boys and girls who have been good or bad, naughty or nice, these are terrorists he's either killed or plans to kill. And of course, in one of the great scenes and by the way, spoiler alerts. Oh, man, I guess so. People like, man, I was just going to watch Die Hard. This year, for the first time ever, he sends a one dead terrace down. In one of my favorite scenes from the 32nd floor down to the lobby, the door opens, he is dead and has on his chest okay. Say it in a German accent, please. Not only that, I'll say it with my best Allen Rickman. Okay. R-I-P. Now I have a machine gun. Oh, goodness. So he says this proves that McLean is a sociopathic Santa Claus. Yeah. And that the elevator was his chimney. Yeah. So it's getting a little weird here. John McLean has Christmas dinner. That's the Twinkie that he eats during a period of respite. It's weak, but says there is a miracle in this. And they even call it out there's a Christmas miracle because remember Theo, the guy who's kind of like the hacker of the group, he's trying to crack the safe with the drill. And Hans comes down to see how the progress is going, and Theo tells them it's going to take a miracle to get past this electromagnetic lock. Yeah. In very short order, the FBI turns off the power. But before this, Hans Gruber says, theo, you asked for a miracle, I give you the FBI. So they specifically say there's a miracle in this movie. Yeah, that's another one. That's right. What else? John McLean, he makes it back to his family. He and his wife are reunited. At the end, she gives them her Christmas gift. She identifies herself as Holly McClain. Right. Yeah. And then ostensibly by extension, I guess, they're going to go home to their six year old daughter for Christmas morning. The sun has not risen yet, so it's still Christmas Eve, and there are barrow bonds floating down like snow around them. And they even play the song. Let it snow. Yeah. So Art points some stuff out. He went back and looked at reviews that he could find because he works for La. Weekly, he's a movie critic. I think this holds water to me at this point. He said, I could not find any reviews that cited this thing as a Christmas movie. It came out in July of 1988. Yes. This is definitely something that has been retrofitted for sure. Right. No one called it a Christmas movie back then. Only the clever generations of today shall do so. Yeah. So he points out that no one at the time said, this is a great Christmas movie. It was a buddy picture, is how they put it. Right? Yeah. Or it's just an action, like, shoot him up fest. And it was. It was a great movie. Still is, right? Oh, sure. But he says that at the same time, there was a weird kind of foreshadowing that same year because Scrooge came out, which is another great Christmas movie. And that is a bona fide Christmas movie because it's an adaptation of A Christmas Carol. There's no question about that. But in it, Bill Murray plays a TV executive who has green lit a picture called The Night the Reindeer Died. And it's about a terrorist attack on the North Pole in Santa's workshop. And he says, the implication of this is that you would have to be some soulless TV executive to watch an action movie for Christmas. Yeah. I don't buy it. Oh, I think it just ties the whole thing up if it just brings it right back to the beginning, man. No, I don't buy that. You would have to be a soulless. Oh. Got you. Yeah. Now I'm on board. I think it's a Christmas movie. Art Tivana is the oracle of our time. Are you done with art Tvana? Yeah. All right. Because I've got a very special Christmas gift for you, sir. Okay. And I kept this a surprise. Thank you. I was wondering what this was. You see, I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand, and what I have in my hand is an email exchange with the writer of Diehard. What? Jeb Stewart. What? This is insider information. What? I know, right? Wow. All right, man. Look at that smile. I can't believe I'm dizzy. All right, so I was able to get this email, and he was happy to oblige. Wow. He's sort of been making the rounds on this. I think 2020 interviewed him on it, and he's just a great dude. So I knew that there was a book that Die Hard was based on called Nothing Last Forever by Roderick Thorpe. And so I thought, well, when he wrote, was that set at Christmas? Was Christmas a big deal or did you run with it? So this is his reply. This is amazing, Chuck. And it's not super long, but I'm going to read the whole thing because it deserves it. So he said that Nothing Last Forever is a dark Nora novel about a 60 plus year old man who comes to visit his 40 year old daughter in La. So obviously he changed that stuff. And then he talks a little bit more about the writing process, and then he says, so back to your question. Yes, christmas was always part of the theme. Thorpe said it on December 24 and 25th in the novel for a very practical reason we need the building as empty as possible. Oh, yeah. So that makes sense. That's where that comes from. However, once he established this, he sort of abandoned the theme. Since I had a lot of dramatic leeway, I took the approach. Let's go for it first. So this all came from Jeb Stewart, all the Christmasy stuff. First, I changed the main character's ages set up the story about a 30 year old guy with old school ideas about marriage coming from New York to visit as a strange wife. But everything right again. With his family, la represents and conflicts with his views of normal. Christmas music is different. The office party and gifts are over the top. His wife keeps her maiden name and the temperature is warm and not snowy. It drives him crazy. But once Hans Gruber takes over Nakatomi Plaza, all that melts away. All the action, all the struggle become John McLean's long journey to discover what really matters his family. You don't appreciate what you have until you risk losing it. Since family is at the core of the idea of this work, what better holiday than Christmas? There's no question in my mind that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Wow. There you have it. There you have it. A Christmas movie has more to do with just being set at the holiday. It has to include the holiday and the themes of the film. Christmas also needs to be reflected in the characters, their stories and dialogue. I tried to do this as much as possible, even when it means sending a body down the elevator with a Santa cap and a message written on a shirt saying, Ho, ho, ho. Now I have a machine gun. Anyway, that is my argument. The Die Hard is a Christmas film. I'm happy some people agree. As someone once told me, it's not Christmas at our house until Hans Gruber falls off Nakatomi Plaza. Amen to that. Jeb Stewart. Wow. That is definitive, Chuck. Nicely done. Yeah, that's funny. I had no idea that it was originally Ho, ho. Now I have a machine gun. I'm sure some execs workshopped it and focus grouped it and then they switched it around. Well, I'm not sure if he was saying that's how he wrote it, but that's wonderful. Chuck. Kudos to you. That's a great Christmas present. And Kudos to Jeff Stewart. He says he's a big stuff. You should know fans. So take that for what's worth. Awesome, man. Well, I just got you some socks. Oh, wow. Sorry. I got you a personalized letter from Jeb Stewart. I know. And some socks. Oh, man. All right. Is that the end of our segment? Yeah. All right. Okay. Which one you want to do next? I'm happy to wrap around the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Okay. Rockefeller the R is silent and invisible. So most of this information comes from an article this year from Dana Schultz the History of Rockefeller Center christmas tree and New York holiday tradition. So the Rockefeller Center tree, everybody knows this thing, right? Yeah. They probably know more than they realize that that statue is Prometheus, the big golden statue. And I only say that because I didn't realize that until researching this article. But it's an extremely famous thing because it's a giant tree. It's in the middle of New York, and everybody watches it, but it has some really sweet, humble origins that I wasn't aware of at all. Yeah. And I got to say, if you've never been to New York at Christmas, do yourself a favor and go, because the word magical is thrown around a lot. But it is truly magical. It is truly it's great. Rockefeller center. It's wonderful to go down there, even if you're a Scrooge McDuck. I think your heart might melt a bit. Sure. Can you just see, like, Scrooge duck weeping quietly in public off to the side of the ice skating rink? Sure. That'd be kind of neat. There's a cartoon in real life. So back to the origins. Where are we? Yeah. And the Great Depression was in full swing. This is another thing I didn't realize. Did you know the Great Depression is also called the clutch Plague? Is that what that is? Yeah. Did not know that. The only explanation I saw was that the clutch plague more refers to the global depression, whereas the Great Depression is the American Great Depression. Got you. It's all I saw. But the clutchplaggreat depression is going on. It's 1931, and a group of workers, construction workers, are building Rockefeller Center at the time. And Christmas comes around and the workers decide, hey, we need to Christmas up this place a little bit. So they pull their money together and they buy a 20 foot tree and they install it right there on the construction site. And if that's not heartwarming enough, their families made garland to decorate the tree with. It's truly like this great little thing that these people did in the peak of the Depression, the deepest trough of the Depression, to increase their spirits as the holiday Christmas weddings always have embroidered on them. That's good. You really stumbled through that one, man. So the men lined up, apparently to get their paychecks at the tree, and a couple of years later, in 1933, rockefeller center said, you know what? Let's make this a thing. We're going to actually erect a tree and have a lighting ceremony. It's going to be 50ft tall. And this is now just a great new tradition here in New York City. Yeah, 33. They've been doing it ever since. And they actually were smart enough to broadcast it on the radio. And then 20 years later, they started broadcasting it on television. And apparently today, like tens and tens, if not hundreds of millions of people watch the tree lighting, except me. I wasn't one of them. I forgot to watch it. I have never watched it. I haven't either. If I'm in New York City in the wintertime, I always go by Rockefeller Center. Well, sure. So there's actually some pretty cool facts about the tree that I wasn't aware of. They tend to be a typical species, the white spruce. Yeah. And apparently that's because they are generally very straight and very strong and grow about the height that they want, which is generally between 80 and 100ft. Right. And they find them by scouting by helicopter, like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, upstate New York. Apparently they got one from Ohio once in 1998, that had to be flown in the world's largest cargo plane. Yeah. How about that? Pretty cool. They put a lot of thought into this. It's not like there's a big tree and they want them to be upright. And the head gardener, whose job in part is to go scout throughout the year to find a tree, his name is Eric Pozer. He says that you want to not be able to see the sky through it. Oh, wow. You wanted to be dense enough that you can't just see the sky through. Yeah. So they erect that thing. It usually does not arrive by world's largest cargo plane. It's usually in a truck. And then they have these guy wires. Of course, it's so large they have guy wires supporting it right there at the midpoint. They have a steel spike in the base. And for many, many years they've had scaffolding installed around it, so they can obviously get up there to decorate it. And they've been using Led lights for how long? I thought I saw a year here. 2007. All right, so about ten years they've been using the LEDs. About 50,000. So these trees are usually donated. And I get the feeling that's a great honor. Sure. I think some guy from New York City lands his helicopter in your field and says, can I have that tree for free? We'll mentioned your name in the press release. And the city slicker just takes advantage of the poor country folk and gets a tree out of them in the true spirit of the season. One of the things that grabbed me was those Led lights. They save 1200 electricity a day, which is enough to power a 2000 square foot home for a month. Which means that about four years worth of energy for a 2000 square foot home is saved every year from a month and a half that the tree is lit. That's what gets you that's nuts. That's so much energy. And that's not how much it uses, that's how much they save by transferring to LEDs. You know what gets me? What? So starting many years ago, they started to recycle the trees. And for a while what they would do was mulch it up and then spread it around the walking path of Central Park. Which is pretty great. It's a good way to do it. But for the past eleven years, I think, including this year. What they do is they donate the tree to Habitat for Humanity, so it comes down on January 7. Then they mill the wood, make that into lumber, and they build homes. So there are Habitat for Humanity homes that people are living in, built from the Rockefeller Christmas trees, and you can sell them for a million bucks. That's so great. It is pretty great. I mean, just the Habitat for Humanity part is great enough. I think when they were mulching it, they got about 33 bushel bags of mulch, and everyone involved in the spreading of the mulch was mugged. Yeah. Central park. Well, I guess back then, maybe. Yeah. So one of the other things that grabbed me was the star that's now become pretty famous, too, I think. It was introduced in 2004, it says. Yeah, it's made of 25,000 crystals. Right. And the thing is like 10ft tall and weighs \u00a3500. Yeah, it's crazy. It's nine and a half feet wide. It was designed by an artist, German artist Michael Hamas, and yeah, they've been using that thing since 2004. Yeah. \u00a3550 of star. Can you imagine if that thing just came off the top? It would kill somebody. Sure. Because there's actually a pretty good chance that it could kill somebody, Chuck, because three quarters of a million people come see that tree every day. So the chance of it falling on somebody or pretty high. Yeah. I've never been by when it's just desolate. I'll say that. No, I can't imagine. Three quarters of a million in a day. That's crazy. So that's it for the tree, huh? That's all I got. One of these days we're going to watch the lighting. We'll make some popcorn, get our coziest socks on, get our eggnog on. Oh, yeah. I think that was just one without saying so, Chuck, this is one of my favorites of all time. Which one? I had no idea. Like, finding out about little weird pop culture things that happened before I was born, and I had no idea about it's. One of my favorite things in the world. Okay. And you've delighted me by sending this thing to me about Christmas and space in 1968. Did you know about this already? No, but I was just thinking, like, you have been diligent about keeping a list of what we've done every year so we don't repeat ourselves, and it's getting tough. I got to say, there's only so much Christmas that's happened. I literally looked up, like, I think two or three different things. I was like, We've never done this. And then I saw your list, I was like, We've done that. Curses. So I thought, Wait a minute, like astronauts spending Christmas in space? That got to have happened. Oh, you had an independent thought about it? You didn't just come across it? Oh, no, I had an independent thought. That is magnificent. A Christmas miracle. It must. Have increased your holiday spirit tremendously by at least 38%. So Christmas and space happened for the first time in 1968. There was actually, like, a holiday transmission, basically, the Apollo Eight crew, starring Frank Bormann, who is the commander, tom Hanksjimloville was the pilot, and William Anders was the lunar module pilot. And they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968, and they knew they were going to be orbiting the moon, so they planned a transmission from space to basically, they knew they launched on December 21 and like, wait a minute. Oh, man. Yeah. Did you pack a Bible for them to read from? I thought you did. Well, somebody thought about it because they had a Bible up there, or else they have, like, a bunch of scripture rehearsed and memorized because they decided to go with Christianity that year for Christmas, which is appropriate. Sure. From space, they read some scripture and bestowed blessings on the Earth below them. And apparently a billion people watch this transmission of their live pictures and their audio over the like from the lunar module. Yeah. So they sent out this transmission. They closed with the message, good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. That was a great Frank borman. Yeah. You know Bormann. He's very stiff. Yeah, I thought that was nice. It was kind of velvety. Well, I appreciate that. The velvet fog. Right. So the Christmas and space thing is kind of sporadic for a while. Skylab, five years later, were the next group to spend Christmas and space. They made a little Christmas tree out of food cans. Very cute. There was a space shuttle launch or a space shuttle mission in they spent Christmas in space, and they fixed the Hubble telescope on that mission, which was huge. It changed everything. Yeah, that was a big deal. The first time there was Christmas and space on the Russian mirror, american astronaut John Laha went up there and said, I'm up here with Cosmonauts, but I guess I'll celebrate Christmas anyway. Sure. And I believe that was his second Christmas in space. Yeah. The guy was just showing off by then. Yeah. He's like, I don't have the family I care about. Just go ahead and send me up. I'm just a single guy. I got some plants I don't take very good care of. And you know what? My parents are gone, too, so Mother's and Father's Day go ahead and send me. Right. They always say and whether he wanted to go or not, if it wasn't in space, he was eating by himself and kind of weeping quietly at Cracker Barrel. So which one is it going to be? You choose, buddy. Is Cracker Barrel open on Christmas? Oh, yeah. Is it? Yeah. I knew Waffle House was you mean I ate there for Thanksgiving this year. At Waffle House? No. At the Cracker Barrel. Okay. It's actually really good. I ate Waffle House Thanksgiving one year by myself. How sad is that? Did you really? Yeah, I can't remember the deal, but it was one year where my family wasn't around, or maybe I was away from them and everyone was gone, so I was like, all right. Scattered some other uncovered. Well, that sounds pretty good. No, it was great, actually. It was best Thanksgiving ever, so that's what I was going to say. Was it actually way more amusing than you thought. That's how it was for us. I was like, Is this going to be, like, sad or great? And it was great. Did they serve traditional Thanksgiving dinner? Yes. And again, it was really good. I mean, just as salty and tasty and fatty as you would imagine Thanksgiving at Cracker Barrel to be. Yeah, we do. Thanksgiving is my mom's jam, so we always go to Diane's place and I cook up my cornbread dressing and mashed potatoes is what I bring. Very nice. Yeah. But this is not about Thanksgiving. No. It's about Christmas and space. That's right. So now it's become kind of routine. Charles ever since they launched the International Space Station, it's been continuously occupied since November of 2000. So every year there's astronauts in space from all different countries aboard the ISS. And one of the cool things I saw about that was that anytime you're on the ISS, you go around the Earth about every 92 minutes. So in any given day, you see about 15 sunrises. But on Christmas Day, that means that the astronauts get 15 Christmas mornings throughout the whole day. Yeah. So I thought that was pretty cool. That is pretty cool. And every year they make a big deal about it. Now, I think it's a bit of an honor to go up and be at the ISS on Christmas now. Yeah. It stinks to be away from your family, but I imagine they have a great familial experience together up there, taking care of business they do for the future of humanity. You got anything else? Space? No. All right, well, we'll move along right after this jingle to some great Christmas toys of the 20th century. Okay, Chuck, I don't know if you remember this or not, but the 20th century was just 19 years ago. Yeah, I remember it. Okay. I remember it, too. It formed a substantial portion of my life. Yes. Those were our best days. Yeah. And one of the reasons why they were some of our best days is because some of the greatest toys ever invented came out of the 20th century. Yes. Dangerous toys. Dangerous toys that you had to have. The first time in world history that anyone ever had to have a toy on Christmas happened in the 20th century. All right, before we get to these, I'm going to ask you, do you have a stand out memory of one Christmas where there was something you had to have? I think the Nintendo, the original Nintendo was probably It all right. And I don't remember if I got it for Christmas or some other time or whatever, but for me, I remember opening a robot arm, which I hadn't asked for, but turned out to be, like, one of the coolest things I've ever had. Opening a robot arm? Yeah, it was a robot arm. And then there was another zip racer. You remember the cord that would make a motorcycle go really fast, which we talked about in the Evil Can, Evil episode? I remember that. I remember opening that on Christmas morning, too. Is the robot arm something that you could wear? No, it was, like, on a tabletop robot arm you could pick stuff up with. Okay. Yeah. So do you have a must have toy that you remember? Well, I do. I have a couple. One was the year that the Pacman Atari cartridge came out. Nice. That was a big one. And little did we all know that that game sucked really bad. Pacman did. Yeah, it was okay, actually. But you wanted it to be like the arcade game. Oh, it wasn't. I don't remember playing Pacman on Atari. Yeah. Instead of Waka Waka waka, it went oh, yeah. When it ate one of the things, it was pretty bad. And the other big one before that was when I was younger. I wanted more than anything one year, I wanted to Stretch Armstrong. Did you get it? Well, my parents actually did the old trickarooski on me, like, oh, is there one more thing over there? Because I was disappointed because I didn't get Stretch arm songs. So they actually pulled one over on me, and I got Stretch. It would have been funny if they were like, oh, no, there isn't anything. Is there one more thing under the tree? Oh, no, that's just dog poop. Right. Which we wrapped up for some reason. All right, but getting to these iconic 20th century toys, first on your list is the iconic, iconic Cabbage Patch Kid. I had one of these. Maybe I got it at Christmas. I don't remember. Well, at our house, and I may have told this story before, we had the original dolls, the ones that these were later ripped off from. Yeah, the original all cloth dolls handmade by Xavier Roberts, I think was his name, because they were made right here in Georgia and Cleveland. I'm sorry, not made. Born in Cleveland, Georgia, where Babyland General still is. But my sister got, I think, the 75th or the 18th one ever made that was signed by him. And it's worth some dough today. Do you still have it? Oh, yes. Michelle got it. So it was one of the top 100 ones made, and it became pretty valuable. And then my mom ended up getting my brother and I to each, which I literally have never touched. But I'm just waiting for those to gain enough in value, and I'm going to sell those. Is it still in the box? No, they didn't come in boxes. They were just, like, on a shelf. Wow. Those were early ones. The ones I got came in a box. Yeah, that's when they house, I think. I can't remember who took it over. Calico. Yeah. Colleico took it over. They got plastic heads, and those were sort of the mass market version. And I guess Xavier Roberts probably got rich. Oh, yeah, that's that deal. I would think so. The Cabbage Pet Kid, 1983 was when Colico took over, and it became, like, just a breakout hit. It was one of the first times, if not the first time, when there were reports of people, like, shoving and punching each other in the face and paying way more than the actual value of the doll. Like, apparently people were selling it for, like, ten times what the doll went for, which was $25, which back in 1983, $25 is not cheap now. I have no idea how much it would be now, but I'll bet it's a lot. And the Cabbage Patch Kid craze was so significant, it spilled over to the next year, 1984. And so Christmas of 1984 was just as crazy as Christmas of 1983. And apparently they made two and a half billion dollars off of Cabbage Patch Kids between 1983 and 1988. Yeah, I think 1984 was just 2.5 billion, wasn't it? Oh, my goodness. Is that right? Yeah, that's just one year. Dude, that's like 100 million cabbage patch kids. Yeah. And like you said, it went all the way through 1988. This is not a one year craze, and it's just nuts. Like I said, you can still go to babyland. General. And the whole deal with those was they were born and not made. And they were I mean, that was like, a little cutesy selling point. But the dolls came named. Yeah. Do you remember your name? Well, I don't remember my two original dolls. They were like the little TV stars or something that was on their T shirt. But my sisters I remember because her doll and it was even kind of misshapen those early ones were kind of funny looking, like his hairline was crooked and stuff because it was, like, folksy and handmade, and he was routinely drunk while he was making. But her doll's name, the one that is so valuable is Chuck. No. Yes. That's a sign from God. Mine was Webber Dino. Wait, is that first and last name? No, that was his first and middle name. His last name is Clark, obviously. Weber Dino. Dino? Yes. Webber Dino Clark. Pretty weird. Yeah. I didn't name him that's great. Yeah. Do you still have it? Oh, no. I imagine those probably aren't worth much money. No, probably not in the shape he was in by the time I aged out of them, too. Did a mohawk and stuff, I guess. I don't think his head was attached any longer. Right. Yeah. Eventually he blew up at all. So there's more, Chuck. We got to go backward in time. That's right. This next one, because it turns out we talked about this in the action figure episode a little bit, but so Star Wars, when Star Wars came out, it was such a total surprise to everybody that Kenneth, who had the rights to make the action figures, had even started production by the time Christmas came around. Yeah. No one thought the movie was going to be big, much less the ancillary products associated with that movie. Sure. So little kids got vouchers. I remember that. Did you have a voucher? I don't think so. I think I got the toys a little bit later. Okay. Because this is Christmas of 1977. They're like, oh, God, we got caught with our pants down. Get some vouchers out quick. So little kids got vouchers wrapped up as presents that they were finally able, I guess, in 1978 sometime, to trade their voucher in for the actual action figure. Yeah. And they were a hot ticket for a solid seven years, and I certainly had a ton of them. I had no idea that there was a thing that people did where they left them in boxes and didn't play with them. I didn't know that was the thing. So I played with mine, and they were all very well worn, which I think is the way to do it. Same here. I think I still have, like, a box of, like, busted up GI. Joe's that are in no way, shape, or form sellable. Yeah. My brother and I have a bunch of these, but yeah, unless you have some super rare jawai'i, get it wrong, but it's either the cloth cape or the plastic cape. I think it's a cloth one. Is that the valuable one? I don't remember. There are nerds out there that are freaking out right now. Yeah. I'm so sorry. Luke Skywalkers, take your eye out. Lightsaber. Right. The double telescoping. Yeah. I think that was worth a lot of dough. Yeah. But back in Christmas 1977, no one had any idea, and little children were unwrapping presents and going, I had no idea what a voucher was until just now. Thanks, mom and dad. And they said, well, that's good, because here mom and dad what I got you as vouchers for a back scratch and breakfast in bed. Free hugs. So cute. And then lastly, check is Tickle Me Elmo, and I have to say, shout out to history.com. Yes. They came up with this article. I think there was a lot more to it, but these are the ones that held the most water. But Tickle Meowmo if you thought the cabbage pet doll craze was nuts. Tickle Me Elmo was just off the chain. Yes, Elmo. I think we've even talked about this before for some weird reason, but it became way after me, probably in the Muppets episode. So I was never an Elmo aficionado because it was 1996, and by that point I was 15 years old. I didn't care about things like that. But my daughter loves Elmo, and it has transcended since then, for sure, because Elmo is still super popular. You were 25, by the way. Oh, yeah. I was thinking 86. Oh, yeah. I was way too old for Elmo, right? Even more so than being 15 would have been. Yes, I was still drunk in Athens, Georgia. But I think that's cute that she's still into that. Almost still around for kids to be into today, because almost just too cute and great a character just go away because of some stupid craze. I agree. And I have the curse of doing too good of an Elmo impression. So now, almost every morning still, I have to start out by doing Elmo Voices with the Elmo Doll. Oh, that's sweet. That is sweet. So, in October, I guess, of 1996, there was a big surprise on the Rosie O'Donnell Show when she debuted the Tickle Miyama doll, which most people hadn't heard of by this time. And if you remember, you remember the doll. Right. I think you press it's belly, or maybe even tickle it, and it'd be like, Stop. Right? Yeah. I think you give it a squeeze and he giggles. Right. And it was super cute, and it just captured America's heart. And Rosie O'Donnell's show was huge at the time. Like Oprah level huge. Yeah. So it was a huge plug for the Tickle Miomo makers. And they were totally caught off guard. They had no idea that this was coming. And since it was October, there was a huge shortage of this suddenly very much in demand dall by the time Christmas rolled around. Yeah. And they did not do Vouchers. Right. They did raffles or something. I think they did. Raffles and stampedes. Those are the big ones. The classic Stampede. Yeah. There was a report of a Walmart employee in Frederickton, New Brunswick, who was trampled and had to go to the hospital. Oh, man. Because they did the smartest thing possible line up. But then when we open the doors, it's every person for themself, for themselves. Yes. And this is the final thing from history.com. It says, in New York, the son of jailed my boss John Gotti, along with his friends, dropped $8,000 at a toy store and reportedly be made off with a case of Tickle Me Elmo. Pretty smart. It's true. I hope it is true. That would be so great. So what's the must have toy this year? Do you know? I have no idea. Do you have no idea? No. All right. We'll find out one way or another by hanging out at toy stores, I guess. I get the feeling there isn't a well, maybe that still happens sometimes. Like a single must have. Oh, yeah, it definitely happens sometimes. Yeah. I don't know what it is, though. I guarantee it's not going away. Like the furby. Remember that silly thing? Yeah. Now it's hatchimals. Oh, well, that might be the thing. Actually, that was last year, right? No, because I remember Null had trouble finding one for his daughter. Oh, yeah. But you came through, didn't you know? He did. It was a Christmas miracle. It was. All right, so we're going to have another little jingle and come back with our traditional Christmas buzz recipe. Yeah. Okay. So I have a little background here because we're talking about waffle. Did you see the background things? Did I send it to you? No. I can't wait. So the etymology not the entomology, the etymology of Watson, the word wassail. Yeah. Apparently it comes from the old Norse vessel and then the old English, because most English words come from the Norse or Germanic words. Right. Was hall. And the whole thing was basically like a greeting or a toast, which was being good health. Okay. Eventually it was turned into waste hail. And then Wassell. And wasol is so old that it actually appears in Bayowolf as a greeting. Right. Again, being good health. So there was this tradition of going on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, I can't remember which one, where you would basically just go to people's houses around town during the whole day and hang out, maybe bring them a little present or eat some food, and it was like kind of a roving Christmas party, and that was called waffling. And then eventually this warm punch that you would serve your guests came to be called waffle. And because it kind of came out of this tradition, there's no one Wassel recipe, but it's usually a very strong drinky. Boozy, warm punch. It's basically the only requisite for it that usually has something like nutmeg or something in it. That's right. And you're the cocktail man. Do you want to go over the recipe here? Well, there's two. Did you see both? I only saw the one that was super rummy. Okay, well, we'll just go with that one then, because the other one is pretty traditional. This one is not just rummy, but it's beery. Sounded funny, I got to admit. I'm ready to try this one, Chuck. All right. Two quarts of lager beer. And you don't have to just use beer that comes in a court size. As a matter of fact, you might want to just steer clear those all together for this one, a quart of rum I just got giddy, 5oz of simple syrup, 3oz of lemon juice, a teaspoon of grated nutmeg. You want that freshly grated teaspoon of grated ginger. You want that fresh two, and then fruit slices for garnish. Pretty simple stuff that you can really kind of put together from just about any store that sells such things. That's right. So you take the beer, the simple syrup, the lemon juice, the nutmeg and the ginger, and you put it together in a saucepan and you warm it on low heat for about ten minutes. You want to get a nice steam off of it, but do not let it boil. If you boil it, all the alcohol will cook off. So don't do that. That's right. You add the rum and you stir it. And then you place that fruit in a heat resistant bowl or some sort of serving vessel and you pour the waffle in there. And then you have waffle, you drink it. So you haven't had this? No, I haven't. I just found it the other day. All right. This recipe was from the Spruce, and there's another one they have which has brandy and sherry in it, but beer and lager. Two quarts of beer and one quart of rum. That's a party. It's a party in your mouth. It is. And of course, always drink waffle responsibly. And if you're over 21 in the United States yes. And if you're whistling in someone's home and they ask you to leave, do the Christmasy thing and leave. That's right. And if you're in the UK, you can be like twelve years old and drink, probably. Is that true? No, I think it's probably 18. Is that a Christmas legend? Yeah, I think so. Charles, we've reached the end here. That's right. This has been maybe our best one yet. I like to think each year they get a little bit better. The guest appearance from the writer of Diehard. Are you kidding me? That was pretty great. The socks that I got you. Those are amazing. Yeah, they vibrate. I was very surprised. They're magic fingers. Toe socks. I love it. Well, Happy Christmas, merry New Year and all that stuff. To all of you people out there, we hope you have just a wonderful holiday season. No matter how you celebrate it, no matter what your religion, no matter whether you have no religion at all, no matter where you are in the world, we hope you have a very warm and glad holiday. Tidings. Right. I agreed. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you later you next year." | |
210e9ecc-121b-11eb-85ed-6ff2c934ba03 | Short Stuff: Runner's High | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-runners-high | Listen in to today's short stuff to learn if a runner's high is really a thing. | Listen in to today's short stuff to learn if a runner's high is really a thing. | Wed, 02 Jun 2021 10:51:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=51, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=153, tm_isdst=0) | 12401726 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com.com. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Chuck is out of his mind on endorphins right now, and this is short Stuff, like I said. Oh, man, I've been running for hours, and I just can't even feel my feet. I'm like, I'm floating, man. It's amazing. I'm not even breaking a sweat, and I'm like, I'm having such a runner's high. Bro, you sound like the average marathon are, like, so much I got on my barefoot running shoes. Oh, man. I don't ever want to talk about that again. We talked about this runner's high in some episode to such a degree. I was like, have we done it as a short stuff? Oh, really? I think so. We must have talked about it in marathons or something like that. Yeah, I bet that was it. I believe a standalone short stuff is a great way to go with it. Yeah, but what I was describing is what runners will tell you they feel oftentimes when they are on what's known as a runner's high, which is your light is a feather, you're floating, your pace is strong, and sometimes they might even burst out into uncontrollable tears of joy that they can't even explain. Yes. So have you ever had a runner's high? No, because I think you got to run, like, a long way, if it even exists. It occurs not at mile one. So I have never had a runner's high, but these emotional sobs that they mentioned I can identify with because I hit the treadmill. I do that every morning. I hit the treadmill when I run. I very rarely run outside, and I usually run about 11:00 a.m., so I end up watching the prices right while I run a lot. Amazing. And by the end of the show, when people are winning or losing or whatever, are you crying? Crying is not the right word. But my chest is tight, and I'm overcome with emotion. It's like a hitch. It's amazing. And I'm like, well, clearly this has to do with running or exercising or something, but it's pretty funny. Yeah, it gets to me by the end of The Price is Right. All right, let me see if I can trigger you ready? Okay. It's too early for a break. You got to press on, brother. Okay, let's just take it from here. That, by the way, is one of the greatest theme songs of all time. Oh, yeah. Iconic. I haven't seen it, and I haven't really seen much of any of the Drew Carey stuff, and I can still just rattle that thing. He's good. He's finally settled in. I mean, he's not Bob Barker, but he knows he's not Bob Barker. He's not trying to be Bob Barker. He's Drew Carey, and he's doing his own thing, and it's good. All right, so let's talk about flow state. This is a concept that Hungarian American psychologist I looked up, too. Insert name. Go, please. I think you should get it. No. Man. There are 16 letters in this person's last name and all consonants. Five of them are vowels. His name is Mihai Chicks. And Mihi. Look at you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure that my dialect is, like, nowhere near Russia, but that's pretty close from what I can tell. Yeah. Just picture in your mind something spelled like this. Everyone. C-S-I-K-S-Z-E-N-T-M-I-H-A-L-L-Y-I. That's his last name? Yeah, that's the last name. I want to say it again. Okay. Yeah, I want to hear it again. Mihi Chicks. Mihi. It sounds like a sentence. It sounds like you're saying something in a different language. I am. I'm saying this guy's name like, I appreciate the advice. Can you point me in the direction of the nearest car rental? Mihi Chicks at mihai. Okay. It's right over there, then. I'm glad we're patting this out with comedy, because there's not a lot to the runners high, as we will learn. But flow state is what say it. Mihi Chick sent me high came up with after interviewing athletes and musicians and artists. Basically. About what brings them joy and basically kind of came to the conclusion that when these people are performing at peak levels. Whether they're songwriting or poetry slamming or running marathons. That they all say that they fall into or I guess the majority of people say they fall into this really focused mental state that they call the flow state. Where it's just like. I'm channeling something. I'm not even working to do what I'm doing. It's just coming out of me. Have you ever been in that state? I know you haven't had a runners. Neither have I, but I've been in a flow state before. Have you? I feel like I've been in a flow state with writing before. Nice. I don't remember what I was doing while I was doing it, but I remember being like, oh, wow, this is something special. And it was probably something mundane, like digging a hole or something like that, which I'm known to do. But it is a pretty neat thing. It's just effortless. There's a certain amount of joy and pleasure to it. You feel a little bit high, and it's because my theory is that your body and your mind have stopped trying to find the most efficient, least wasteful, energy wise way of doing what you're doing, and now it's just doing it. So there's no effort. There's no trying to figure something out. There's no wasted energy, and it can be pleasurable in that sense. Right. So flow state, they think might have a link to encountering a runner's high. But here's the thing is, most athletes haven't experienced a runner's high. It's not like all you got to do is run eight or more miles and you're going to get one. And I guess this would be a good time to break. There's a lot of debate about if a runner's high is even real to begin with. Scientifically speaking, is it real? We'll find out right after these messages from our sponsor. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because Adventure is around the corner, and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations, so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table, because there's so much world to see. And the city advantage. Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more@citi.com Adventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the allinone commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. Chuck, is it real? Well, first we should just say that the whole idea of this came around in the 70s when the big running boom really kicked off. Kicked off by forest. Comp. Yeah, exactly. And doctors started looking into it a little bit, and researchers are like, Is this even a thing? Can we explain this physiologically? And they kind of landed on initially endorphins, which are neurotransmitters that are sending chemical messages, activating opiate receptors, and basically they can create sort of an analgesic effect that could numb the body to pain and trigger a kind of morphine, like euphoria, let's say. And they're like, all right, if you're running enough, maybe just the surge of endorphins is what's explaining this. I mean, that's what it stayed for decades, basically. Like, when I first started getting into running ten years ago, I used getting into running and making air quotes. I remember hearing, like, I was in endorphins. And endorphins do keep your muscles from making. They do have the analgesic effects, like you're talking about. But the big problem is they apparently don't cross the blood brain barrier. So I guess somehow they do release opioids, or they activate your opioid receptors. But I'm not sure how they do that if they can't get to your brain. Or maybe there's some that get to your brain, but it's not the ones that get released by your muscles. Whatever the case, these early researchers, physiologists, who said it's endorphins, they were just making it up. No one went back and checked their work, and when they finally did, they saw that this is just bunk, basically. It's bunk of speed reading. Yeah, exactly. That's a good T shirt. In 2015, there was a study out of Germany that basically said that running can stimulate your endocannabinoid system, which is pretty interesting. Your body produces endocannabinoids. It's like your sort of built in cannabis system. It's Body Pot. Yeah. Good band name. Oh, man, it's a great band name. And I don't even like my band name stuff, usually, but Body Pot sounds great. Yeah, that's a pretty good one. What kind of music is it, though? You're Always Mad? It's classical, but done on mandolin. All right. Very interesting. That's not a thing. You just created a genre. I think I might have. Not a good one, but I did. Sure. So have you ever seen that bluegrass band do AC DC Thunderstruck? No, but it's pretty good. It's pretty awesome. I'm not a big AC DC guy, but I can imagine hearing somebody do that on anything is pretty stirring. Like watching the end of Prices right after you've been running a few miles. Yeah, that guitar sounds pretty cool in the banjo. Indocannabinoids cannabinoids. It's like what pot does for you. Basically, it improves your anxiety and improves your mood. This is why some people turn to marijuana, to reduce their anxiety. And this does actually past the blood brain barrier. I don't understand that about how marijuana reduces anxiety. I know for a fact that it does. But I feel like it's a certain kind of person that marijuana has that effect on and that does not have that effect on everybody. Sure. I think there are plenty of people where marijuana very much increases their anxiety. Yes. And that is the saddest thing of all. Yeah. It's called getting robbed by God. Himself. Or herself. Or herself, yeah. Because if it only did the one thing and reduced anxiety. It would be the wonder drug of the world. Yes, it's true. Yes. I'm glad we didn't have this conversation in the Girl Scouts episode. Yes, that would be bad. But like I said, unlike the endorphins, these endocannabinoids can move through that blood brain barrier and give you that feeling of calm. So they think that might have something to do with the runner's eye. Yes, which makes a lot more sense. I mean, endocannabinoid seem like it's probably the case that that is what gives you some sort of euphoric feeling while you're in that flow state. But again, it's possible that the runner's high doesn't even exist and that it's one of those things where it's like a self fulfilling prophecy or I guess a bit of placebo effect where you think it exists and you're running some time and you think, oh, I feel kind of good, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm in a flow state. Check me out. I'm so high. It could be like that. It also could exist, and we just haven't really identified it fully yet. Yeah, but what I'm pretty sure is going to happen is we're going to get gazillion emails from runners that are like, don't mock this. It is totally real. I've experienced it firsthand. Hey, I don't care if it is the greatest placebo effect of all time, it's still real. If it's a placebo, your body is still experiencing the effects of whatever it is, from a fake drug to running high, you're still experiencing it. So it doesn't matter if it's externally objectively real or not. It doesn't matter. True. Well, if you want to know more about sylpsism or anything like that, join us next time on Short Stuff. We don't have anything else about runners high, right, Chuck? No, we don't. Well, that means everybody that Short Stuff is is giddy up. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Are stupid people happier? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-stupid-people-happier | Is there a negative correlation between happiness and intelligence? Is ignorance truly bliss? Josh and Chuck attempt to answer this age-old question by exploring the "science" of happiness in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Is there a negative correlation between happiness and intelligence? Is ignorance truly bliss? Josh and Chuck attempt to answer this age-old question by exploring the "science" of happiness in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:23:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=23, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=202, tm_isdst=0) | 18322648 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn More@halopets.com.com hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from Howstepworks.com. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the Internet's leading provider of spoken word entertainment. Get a free audiobook download of your choice when you sign up today. Log on to audiblepodcast. Comstellay for details. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Chuckles Bryant. How's it going? Chuck? I was chuckling. Yes. I think that might have gotten caught. Yeah, I think that was an Afropo mixing. Yeah. Jerry's funny like that. Yeah, she made me laugh. I know. Let's do this. Yeah. Where's your awesome setup? My awesome setup is as follows. Chuck, do you consider yourself a happy person? Yes, I do. Well, then, Chuck, you may be dumb. Really? Yeah. How so? Well, there's this long standing question of whether or not there is a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness. Take one. Ernest Hemingway. He said something along the lines of, oh, I don't know. Happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. I'll run up you. Oh, bring it, buddy. Charles de Gaulle reportedly said happy people are idiots. Did he really? And I don't know if you meant the medical classification of days gone by idiots. I think he just meant idiots mouth breathers. I've got one that's going to even top your Charles de Gaulle one. Okay. Charlton Heston said, you can pry my gun from my cold, dead hand. Yeah, he sure did. Was he happy? I don't know. Okay? I don't know. Happiness is a warm gun. That's what Paul McCartney said. And the Breeders, man, we could just quote, like, song lyrics and people all day, let's just do it. End up with no results. Okay, well, let's talk about this, Chuck. Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness? I mean, if you think about it in your own experience, you could make the case that ignorance is bliss, that kind of thing? That you're happier when you don't know about something bad. That's already happened to you than you are after you get the news. But that really has nothing to do with intellect. Well, does it, though? This whole thing is kind of fraught with questions for me. Okay. Like, is it emotional intelligence? We're talking about ignorance, and you don't want to use the words like stupid. I know Jerry says that schools don't like to use that word. The word stupid? Yeah, it's a pretty negative word, I'll admit. And people that don't score well on IQ testing, that means nothing about how smart they are. I think it has to do more with emotional intelligence. And when I think of dumb, I think and happy, I think of the dude sitting there picking his belly button, like, laughing his head off at America's Funniest Home Video. Would you call him intelligent? I don't know. I kind of link that as one of the dummies out there, but I'm jealous of that because I watched that show and I can't sit still. It's just so awful. But some people think it's the funniest thing ever. I think it's kind of funny. And they seem really happy. A guy gets kicked in the groin and everyone gets a good laugh, and he falls on his face. And Beavis and Butthead. They were idiots. They were always laughing and happy. And you couldn't laugh at that show, either. No, it was funny. Okay. But I was laughing at their idiocy. I don't know if intellectual is the right word, but definitely intelligent. I would consider an intelligent person, but I'm not intellectual in the lease. You know that. I would say you're fairly happy. Yeah, but I could see you happier. Well, moods come and go, buddy. Okay, but you're saying you think you're generally a positive happy person? Yeah, I'd say generally I'm pretty happy person. Barring I'm moody as well, but that's in the genes. So your questions as to these articles are, like, is intelligence emotional intelligence or intellectual intelligence. Right. I think what they're talking about specifically is mental intelligence. Right. Like book smarts. Sure. I think you could make a case that street smarts comes out of intellect as well. Can you? I can. Okay. I'm not going to hear but I could if I wanted to. Well, I think technically they've done some studies that said there is no direct link between happiness and actual intelligence. Right. Yeah. Let's put some substance into this podcast here so you can speculate all day. Okay. So, yeah, officially what they say is there is no link. That's the official line on that. And thank you for coming and listening to this one. Yeah, no, there isn't any, actually, that's not true, because I found a study okay, hit me. I found a study on the freakonomics blog. Actually, there's a couple he drew data from a study of 14,000 people. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's a pretty good sample. They were given a vocabulary test, and then they were giving an analytical reasoning skills test, and the people in the top third consistently also reported being happiest. They were less likely to be very unhappy. Right. Before we get into what happiness is and all that stuff, here's the big problem. This is the problem with everything. Yes. Here's our problem. No one actually knows what happiness is. It's an objective experience or if it even exists. I've seen a couple of people posit that the problem is, and here's the catch 22 all the people who are thinking about happiness are intelligent. Right. If you're intelligent or if you're not intelligent, you're probably not thinking about happiness. You're just happy. Right. So the whole field of the study of happiness shoots itself in the foot every time it opens its mouth. True. Because it's all smart people trying to figure out what happiness is. And I can't think of anything that could make you unhappier than that. True. So let's just stop doing this immediately. We should well, we can talk about some little correlations here and there. I know that one researcher was talking about how our educational system doesn't really tend to separate the intelligent ones. So in other words, early on in schooling, the really smart kids are oftentimes segregated and put in special classes, sometimes even special magnet schools. Yeah. They're not picked first on the kickball team. They're outcast in some ways because they're smart. And does that lead to happiness? Probably not. Yeah, there's too many externalities that you can't really account for exogenous factors. Yeah. Nice. Wow, you have quite a memory, my friend. Recall from our super stuffed guide to the economy. Another problem with trying to define happiness is every study of happiness is a survey. It's all self reporting, right? Sure. And I can't remember it rings a bell that you had said, like, we talked about this before, and you had said something along the lines of it depends on when you take that kind of test. If somebody tested you right now, how would you test as far as the life satisfaction scale or happiness quotient goes? Well, jeez, that's tough. I mean, like, right this minute. Well, I'm in a pretty rotten mood today. Exactly. But I was about yesterday, but I wouldn't call that I wouldn't charge that on the live happens. Don't you think that the mood that you're in when you're taking a look, a survey on your life is going to influence everything? I would like to think that I would be able to step outside of that, but how can it not? You're right. Yeah. So the whole fact that it's all self reported right? I mean, self reported data is almost always discarded in every other area of science. Yeah, that's true. It's anecdotal well, that's because this isn't really scientific if you think about it. No, it's not. And let's talk about something that's not scientific. It's a field, the new sub discipline called positive psychology. Yes. That would be Martin Seligman. Yeah. And you get the impression by the fact that his name is associated with something as ridiculously hippie sounding as positive psychology that he's a crackpot. Sure. He is not. In fact, he's a PhD. He runs the center, I think, for Authentic Happiness or something like that at the University of Pennsylvania. So it's bona fide. Yes. He was the president of the APA, too. Yeah. And actually he dedicated their millennial issue to positive psychology while he was president there. Cool. It was cool, but it was also pretty self serving. Right. And I'm sure he had his birkenstocks on. Quite sure. But the whole field of positive psychology is basically they're exploring interventions, and an intervention is any kind of treatment in the field of psychology. Right? Right. Basically, what positive psychology is saying is I read a quote in an article about it by another positive psychologist who said, psychology is very good at getting people from negative eight to zero. Right. But hasn't learned how to get people from zero to eight interest rates to positive eight. Right? Yeah, and that's absolutely true. But at the same time, I mean, like, are you supposed to get people to positive eight? Right. There's some real ethical questions that are raised. Let's say that we develop some sort of pharmaco psychiatric pill that can make a normal person happy. Right. Should that person take that pill? I mean, we've already established as a society a baseline, which is zero, and anybody below that is suffering from a mental illness and deserves treatment. Right. To get back to zero, why should we accelerate our happiness? And in doing so, are we edging out real experiences, the negative? Right? I mean, life is full of both, right? Right. But are you going to bring that home with the smart, intelligent or dumb stupid thing, or does that fall into the ignorance bliss category? I don't know. I don't know how to categorize that, man. Interesting. Yeah. No, I was actually going to go into another kind of contrary therapy. All right, let's hear it. Well, you want to talk some more about positive psychology? No, that's good. Are you sure? Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll continue on then. Have you heard of what is it? Acceptance and commitment therapy? I have not, actually. See, I have a leg up on you. I have to tell everybody I've written a bunch of articles on happiness recently. Poor Chuck's been writing nothing but social media stuff, which is unhappy. If this were about Twitter, I'd be sitting here silently. Yeah, I would, too, actually. There's a contrary field of therapy to positive psychologies called acceptance and commitment therapy. And basically it says, look, you have good and bad experiences. You can't just focus on the happy ones. Right. Because you still have these negative experiences. You can't just crush them down, or else you're going to end up climbing a clock tower and shooting people I believe in that for sure. Right. So this therapy basically says what you do is you go back and I've got a perfect example for you. When I was like five or six, we went to this Koa campground and I had like this awesome Pacman T shirt. It had the red ring around the neck and the sleeve. It was just like, I think an iron on Pacman. Right, sure. And I decided to stuff a pack of firecrackers down the front of my shirt, stole them and got away with it. Right. And my family was traveling back from this campground and we made it to Wendy's and stopped to eat. And I got up to go to the bathroom and the firecrackers, I was too scared to do anything with them. I just left them in my shirt for 2 hours. Sure. And so when I stood up, my fat stomach pressed them up against the Pacman shirt, made this crinkling sound. And my mom immediately looked at me, and somehow she's so intuitive. She looked at me and was like, what's in your shirt? And that was that. That was so bad. It was right on my birthday, they took me home and showed me like all the heman stuff I wasn't going to be getting for my birthday that year. And they made me take it back and take the firecrackers to the guy. We turned around and went back. Classic move. Yeah. Took the firecrackers back to the guy and I had to apologize. I thought you were going to say they lit the firecrackers under your shirt. Right. And then yeah, put them in my shirt and push me back into the store at the Koa campground. Right. So that was something that definitely contributed to my outlook today. It's still very much in my mind. Right. And I wonder just how much of that forms my personality. Sure. How much guilt from that. So under acceptance and commitment therapy, basically I or anybody else would look at that and say, really? Okay, you stole a pack of fire crackers when you're six and you felt bad about it your whole life. Now that you're 32, is it really that bad? So you're basically becoming conscious of these experiences that are contributing to your outlook on life. That just accumulate all this crap. I definitely subscribe more to act than to positive psychology. I guess it's what I'm trying to say. Me too, for sure. My shrink is real big on that. But just from a practical standpoint, I've never even heard of use those words. It just makes sense to me. It's practical. Sure. As opposed. Emily's always talking about people that bliss out and that sometimes she wishes that she has that quality to just bliss out and like, leave it up to the cosmos. Or Christians say they'll just leave it up to God and let him take care of it. And that's awesome. If you can do that, but are you dealing with it? It's a great question, Chuck. The problem is, we always say on this podcast, to each his own. So if that is how you deal with life and it's working for you, fantastic. Well, I can't do it any more than you or Emily can. Right. But if that means that you end up on the couch just laughing your head off like I said, America's funny. Some videos. I'm trying to think something worse than that to me, Save by the Bell. It's pretty bad. Okay, let's go with that. Okay. I find that show mortifyingly embarrassing. It is. And I still can't stop watching it's like a train wreck. Do you remember the show? Hey, Dude? No. Nickelodeon show on a dude ranch. Was it bad? It was sort of like Saved by the Bell, but on a dude ranch and worse, if you can imagine that innovative right there. Yeah. So, anyway, if that's your end result and you're on the couch picking your boogers and eating them and you're smiling and laughing, then who are we to say whether or not ignorance is bliss or blissing out is the right way to go? Although possibly you should lay off the dope. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. Doritos are in the mix there somewhere. So I guess the answer to this question, Chuck, are stupid people happier? The answer is we don't know. And whether you think that that's the case or not would definitely depend on whatever self reported anecdotal survey you read, right? I think it's interesting. This is the one I want people to log on to the blog when I do my Friday recap. I'd like to hear about this. I'd like to hear some opinions calling out. I'm asking for it. Awesome. 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 longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Josh, this is a cool one. Remember on our Body Farms podcast, toward the end you said something about the lies perpetrated by CSI, the television show? Yeah. I love this email. This is really interesting, dude. Yes, dude, indeed. All right, here we go. Here's my first hand experience of the lies perpetrated by TV in general and TSI specifically. Five years ago, my wife was carjacked robbed and assaulted. She escaped by her own wits and strength. Her attacker had been smoking a cigarette. During the attack. They fought over a knife that he had to her throat, and he cut her hands deeply. She pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tried to burn them with it, but it failed, which is a great movie move. Sure. Turn it on. After she escaped and the police found the car, they found the cigarette butt with her blood on the filter. Under the blood, they found his saliva, pulled the DNA from it, and found him in the CODIS databank, which is the combined DNA Index system, or as they call it, the bad guy databank. Exactly. Which is maintained by the FBI. Sure. She went through the line up at the local precinct where they made the arrest. The grand jury got the indictment. The trial happened, complete with a dramatic that's the man who did it moment and sentencing. After the case was closed, it was submitted by the county forensics chief and accepted by the FBI to be featured at that year's CODIS conference in DC. During every phase of the process, we were amazed at how much TV had lied to us about the process. The actual working in the system is so unlike what you see on television as to be unrecognizable. During the conference, they openly spoke of the CSI effect. So it's basically these cops and forensics guys actually talk about how that show is damaging their work. They're lying liars. They're lying liars. And how the public has been influenced so much by these shows. So basically, he hates those shows, and he found it to be a lot of bunk. I did converse with him a couple more times via email, and he felt a lot of responsibility because he left his wife in a running car with the heat on and the radio on while he ran in to get ice cream. Oh, Lord. And then she was attacked. And he had to say that in court, and he said, which made him feel like more of a jerk than she was attacked. And he says, Just like a TV show, except all the details of how it really goes down. Sure. The drama was all there. Yeah. Jerry Bruckheimer is systematically undermining the law enforcement community. Cool. But she fought him off. And this guy, turns out, had a rap sheet of, like, rape and murder, and they couldn't get him on the murder charge because something had happened. I can't remember. So he ended up going to prison for 25 to life in the Pokey in the Husky and the family of the raped and murdergirl got closure and were at the trial at this lady's trial. That's wow. So thank you, Christopher, for that harrowing tale. Seriously, I think they should get t shirts. You think so? Yeah. Dude, that's actually you went through this. We'll give you a t shirt. Like the lease we can do. I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it sounds insulting. We should knit her a t shirt. Yeah, exactly. You narrowly averted death by your own weight and we'll give you a t shirt for that. We should make a t shirt. We shouldn't knit it. Well, Christopher, if you want to send us yours and your wife's t shirt sizes and address, we'll make sure that those go out to you. Again, it's the least we can do. No insult intended. Just to show of support for bringing us this email. Yeah. And if you have a harrowing tale of survival, near miss with death, or if you've run into any bad guys lately, let us know and you can send that in an email to stuffpodcast@howstufferts.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.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, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
How the Terracotta Army Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-terracotta-army-works | In 1974, Chinese farmers discovered the first of what would number 7,000 terracotta soldiers meant to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife. | In 1974, Chinese farmers discovered the first of what would number 7,000 terracotta soldiers meant to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife. | Tue, 14 Jul 2015 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=195, tm_isdst=0) | 30659476 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. We're just hangman, figure we press Accord and see what happens. Yeah. Terracotta. Army of three. Not very imposing or terracotta. Did you go to the High Museum and see this when it was around? No, I didn't. Yuumi did. And I wish I would have gone, but I did not. Yeah, but she was quite blown away. It was awesome. And I hadn't heard of it until then. And then when I went and saw it was like, this is pretty amazing, what a great story. And then wanted to podcast about it and then just sort of forgot. And now here it is a year later or however long. Yes, it was a while ago. Yeah, it was. But it's still a pretty fascinating story. Yeah. In that exhibit, if you live on planet Earth, go to the website and see where it's going to be because it travels around. Oh, is it like the body's exhibit? Yeah, I mean there's this exhibit and then I think there's permanent exhibits elsewhere. There's a permanent exhibit at the site itself. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. One in London, I'm not positive, but London has everything. They do. They really do. The only thing they don't have is twelve ounce beers. Yeah. Because they're 16 ounce. That's right. Yeah. You don't need it. When I took a trip there, I was like, what's with all these tall boys? And they're like, what's that? I get it now. Yeah. And it's not like when you go to the pub. You don't go in for a twelve ounce or you go for a pint. Yeah, it's an Imperial pint. Right. Is that more than 16oz? Is that 16.9? Is that 1.9oz? I'll bet it is. Jerry. Hold up fingers. Jerry said 20oz is an imperial pint, so I was wrong. 16 is a standard pint. Are you sure it's not 25? Jerry? That's called a double deuce. It's called the core's double deuce. Double Deuce is 22oz. 24 technically. Why? Well, because the twelve is a single. Right. No, but a double deuce deuce. I thought Double Deuce just meant we're going to put two beers into one can. That's a double beer. What are we talking about today? I don't know. I'm thirsty all of a sudden though. You want a beer Friday? I'd love a beer. Let me just reach into my bag. Here your cooler bag. I carry around like a purse. I wish, man, that would be fun. Cooler fanny pack. Drink it on the job like it's the 1950s. Yep. Alright, let's get serious, buddy. Okay. Chuck. On the morning of March 20, 1974, seven farmers set out to dig a well. So begins the article on how stuff works.com. Yes. But it also begins this story. A pretty amazing story actually. Yes, it's awesome. This is in the Chinese village of Good Luck oh, that was pretty good. That's what I'm going to say. And they were digging for water and got down about 13ft and hit something hard and dug up a terracotta face and head. And we're like they're like, Whoa. Yes, or whatever the Chinese expression for woe would be. What's kind of universal. Okay, I'm curious. We found out we're not banned in China, by the way. Yeah. So hello to all of our listeners out there in China, and will you let us know what woe is in Chinese? Yeah, I think we should do a show somewhere on Universal. Sounds like I read different things about how people laugh in different countries and people remark of affirmation or decline something. I think it'd be really interesting. Yes. They're called idioms, right? Is that what it is? I think so. Like, here we might go, but somewhere else they might go. Well, what else? We have focus here. Terracotta army. Yes. So they alerted the government, like, any good citizenship and said, hey, I think we have something here. You should come look at it. Yeah. Because they dug down a little more, and they found shards of the same type of pottery, and a lot of it in kind of vague human form, and that's when they're like, there's something weird going on here, so let's contact the authorities. Yeah. And the authorities said, Archeologists away, and sent them out to the site because it was, hey, let's contact the Chinese government right away. That's right. I don't know if that would happen today. The Chinese people. You think? I don't know. It depends on who they are. I would guess they probably were more likely to in 74 than today. All right, so what they knew, the government and experts in archaeologists said, well, hold on a minute. You guys are digging near the burial ground of Chincher Honda. Nice. And he was the first emperor of China, and he had a huge mausoleum. And I bet you anything that's what you guys have found. And it turns out they're right. The archaeologists were right. So the legend had it that Chin Shure Huangdi, China's first emperor, had himself built a pretty awesome mausoleum. As a matter of fact, you couldn't even call it a mausoleum. It was called a funerary complex. It was so massive. Oh, yeah. But as they started to dig and get further and further along in this excavation, which they have still not even come close to completing, from what I understand, 1% or something. Yeah. The size of Manhattan. The size of Manhattan. His mausoleum, they started to realize it's even bigger than we ever thought. It wasn't lost. They knew that he was buried somewhere around this area. It was just you don't go digging up emperor's tombs. But these farmers had found something pretty interesting, and it was enough to get the archeologists over that, and they started to dig, and they still have yet to excavate Sheen's tomb, his actual tomb, where he's buried? We'll talk about that later. But when they started to dig, they started to reveal more and more of these terracotta figures. And they would stumble upon one room. At first, they stumbled upon a room and they found chuck, like, 6000 of these things of infantrymen, all standing at the ready, all larger than life. They were about six to six and a half feet tall. Yeah. That's including the base. Yeah. All made of terracotta. Yes. Crossbows, finger on the trigger, dudes on horses. Well, those are in separate rooms. So first room was like 6000 infantry, man. Yeah. It was lined up like a formation would be lined up. Then there's another room that had specialists like cavalry, archers with crossbows, blow darters. Yeah. And then there was a third room that had, I think, 86 commanders. It was like the command room. So basically what they revealed was this terracotta army information in this guy's grave. Yes. With the idea that he wanted protection in the afterlife because he was one of the great jerks of world history. Yeah, he was terrible. He was a tyrant for sure. He perhaps was responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million of his citizens. Okay. He also, though, got things done. Yeah, let's talk about the guy. Okay. So he was the first emperor. Before him, China had seven kingdoms. And in 481, all these kingdoms said, you know what? I want to be the main kingdom. So it started what was called the Warring States era of battling for land and superiority. And I saw this really neat documentary on that geo, I think, called China's Ghost Army. I think it's what it's called. I posted a link on our podcast page for this episode. Totally worth watching. It's like an hour. But they say that before this, prior to this Warring States era, when an emperor died in the Chin kingdom, they would kill the whole court, hundreds of people wow. Would be buried alive with the emperor. Holy cow. And then this Warring States these battles and wars were so significant as far as casualties went. They're like, we can't do that anymore. We need them to go fight in the wars. So they stopped that tradition, but it was because of the Warring States era. Interesting. Can you imagine, like, 200 people just being mass buried alive together? No. Because the emperor died. I can't imagine. So let's get back to this jerk. Sorry, Chin. He overtook and basically was the first emperor. Forced people to be in the army, built up a huge army. He relocated in his first year about 120,000 families. And that's like Stalin did the same thing. It's like you can't have ethnic unity and then that kind of collective thought and then potentially an uprising if you break up that kind of ethnic bonds by basically busting people in and out of different areas. Yeah, it makes sense. But this guy was doing it like about 2000 years before Stalin. Crazy. He burned all the books, he burned all the writings. Scholars that didn't jibe with his line of thought were buried alive or beheaded. Yeah. He was a piece of garbage. It's terrible. He assembled a workforce of a million men to build about 5000 miles of roads and the Great Wall of China. Yeah. The First Great Wall of China. So while we said he was a jerk, you made a point and he got things done. He got a monetary system that was unified. Yeah. He also unified weights and measurements. He unified China from seven kingdoms into one country. And it's still that way today, 2000 years later. And if you've noticed the similarity between Chin and China, that's because the country is named after him. Yeah. So he got things done. Vital figure in China's history. But he did a brutal, controlling, murderous dictator. Right. He wasn't asking. No. And he also had a really conflated view of the empire that he put together. And you can see this apparently in the money that he minted. There were different regions that he conquered, had different kinds of money. So he did create like, a single monetary system, I think he said. And that money was square shaped with a hole in the center, kind of like a square donut the Ban Liang coin. And that coin at the time in ancient China, the square represented the earth and the circle represented the sky or the heavens. And so what he was saying is that this earth, my empire, is even greater than the heavens that surround the earth. Yeah. That's how good I'm feeling about myself right now. He felt pretty good, but he was paranoid. And I think that usually comes when you're on top and you get there by any means necessary. You're going to be watching your back your whole life. Specifically, he came from the west and conquered eastward. So when he was buried, he had the Terracotta Army facing east to protect him because of all the badness he had done. And this is after he had killed hundreds of scientists that he commissioned to try and prolong his life. Yeah. So we talked about him, actually in the bizarre medical treatments episode, I think, without realizing it, that back in the day, at the time, they believe mercury had some sort of, like life enhancing or immortality bestowing properties. And he would take mercury pills. I think that's ironically what killed him. But in addition to mercury, he sent out people that, like, find fountains of youth or whatever was the Chinese legend version of that. He was obsessed with remaining alive and simultaneously, like you said, totally paranoid with dying. So he must have been a very tormented person. Yeah. He killed 480 doctors and scientists were killed who could not come up with a way to make him immortal. And again, buried alive or beheaded. Great. Not a good guy. All right, you want to take a break here and talk more about the Terracotta Army? Yes. All right. So, Chuck, when we were talking about this guy, I think you're painted a pretty good picture of him. I guess he comes to either he comes to Grip with the idea that he's going to die because at the time he's trying to chase immortality. He's concocting, like, a huge burial mausoleum for himself. I guess hedging his bets in case he does die. Sure. But by this time, Confucius and other scholars in China had basically philosophically debunked the idea of life after death. So this man was utterly crazy by his contemporary standards. Yeah. And that kind of shows if you step back and really think about the attitude and the mentality behind what he was doing. But he, at some point, either came to grips with the fact that he was going to die, or he was just hedging his bets and thought he was going to remain immortal. But just in case, let me have this incredible, grand, funerary complex created, and let's build a Terracotta Army to protect me in the afterlife. Yeah. It's really neat to look at the Terracotta Army now as art, but it's 8000 soldiers. Like, this guy was clearly cuckoo. He was off as rocker. Yeah, he's a bad man. He was a bad man. All right, so shall we start with the army? Yes. Because it's not all that he had commissioned, but the army is pretty significant. It is significant. Like you said, they are in formation, so the front dudes are kneeling down. They're bowmen. And they were famous, the armies they had then. This is one of the reasons he took over. Figured out the crossbow, and they figured out how to shoot while riding a horse. And that was basically all she wrote. Yeah. Everybody else is like your mother. Yeah. Like, down here with a sword on the ground. Right. And you're shooting at me from 20ft away with some weird metallic bolt. Not fair. I guess. Not metallic, but wooden. Yeah. They weren't forging steel back then. I wonder when they did start. I don't know. Sounds like a podcast. It does. How steel works. Yes, that would be a good one. You could see that. So you have these bowmen they have on their armor, their fingers on the trigger. They're incredibly detailed down to the soles of their feet. Yeah. Their shoes they're wearing have, like, treadmarks on the bottom. Yeah. They took great pride, these artists, clearly, because they probably didn't want to get killed. Yeah. Because each of them had to sign in case there was a flaw. It could be traced back to who built this one. Yeah. And I bet they were killed if they didn't like it. They most decidedly were 83. They found the stamps, which were ultimately the signatures of 83 different foreman. Okay. And each foreman had a team of apprentices working under him. And the reason that they did assign those stamps is so that he could have them killed if he didn't like how slow work was progressing, if he didn't like what it looked like. And at first, Chuck, they were like, well, this is clearly they just set up an assembly line. Molds were known to the Chinese back then, and that's the only way you could possibly create 7000 figures from a terracotta army. And they found that? Yes. Actually, the heads were created through molds, I think the arms were, and stuff like that. But the bulk of them were created by this thing called coiling. Okay. Is that like 3D printing? Very much so. Actually, they take clay and hammer it until it's soft and pliable, and then you wrap it in, like, a rope around it, and then you mold it. Yeah. There's people who are recreating it to try to figure out how they did it. I love that stuff. And they've examined, like, broken pieces so they can see the inside. They can see the coiling evidence very clearly, and they're like, It doesn't make any sense. Like, you can't quickly make all these figures in an efficient way by coiling. Why would they not just use molds? And finally, somebody realized this emperor was a bloodthirsty tyrant. He didn't care about efficiency. He cared about differences, distinctions. So while the heads just the actual shape of the heads were made in molds, the bodies were made by hand each one wow. Through this coiling method. So where you could make, like, a molded body in maybe a week, it would take a month to do one body by coiling. And that's what they were doing. Because he wanted them different. That's crazy. Yeah. He just didn't want to carbon copy soldiers. Exactly. Wow. So each one of these the body was made by hand through this incredibly intensive coiling method. So they're starting from the ground up, obviously, with the base. Right. And then coiling their way up. The legs then were molded and affixed, as well as the arms and torsos. No, not the torso. Oh, not the torso. No, that's not right. Okay. Got you. But then the heads, they said they found eight different head molds. Yes. And that's just the big mold, not the faces. Right. The faces were done by hand, individually, as well. Right. Each face. Yeah. The hair and expressions. Yeah. And the hair warriors who had had the most kills had longer hair and a bigger updo. Right. Bigger beehive. They took great care into making the most revered soldiers have their hair matched as it should be, as realistic as they could. Yeah. All the way around. If you're just an infantry man, you'd be wearing, like, one of those beanies a beanie hat, probably, with maybe like, your bun just kind of sticking up off to the side underneath. If you're a general, you might be wearing a huge hat with a pheasant feather and a bow tying the whole thing underneath you. Pretty fancy. Yeah, very fancy. So these things were incredibly detailed. They weren't like a knock off Star Wars figure that you would find in Bulgaria or something like that. Yeah. Or China. Yes. Sure. That was way more appropriate than Bulgaria. They probably make the real thing, too. Yeah. These were very detailed. You wouldn't want to say lifelike. They're still artistic slightly, but they were pretty detailed still. Yeah. And the ones you see now, when you see them in the museum or you look it up on Google, they are not colored, but that is because of humidity and time. But originally they fired them in the kiln, and they painted and lacquered them as well. That's right. I'd love to see those. Watch that National Geographic thing. They've redone one. Oh, really? In the original colors that they think almost garish. Wow. They're so different. Like, colorful, wise, and lots of surprising lavenders and blues and purples and things. Reds. Garish colors used to be way more garish. Right. Okay. They were doing some assembly line stuff. Most of the bulk of it, though, was coiled by hand. The faces, the hair, all done by hand. And then each one was painted by hand and then given a coat of lacquer. That's insane. It's insane. That sky would have had an assembly line of 7000 of these things built and unpainted. But he didn't. He went even more detailed. And apparently also, I learned from that documentary at the time, lacquer was an extremely expensive product. Oh, I'm sure. And he was using it on his Terracotta soldiers. It still ain't cheap. There wasn't just the soldiers. There were also there was a strong man in another room and some what do you call them? Not circus performers. Yeah. Acrobat. Yeah. And I looked up the strong man, and he was noted for the detail of his biceps. And he had a gut. He did. He had a gut and some gut and guns. He's missing his head, right? Yeah. I didn't see a head. Yeah, but he's a big boy. He was built like Andre the Giant. Yeah, kind of. All right, you want to take another little rest here? We'll take a quick nap. Okay. And then I'll nudge you awake. Okay. Very gently, we'll finish up. Wake up, buddy. Time to finish the Terracotta Army. Oh, man. Oh, I got crust in my eyes. Look at you. Okay, I'm back. Chuck. Okay, so Chain wasn't the only ruler to do this, right? No, he wasn't. Who else did it? Well, do you remember in our pyramids episode? Yeah. Although if it hasn't come out yet, no one will know what I'm talking about. But you will eventually. We talked about how the pyramid of Khufu is the pinnacle of pyramid building in Dynastic, Egypt. Yes. And then the pyramids got smaller because the rulers credits, I guess, went down as people started to worship the sun instead. Yeah, great point that I never considered. Very similar thing happened in China. While the Qing Dynasty only lasted for another four years after Chin Shi Huangdi died, and then the Han Dynasty started, and the Hans apparently had a much easier hand with their subjects. And so as a result, even though they had terracotta armies buried with them, they were like a third to a 6th of the size of Chin's terracotta army. And they take that as a sign that this might and power over people had diminished tremendously. Yeah, I think it was symbolic of a kinder regime. Right. And one that was not also boobytrapped with very much like Raiders of the Lost Dark, apparently chains to them, or the whole complex was boobytrapped with blow darts and stuff. Crossbows. Crossbows. Ready to go. Yeah. And also one of the reasons why this thing was boobytrapped was to prevent looters, because, remember, there's a historian that came along not too long after he's part of the early Han Dynasty, from what I understand. His name is Sima Kian. And Sima Kian is the one who first described chains mausoleum. And one of the things he described is that on the ceiling was a constellation made of pearls and gems. Crazy mountains had been chiseled out of gold, and that chains tomb itself was surrounded by a river of mercury. Because remember, again, that makes sense. They said that it bestowed immortality. And from what I understand, a lot of what SEMA Kian was talking about in writing has been proven correct. And they've also found that in the soil around Chiang's tomb, where they think he's buried there's higher than unusually high mercury levels. Yeah, like super high. Yeah. So they think, like, these crazy people buried him around a river of mercury, and who knows if there's a constellation of pearls and gemstones, maybe. See? My kian is right. Yeah. And that also makes it super dangerous to excavate still. Sure. Which is one of the reasons why they haven't done more there. There are 600 pits that they have unearthed thus far, which is, like I said, I think only about 1%. And they're sort of afraid to look elsewhere because of the booby traps and the mercury. I don't blame them. So if you stats 36 years to complete this army yes. Or the tomb, I guess. Right. 700,000 laborers. They estimate 820,000 deep with I saw 8000 warriors. This is seven. I've seen different numbers, too. Let's just say between six and eight. Okay. 40,000 weapons. And apparently these weapons are in really good shape. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're like bronze swords and stuff like that. They weren't made of paper mache, so I guess he did have metal. Yeah, bronze. At least that answers that. And each one of these terracotta soldiers weighs about \u00a3330. Yeah, which is crazy, because they're not even solid. Yeah, they wouldn't be. Right. So what is the coil on the inside, then they smooth out the outside. Right. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So we did mention that Emperor Han Ling Di, who came 53 years after Chin, had his smaller terracotta soldiers. There's also the wish on site, which they found in 2002. Another Terracotta army. But they're all just a foot tall. Might as well not even be there. Symbolic and cute. Yeah, that also symbolic. Again, of a kinder. What was the one quote from do nothing in order to govern? Yeah, not quite the same as Chin. That was Emperor Han. Lean Dee's quote. He was remodel chain was a little more do whatever you need to do to squash any disruption. Oh, yeah. And Han Langdy came along and said, you know what? We're going to not text you guys that much. We're going to do away with forced labor. Yeah, let's party. He was like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Han Dynasty. I think he got respect, though. Sure. He was the Rodney Dangerfield post death because Rodney has tons of respect. What was Rodney Dangerfield's? Epitaph do you remember? It's like one of the best ever. Someone I was on the Mark Marin's interview show, WTF was interviewed and they were talking about the old days, hanging out with Rodney and just what a beast that guy was. What do you mean just party beast? Oh, yeah, like legendary. You hang out with Rodney and you're in for a long night. I can imagine. Yeah, but a really good guy. I found it, Chuck. What? His epitaph on Ronnie Dangerfield's Gravestone. Oh, boy. There goes the neighborhood. So classic. Yes. Awesome. You buy a hat like that, you get a free bowl of soup. Oh, that was pretty good. Man, you are like the rich little of this podcast. You got anything else? No. If you want to know more about the Terracotta army, go see it. And while you're doing that, you can type those words into the search bar@howstepworks.com. Terracotta is one word, by the way. One word. Smithsonian magazine. Oh, did they goof it? And since I shamed Smithsonian magazine, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this animal imprint feedback. Hey, guys. I'm currently listening to how animal imprinting works and could not even finish it because I had to write you. My Godmothers. Dorothy and Susan live on own and run an urban farm in Austin, Texas. On the east side they have several animals such as chickens, bunnies, geese, miniature donkeys, oh, boy. And ducks. Recently, a mother duck had no interest in her babies and they got adopted by chicken. That chicken got sick of them trying to play in all of the rain and all the rain we've been getting and left them on their own. A male goose named Gustavo took the baby ducks in and treats them as his own. On top of that, the next batch of baby ducks born, he went and took as his own. Now, Gustavo has about ten baby ducks that follow him around the nest with them. He has his own private army. That's right. And they're not terracotta. They're made of baby duck feathers. The softest army. I failed to mention that Gustavo is the face of the farm, greets people, follows around my Godmothers, and gives tours whoever stops by. So she says, she finishes with I started listening to all about five months ago and cannot stop. I start many of my sentences now with this podcast. I was listening to many random facts that I learned from you. I also teach high school world history and on the days I need the students not to talk, aka the days that I don't have a lesson plan, this is Chuck's Words Giggly email. I play one of your episodes. It applies to what we're learning and have them do book work. I find many of them not working and listening to your show instead. Nice. So that is from Christina mouthy. And Christina, thank you for your work as a teacher. And hello to all your students. Hello to your godmother's in Gustavo. Yes. Hello, Ms. Madison's class. Thanks for listening, Ms. Maddie. That's so nice. I'm sure that's what they call her. Yeah, that'd be great. I call her Christina. That's way too modern of a school for me. Yeah, and big ups to Gustavo. That's pretty cool. I want to take a Gustavo tour someday. Oh, and she sent a picture of Gustavo on the ducks too. Well, we should post that somewhere. All right. Unless it's copyrighted, let us know if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com STUFFYou know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Hey, 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." | ||
a6d555b0-5462-11e8-b449-270c45655971 | How Search and Rescue Dogs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-search-and-rescue-dogs-work | All dogs are great, but some dogs work harder than others. Or play harder, depending on your view. Learn all about the good boys and girls who find lost people and recover bodies to bring humans peace and closure. | All dogs are great, but some dogs work harder than others. Or play harder, depending on your view. Learn all about the good boys and girls who find lost people and recover bodies to bring humans peace and closure. | Tue, 04 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=338, tm_isdst=0) | 48911756 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and firsttime ever guest producer. Andrew. Very exciting. I thought you were saying he was a ghost or something. Well, no, he's right beside you. Right. But I mean, he could be an illusion or one of those, like the ghosts that I saw that didn't look like a ghost. That was just a solid form. Sure. Aka a ghost. Yeah. We could use more ghost producers. We could don't have to pay benefits. No, that would be great. Press a button and die. Chuck. Yes. I don't know if you remember, several months ago, we released an episode, and it was a good one, if you ask me. It was about search and rescue. Okay. Do you remember the episode SAR? Right. And there was like, USA, urban Search and Rescue, wilderness search and rescue. And in that episode, I was like, man, we have to do an episode on search and rescue dogs. Well, by God, today is the day. We're doing it. The only time we've ever followed up on a promise in our career. The prophecy has been fulfilled. That's right. So we're talking today about search and rescue dogs. And first of all, this article is just genuine, bona fide, how stuff works quality from the olden days. Yeah. Just checks all those boxes, doesn't it? Every box. That's Mark One in the favor of this episode. That it's. Based on that article, mark Two is that it's about dogs and how great dogs are, and I just had a really good time researching this one. Yeah, it's funny. Like, during reading this whole thing and all this research in my head, I just kept thinking, good boy, good girl. I just kept seeing that over and over. Yeah, just petting them behind the ears, playing with them in your mind. So when we're talking about star dogs, we're talking about search and rescue dogs. Dogs that are trained to go find people. Right. They do two things. There's two components to a search and rescue dog's job. It is to find people and then to let their handler know that they found the person. Right, sure. Because if a dog, they just find someone, doesn't let anyone know. They'll just be sitting around licking faces all day. Right. You're like, yes, you found me. Go get help. And the dogs like, I don't know. Although I did like seeing what was that one dog called that's trained to stay there instead of going to alert everyone else. Victim loyalty is that behavior. Yeah. And I think that's the case. If there's, like, someone is injured, they may need that dog to just stay there and start barking instead of saying, hey, I'm going to run and find someone and let them know that you're not okay. Right. So however they alert, as long as they alert, that's good. That's the second part of the job, as long as they don't wander off and find a craps game to engage in without telling anybody that they found the person who's stranded in the wilderness. Right. Which would not happen with a SAR dog because they can focus like nobody's business. Right. So Sardogs are professional working dogs, right, just as much as like a herding dog on a farm who actually does that work, or a canine unit dog. Or one of the Beagle brigade. We talked about them before. It's a working dog. But the article that Julia Layton wrote points out and I think really just kind of changed my perspective on things and opened up my eyes that what the dog is really doing is playing. Yeah. Right. The dog is not taking work seriously, even though it appears to be it's taking place seriously. And I just love that. Yeah, it really hit home to me, too, when it pointed out that if you've ever had a dog that will, like, run till their paws are bloody to get that tennis ball or that Kong, right. I guess I just name checked a brand. They should throw some dough for that. It's a good brand, though. Mobile loves the little Kong balls, the tiny ones. Those tiny ones are so cute. That would make a good Sardog. And I have had two dogs in my life that would be great. Search and rescue dogs. My dog Buckley, who is no longer with us, and my two current dogs, Nico. And they both had a lot of Staffordshire terrier in them. And they both, from day one, if you threw something, ran and got it, brought it back, dropped it at your feet and looked at you as, if you don't throw that thing again, I might keel over and die right now. Staff richard terrier. Isn't that spudz? McKenzie no, I can't remember what kind of terrier that is. It was some kind of terrier and I thought it was an English countryside village named Terrier. Staffie I think a lot of people throw a lot of dogs into the pit bull category that aren't pit bulls. That's kind of a bone of contention with pit bull owners. Sure. It's like a dog attack that has any a terrier in it. And they say it was a pit bull, so staffes are lumped in there. But I remember when we did one of my great memories of being in Edinburgh on our tour, I took a walk around the lovely town and I ran into a lady who was walking one of hers. And when you're out of town and you're not with your dog, you just sort of like, attack every dog you see. Totally. And so I got down and I was with this dog and I was like, oh, I love this dog. Your dog's so sweet or something. And she went, Just a wee. Staffie it's so Scottish. A wee. Staffie that town is magnificent. It's magic. It really is. I can't wait to go back one day. Yeah, we need to do that. We need to get on another UK tour. I could not agree more, dude. Heck yeah. Okay, it's done. We're doing it. Look for it in like two years or three years if it's anything like our Australia tour. So with the Sardogs, though, we cannot emphasize anymore how much time is of the essence, because whether it is and we'll get into the various types of rescues, but they're all pretty time sensitive, whether it's a missing child, God forbid, or a collapsed building, God forbid, or an avalanche, God forbid. None of these situations are awesome and the clock is ticking. Especially in those cases where there's maybe short of oxygen or they're buried in snow. Like minutes count. Yeah, for sure. I saw on a site from an organization that offers Sardog training for your dog, like if you think your dog's got it, they say, Come, we'll find out if your dog has got it. They were saying that you have to be out there. You have to treat this like you're an ambulance. Basically, when you get the call, you got to be out the door. And it's interesting, the dog doesn't have any job other than search and rescue. So the dog is ready to go anytime. But you're their handler and they live with you and you have to be out there with them. So you have to be able to leave your regular job at the drop of a hat. And Star dog handlers are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So much that the dogs go on vacation with the handlers in case there's a call and you both have to go show up somewhere together. So you have to be very responsive. And it is like you're saying, because time is of the essence, because this article gives the example of avalanche victims. Oh, man. Like, if you're an avalanche victim, if you're covered in an avalanche, you probably will not want to be thinking about these stats. But most avalanche victims who are found within, I think is it ten minutes or 15 minutes? I think 90% of the victims are alive at 15 minutes. Okay, great. What about 35 minutes? Chuck 30%, right? Between 15 and 35 minutes, 60% of those folks will be gone. Right. And so you might say, well, okay, wait, you guys are talking about an avalanche. How's the dog going to find you in an avalanche? Dogs can find you covered in snow. Dogs can find you underwater. Dogs can pick up your scent sometimes when you're 500 meters away. Right. It's amazing. I was surprised to hear that because you always see in like those old timey chain gang movies that are my favorite genre, obviously, when they're trying to elude the tracking dogs, they cross a river or something like that to scent and that probably works for tracking dogs. And we'll talk about the difference between these dogs, but for a scent dog, they can be trained to find your scent underwater, especially if you just happen to be decomposing. Yeah. And especially if that dog is a bloodhound. And in those old timey movies that you love, it seems like it's always a bloodhound or a pack of bloodhounds. And the dude who just escaped from prison runs through the river. And usually in the movie, they're like, drat it all. They just threw us off the scent. Right. Somebody throws their hat to the ground because of that whole thing, that whole genre or whatever, that prism escape thing. I unfairly associate bloodhounds with scary, backwards, like redneck police officials. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because they're always with them. But that doesn't mean that the bloodhounds are scary. They're great. Sure. Good old hound dogs. Yeah. Elvis wrote a song about them. Yeah. But it wasn't favorable. That's true. Lying all the time. I wonder. But Elvis wasn't talking about dogs. No, but he was comparing somebody who he didn't have in a high opinion or high esteem to a hound dog. I wonder who that was about. And he probably had no idea that he was giving them quite a compliment, right? He was trying to do the opposite. It was like that Simpsons, where somebody calls somebody else a chicken and a chicken and a top head appears and goes, he's insulting the both of us. Elvis should have said, you ain't nothing but a hound dog, which is actually the most talented scent dog of all time. That would have fit, too. You ain't nothing but a hound dog. I hold you in deep admiration. And there goes the career of Elvis Presley. Yeah. So smell wise, dogs have a sense of smell about 40 times stronger than a human, and this is all dogs. It doesn't mean all dogs make good star dogs. But just because little Momo is like a little curly, cute lap dog doesn't mean that Momo may not be a good SAR dog, for obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean Momo can't smell a dead body in the ocean. No. And she does. She goes and finds a game of craps instead of telling anybody about it, because that's how you've trained her. Sure. Now, Momo would not be a very good dog. She would be a little sketched out on the scene of a search and rescue mission, but she could. And she does, I'm sure, pick up on the rafts, R-A-F-T-S which is gross. But these are the dead skin cells that are constantly flying off of our body that smell only like us, like every individual. Apparently. This is not proven, but they know that humans shed skin cells, rafts, and that they do have a scent, specifically human scent, and that is specific to each person, too, which is all totally believable yeah. Which is why, like in the movies, they give somebody an old sweatshirt that that person wore the day before. Right. And that's how they know how to go look for that person. Right. They'll do that. They'll mash it in the dog's face and then go find it and they find the person that smells like that. So they think that's how dogs are able to find specific human scents or any human scent is that the rafts, the skin cells that we're shedding are being picked up. We leave them behind on the ground. They follow the ground. If we run up against a bush or something, a bunch of them get scraped off or they're just kind of floating in the air. And depending on the type of dog, they're going to pick up those skin cell rafts. And it's probably about here that we should say that there are two general umbrella categories of search and rescue dogs. There's the tracking dog and there's the air scent dog. And they do the same thing. They find humans, but they do it in two very different ways. One super targeted and one super general. And depending on the situation that you're faced with, you're going to call in one dog or the other or maybe both. If you're just a county that's just flush with extra tax pay or cash that you don't know what to do with. Sure. Dog county. Yeah. So a tracking dog, they also call those following dogs. Those are like when you think of a bloodhound with their nose down on a trail, right. They're the ones who know. And this is what these dogs need. They know the last scene point of this person. So like, if you went hiking in the woods and you parked your car at a trailhead, they know. That is in fact your lasting point. That is the lasting point. Here is a sweater that they wore yesterday and go at it. Right. And we talked about the nuts and bolts of that kind of stuff on the search and rescue episode. So go listen to that. Because we talked about the last seen point and we talked about how searchers, like, fan out from there. Sure. There's like a quick response team. The dogs are the ones that are brought out first because if it's a tracking dog and they're following the scent that was specifically laid down by that person. That tracking dog needs to be there very quickly and they need to be there before everybody else because once a bunch of searchers get into the area and start searching for the person. They don't know where the person scent trail is. So they might be crossing all over it and ultimately ruin it for the dog who can't pick it up anymore. So that tracking dog is going to be among the first searchers on the scene. That's right. The air sent dogs. Like you said, these are a little more like when you don't know, like somebody's just lost in the forest or somebody is buried in the snow, they don't have that lasting starting point, and they basically just say, go out there and stick your nose in the air instead of on the ground and see if you can inhale some of those airborne rafts. Like fine seventies cocaine. Right. The finest Querville golden, the fine Colombian and those that's basically their deal. It's a little more general. You're probably some sort of a well, there are all kinds of dogs, but you're not small. You're medium sized or larger. You may be a German shepherd or like a Lab. Believe it or not, it's probably not a St. Bernard just because they're just a little too big these days. Yeah. Cumbersome is how this article put it. Border collies are good. Yeah. And of course, the bloodhound, because those big old ears and all those cute folds in their faces actually concentrate scent particles right into those stinky, stinky, drippy nostrils. Yeah. It just kind of slaps the skin cells of humans right into the dog's nostrils. Amazing. So let's take a break, and then we're going to come back and talk about different specialties that a search and rescue dog can have. Okay. Wolf learning stuff with your child, Chuck. So we're back. We are talking now, if you'll follow me, in this line of thinking, okay, about the different specialties search and rescue dogs can have. Go, yeah. This one is sort of the saddest specialty. But the cadaver dog very important, though, because people need closure in their lives. And if you've lost a loved one, literally lost a loved one, and you don't know where they are, and they end up not surviving that ordeal, then you would still like to give them a burial of your choice or however you want to do things in your family. But, wow, that was a lot well, I was saying a proper burial, but that means a lot of things to a lot of people. Sure, it could be a sky burial. Sure, it could be. Remember those? Oh, yeah, that was a great one. I don't remember what that was on, but that was a good one. Buzzards right. Just picking at your body. Yes. Up in the Himalayas. So they are specifically trained to search for human remains and those decomposition gases and those skin rafts still. But that is pretty amazing because these dogs can find, it says a single human tooth or a single drop of blood they can detect. Right. Because first of all, they're naturally able to detect that kind of stuff, but then the training they receive really kind of narrows and focuses that natural ability they have. But when I was looking up cadaver dogs, as of course they did, I was like, how would you train a cadaver dog? Where are you getting the dead bodies? Body farm. Apparently, if you are training cadaver dogs, you can't apply to get like decomposing human tissue. You have to get a license for it, I believe, or a license to have it, but apparently it's hard to come by. So trainers will use their own blood to train dogs to find blood. There's also a company that makes an artificial training scent called Sigma Pseudocorp Scent, and it comes in three flavors recently deceased, decomposing and drowned. And you can train a dog on this scent. It's close enough approximation that they will learn to follow the scent and find decomposing human remains. So two people buy those creeps and SAR trainers, right? But just two people buy the bottles. They're like a million dollars each. Yeah. And they go out on a tinder date and they're like just a little dab of drowned body behind each year. I'm all set. Yeah. All right. Water dogs are the next and those search for drowning victims, obviously they are generally in a boat at some point and we'll talk about their training. But one of the big parts of training is to make sure that these SAR dogs can ride in helicopters and ride in boats and ride on a snowmobile or whatever. An ATV, what are those things called? Yeah, ATV. Four wheelers. Remember they had three wheelers when we were kids. Man, those are so dangerous. Yeah. Everyone's like, man, these things sure to tip over a lot, right? Maybe we should add a fourth wheel. Yeah, there you go. And then now it's stable. Oh, man, those were so dangerous. I remember when they came out and it was like twelve year olds dying all over the place with those things. I never read one of those. I didn't either. My mom would not have let me near one of those. I was a go. Carter. Oh, lucky I didn't have one. We never had any of that stuff because my parents were teachers, so they were like, draw a picture of one. But my really good friend growing up lived out in the woods in the country and he had two sort of homemade gokarts. Not sort of homemade, they were totally homemade. They weren't like the super sweet things you could buy. Right. But they had the land where their dad built like a dirt track and it was the most fun thing I ever did as a child. That's awesome. It was awesome. Yeah. I was always the friend out in the country that had the gokarts. Sure, yeah. Not a city folk. Right. I mean, if you have a really specialized sardog, maybe it is used to riding in a go karts too. But it's going to definitely be trained to ride in on just about anything that it will be called in for. And in addition, Chuck, this is amazing to me. They are totally fine with being lowered down the face of a cliff in a harness, on a rope. Yeah, stuff like that. As we'll see, they're trained to basically keep it together in some very weird situations for dogs. Yeah. And again, with my dog, Nico, the staffie, I have two dogs and they've both been on boats. And Charlie, the shelter mix, kind of just hides under seats, whereas Nico, we call her the hood ornament, she just sits as tall as possible, front and center, and her nose is just I can't imagine the amount of sense that she's inhaling. Right. It's really impressive. Yes. We took Mumbo and a kayak to see what she would do, and she loved it. She did not hide at all. She was alert, barking at fish, anything she could find. She was like, yes, this is pretty great. That's pretty fun stuff. So there was also, like we said, there's avalanche search and rescue dogs. There's also urban disaster search and rescue dogs, and we'll talk about them more in depth in a little while, but suffice to say that that is the pinnacle of search and rescue dogs. Yeah, that's the toughest one. There is something like, from what I saw, there's maybe 100 search and rescue dogs in the United States that are officially qualified to search in a disaster scenario in an urban area. Yeah. And I know we're going to talk about it in a minute, but there was one part of that section oh, yeah. That just got me. Like, these dogs operate 100% on reward for doing what they're doing. And in urban disasters, like, apparently a dog can get down on themselves if they just keep finding dead people. Right. And so at ground zero, there were firefighters and rescuers that would pretend to be people trapped just so that these dogs that have been working long days could feel like they had done something to help. Right. Can you believe that? Dude, I totally can. That's just such, like a firefighter thing to do. Pretty cool. I love that too. All right, so there's wilderness dogs, self explanatory, and then something called evidence article dogs. Yeah. They can find, like, pieces of clothing or evidence in a crime. Oh, okay. Yeah, got you. So go find the bloody hammer, right? Exactly. Wow, that turned dark. He did. So let's say that you want to start training your dog. Actually, training a search and rescue dog follows pretty established training principles. And first of all, it's all positive reinforcement. Oh, sure, we eventually need to do an episode on, like, negative reinforcement or dog obedience because it's just so fully discredited. But most people think that. Most people don't realize it. But you do not need to punish your dog for not doing something right. You just praise and reward your dog for when they do do something right. That's how you train a dog. Yeah. And that's the basis of search and rescue training is it's all positive reinforcement and reward. And the whole thing starts out with just basic obedience. And it's at this point that Momo would wash out of search and rescue trail really just right out of the gate. Momo is her own person and we treat her as such, like she's our child, so we don't treat her like a dog. So she has come to not see herself as a dog. She's a very good dog, very sweet and loyal and takes good care of us. But she would just get distracted and again, a little freaked out and sketched out when the distractions came around. Yeah, nico stares. We're living in a rental house right now because we're doing work on our house, so it's a very weird time for our whole family to all of a sudden be uprooted and living in this strange house out in the woods. But Nico just sits in stairs in the window, which overlooks a big wooded lot, just movement, squirrels, birds or whatever. And the second you open that door, she's so fast, she's like a greyhound bolting for anything. And luckily she hasn't caught anything yet. But I'm telling you, man, she'd be a great star dog. The only reason I would not do this is because I want her around, not on location, helping people. So, I guess yeah, I'm selfish. If it were squirrel search and rescue, I think Muma would be excellent, excellent at it. I agree. S-S-A-R. Yeah, maybe there is a call for that. We just don't realize it because we don't speak squirrel. So, yes, basic obedience is level one, just regular commands. Temperament is super important. They have to be good with strangers, other dogs. Obviously, a lot of times there are a bunch of dogs on the scene and they can't be like, I want to go fight that dog or play with that dog. They have to be good on walks, on loose leashes, but be good with crowds. All of that stuff I imagine, really roots out in training a bunch of dogs right off the bat. Yes, for sure. So that's just basic obedience and you have to just knock that off the list out of the gate. Sure. Right. Then you move on to the you move from good, well behaved, obedient dog to now we're starting to get into the training a little bit. And you want to teach your dog something really important that apparently comes up in search and rescue, that you are not the end all, be all in the world to this dog. This is the part I hate. This dog has to be able to take instruction from people other than you and to also show a tremendous amount of concentration, self possession, nondistraction. And the way that they test this, usually when they're training search and rescue dogs, is they will take a dog over to a crowd of other dogs and there will be other people milling about and all that. And you, the handler, will ask the dog to lay down or stay or sit, and the dog and then you leave, you go away, at least out of sight. I think this article says 30ft away and so the dog can't see you anymore. And then over the course of 1015, 20 minutes, other handlers come in and take over responsibility of tending to this herd of dogs that are all sitting around. And if your dog will listen to your command that you gave one time to stay here or sit or lay down, whatever, the whole time you're gone until you come back and tell them that they can get up or whatever, then that's apparently the test for canine professionalism pretty amazing. And I'm sure there's probably a lot of different tests. There's no standardization for search and rescue dog training except for the FEMA certification for urban search and rescue dogs. So I'm sure there's different tests all over the place, but that's a pretty good glimpse of what you need to expect from your dog to surpass the second level, the second echelon, and move on to the third one. Yeah, the second one is tough. Second one is tough. I think the third one is genuinely tough. Not necessarily for you training the dog. I think the third one is the tough one on the dog. Yeah. This is just raw physical and mental ability and agility. They're going through like, an obstacle course, basically. You can go through tunnels. You can climb an incline of more than, I think, a minimum of 45 degrees on each side, like up and down. You can get into a cherry picker like we talked about and go up really high without jumping out or be in that boat or be in that snowmobile or helicopter and not get freaked out. They don't crank up the helicopter usually once you get in, we've all seen Mash, you got to run up to a helicopter whose blades are spinning. A lot of people don't want to do that. No, but your dog needs to be able to, like, come on, let's go. All man, the machine gun. Yeah. Or, hey, get in this harness. I'm going to attach you to my chest and we're going to repel down this mountain. And you just got to be a good boy. Yeah, they do. I mean, once they reach a certain level of training, they do. And then the final is tracking, obviously. Well, I mean, this is after they pass those three levels, but tracking is urban tracking is level one, like you talked about. That is the hardest thing to do in this test, is just off the charts to me. What they have a person do is they will be the target, like whatever they're looking for. So they will do a half mile to 1 mile track from one point to another in a high traffic area of a city. They'll go to downtown New York and walk half mile to a mile. This dog is sitting there the whole time with someone else. They have. To cross at least two intersections, make at least three right angle, turns right, go down two blocks of alleyways, leaving a sent article along the way. Like, they're at least leaving little nuggets shedding off skin cells, I guess. Sure. Or maybe dropping the comb in your back pocket. Then once you have laid down that track, another person crosses that track in at least one place. So they're adding scent, basically trying to throw this dog off. Right. And then 30 minutes later, after all of this and after the target is at the very end, they finally say, all right, dog, go. And the dog has to find this target in no more time than it took for the person to lay down that track. Right. And like you said, waiting 30 minutes before they start, after the person's finished. That's impressive. That is super impressive. And there are distractions the whole way, too. Right. From what I gathered, this is actually done in an actual city. Like, they don't have a fake city built somewhere in Colorado or something like that. Your real town this is happening in. Yeah. So the more distractions, the better. Yeah, for sure. And they hire people who are wearing, like, Dracar Noir and just to wander around everywhere to confuse the scent and everything. It's a crazy jam for the dog. That's gross, actually. Man. When's the last time you smelled your Car Noir? I don't know. 86? I have smelled it within the last year, and I got to tell you, it holds up maybe even more than I realized before, you know, I feel about cologne. So I say we take our second break and then come back and talk about what we've talked about at this point is just, like, basic training. Now we got to get into specialty training. Okay. Yeah. We'll be right back. Okay, so, Chuck, your dog has been through SAR training or basic training for SAR, yes. But they haven't actually been taught the SAR part yet. They've just shown, like, okay, I got it. I got what it takes. Let's put me in there. Show me what to do. Yeah. And the way that you train a dog to search and rescue by alerting is just basically taking their natural inclinations, and, again, like, focusing on and amplifying them, and you do that through reward. And the way that you train a dog through reward I'm having trouble saying that for some reason, is that you identify what that dog wants more in the world than anything else, whether it's a tennis ball, whether it's a snocages, whatever it is, you figure out what that dog wants, the thing that they will do anything to get, and that's what you use as their reward. And then you can start this search and rescue training. Yeah. And the reward is important to be consistent with that reward, because you can't even pointed out, even in horrible situations like 911 or if they find your family member, their body out on the woods, you need to discreetly take this dog off to the side and give them the reward. And even if that means toss a Frisbee, if that's what it is, then that's what you got to do. Which would be a really just odd thing to see somebody playing Frisbee with their dog, with the crying family and a dead body in the woods with bloody hammer sticking out of their forehead. Discreetly is the key word there. I don't think you're, like leaping over the body or anything. Like, you just find a nearby area and then go kind of discreetly carry out your reward. Let's just hope so. Yeah. So it takes about 600 and this is generalization, of course, but about 600 hours of training, which is a lot of hours for a dog to be field ready. That's for the dog. Yeah, the humans have to go through, what, like 1000 hours? That's what this article says. Yeah. So that's 1600 hours of training between humans and dogs, which is hilarious because it means that humans require more training than the dogs do to do the job. I know. I don't know. Are humans rewarded? Are they like? Here's your martini, Chuck. You're like, I would crawl through an avalanche to get to a martini. That's my reward. That'd be great. So the whole way you start this again, you're using their favorite thing in the world is a reward. And you teach them that they can go find their reward somewhere they normally want to find things. So if you show them, okay, come find me, is a good way to start. Usually this takes two people, and this article uses avalanche training as an example, but it kind of generally applies to anything, whatever specialty you're training your sardog to engage in, that's kind of what you would teach them. So if you're training them under avalanche guidelines, you would go dig a hole in some snow and in perfect line of sight with the dog, you would go and go run and jump into the hole in the snow, and you would have your assistant holding the dog back. And then after just a second, after you make it into the hole, they let the dog go, and the dog runs after you. And when the dog comes to get you, you just praise it and love on it and give it its ball or its messages or whatever it is. And the dogs like, oh, okay, if I go find human, I will get played with. I will get a reward, whatever it is, that's really important to me. And now the Colonel, the seed of search and rescue training has just been planted in the dog. And dogs are smart, so it doesn't take much more to kind of fluff it up into bona fide full search and rescue professionalism. Yeah, it's kind of funny because dogs are super smart, but also very dumb in that it's just a simple reward situation, like find person, get treat. Yeah, and that doesn't mean dumb, but it's simplistic, I guess. Okay, good. I'm glad you said that, because I was going to say it sounds more like dogs have it figured out rather than being dumb. I've had some dumb dogs. Well, sure. There is such thing as dumb dogs. They're the best. There's dumb people, too. Sure. Dumb shrews, dumb camels, dumb plants. Interesting point. Dumb everything. So in the case of the avalanche, you jump in the hole, and that's great. First part accomplished, but then they'll do it again. But the person handling the dog holds onto them for, say, five or 10 seconds, then makes them go. Then they just increase that time up until the point where it's like five or ten minutes, and the person has buried themselves in the snow. And then the dog like, that's the true test. Like, it's been ten minutes. I saw the person go and disappear. And now and I imagine this is a very fun for the person to bury themselves in snow completely. Right. But it's got to be done. And then the dog finds the person, and they get that sausage or that frisbee play. Yes. And so each time, they're associating this new thing, the increasingly complex game of find the human with their reward. So they're learning this new stuff. Holding the dog back increases the amount of attention span and memory that's required to remember this game. And so over time, the dog learns, if I go dig under snow, I can find a person that I smell there, and they'll probably play with me again. It depends on how soon the dog was let off on the scent of the person covered by the avalanche. But that's the game that they learned. Yeah, and they talk a lot about focus and concentration, but these dogs, it is amazing because in a lot of these searches, unless you're like, you're the first one on the scene. There are people everywhere. There are sirens, there are bullhorns, there's equipment making loud noises. Any distraction you could think of that would freak a dog out is on the scene all at once. And they say that sardogs can get so good that they can not only ignore all this, but they could walk by a cheeseburger on a trail and just keep following that scent. Yes. Which is where my dogs would fail. You want to identify the sardog at a disaster area, find the dog that's just casually filing its nails. That's the SAR dog every time, yes. There's no way my dogs would ignore the food thing that would get this thing where her eyes get real big and kind of bug out of her head, and she, like, uses a paw to kind of gently tap you, like, hey, I'm right here. You want to share some of that? So there's a couple of other things we should mention about this, this training, the avalanche training we just mentioned. You can do that with anything. You can do it with underwater training. Apparently it involves the handler in the boat with the dog, but also a scuba diver hiding underwater. That's the best way to train dogs on water. Well, you can do it with simulated disaster, like collapse buildings, that kind of stuff. So you can take this idea that you're training the dog, that if they go look for a person, the person might give them their snossage or their ball and that's what they're doing. Yeah. So even when they're out there searching for dead bodies in the woods, to the dog, they're just playing a game. There's a bunch of people around. There's a lot of sirens and like crying humans and shovels and backhoes and all that stuff. But the dogs, just in the midst of all this, the dog is playing a game of go find it. Yes. Which is why that reward is so key even in the face of tragedy. Yeah. So that's the dog training. We have to talk about training you because in Soviet Russia, SAR training trains you. Yeah. Most of these SAR handlers will seek out this dog probably from the GetGo at a shelter and kind of start from day one as like, this is my next Sardog. Like we said earlier, they spend about 1000 hours of training as a human. This is training the dog. This is also like, you've got to be good in the woods. You've got to know weather patterns. You got to know how to communicate on these radio coms and know how to work a compass. And most of these people are a lot of them are EMS certified. But the very least, you're brushed up very well on your CPR because if you're a couple of miles away and you're the person that comes upon the scene, you've got to administer some aid right there. One might call it first aid. Yeah, you would. You got to look good in cargo pants. Yeah, for sure. You got to have a nice pair of hiking boots. You got to be able to wear a boot. This article quotes a search and rescue handler who says the cheap thing that you have to be able to do is to know where you are at any given point during the search. You have to precisely identify your coordinates, which means you have to know that GPS, the compass, the map, all that stuff you said, but you also have to know it while you're following your dog with a flashlight at night, because apparently at night is the best time for a dog to search. Crazy. So you have to be really good at identifying your coordinates. And the reason why is because dogs will often give a sign. They will alert that they found something, even though there doesn't seem to be anything there. But if your dog does that you want to note down the coordinates and you keep searching. And if some other Sardogs come along and they note the same area and everybody compares notes afterwards, you're going to go back to that same area. You need to know exactly where the area is so you know that there's something there and how to get back to it. Yeah. So you really need to know what you're doing with self coordination is what I'll call it. Yeah. I would fail. Even if Nico was great, my legendary poor sense of direction would disqualify me. Yes. So that's why I don't do this. Don't you get trapped in a cave once? No, I didn't get trapped. You just didn't feel like leaving. What are you talking about? I went caving and I went in and I went out. Okay. There was no problem. I thought there was a problem. No, I mean, the problems were it was kind of scary. Right. But I was with experienced speed lunkers who got me all through it. Sure. But yeah, there was that one pancake part that you freaked out when I even told you about it. Yeah, I don't want to talk about it. So if you are a SAR team or you have a SAR dog, you are, like you said, on call at all times, even if you're on vacation. That's why you travel with your dogs a lot. You are always ready, and I imagine it could ruin a vacation. But if you're sitting around pushing papers in an office, you probably look forward to that call to get out in the woods and do what you were trained to do with your best pal. Yeah, exactly. So you get the call out, you load up all your gear, you head out there. It depends on what's going on. You might be hopping on a helicopter or a boat again, depending on what's going on there. And this is where the obedience and all those distractions come into play. And it's up to you as the handler to be the alpha. Even though your dog needs to be good off leash and on loose leash, you're still in charge. Right. And that's a big part of it. So I think we said that urban search and rescue is the hardest kind of search and rescue for a dog to do, not just because it's difficult, but because it can really get a dog down to find nothing but dead bodies. It's also extremely hazardous. The dogs poking around the collapsed building, that's a precarious place to be looking for survivors. So if you're an urban search and rescue dog, from what I saw, you don't want a dog that's over three years old entering this. That's just too old. So you want a younger dog. You want to start training them early on. But if you're an urban search and rescue dog, urban disaster search and rescue, you're probably not going to have an extremely long career in that it's just too exhausting and it's too demanding. So you may, as you kind of move toward retirement, get moved to different types of search and rescue that are a little less demanding. And apparently the last step before retirement is wilderness search and rescue. Because to a dog, it's just a great day out in the woods. Sure. It's as good as it comes. Yeah. So after four or five years on the scene of collapsed buildings, you get to run around the national forest and look for folks. Yes. And then after you finally are retired, you get to lay around all day and chase those squirrels you've been wanting to chase that whole time. Yes. And unsurprisingly, I would say most all of the time. You are probably sticking with the the trainer as their good boy or girl. But if that is not possible, for some reason, there are plenty of people that will line up to adopt a Sardog. Oh, yes. Because they are just as well trained as they come. That's right. You got anything else? No, man, I love these dog cats. SAR dogs. Yeah. I'd love to do something about just breeds and the original dogs and how they evolved and all that good stuff. Okay. Have we not done how dogs works? I'm sure we have. Yeah. But I don't know if we got into all the you know, there's that movie out about the original dog, the original domesticated dog. It's called Alpha. Okay. And I think it's not true, but I think it may be based on what people believe might have happened. Like one human bonded with one wolf, and that kind of started the whole thing. Are you talking about? Dances With Wolves? Yeah, that's it. Okay. No, I have seen that. It was Water World, right? I was way off that's funny you bring that up. I was thinking about that movie the other day and just how perfect the casting of Dennis Hopper was, because whoever casted him was like, this movie is off the rails before we even started shooting. Yeah. Let's get Dennis Hopper and Gary Busey in here with Gary Busey in it, too. No. I don't want to make fun of Gary Busey. No, you shouldn't have. Real troubles. Well, we end this on a downer. We'll just stop right here. If you want to know more about Sardog, just start looking it up. There's all sorts of training, resources and everything you could hope to find on the Internet. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is about pando. Yes. And I have to say that since we did that episode, I often listen to Brown Noise here at work while I'm trying to concentrate on my earbuds. But I have since switched to Aspen Forest. Oh, nice and wind. There's a great hour and a half recording in the field of it may Be Panda. For all I know. But it's really lovely. Highly recommended. Cool. So, all right, here we go. Hey, guys and Jerry. Hope you're having a wonderful day. Really enjoyed hearing the episode on Pando. My family has been taking an annual camping trip to Fish Lake, Utah since the early to mid 90s, which is only a mile or two down the road from Pando. It's like, how do you go a mile from Pando that's that big and just not going to Pando? Maybe they don't know about Pando. Oh, he knows. He said, I've been hearing stories about it since I was little and have always been astounded by the magnitude and resilience of an organism like that. The ungulate fences start right on the side of the road and it's like night and day. You're driving along in a fairly sparse aspen grove, and then bam, there's a wall of tall, dense aspens on one side surrounded by a fence. The other side of the road is a fence as well, but there's often cattle roaming and the tree population is considerably thinner. I'm an oil painter by trade and recently did a commission of a nice little spot in Pando and included a little picture here in the email of the finished piece. Oh, cool. It is a wonderfully, gorgeous place. Saddens me to hear how much danger it's in. Thanks for getting the word out there, guys. Hopefully something can be done. Hope all is well. That is from Lawson Barney in Colorado. Nice. And asked them if people could view his art and he said, just go to Lawson Barney on Instagram. L-A-W-S-O-N. All one word. Capital Barney on Instagram to see some of his stuff. Yes, Instagram is a great place to find artists these days. That's what I hear. Are you not on? Oh, no, you know me. Yeah, check it out. While you're there, check out an artist I love called Christian. Rex van Men. Amazing. I'm going to check out Lawson Barney, too, at the very least because he's got a pretty awesome name. Yes. If you want to talk about artists that you love on Instagram, turn us on to some. You can go to our website, stuffychildnow.com, find all of our social links. I also have a website called the Joshclarkway.com and you can send us an email, send it off to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit househopworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun 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 pools like, tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
c600c462-5460-11e8-b38c-9f88fd8987ff | Selects: What's the Deal With Staring? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-whats-the-deal-with-staring | Gazing too long upon another person is almost universally viewed as anywhere from impolite to hostile, which is odd considering science isn't fully certain why we stare - and why we're so good at knowing when we're being stared at. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Gazing too long upon another person is almost universally viewed as anywhere from impolite to hostile, which is odd considering science isn't fully certain why we stare - and why we're so good at knowing when we're being stared at. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 05 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=36, tm_isdst=0) | 34411923 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, Chuck here. You ever been in a public place and you notice somebody is staring at you? Or have you ever been in a public place and stared at somebody? People say it's rude. You're supposed to tell your kids, don't stare. That's rude. But what's the deal with staring? Turns out we have a podcast episode from November 17, 2015, called what's the Deal with Staring? We're going to answer that for you right now. Please 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 and guest producer. Noel is actually staying in here. I believe he's staring at us for this one. He is. As we speak. It's making my cheek blush. Just the one, though. Yes. Which is weird. The tease is what? That is a little bit of a tease. If I'm anything, I'm a big tease. Spoiler alert. Okay. No, that was it. That your cheek is hot. It's a post. Spoiler alert. Spoiler I don't know if those work, Count. I think you can set the Internet off into a frenzy if you do it the wrong way. Oh, yes. We've done that before. Oh, yeah, that's right. You say spoiler alert beforehand, apparently. Yeah. I thought you just spoiled it and it said spoiler alert. Right? As a tag. Yeah. It's not how it works. No. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever been to the grocery store? Yeah, I was there yesterday. Were you? Did you go down the street by cereal? No. I don't really buy cereal much, either. I appreciate cereal. I'm glad it's still around, but I just don't buy it myself. Yeah. Every once in a while, go down the cereal just to visit old friends. There's the Count. Chocolate. Yeah, exactly. There's Fred Flintstone. What the heck happened to Lucky the Leprechaun? He doesn't look anything like he did when we were kids. Look at Tony Tiger. Yes. While I'm walking down the cereal, I noticed they don't hold my gaze like they used to, actually, because you're not seven. No, actually, there's this study that found in, I think, last couple of years at Cornell University, they have, like, a whole food psychology program. I love that stuff. And they did a study of, like, I think, 65 different cereals and found that the average gaze, downward gaze is about a 9.60 deg. Right. Just your normal human walking. No, in the cereal. In the cereal. If you were looking at Tony the Tiger and you were me in our normal adult height, he wouldn't be locking eyes with us. But if we were little kids, he'd be looking right into our eyes. Tucan Sam. Tucan Sam. Lucky. Captain Crunch, which we talked about. Yeah, the Honeycombs Maniac. Yeah. The Goleen Fiber Stick. Sure. All of those guys, they look into little kids eyes. And the whole reason why is because it builds brand trust and brand loyalty among cereal boxes where the character is looking right into your kids eyes on the cereal aisle, there's like 28% brand loyalty compared to like 16% among boxes that don't have little characters looking into your kids eyes. And it all just kind of goes to show you, like the stare. Even being stared at by a lifeless cardboard cartoon character is that powerful that it can make you say, I want to eat what's inside of you? Yeah, sure. So the days it's powerful or like the old days when I was single and I would go into a bar and just like go right up beside a lady and just stare at her face until she looked at me. Make your eyes as wide as you possibly could. They love that stuff. Sure. Very powerful. It shows what a panther you are. A creep is what that would be. Sure, yeah. And I mean, that's a really great point. Like, if it's a leprechaun on a cereal box, you're not threatened or intimidated by it, but there's still some sort of power to its gaze, right? Yes. If you're another human being that is so powerful, it has to be wielded very delicately, because people don't like to be stared at. As this House Stuff Works article points out, it's simply rude to stare. Yes. Depending on what culture you live in, it can be everything from intimidation tactic to an affront to something that's very aggressive. Right? Yeah. It means a lot of things around the world, but I didn't find a lot of cultures where it was super nice. Now, the closest thing I could find was Argentina being called out as it being socially acceptable for men to stare at women. That doesn't mean that it's article, right. It's not welcome necessarily or wanted, but it's not like, what are you doing? Kind of thing. But I couldn't find any culture around the world where just outright staring is just normal and fine. Right. It seems to be like universally it makes people uncomfortable, it seems like. Yeah. Well, this article we're going to draw from a few, but one from our own website, why is it Rude to Stare? Which never really answers. Actually. No, it doesn't. It sort of gives some reason danced around it. But I did think they made a good point. Whoever wrote this early on in the article that humans are constantly categorizing things when we look around at anything, right. From inanimate objects, that desk looks comfortable, or that chair looks nice. Let me lay down on that desk. That car is cool. Or that person is white, that person is a woman, that person is attractive, that person isn't. Like we're always scanning and dropping things into different mental boxes. Right. So they make a pretty good point, I think. Whenever something is just slightly off, like that person has one leg, the brain has an instinct to stay on that gaze a little longer because it just disrupts the normal. Like that's a thing. That's the thing. That's a thing. And that's difference. Let me look at that for a minute. Right. And the whole idea behind us walking around constantly scanning our environment is this idea that we've evolved to at first, I guess, probably Hunt for Predators member in the gun control episode, we talked about how humans can recognize a gun in the environment as readily as recognizing snakes or spiders. So we're trained to pluck stuff out of our environment that may or may not be a threat as we've kind of moved away from the possibility of a bear eating you typically still happens infrequently, but for the most part we're not threatened by bears. Right. That same ability has kind of moved into the social realm where that whole in group out group categorization that we've talked about to really kind of comes up. And so we're walking around saying, you're okay, you're all right. You may be a threat. So I'm going to move over here on the other side of the street. Right. I don't necessarily recognize you, but we can do all this pretty quickly, right, sure. But it's like you were saying, if you see somebody with missing a face, for example, is a good one. And I read this Wired article. It cited a woman who basically was like, her husband shot her in the face. Oh, man. She walked around before a face transplant, like missing a significant section of the middle of her face. Sure. And she just was stared at all the time. She said she had to get used to it. Sure. This article points out that all you're doing necessarily is taking in more information than you're used to. And we do that by steering. It's a result of saying, there's more info than I can just get through with a quick glance. I need to look at you a little while longer. Right. And then there was a study at USC, as in Southern California in 2012. This one makes a lot of sense to me because I think what you're doing is you're satisfying a curiosity. Like, I guess Oscar Pistorius is a weird example now that he's gone through that thing. Right. But let's say pre that incident, you would see someone like Oscar Pistorius and say, wow, I want to see how this guy runs without legs. Right. So I'm going to look at him, put on those blades and run. And of course, it's a spectator sport anyway, but I mean, it could it happen any day, like someone who's handicapped. I wonder how they drive a car with no legs. Right. So it's very interesting. So I'm going to look at that and watch them get in the car and have a specially outfitted car with hand operations. Sure. So it's weird because in that case, I don't think it's rude, but you're walking a fine line, but it is still very rude. Another non murderous example, like the second one you gave is there was in this study at USC, they use women with novel biological effectors, meaning in this case that their arms hadn't fully developed, but they were performing functions that people would normally use their hands for with their residual limbs. Right. So someone might be like, wow, how is she painting or cooking for dinner? Exactly. But at the same time, you're right. You're walking that fine line, so you're staring, but maybe you look away, but then you look back and you kind of have to take it in pieces because we are in this weird position where we want to take in, but we're also socialized to not stare as well. It's rude. Well, what they determined in the study, though, which sort of backs up the idea that it is satisfying the curiosity, is they looked at the brains of people, like staring at, let's say, the lady without the formed limbs. And after they looked for a little while, the brain lit up at first like, oh my gosh, what am I seeing? This is super interesting. And then the brain normalized was like, oh, okay, well, that's how she cooks her dinner. That's really neat. Exactly. And then they were able to interact normally after that point. So it's almost like as long as your brain hasn't gotten enough information to its satisfaction, you're not going to feel comfortable. There's going to be something weird and different around it. And if you interact with somebody before you've satisfied, your brain's need to understand what the heck is going on there, then you might not interact with them as comfortably as you would if you were able to sit there and take it back. And they did this by having people watch other people through like a one way mirror, I think, and watch them for a few minutes. Their brains, I guess, became satisfied or figured out what the process was. And then after that, they interacted with the people much more normally than they did before they were able to fully satisfy their brain's curiosity. Yeah, this might be a pretty lame example, but it's like if you have a huge zip on the end of your nose, right, and you walk into a group of friends for a meeting, you might say, just get over with. I got this huge zip on my nose. Like Fred Savage in Austin Powers. The Mole. The mole, yes. Like acknowledging it. Hey, I got this huge thing. Instead of being weird about it, just go ahead and take a good gander. Isn't it amazing? And now let's just take normal. And then nine times out of ten, people are like, yeah, great, I just put my hand in front of my face and pretend that nothing's different. Is the makeup not working right? But the thing is, people have zits themselves. They're fairly well understood, and it's transient, you know what I mean? So there is definitely looking at somebody who is differently abled or just different in any way, it can be considered rude, especially if that person has to put up with it again and again. But I think there's just not that understanding of what is the basis of it. And of course kids are going to do that. And as parents, you are probably Johnny on the spot by saying, don't stare at that person, that lady without a face. It's not nice. Whereas the kids thinking, like, I've never seen someone without a face. Right. And the parent was thinking that same thing, but they're just having to do the parental thing and steal a quick glance and then tell the kid not to stare because it's been socialized out of them. Yeah. It's super interesting to me. But it seems to be innate because kids do it and then they have to be taught not to do it. Right. Yeah. So I wonder almost in that circumstance, if it's like a vestigial trait. It's an innate thing that the kid is responding to the kid's evolutionary history. Right. But it hasn't been socialized to not do that yet. So there's this social layer that's being put on top of an evolutionary trait. Yeah. So steering seems pretty straightforward so far, right. Actually, it gets way more complex, and we will dig into that right after this. So we're back and we're talking about being stared at, which, by the way, I didn't get a chance to listen to it, but Robert and Julie At Stuff to Blow Your Mind did this did a staring episode a few years back. They had a stare off. Yeah. Who won? I met Julie won, I would guess. Yeah. Again, I don't know. Yes, I'm sure they did, though, now that you mentioned. So, Chuck, we're talking about staring and how maybe the evolutionary adaptations to it. And there's a further idea that we've actually evolved, our eyes have evolved to really understand when somebody's looking at us. Right. I think it's pretty neat. The gaze detection system. Yeah. They make the point in here. Which article is this from? This one was from Psychology Today. Basically, the main difference between humans and a lot of animals is with people, you can see a lot more whites of the eye than you can with most animals. Right. So the dark parts, that is, the parts that look at you, you can really tell when those things are moving around. Right, exactly. You can tell when you're being looked at a lot more easily. Yeah. So, like, if the dark parts are in the center of the eye, roughly, you can assume that you're being looked at. Sure. If the dark parts are to the right, the person is looking to the right. If the dark parts are to the left, vice versa. Right, yes. I'm looking at knoll out of my I guess you would say peripheral vision. Exactly. I can relax because you're not looking at me, you're looking at Noel. So I can go back to knitting or starting fires, whatever, but Noel needs to be on his best behavior. And that's actually one of the two suggestions for why we're so responsive to being looked at. Like, there's a couple of things. So this gaze detection system, they've determined that if you are looking toward me, Chuck, but over my shoulder, and I can just kind of tell. Right. So your head is looking at me, your eyes are generally at me, but you're just like a degree or two off. Yeah, like right now. Isn't that weird? Yeah, right now it is kind of off putting. But right now, you're setting off a different kind of neuron in my brain than you are now that you're looking directly at me. Now different neurons are firing, like specific neurons for when someone is looking right at you. Fire. Which is awesome. Exactly. We have basically a region of the brain dedicated to that. Yes. And I have to say, you and I are, like, staring at each other way more than normal in this episode. Oh, you think? Oh, yeah. Interesting. Or maybe we're just talking about it more than you. I'm not sure. The other cool thing is you tend in your peripheral vision to notice more when instead of someone just looking at you straight on with their body and their face, if someone is looking from the side and turning their head completely to the right to look at you, that will stand out a lot more in your peripheral vision than someone just standing staring straight at you. Yeah, which is super weird. It really is. Today when I was driving in, there was this woman walking her baby in a stroller down the street, and I was just looking at her kid, and I was driving parallel to her, but my head, I'm sure, was turned toward them. She wasn't looking anywhere near me. All of a sudden, she turns her head and just completely meets my gaze. Right. She saw somehow, probably in her peripheral vision, that there was somebody in a car looking at her kid. Yeah. And she needed to check it out. So she threw the cover over the stroller real quick, turned around and went the other way. He's like a monster. Yeah. I don't know. I find all this stuff fascinating. Like whether or not you can feel when you're being stared at directly to your back, let's say, well, that's something different. So up to this point, we've been talking about stuff that can be explained away using your peripheral vision, noticing other people's body language, looking at where the eyes are. Now we're getting into just some weirdness in, something called the psychic staring effect or scope esthesia or the feeling that you're being stared at from behind. Even though there's no way, using your normal senses, you should be able to tell that someone is looking at you yeah. And there was a paper this is from the article of The Feeling of Being Stared At. And there's an old paper from Science magazine called the Feeling of Being Stared At by Edward Kitchener. And this is sort of a weird feedback loop, but he said if you go to the front of a room and you have your back to everyone, you're going to feel like you're being stared at, and then you're going to get nervous and start fidgeting around, which will cause people to stare at you. Yeah. So that doesn't do much for me. He also said it's possible that when you think someone's staring at you, you start to turn around to see them, to catch somebody staring at you, or to see who it is, and they'll then look at you. Right. They notice you moving, and they start looking at you before you've made it all the way around. They see you were looking at me. Exactly. And you say, no, jerk, I didn't look at you until you turn around. Looked at me. Right. And then just turns into a fist fight. Every time. Every time. Without fail. So Kushner basically was like, It's all illusory. It's done. He didn't really write necessarily about all of his methods or study size or anything like that, but he felt like he kind of settled it. 15 years later, there was a guy who picked it up again. His name was Je Cooper. He wrote another paper called The Feeling of Being Stared At. And he tried a little more scientifically to figure out what was going on. And he had a pretty cool I thought his technique was pretty awesome. It was okay. He would sit there and have a study participant with his back to him, and he would roll a dice or die. And if it came up even, he would not stare at them for 15 seconds. Yeah. If it came up odd, he would stare at them for 15 seconds. And then each time, the person needed to write down what they thought, whether they were being stared at or not. Yes. And it was lined up pretty consistently. But what this points out, and what a few of the other steering studies point out, is if you know you're in a steering study, you may be more clued in, even if you're blindfolded to think, like, oh, I feel like someone's staring because I'm supposed to. Right, exactly. Like you're thinking about being staring. Yeah, exactly. So in this Je Cooper study from 1913, he found that people guessed at about 50%. They were right about 30% of the time. Which is even with chance. Right. Yeah. So that suggests that you don't really have any kind of signal or sense that you're being stared at. You're just guessing. And you're primed to being guessing. Yeah. Follow up studies have shown that if people are distracted with another task or if they don't think the studies actually about whether or not they're being stared at. They almost never guess that they're being stared at. Yeah, it only starts to show up in studies where you're testing for that sense of being stared at, and they're trying to guess, but even then, they're just guessing at about the same rate as chance. So Kishner Vancouver and others later on over the years have basically suggested that scopesthesia or that feeling you're being stared at is very widespread. Most people believe that they can tell when somebody's staring at them, but that it's actually an illusion that isn't necessarily explained in any of these, but it is a widespread illusion that humans tend to suffer from universally. Well, and anecdotally. You might remember the times where I feel like someone's staring at me and someone is but not remember the times that you feel like someone's staring at you and you look up and no one's staring? Yeah, like you don't catalog that. Well, that was another thing they found, too, is that no one's ever found any idea that you can tell when you're not being stared at. It's just being stared at that was supposed to have a sense for. All right, well, let's take another break here, and we'll talk about a few more weird staring studies right after this. All right, we're back. And here's a weird staring study. Yeah, they've done a lot of them. And this is from an article. The many creepy experiments that involve staring at people on IO nine. Great website. So this one, the stare, is a stimulus to flight and human subjects, I thought pretty interesting and kind of a no brainer. Basically, they would have someone stand on a corner, and then when people would pull up in their car at the light of the stop sign, they would just stare at them in their car, and then they would time how long it took them to get the heck out of there when the light turned green. And, of course, naturally, they don't even release the results. I imagine it was about 100% that people sped out of there when the light turned green. Yeah, they had a control group that they specifically didn't stare at or look at. And they definitely left that intersection much more slowly. Yeah, because there's not a creep leering at you on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's a weird study, but I guess it added to the scientific body on staring by 1%. I thought this was interesting because it actually harkens back to what Kitchener studied, too, was that there's this weird part of the psychic steering effect where physically, you can feel like you're being stared at, like the back of your neck gets hot. When I was in college, I used to, like, my scalp would get hot or something. I just knew I was being stared at from behind. And this study found that we produce some sort of physical effect when we're stared at. Right. Yeah. So in this particular study, they had a psychologist sitting there, I guess, interviewing a person, and then another psychologist would be staring at the person while they were forced to either read out loud or sing. Yeah. The person being stared at would have to do those things. Yeah, thank you for specifying that. And the second psychologist would stare directly at their cheek and the person would blush all over, especially if they were having to sing. But the cheek that was being stared at would blush more. It would get hotter. Like, physically, they would measure this. It wasn't just anecdotally like, my right cheek feels hotter. No one has any idea how this happens or why this happens, but it's almost like the self consciousness that's produced and being stared at is directed to the specific part of the body that's being looked at. That's very bizarre. Yeah. Well, because they haven't figured it out. No, they'll probably isolate something at some point. Yeah, eventually they will. But I mean, if you start to compile, like, this body of knowledge on steering, you get the idea that we have a very loose grasp on the effects of steering and what it does and what it signifies and why it's around. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I always loved those episodes. I do too. This other study I thought was pretty interesting called Gaydar Colon. Igaze as identity recognition among gay men and lesbians. And I tried to find a copy. I couldn't find one that I didn't have to pay like $50 for, but I did read some summaries. It basically looks into how gay men and women use a stare to either assess someone's sexuality or to broadcast their own sexuality. Right. And it's not always just a fixed gaze, not someone like, creepy stare, but it was mixed with body language and looking away and like, a flirtation at times. But I thought it was pretty interesting. It's definitely not just like some heterosexual concept. Right. And steering is not just creepy. It's not just for flirting. They've actually found in other studies that it's a way to ask for help, actually. And it gets results, supposedly. Yeah. This one didn't make a ton of sense to me. So like, if you spilled some groceries, I think is what this one study did. Yeah. If you drop some groceries and you bent over and pick them up, if you just kind of keep to yourself and bend over your groceries and you're looking down at I mean, you got it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. In this study, if you look up, though, and are staring at a passerby while you're doing this, they take that as an invitation, if not a directive to come help them pick up the groceries. And people respond to that. It's the same thing. Think about it. Like if somebody is in a situation where they could use help, but it's also ambiguous. They kind of got it, but do they really need help? If they're looking at you, they're broadcasting, Help me. They are. It's just kind of funny because I'm trying to think it just seems like a no brainer. Like, if I saw a woman in a parking lot who had spilled her groceries, and I was walking by and she looked up right at me as I was passing and picking up, I wouldn't just say, how are you doing? And Keep going. Bummer, huh? Yeah. Boy, you look like you got it under control. Of course I would stop, but if she didn't look up yeah. Maybe I would feel like I'm intruding. Exactly. So they don't want me putting her hands on her groceries. Right. And that is one of the theories behind why we're so adept at catching other people's gazes, is that it's a means of communicating nonverbally very directly. Right. So that woman who dropped her groceries, or anybody who drops their groceries, if they're handling themselves, leave them alone. If they're looking up directly at you, they're communicating with you. They've spilled their groceries, and what they're saying is, I could use some help with some groceries, picking them up. And that's that theory behind that. The idea that we communicate and engage in social behavior just from looking is called the Cooperative Eye Hypothesis, and it's basically this idea that a bad band name. Cooperative Eye Hypothesis. It's a little wordy, but I could see, like, a math rock band. It's no Kathleen Turner Overdrive, maybe the best band name of all time. But this whole thing is that we are able to communicate not just that we need help, but also we tend to follow one another's gaze. If one person is looking off in the distance and clearly looking at something, not zoned out. Yeah. People are going to look over there, and it's basically the same thing. It's like a herd of gazelles looking over at one gazelle on high alert is suddenly looking at, yeah, you want to have some fun? Go to New York City or any city, just with one other person, and just go stand and both look up and stare at something. And then just sit back. Well, you can't sit back, but have a friend sit back and watch. How many people and in New York, of course, they won't stop and look, but everyone that passes you by will look up and say, what in the world are these two people looking at? Yeah. What are you looking at? Yeah, what's up there? You stare at nothing. You just don't say anything. And then a game of telephone will break out. People will just start making up what's up there? Yeah. And then it becomes a what do you call it when people all get together and dance at one time somewhere? Flash mob. Flash mob? Yeah. That's an organic flash. You have a bunch of people staring. It's very boring. Flash mob. I got one. More. All right. The idea that being aware of being stared at basically keeps us in line. The idea that we're being stared at or watched oh, it makes you behave. Yeah. Another socially pro social motivation. And I got another grocery store example. I was at the grocery store yesterday and I was walking in the parking lot and this woman had her cart and I noticed her, like, looking around and she was about to leave her cart right there in the parking lot next to her. She saw me looking at her and she just suddenly went and walked it over to the cart corral. I could tell by her movement she was not planning on going to the cart corral until she saw me watching her and then she took it to the car crawl. I'm like, yes, shame. Exactly. You engage in more ethical behavior if you think you're being watched. And that would explain why we're such a social species. Sure. And just having that heightened awareness that you're being watched is possibly part of that. Yeah. That's one of my couple of big rules in life that are meaningless to most people but always return your card. Yeah. People, like, they pay people to go around and get the carts just because they have to because of you. And the other thing is, always throw your movie theater popcorn and drinks away on your way out. Oh, yeah. The people that just get up and leave the movie theater with their popcorn bag and their drink there, it's pretty easy. Yeah. I just don't get it. I'm just going to go and say it. Those are the worst people in the planet. If you want to become canonized, Chuck, not only should you return your cart, you can do the opposite and take a cart from somebody so they don't even have to take it back if you're on your way in. Yeah, I've done that. That's the level stuff. I rarely use the big cart, though. I do a lot of daily grocery shopping. Yeah. Good way to go. It's very Dutch. Is it? According to the stuff for the next article, it is, yeah. Well, I wear my wooden clogs and ride my bicycle. Very astute of you. Thank you. You got anything else? You know what this just reminded me? I did have one slight more thing. You've heard of Vitiligo? What? Michael Jackson has skin condition where parts of your skin are lighter than others. I posted on Facebook there was this young woman who has vitalago on her arms and she finally just got a tattoo and lovely script on her forearm that said, it's called Vitaligo. Awesome. And I posted about this and then she apparently listened to the show and she posted, thanks for sharing, this guy awesome. That's great. Yeah, I thought it was kind of neat, but I'm curious to hear from people that have I can't remember what they call them in the studies. Novel. Novel biological effectors. Right. Basically something unusual physically that people might be prone to stare at. Yeah. I want to hear from people and how you deal with that or if you've gotten used to it or if you think it is super rude. Or if you're like, yeah, I would stare at me too. Yes. That is a great call out. Yeah. And let's do this. Or mail. And then we'll hit it up again. All right. Ola Toros. My name is Amy and I'm an English teacher living abroad in Malaga, Spain. I'm a recent fan and only discovered your podcast when I was desperate for something to listen to on the Metro rides. That's why everybody comes to us out of birth. The first podcast I listen to is how Nazis invaded Florida. And I haven't stopped downloading. Now, the real reason I'm sending the email is a little strange. I teach many adult classes. My students are always asking how they can practice listening to native speakers. Many people don't know that in Spain all of the American or English TV series or movies are dubbed. I did not know that. In Spanish voiceover. I didn't know that. I figured like a high percentage would be, but not all of them. So there aren't many options to practice listening skills. Once I got addicted to your show, I started suggesting that my higher level students listen to you guys as well. Honestly didn't think many of them would actually go home and start listening. However, I was wrong. And this is an all caps. Every single one of them are now addicted like me. That's so awesome. And then back to regular non all caps. Yeah. So thanks, guys. My students want me to send an email to say thank you for speaking slow but not too slow and using a vocabulary that makes any topic of science, astrophysics, biology and history easy to understand. I've noticed a big change in their listening skills and even have the entertainment of teaching some puns and slang that you both say on the show. It makes class much more enjoyable. The only bad side is now they want a tour of the UK so we can all come to see you guys live. That's so cool seeing everybody in the United States. You guys aren't coming to St. Louis? I can't possibly come see you. People are talking about traveling from Spain to England to see us. Seriously, come on. Don't go to Milwaukee. I'm in Madison. Right. Keep on showing out this podcast and gracias for Toro hasta Luigi's Amy Culver. Amy, thank you for that. I love that email. That's a great email osalaisa your class. Thank you very much for writing in and that's wonderful. Hope you guys keep listening. We're known for our slang, aren't we? Get on the trolley, Chuck. Yeah, that old thing. If you want to get in touch with us to say hi in another language, that's cool. But like Chuck said, we want to hear from you. If you have a novel biological effector and get stared at, and what you do in dealing with that, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@housetoppers.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.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 Fossils Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-fossils-work | A fossil is a piece of once-living organic material that has undergone a transition from an organic state to an inorganic state. But what exactly is fossilization? Listen in as Josh and Chuck break down the process of fossilization. | A fossil is a piece of once-living organic material that has undergone a transition from an organic state to an inorganic state. But what exactly is fossilization? Listen in as Josh and Chuck break down the process of fossilization. | Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:30:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=19, tm_min=30, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=62, tm_isdst=0) | 34403124 | 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, is the it's the intrepid paleontologist Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Terrible. No, I like it. Okay. I wish I was a paleontologist. What's your new nickname? Or intrepid, at least? Let's just go with paleontologists. That'd be great. Okay. We're talking fossils today. Dude. This is really interesting stuff. It really is. And you can tell that Tracy Wilson, our esteemed head of the writing editor, I think she's site director. Site director. Right. You can tell that she was very excited. She took her time and really doled this one out. I think saver is the right word. You can feel her smiling through the keyboard. Yeah. She's very happy to write how fossils work, and we're happy to do it because it's one of those very comprehensive articles on the site that it has everything you need sedimentary rock, flat bones versus round bones, leaf impressions. It has it all. Unless you're an intrepid paleontologist. Then we'll get an email saying it actually wasn't very comprehensive. Right. You guys royally screwed us up. We just wait until we get into punctuated versus gradual evolution. Chuck, you've heard of Lucy, right? The Australopithecus? Yeah. Okay. Well, she was, I think, 3.2 million years old. That's one old lady. It really is the earliest hominid we found, as far as I know. But there is a part of her foot missing. It's always been missing that we've never found before. So this bone was so essential that we couldn't tell how she walked until recently. Right, because the missing bone, we couldn't tell how she walked exactly. Well, we can tell so much from bones that when we don't have the right bones, we can't tell anything. So she may have been in a knuckle dragger. Sure. She may have hopped. We didn't know. Well, recently, some people from the University of Missouri or Missouri, depending on whether or not you live in the state, found the group of footballs needed to show what kind of walker Lucy was. And she walked upright. How was her gate upright? Upright, just like a human. She had a hitch in her get along. She had a pep in her step, possibly love. She knew she'd be famous one day. Sure, she was in love with talk. Talk. But consider this, right. Okay. 3.2 million year old footballs were found, and we could tell from them how she walked. This is the state of the field that you remember. Paleontology. Pretty cool. This is how advanced it is, and yet it's really just kind of using common sense to figure out what old bones mean. Yeah, common sense in science. Fossils go. Let's talk about it. Chuck, what are some of the different kinds of fossils? Well, one of my favorite kinds is trace fossil. Yeah, that's actually one of my favorites, too. It's like that Jesus footprint thing. Footprints in the sand. Yes, it sort of is, Josh. That is, when it's actually not part of the organism at all, but it's like tooth marks and a chunk of wood from a saber tooth tiger. Or footprints. Or footprints or trackways, as Tracy calls them. Yes, footprints. It's just unnecessary, but it has a pleasant tone. Science. Yes. They're not footprints. They're track ways. I'm bored in Ethiopia. Let's call them trackways. So trace fossils is one. Of course. There's bone fossils, right? The most famous fossils. Yeah, those are great, too. They got nothing on trace fossils, actually. Bone fossils. That's what you really want. If you're going to reconstruct a dinosaur for your museum, you can't do it with footprints. No, you can't. You need the bones. You do. And the bones are, of course, the most famous ones. And the dinosaur bones are the most famous of all the bone types. Right. So there's something that I think is often missed by lay people such as myself in that when you find a bone right. So you find, like, a big old dinosaur bone. It's really, geologically speaking, it's not a bone any longer. Yeah. It's not like you find a bone buried in your yard. That was an animal from 35 years ago, you said. But that's not a fossil. Oh, no. It's still bone. A fossil is a bone or a piece of once living organic material that's undergone a transition from an organic state to an inorganic state. That's what a fossil is. It's gone through the process of fossilization. And most of these fossils, the vast majority of fossils, are found in sedimentary rock. Before we go any further, we should probably do a little brief primer on sedimentary rock. Right. Which is awesome. Yeah, it's pretty easy, too. We've talked about the Earth's core and layers when I think we talked about earthquakes and maybe some other stuff. We all know that there's the inner core, outer core. We got the crust. Crust is the thinnest layer. And that's where the fossils are. That's where the goods are. Yes. And most of the rocks in the crust are sedimentary rocks that you've been talking about off and on for the past eight minutes. And that's like silky, sandy stuff that hardened over the years. Right. I mean, the Earth remember we talked about what was it? Clouds. Sure. I can't remember what podcast it was, but we talked about how much sand is transferred from Africa to South America annually. Yeah, in clouds. But yeah, you remember the one I'm talking about. Okay. So the Earth's biogeochemical processes equal a lot of movement of particulate matter. Right. The Earth is dynamic, baby. It is. It's also very fluid, too. Right. A lot of that matter is at one point as suspended particles in water that's moving around. Right? Yeah. So as the water leaves and the sediment is deposited, it builds up and up. Over time, it hardens into rock, and eventually we have sedimentary rock which is below our feet. We don't normally see it unless, say, the Colorado River winds over it for millions and millions and millions of years, revealing the sedimentary rocket that's in the Earth's crust. Allah. Grand Canyon. Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I forgot the Grand Canyon part. So you know how I said the Earth was dynamic, baby? Yeah. That's important. I didn't just throw that in there as a factoid. It's important because when these plates shift around, that's how fossils are on Earth. Things can be moved great distances and pushed to the surface eventually or close enough to where a dig can unearth it. And it's like just because it's fossilized doesn't mean it's stuck in that one spot forever, because Earth is always moving. So the point of all this is sedimentary rock is, like you said, dynamic. It moves around. Sometimes fossils pop up or it becomes exposed. All of the Colorado River. And that is where fossils are. Right, Chuck? Yes. So let's say that at some point in time there was a dinosaur or saber tooth tiger or a cyanobacteria wooly mammoth. Wooly mammoth, sure. And it's hanging out around a river bed and it has a massive heart attack and falls over in the river bed. And very quickly it becomes covered with sediment and silt. Right? Yeah. And that's important because once it starts getting covered up with stuff, it's sort of being protected from, like let's just break the news. Olive fossil means is that something has been protected from the natural decomposition process. Otherwise it would just decompose like everything else and you wouldn't see anymore. You just totally betrayed Tracy in the tone. She went to this the whole drama drawing out suspense. But that's true. So what you said was right. So you'd fall over in a river bed, you start getting covered up with the sediment and silt, and it's immediately starting to protect you in a way. Right. Not you, but whatever. The woolly mammoth. The woolly mammoth. The thing is, in this sediment, you can't really hide from macrobacteria and other forms of life that are basically dedicated to breaking down organic matter, soft tissue, hair, eyeballs, genitalia, all that kind of stuff. It eventually becomes broken down. And what's left is the hard stuff, the bone. Right. But the bone also has organic material within it as well. Yeah. And that'll break down. We're talking blood cells, collagen, fat. That's going to break down, too. The key here is the inorganic parts of the bone remain intact. Right. And the other key word here is porous. Yes. You take calcium, I imagine, for your hips. Yeah, sure. Glucose mean calcium. Sure. So what you're doing is you're fortifying the calcium that's already in your hip, supposedly. Right. Because the bone is made in large part of calcium, which is a mineral which is inorganic. So as all the organic stuff dies out, what's left is, like you said, the inorganic calcium, whatever minerals. And that holds the shape. Right? Yeah. The initial structure is kept intact. Right. But like you said, this bone is also porous. Yeah. That's the key. And over time, other mineral sediment kind of enters into these microscopic pores iron carbonate and fortifies this, ultimately turning what was once an organic bone into an inorganic rock in the shape of the bone. Yeah. But for all intents and purposes, it's still the bone. It still has the original calcium. It's still the same thing. It's not like a replica of it. It's just become fossilized. Yeah. And Tracy in the article uses a pretty good example. I thought it's like filling a sponge with glue. The sponge is going to keep the shape, but the glue is going to ooze through all the spots that it can ooze, harden. And there you go. You've got a hard sponge, which is basically what fossil is. And this takes place, Josh, over the course of millions of years, the sediment reinforcing the bones, eventually becoming rock. It's not kind of thing that happens willy nilly over thousands of years. Right. Takes a long time. And this isn't just happening by itself. All the surrounding area is being deposited with sediment as well. It's also turning into rock. And then the ultimate test of time for a fossil is that it can withstand the pressure that's mounted by the hardening rock, sedimentary rock that's growing around it, so it can be crushed. Is that how it works? Sure. Okay. I imagine a lot of fossils are definitely crushed. Crushed to death. Poor guys. But if it survives and you can find this, you will eventually be able to get to it, and then you remove the rock from around the fossil, and there's your bone that you can take to the Natural History Museum and get at least $500 for when you were a kid. Josh, let me ask you this. Did you ever go into the woods on a little nature course from, like, a science center, let's say, and do a plaster cast of an animal footprint? Do you ever do that? No. Really? I did that. We went and found, like, deer hoof prints. You fill it with plaster, and there was some way of doing it where you got an inverse plaster cast of a deer hoof print. Right. That can happen, actually, in a way, with trace fossils. So you can sediment can act the same way. In one of these, let's say the woolly mammoth makes a footprint in some loose but sturdy soil that fills up with sediment and creates basically a mold, just like I did as a kid with the plaster cast. Yeah. As long as the sediment that fills it in is lighter or thinner than the soil that the impressions made in, then yeah, it would preserve that tract. Yeah. And plants can do the same thing. It's not just bones we're talking about. Right. It can also fill in a different way, I guess the opposite way to where it makes basically a cast of the foot that made the track. And then so it's like a kind of like a fossil of a ghost foot that's not really there, but it makes the foot it's like an inverse cast okay. Yeah. Of not the track, but the foot that made the track. Yeah. That's cool. You know what my favorite trace fossil is? It's not a trackway. It's copper light. I changed my mind. That is a good one. It's dung poop. Fossilized poop. That's right. It can tell you a lot about an animal. It can tell you about its fiber intake. It can tell you about what size its poop was. Chuck, you know, in the CIA found out much about Gorbachev and his health. They found out he had cancer or some sort of chronic illness by stealing his poop. Really? When he came on a state visit to the US. They took his poop and analyzed it. And when they took his poop, he was in the US. They just grabbed it from the toilet. Did he not flush? I just want more specifics that you probably don't have as far as I understand. Okay. Probably hotel room or wherever he was staying, they were prepared to do this. Toilet rigged, probably, yes. Okay. But wherever Reagan went, they had a portable toilet that he used. It was the only one he was allowed to use. I'm not kidding. So no one could steal his poop. Yeah. Talk about paranoid. Yes. Seriously, when you .1 finger, there's three pointing back at you. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, Josh, that is sedimentary rock, and that's, to me, one of the cooler ways you can get a fossil. Petrified wood, too. Don't leave that one out. Oh, yes, sure. It's basically the same thing that we just described for bone, but for wood. Heart is a rock because it is a rock. Here you go. All right. So like I just said that we'll set them in cherry rock, and that's kind of fun. But you can also get a fossil. Funny, because one dies in a cave that's really dry. Yeah. Desiccation. Yeah. Desiccation is basically sort of a mummification, but it's not like we think of with mummification, with the Egyptian tombs or anything like that. Well, that's because there's no preservation techniques that have been undertaken. Yes, it's natural, basically. It dries out. It's like throwing an orange in a dehydrator. So when it's really dry, there's not going to be any place for bacteria to thrive. The reason beef jerky is not refrigerated. If you refrigerate your beef jerky, you're doing something wrong. Yeah, that's true. Well, if you have beef jerky long enough to need refrigeration, then you're doing something wrong or something really right. So Desiccation actually works so well sometimes that it can preserve the skin and soft tissues as well, which is something that sedimentary rock cannot do. Have you been to the Smithsonian? I have. They have a very cool, I guess a prehistoric cow or a musk ox, I can't remember. But it's a thing's head. Much of its back, I guess the cape, two of its legs. The skin is still there. It's just right there. Probably. It's tens of thousands of years old and it's just sitting right there. Did they rebuild glass? Did they rebuild it or just put the parts up? It's just the parts. Okay. But it's laid out so that it gives you the impression of what you're looking at, but its face is still there. It's very cool. Wow. My favorite kind of fossil, though, Josh, I was going to say that, like, every five minutes is a frozen fossil, because if you get trapped, let's say your willy mammoth trapped in ice, not only is that going to keep other, like, vultures and things from picking up your bones and skin, but it's also going to keep it from breaking down. And you can get hair fully preserved sometimes hair and skin, and like a big mammoth. Have you seen pictures of Liuba? No. Lyuba is a baby wooly mammoth that was found by a reindeer herder in Siberia, and it was \u00a392 or something like that, but it would have gotten up to several tons. It is adorable because it is a fully preserved wooly mammoth baby with the wrinkles in the skin and everything, yet it spent 45,000 years in the permafrost. But it's like, completely intact. It's very cute. That's why it's my favorite. It's one of the cutest dead things you'll ever see. Another couple of ways you can get a fossil, Josh, which are not my favorite, are tar LaBrea tar pits, although that is one of my favorites, which Lebreia tar pit is actually redundant because Lebria means the tar. So it's calling it the tar tar pit and not the tartar. Did I ever tell you about when I shot a commercial there? Did you go by there in La. No, I want to. I forgot about it when we were there last. Well, for those of you who haven't been, it's right in the middle of Los Angeles, like south of Hollywood on Wilshire Boulevard, and the main tar pits are fenced off, obviously, and they have little recreations. It's actually the saddest thing you'll ever see. The recreation they have in there is, I guess it's a mother wooly mammoth trapped in the tar trying to get out, and the father and the baby onshore Howling. It was awful. But it's still active, like all the tar is bubbling up and everything. And shot a commercial there once, and I was on the other side of the property, far away from the main pit, and I looked down and there was a little mini tar pit, a little tar puddle about a foot wide, bubbling right beneath my feet. I could have scooped it up with my finger if I had been so inclined. Instead. You're like that stink. Well, it's just crazy to think that it's happening. Apparently, I looked it up, like you said. Main pits that are chained off and that are still being excavated, but they have them, like, in neighborhoods all around the area, I believe. Parks, they're just kind of all over the place around there. That's like parts of Stone Mountain popping up all over the place. Yeah, we used to have back down through we had a big chunk of Stone Mountain in our backyard growing up. Yeah. All right. For those of you who don't know, stone Mountain is the world's largest exposed piece of granite, and it is right here in our home state. And it takes, like, 30 minutes to hike, but you still get to get to the top and be like, I just like the mountain. Yeah. Which I have. Josh you can also get Pete mossy. Pete can preserve life forms, including human beings, like Toland Man. Who was that? Toland man. I don't know about him. How do you know all these people? These people? The first multisyllable word I could spell was archaeology. Really? I've always been interested in that. I could see that, yeah. Toland man also, you can hate archeology like some people hate art. And you'll still be interested in polling. Man he's found in Denmark. He lived 2400 years ago, and he was murdered. Sacrificially, they think, and cast into the peat bog, which Pete is just decomposing moss and lots of it. But it has a tendency I think it's anaerobic. So tissues preserve really well. But it's this guy that they dug up, and he's so well preserved that when they found him in the 1950s, they called the cops because they thought they'd found a murder victim. Really? Like a recent one. He looks kind of funny, but he's got his whiskers are preserved. Wow. He's wearing a cap. He still has the Garrett around his neck. It's really awesome. What is he dated at? Like 300 to 400 BC. Is when he was killed. He's wearing a hat. Yes. Sheepskin leather cap. Yeah. No. Last Chance garage for him. No. And then my favorite way, josh that you can get a fossil. You're joking. Did you say it again? I did. Is amber. They just keep getting better and better. Like the movie Jurassic Park. Yeah. That's how we get dinosaurs again. Yeah. Dino DNA. So you found something on whether or not that's feasible, right? Yeah. Because I always wondered, when you see Jurassic Park, you see the little video they made, clearly, to explain to the movie going on how this is done. Right. It's better than Ellen Page running around. What was that movie in Inception? So the mosquito flies and tree resin. Tree resin eventually becomes hard as copal. Then it eventually becomes inert as amber. You get the little mosquito in there. They extracted the dino DNA from the blood of the mosquito, filled in the gaps with, I think, frog DNA. Yeah. And that was all there was to it. And at the time, I thought, boom. But of being Bon Jovi. Yes. At the time, I thought, that seems plausible, and it sort of is. But I did look up today, and there was a researcher that was interviewed or closer to that time, I think, that basically debunked it and said we could potentially maybe get some DNA, even though it's really fragile and loses its signature really quickly. Even if you could get the DNA, he said that you couldn't construct a dinosaur. It's just you can't fill in the blanks like that. There's way too many blanks. You have a giant frog yeah. With little tiny arms, forearms. But Steven Spielberg made us believe when you saw those dinosaurs walk across that field, that guy can make me believe in anything, that aliens came to the American Southwest, that there was a World War II. Yeah, sure. Et. Phone home, please. Good stuff, though. Where are we here? Chuck it. We're kind of painting this picture where if you just stick a shovel anywhere in the Earth, you're going to yield, like, all sorts of bones and fossils. Not true. No, it's not. First of all, a mere fraction that I don't think could possibly be calculated because we rely on the fossil record to show us what existed back when, and it's incomplete. Therefore, we've entered a Catch 22. But there's just a mere fraction of all of the species and organisms that's ever lived tiny that become fossilized. Yeah. Basically, a perfect storm of chance has to occur for a fossil to be created. As we've seen, even when it is created, it can still be crushed into oblivion. So they're few and far between. Yes, to begin with, but we have to figure out where to find them. Well, then you got to find it. That's the other problem. And the way we find it is by identifying rock that will likely have the type of fossil that we're looking for. Yeah. So if you want something from that year so if you know that this animal from yeah. If you know this animal lived 30 million years ago, you're going to go find rock that you know is 30 million years old and start poking around and looking. It's sort of a very chanced thing. And we know that. We know, like, say, a layer of rock or strata of rock is 30 million years old because of a technique we have called radio carbon dating. Right. Yeah. You want to do this one? Well, sure. Carbon 14 dating is what a lot of people toss around, because that's probably the most well known. But that can only take you back 60,000 years. We're talking millions and billions of years. So they need to study isotopes like potassium 40 and uranium 238. Right. Because that goes back millions of years, evidently to halflife. Yeah. And the halflife is where an atom loses half of its life isotopes to decay. Yeah. Okay. And this radioactive decay takes place at a predictable rate depending on the atom. The type of atom. Right. Yeah. That's how I understand it. So if we find a type of atom missing x number of isotopes, we can say, well, this is roughly 30 million to 31 million years old, or 30 million to 30,000,300 years old. I'm not sure what window we can date it to window, but I think it's enough so that we have a rough estimate of when this fossil lived and the sediment was buried around it. So, Josh, let's say that you're lucky enough and skilled enough as an intrepid paleontologist to come across your fossil. What do you do? Well, as I said, you dig it up and take it to the museum and sell it for $500. Well, I don't know about that, but you should call a museum. Even if you think you know what you're doing, you're probably going to need some help. If it's something major, I think you should probably go on the assumption that you don't know what you're doing. Okay. Unless you're a trained paleontologist. Right. Part of the problem is we assume that these fossils, being rocks, are sturdy. That's not always the case. No. So there's a lot of danger of damage, just an average Joe trying to excavate them. Also, if you just pull a bone up and walk away with it, it immediately loses context. Yeah. It's like removing a piece of evidence from a crime scene. Almost exactly. Can't do that. Well, you're not supposed to. So they have these huge cranes and digging tools where they can remove huge slabs of earth, which is a really good way to do it. And sometimes, if it's something that could be fragile, they will remove the entire slab, cast it in plaster, and just go ahead and ship that thing off to a facility to handle it from there. Right. And the cool thing is, even though rock has formed around this bone yeah. That's key. Right. All up on it. All up in it. If you flake it away properly, if you flake the surrounding sedimentary rock away, you're going to find that there's what's called a plane of weakness. Makes sense. Which is where the bone and the rock are still on this very microscopic level. They're not fused together. You're going to hit that, and the rock should chip right away. Right. And leave the bone. Yeah. And I think sometimes they missed it with water, too, to soften it up and help the whole process. Yes. Another thing, too, if they find that it's really brittle, they can actually reinforce the bone with resin and thin glue. But you need to be careful there, too, which is pretty much helping along the fossilization process. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, it's the same thing. It's like reinforcing it with something sturdy. Well, then you can date it using your little mass spectrometer that's in your pocket. Or a Cat scan. Sometimes these Cat scans, computer imaging, stuff like that. Yeah. I didn't get how they were dating it from Cat scan. I don't know if they're dating it with a Cat scan or just sussing the whole thing out. Got you. I don't think it's a dating situation. Tracy was just throwing out some extra tools of the trade. Yeah, exactly. Got you. So, Chuck, what is all this worth? We have a thirst for knowledge, obviously. Sure. People think bones are very cool, but ultimately, what's the pursuit of paleontology? Just to put together the piece of the puzzle of how we got here. Right. I mean, that's what I think it is. Yeah, that's my understanding as well. Yeah. You can learn a lot by not only finding the fossil, but finding what was with the fossil in that same strata. It can tell you, like, hey, this is a trex bone, and there's also a bit of pine tree. So we know pine trees were around, and they may have eaten pine trees. Well, not trex, because they were carnivores. Right. Yeah. They were herbivore, let's say. You know what I mean? A bronze ore. Sure. And ultimately, all of these fossils come together, plant and everything that we can get our hands on to form what is called the fossil record. Right? Yeah. And this is basically the record of life on Earth. It's also used to support evolution big time. And it's here that paleontology gets most contentious. Right, yeah, sure. Because there's the idea that beings evolve if you go far enough back from a single common ancestor. Right. And so if we can put together a complete fossil record, we would be able to see how everything alive today evolved from this common ancestor or common ancestors. Right. Yes. The problem is, fossil records incomplete. And one of the really key parts that it's often missing are called transitional fossils. Right. My favorite kind of fossil, Josh, is the transitional fossil. And one example Tracy used was the Bayline whale. There's a picture of one, actually in the article. 25 million year old fossil of a baleen whale with sharp teeth. Today's, baleen whales don't have sharp teeth, but we know that ones before this had sharp teeth and legs. Right. So this is a transitional fossil that shows well, they used to have legs and sharp teeth, and they just had sharp teeth, and now they don't have legs or sharp teeth. They're defenseless, which is why they're baleen whales and not sharks or megalodons. Right. So a transitional fossil is one that pops up between old and new, and it makes sense. Our understanding of evolution is that it takes a little while, and something like teeth. Aren't just going to go away in one generation. It's going to take more and more and more, and then we should be able to find them along the way where maybe the teeth get smaller. There's fewer and fewer baleen whale teeth in the average baleen whale mouth. Yeah. And you're putting together the puzzle. Exactly. Again, the fossil record is a little incomplete and there aren't as many transitional fossils as I think people would like to have. Yeah. Tied all together. Right. And then some of the explanations are probably the most famous explanation for this is that evolution isn't gradual. I think Steven J. Gould came up with the idea of punctuated equilibrium and that is basically that evolution takes place suddenly in these huge quick bits and start, which would explain why there's not like teeth don't go away in a generation, but they go away a lot faster than we used to suspect. Got you. And that's why these fossils, accompanied with the idea that not every animal that's ever died has become fossilized, explain why there are huge gaps in the fossil record which will inevitably always be incomplete. Is that a hypothesis at this point? I guess it is not a theory yet. I don't think so. I think it is a hypothesis. I got one more thing. Okay. I'd like to finish with my favorite kind of fossil, and that is a living fossil. And that, Josh, is when you got a plant or animal that looks so much like ancient fossils that they consider a living fossil. The horseshoe crab. Right. Apparently the horseshoe crab has not changed. Didn't need to. It's perfect. Now look at it. It's gorgeous. What else? Ginkgo biloba plants. And then a word that I don't know. The celicants. What is that? It's this horrid looking fish that they remember that VW commercial where he's like it's like the seal of Cam. And the guy's like, what? They're looking in the trunk and he's like a full size spare tire. It's like a seal of ant. I used to think it was extinct. There was a fish and then they found it, like in the 1930s again. But it's this dinosaur looking fish. Oh, I think I've seen them. That they thought was extinct for millions of years. And they caught them, I think, in South America, off the coast of South America. They're still around, living small. And the horseshoe crab and Stephen J. Cole and the gate of Alova. Well, that's it for fossils, right? That's all I have. I think we got the point across. That's an overview. A fossil is a rock. Just remember that, okay? If you want to learn more about fossils, seriously, this is one of the better articles on the site. Tracy did a great job with it. Type fossils into the search bar, the handy search bar and HowStuffWorks.com. Which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, we made a young girl cry. That's what I'm going to call this one. Okay. It's probably happened more than once. Hi, guys. Jerry. My name is Ali. I'm from Indiana. I was in the ISSMA band contest playing a difficult marimba solo today. I was pretty nervous, but being first chair and the only female percussionist in my school really brought up my confidence. I went in, I choked and I stumbled through my piece. You get a gold, silver, bronze or a participation metal. I got the bronze, which is equivalent to a score of an f 20%. I was really upset. Wait, what is participation then? Sub f. I didn't even know they made metals. I thought it was just a ribbon. It's probably a ribbon. I was really upset. I got home. I was trying to cheer myself up by listening to your podcast on what's the deal with Sinkholes. I really love the show and have listened to almost everyone, but in the beginning you guys talked about how much the bronze metals suck. Remember that? Yeah. So we didn't lift your spirits very much. Josh and Chuck, I just want to let you know that the two of you made me cry. That's from Ally. And I've since written Ally back and apologized and she said that she's feeling much better now and it wasn't our fault. And I told her that I've choked under pressure many times in my life and it happens and it'll happen again and doesn't mean you don't have the goods with your marimba solo every single time. Yeah, you pick yourself up. Sounds like you gave her some good advice. I think so. She's receptive to it. Sounds like a sweet girl. I think that's an excellent lead in. If you have a story about choking, not physically choking, but there's something you're good at and you didn't do it well. Say you're a television reporter in Los Angeles and you're supposed to report on the Grammys. Something like that. Let's say you're a podcaster and you have to do a show about the sun to give it to you. We want to hear about it. You can send it to us via email. Just type in where it says twostuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.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 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 yours favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
b78541cd-77b6-48c3-8156-ae7e00fb7950 | Selects: The Baffling Case of the Body On Somerton Beach | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-the-baffling-case-of-the-body-on-somerton | Since his corpse was found in 1948, wearing a nice suit in summer on an Australian beach, an unidentified man has refused to fade into obscurity, gripping the imagination of sleuths around the world. Learn all about the mystery in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Since his corpse was found in 1948, wearing a nice suit in summer on an Australian beach, an unidentified man has refused to fade into obscurity, gripping the imagination of sleuths around the world. Learn all about the mystery in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 23 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=113, tm_isdst=0) | 62256800 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I chose our 2017 episode about the man on sommerton beach one of the most interesting unsolved mysteries we've ever encountered. Despite lead after lead, it remains unsolved today and seemingly will remain that way forever. And after listening to this one, if you liked it a lot, you can go further down the rabbit hole. There's plenty more stuff on it all over the web, and there have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepare to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W chuck Bryant, and today is a very special day. We have a special guest producer, Matt. Been a while. It has been a while, man. It's been since, like, 2014 or something. Yeah. And Matt is one half of stuff they don't want you to know. One third. Oh, yeah, that's right. There's three of them. Yeah. And we are sort of awkwardly recording two of the same shows they've done. Yeah. So Matt's just sitting there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth, so we're trying not to look at them. How are you doing? I'm good, except for Matt looking at us like that. What did you do for the eclipse? I looked at the eclipse unwisely. From where? From my house. I didn't see a full schmo. I figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive 2 hours. No. See it. No. You did, though. Yeah. How was it? Well, I don't want to be one of those dudes, but the difference between 99% and full eclipse is all the difference in the world. I saw it put I can't remember who put it, but they said that the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying a person. Oh, well, that's from the legendary eclipse article from the Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh, man. I even sent myself the link to read it today, and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner. That was at the height of her career. It was written by Annie Dillard. Okay. It's called total eclipse, and I haven't read it yet, but it's supposed to be just remarkable. And that's exactly how she put it. And it was? I think so. So that would have been a year before Bonnie Tyler came out with totally clips of the heart. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I cried, and, like, five other people with this cried. That's cool. Like, spontaneously. Tears were coming out of my face. I was, like, really sweet. What is happening to my body? Yeah. What have you concluded? I don't know, man. It was just overwhelming. That's neat to stare at the corona. And we're going to probably Texas for the next one. I'm going to every path of totality that I can get to between now and the time that I die. You're in a clip side now. I'm a Totalitar. Got you. Totalitous. Totally. Yeah. And we almost didn't go like literally that morning we were debating and I was like, it's 2 hours away, let's just get in the car and go. That's very cool. And my daughter saw it, which was weird for her, like she knew something was up even at two years old. Yeah. The sun's gone black. Yeah. And stars came out and crickets chirped and it was just really strange. Yeah. That's neat. Yeah, it was a very quick two minutes, but I think the one in 2007 is going to have a four and a half minute totality. When is it? 2000? What? Seven years from now? What is it? 2024? Yes. Okay, that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too. We'll all drive together. Well, if you won't drive 2 hours, why are you going to go to Texas? Hey, if I ever have a good reason to go to Texas, I'll take it. Well, it's Texas and then we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from. It goes through Akron. Oh, really? And then kind of over to Maine. I see. So on that, you guys should just follow it in your van. Well, you know, I wondered how fast of course you can't do this, but how fast would you have to travel? The speed of the moon, stay in the path of totality. The speed of the moon, which is what, like 100 million mile an hour or something like that? I don't know. Listen to our moon episode. It's my new drug totality. That's neat, man. Yeah, well, I'm glad that happened to you. It happened on me. Get all over me. How? Okay. Do you want to talk about this? The eclipse? No. You know what's funny is that we didn't do any podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought about that. We never have. I know. And it's just like us. Moon goes in front of sun, moon goes away from sun. It goes up, it goes down. Yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up talking about like we'll do an episode on the effective and eclipse on plants first and then some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that we'll do how eclipse work. Maybe if we're still around in seven years. There you go. How about that? Good idea. And I've jinxed us before by saying we won't be around, which is an opposite jinx, I was going to say. Is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure that we will be around. Got you. Smart. Thank you. So we're talking today, Chuck, about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you familiar with this one before? Yeah, I think we covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we definitely talked about it, but I scoured our archives and couldn't find an official show. I wonder where it came up because yeah, we talked about it for sure. Yeah. And then a lot of times you would do one of your best things you've read this week. We would then do an Internet roundup piece on that. Okay. That's probably where it came up, then, because you're like, this is so good, it should be seen by dozens of people. Exactly. I want to share it with the 20. Yeah. I probably guess the article that I did, the best stuff we read this week on would have been The Body on Somerton Beach. I think it's what it's called, the Smithsonian Article from years and Years. It was. So, yeah, there been plenty of good articles about it. That one is a good one. There's one from California sunday magazine called the Lost Man. Just some good stuff out there. If this floats your boat. It does. But let us set the theme for you, okay. Because this story takes place in Adelaide, in South Australia, which is not just a place, it's a state as well. Did you know that? Yes. I wonder what they call how they pronounce Adelaide there probably not like I just said it, but in Adelaide, South Australia. Adelaide is the capital, from what I understand. We haven't been there yet, but we probably will, maybe next year. I'm not going to Adelaide, though. I don't know. It sounds kind of neat and creepy. A little weird. Right. But weird in some weird ways. So Adelaide is this place that's kind of known as the murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily, like, the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a history of kind of weird gruesome grizzly murders. Yeah. I think if you've had more than two or three dismemberment type murders, then you're on the map. Sure. And they definitely have. There was a very famous case in the sixties of the Beaumont children who went missing off of a beach called Glenale Beach, I think that's probably how you say it, which is near Adelaide, and we're never heard from again. No trace of them was ever found. We should do an episode on that one, too. There was the Family. Yeah. So dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties. This one's really freaky. Yeah. These were supposedly just like regular professional men, presumed men right. Who had a sort of cabal of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia, with an equally weird ending. Right. Yeah. The sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. And that one again, unsolved. Right. I think one person was convicted, but the people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What about this Bodies in the Barrel thing? That's all you need to say? Okay. There's a string of murders called the Bodies in the Barrels Murders. Right. It's a lot of pluralization. It is. And then so the idea that the one we're talking about, which is the death of just one man, a nonviolent death, possibly, who was found on a beach almost 70 years ago. For that to still have Australia and the world in its grips today, it must be a pretty interesting case. Agreed. And it is. Yeah. So I guess we should go back in time, get the old way back machine and travel south to Adelaide. Post war Adelaide. Yeah. Nice. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot. I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie. Yeah. Drinking Fosters. Yeah, it's like a 55 gallon drum of Fosters. And lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me. Yes. There's a Crocodile Dundees over there. When we tour there, they're going to really get sick of us. Like, after the show, the first show. I can run us out of town. Yeah, fine. New Zealand wants us. Yes. And New Zealand say yeah. Come on over here. So Adelaide is well, it's an interesting place, post war, apparently. It was kind of a place where you could go to sort of if you want to disappear and rewrite your life, that wasn't a bad place to do it. Right. There was a lot of black marketeering going on, apparently. It was really hard to get your hands on a car. So there's like a big black market for cars of all stolenness, all levels of stolenness, right? Yeah. There's just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was still going on. And there's a lot of espionage going on, too. The Cold War had just started in Australia, was in this weird position where there were a lot of Soviet spies running around. There were a lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country. So there was a lot of espionage, a lot of black marketing, and a lot of people who were not who they claimed to be floating around this country. Running around and floating. Right. So that brings us to a very important date for this story. Tuesday, November 30, 1948, about seven in the evening, there was a jeweler named John Lyons and his wife. They were taking a little stroll there on Summerton Beach, which I'm sure is lovely, and they saw something weird. They were walking toward Glen ALG. So I guess they're connected beaches. Yeah. And they saw something interesting on the sea wall there. They saw a man lying in the sand, but very well dressed in a suit, kind of propped up on the sea wall there, as if you were sort of sitting up about 60ft away in America, that's 20 yards in Australia. Certain amount of meters. About 20 meters. Okay. Really? Is that how it works? No, it's pretty close to the yard and the meter are very similar. And he was doing something interesting, so they say he extended his right arm upward, then just let it fall back down to the ground. And they thought, that looks like a passed out drunk guy or maybe a barely awake drunk guy maybe trying to have a cigarette or something. Right. It was remarkable in that they made a mental note of it, but they just kept walking and whatever. Sure. I think his suit being on the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah. He was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit on the beach. Like the suit he was wearing was pretty nice. Pretty nice. Right. And about a half hour later, another couple walked past, and this time the guy wasn't moving at all. And apparently he had a whole swarm of mosquitoes around his face. And the boyfriend says to the girlfriend, that guy must be dead to the world if he's not noticing those mosquitoes. He must just be absolutely wasted. So they were clearly closer, I guess. So if they could see mosquitoes on his face. Yeah, for sure. Because from 20 yards, it's a tough thing to see. I don't know. Further strain. Mosquitoes are large. Right. So the next morning became pretty clear what was going on here, that this was a dead man. The same jeweler. John Lions. He went for a little morning swim, as you were to do in Australia in the mornings when you're hungover and he saw a bunch of people crowded around where the guy was. Right. And it was on it was a dead dude. Yeah. The dude was in basically the same position you'd seen him in the night before. That crowd was like, he's dead. Croaky. Yeah. So Lions is like, wow, that was pretty surprising. And that's the end of John Lyons. Yeah. But very important here in that they are the only people who supposedly saw this body move. Right. Super important. Yeah. So within about a few hours, the body is in the morgue at the hospital and is being examined. And just from the initial examination, there was a lot of just weirdness that immediately came out. Yeah. Right. So remember, the guy is, like, sitting up against the sea wall. His legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There is a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a half burned cigarette either dangling from his mouth or on the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen from his mouth. Yeah. And when he was taken into the morgue, the doctor said that he was probably dead by 02:00. A.m. Yeah. And most likely when they did the full autopsy, a man named John Dwyer said he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no traces of poison, which is a little odd. Right. But the reason he said that is because when they crack the guy open, this John Doe, who's widely become known as the Summerton Man, his organs were all kinds of messed up. He had blood in his stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty. Yeah. It's like a Hot Pocket. Yeah. A delicious Hot Pocket. Or a hand tie. It sounds dirty and pie. Yeah. His spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. It's not a good sign. And firm. His liver was giant and bloody. Not unusual for Australian 55 gallon drum of Foster. His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual, whatever that means. Right. And then they said that he had a little spittle on the side of his mouth. I thought that was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave the guy alone. He's dead. Like sleepy drool is what I thought. If I'm so pretty that I just have a little bit of spittle coming down my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy. Oh, you mean if that's the only thing yeah, agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well, they were doing forensics, right? Had to note everything. Yeah, indeed they did. And they kept saying, like, this got to be poisoning. Like, his organs are all kinds of messed up. But there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks. Yeah. They ate the pasty, the ham pie. Yeah. Nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he was still standing afterwards. Yeah. So it's all good. So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, well, let me see this. And he concluded that it was probably one of two poisons that would have done this kind of damage. Resulted in heart failure. We didn't say that. So they concluded he probably died from his heart failure, ultimately, but that wouldn't have left a trace. And he did not feel like it was a responsible move on his part to say these things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquestedric. So we wrote them down, and the coroner's like, okay, all right, and picked him up and read. What he read was digitalis and struffantin. Cedric said he said it, I didn't. Right. He goes, oh, gosh, did I say that out loud? That sounds like something that you'd see in a movie just added for the drama. But apparently it really happened. Right. So he read those names. Well, I don't know if he read those names, but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Right. Sir Cedric Stanton Hick suspected the Stro phanthan, although later investigators feel sure it was probably the digitalis. Right. It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was because they were both kind of used and I think maybe still used to treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah. And then you can get them with a prescription from a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe they are, but they definitely were common at the time or obtainable in just about every major city. So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was. But again, it bears pointing out again and again that no one has ever found any direct evidence that the man was poisoned. And to this day, 2017 and beyond, if you're listening to this, years from now, they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and they may still be looking, because this is one of those, like the DB. Cooper when we did one of those cases where amateur sleeves on the Internet are still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless we come up with some really amazing technologies in the next 1020 years or something like that, the time is passing quite quickly on this case, and DB. Cooper as well, where we may never know. It may remain a mystery forever. Unless we invent time travel. Then somebody will go back and figure those out. So the dude who looks a little bit like Harvey Kitell yes, he does. You think so? I mean, look up a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car, you can look them up. They're two very famous photos, I guess, from the autopsy scene. Just straight onto his face and then sort of from the side with his eyes open. Yeah, he looks like Harvey Caitelle. He does. It looks like a wasted Harvey kitel. Which is to say, he looks like Harvey kitel. So he's in about his mid forty s. Yeah, I guess a younger Harvey guy. Tell he's wearing this double breasted suit. I saw that he's wearing a knit pullover with a necktie. And this sounds like we're being too specific by saying the stripe slanted from left to right, but we're not. We're not. That will come into play. It will. Just hang on to that now. Put that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat, which was weird for that time. I hadn't ran across that, but yeah, I've never seen that. There was a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat. But it would be unusual for a man in late forty s to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. Fedoras were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down in Adelaide at the time. Fedoras in Australia were literally huge. They were like sombreros made of tortillas with melted cheese in the middle. Is that a thing? It was on the Simpsons. What else? He had weird feet. Yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and that his shoes seemed to be molded almost to his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His calves were remarkable. They were bulbous, just below the knee. And the guy who performed the autopsy, I think it was Dwyer, said, this is like, what, dancers or people who wear high heels? It's the kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that. He looks like Lina Horn. Oh, my gosh. It is Lena Horn. Yeah. So that's definitely notable. The other thing they found out, too, was a couple of physical traits that he had which will come into play later on. His ear is simba, which is the upper hollow portion of the ear. Not hollow, but caved in. Caved in? Yeah. The rolled over part up here? No, like just the upper hole. Okay. Then the lower part. Got you. Yeah. We've done showing ears, have we? No, we should. The simba is larger than the Cavem, which is a fairly rare thing. So I would guess the Cavem is where your ear drum leads to your eardrum. Yeah. That's where you put your finger when you want to. Right. But if you put your finger up over that ridge that's the simba. Yeah. That would be weird if this one was bigger than that one. Yeah, it's a pretty rare genetic trait. As were his strange teeth. Yeah. He had something called hypodontia, which is he was missing his lateral incisers, which are the teeth that most people have between their front teeth and their canines. His lateral enzymers never develop. So his canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah. And it's what did you say? Hypodonsia. That can be as common as like you'd never get your wisdom teeth, but in this case, those particular teeth, it was pretty rare. I saw hypodencies. So that would include not getting wisdom teeth. Well, in any teeth not developing is hypodenia. I got you. Well, I don't know if hypodancia in general or just this type of hypodancia. Is that type 2% of the population? Yes, it's specifically for those teeth was pretty rare. Got you. Yeah, 2%. Pretty rare. Everyone's got this teeth. And people at home were like, why are you saying all this weird stuff? Who cares? Just settle down. Everybody settle down because it's all going to come into play. We haven't said anything that will not come back into play. Alright. Should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's getting all riled up. Let's take a break. And then we're going to detail for about 15 minutes what was in his pockets. Yeah. Okay, Chuck. So we went over the body. Now it's time to go through his personal effects. Yes. Which were kind of weird in and of themselves. Right. About the details. When you're talking about murders and disappearances and things sure. Unsolved after 70 years. Yes. You need to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast clocks would we be if we were just like yeah, he sort of looked like Harvey Caitille and he was in a suit. The end. No good. That sounded like Harvey. Caitlin yeah, it did, didn't it? Not bad. That was my Harvey Caitel. And the piano. Oh, man, what a movie. All right, so in his pockets he had a pack of Juicy Fruit. Juicy Fruit? Yeah. Oh, nice. Chewing gum. Good stuff. He had some matches. Bryant and May matches. Okay. Well, he had a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach. He had a bus ticket from Adelaide to Glen ALG, and then he had a used ticket that said he had come, arrived there by bus from the railway station there. Yeah. From the Adelaide Railway. Correct. Yeah. He also had a pack of cigarettes. This is weird. Army club. The pack of cigarettes was an army club pack, but inside was something called Concedus, which was a much more expensive brand. That makes no sense. That's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense, which is he just kept the expensive pack and would put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy. Right. Unless he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of them. So he kept the cheap pack or the likelihood. Right. The likelier, story is that he bumped a bunch of cigarettes off of somebody and put them in his own pack. All right. Like, hey, man, you got a smoke? Or seven. Or seven, yeah. Interesting. Or perhaps they were poisoned and put in that pack. That's another possible explanation, too. Right. So that was like, the extent of his personal effects, aside from his clothing. Right. There was no idea. He had a couple of combs, okay. Hair combs. More to the point, there was no ID. No ID, no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd, for sure. And his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right. So, again, he was wearing a very nice suit, but the makers labels of all of his clothes had been, from what I understand, carefully, snipped away. Yeah. I saw one explanation for this that made it seem a little less odd, which was, back then, apparently, people oftentimes, because there were nice clothes, were not scarce, but you wanted to keep them for yourself. So you would write your name a lot of times on your suit jackets and things. Sure. And then if you ever went to sell them second hand, you would flip out those labels. Oh, I see. So that's one explanation. It's not bad. I don't know if that's a reach or not, but at least something could make sense out of that. Yes, but the other thing could mean that this person was being dumped and no one wanted them to know who they were. It's a possibility, too. Or that he didn't want anyone to know who he was. That's another possibility as well. Yeah, that's what a lot of people think, that he was trying to cover up his own identity as well. Yeah. His trousers, I think, had a little repair done with orange thread. Bear with us. And then that was about it. They took fingerprints of the guy and spread around to no avail. Spread the fingerprints around. Right. They figured out after a little while, I'm not sure when, but this would have been so December 1 is when he was found. This is like July to us in the northern hemisphere. The beginning of July. Oh, Jesus. Starting to get hot down there. Right. You can only keep a body for so long in the 1940s in Summer in Adelaide, it's already a hot place to begin with, and the authorities were like, we can't keep this guy above ground any longer. So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster bust of him and they did, and they kept it at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty smart way, if you ask me. Yeah. They buried them with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who was found at Summerton Beach 1st December 1 948, and he was buried just in really dry ground, so if they ever needed to get in there, they could and case them in concrete as well, to really keep them preserved as much as possible if you ever need to be exhumed. Right, correct. So, like I said, they took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for this guy. They buried them finally, but they're like, this is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened to them? So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia. They started to send them around to America, the UK, just Englishspeaking countries. Yeah. They also, like, kind of before they got rid of the real body, they brought people in, locals, to see if anyone could identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a few people the bus and they were just trying to do anything and nobody could recognize who this person was? No, I mean, some people saw, like, pictures of the bust or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper, and we're like, oh, it kind of looks like Uncle Ted, and then they go in and see him and be like, It's not Uncle Ted. Right. And so the fact that this is becoming a weird, unsolved mystery already, like, just quickly after the case started to capture the nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the South Australia State Police, were not shy about publicizing stuff as needed. Right. Like, as they develop breaks in the case, they would tell the newspapers about it and the newspapers would tell the rest of the country. So it became a pretty big sensation in Australia, so much so that a lot of people are just basically take it for granted that the man was not Australian. Right. That were he Australian, several people would have come forward because the case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah. And I'm just guessing here, but I imagine 1948, this part of Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there. I don't know how small of a town it was, but I don't think it was like some huge city, was it? Well, yeah, adelaide is the capital of South Australia. Yeah, but how big was that? 1000, 948? You think there was like, at least 500 people there. I'm going to say at the minimum, someone's going to write in. And tell us so they're going to be mad that we didn't know. No. Australians are nice about things, usually. Yeah, they aren't. They are. They're the Canadians of the south. So they decide, the cops decide. Very smartly. You know what? We're going to widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in town someone has found something, there are any possessions that this guy might have left behind since he was just found with what was in his pockets. Surely there's something and in fact there was. They discovered that there was a suitcase, brown suitcase, in a cloak room that was left there on November 30, which was the night before the morning that he was found. Yeah. The first time he was seen on the beach was November 30. Big lead. It was. And because he had that ticket that showed he had taken a bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of the first places detectives went. Yes. And they found this suitcase that had been left there, like you said, on November 30. And inside there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah. I mean, it was full of stuff. It was clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots of clothes. Shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs. There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one in a sheath, like a shave kit, screwdriver, lots of just normal travel things. Razor. Razor strap. All the junk. You would expect multiple pairs of scissors. It's a little weird thread, but the thread was the big one. Orange thread. Yeah. Barber, not Australian brand, barber thread, which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitched. Right. So it's got to be him. Right. That's the thing that really links him with the suitcase. There was also some stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah. That's a little weird. Very weird. And there was a suit jacket that had what's called a feather stitch. Well, stitching it's the lightest stitch, right. And they're like, we don't do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing machine that can do this in Australia. Yet. A Taylor said this is an American coat. Yeah. With their feathers. Right. We use a hammer stitch. Right. And then inside some of these clothes was the name Keen, because I told you, people wrote on their clothes a lot. And the best cops could figure is someone did that to sniff everyone off the case. Right. Because they looked around and there was no T ke Keen or any Keen that they couldn't put their fingers on who is missing. Correct. And the tie years later, like the cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if they noticed that it was slanting one way or another. I don't know, but they probably just knew it looked weird for some reason they couldn't put their finger on. Yeah. But at the time in Australia, the tie slanted left or right? And this guy's tie slanted right to left. And that was the style in America. It's like everything's the opposite. Isn't it so weird? Yeah. Summers, winter, winter, summer, flush. The toilet goes in a different direction. I think that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true. Right? No, I did something on it. Really? Yeah, I think it's an urban legend. It really has to do with the shape of the drain. What? Man, I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia. You can still do it. Well, you probably should, actually, while we're there. I'm going to. But the joy is dead. Just don't watch it flush. Yeah, but you might be better off, actually in this way. I've just been used to my poop turning in such a direction my whole life. I was really ready for something new. All right, I'm sorry. So the tie is opposite. They said this is an American tie, like you said. Yeah. And then they brought in and actually, we should say those were Internet sleuths. Oh, really? Within the last 1015 years. Who figured that one out? Good for you, Internet. Finally, in April 1949, police brought in a dude expert pathologist named John Cleland. And this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South Australia were not as thorough as you would think because they didn't even check his little pocket watch. Pocket. A little pocket inside your pocket. Because there was a really key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would. There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very tightly in this pocket. And written on it in some pretty fancy type setting were the words tamo shode tamamshud. And the cop said, what is this? First orange thread? Now some weirdo words rolled up in the sky's. Pocket. What is this? And John Cleveland said you dope. It's called a lead. You didn't check his pocket in his pocket. Right. I said no. So they would figure out in a little while, by a stroke of luck, it seems that tamum shoot means it is finished or it is done, or in this case, the end. In Persian, correct? Yeah. Sounds very random and out of left field. Anybody would know this, but a reporter working the police beat there said named Frank Kennedy said, no, I know what that's from. That's from a twelve century book of Persian poetry called Rubayat of Omar Kayam. And that just sounds so out of left field. But in fact, that book had been translated by an English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of a big deal once it was translated into English. Right. So it wasn't like just so word I'm looking for obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it was extremely popular in the west after that. I think even in America there's a Peanuts comic strip that makes reference to it even it was one of those things where people might not know about it, but there are plenty of people out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized it. Right? Yeah. So they realized then that they needed to find the copy of the Rubyte that this came from, and they started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it. So the state police did what they had been doing all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey, we found this weird scrap of paper. It says Tamil Schude. We're told that it comes from The Rubyte. Yeah. And specifically, it's the last words of The Rubyant. Right. The last words of the last poem. Right. And go to it. Media. And the media went wild and let everybody know. And it turns out so this is April when they found the scrap of paper. And in July, they got another break based on finding that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what? I found this copy of the Rubio in the back seat of my car, which had been parked by somerton beach around the time the man who was found on Summerton Beach was found. And I have no idea whose it is. It's just been I put it in my glove compartment, been sitting there until I read this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled down or his car was unlocked. And whoever ripped this thing out, because they did find out that part was ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the back seat of this guy's car. Right. Not very smart if you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're not trying to cover your tracks. Exactly. Right. So they now have the copy of the Rubyte that the scrap of paper that was found in the summer to man's trousers came from. Yeah. Which by all accounts, is a one of a kind printing. Right? Yeah. Like a one off. Yes. And not an addition of hundreds. Like a single printing of this one book. Right. But supposedly it's part of an addition. I can't remember which edition it was by this printer. But for years, people have been trying to track down a copy from that edition, and they couldn't find it. Well, somebody finally found one. They're like, this is not the exact same book that the cops found with the associated with somerton man, which is a very odd thing. Totally. So in this book, they get another huge break. This breaks the case open even further. Right. They're like, Surely we're going to figure it out now. Yeah. This was huge. They found two local phone numbers. One was a bank phone number, which didn't lead to much of anything. And another one, X 3239, belong to well, they found a couple of things. They found this number that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson, who we'll talk about in a minute. And then they also found, you know, how we did our episode on Spies? And one of the things sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that they would literally write things on, and you could make an impression such that it's like the kids trick, where you rip that page off and you have what looks like a blank page, but the impression of what was written above it. And in this, little kids will use a pencil to see what it says. But in this case, they used UV light to see what, by all accounts, is a five line code. Right. And the code's pretty odd. Yeah. I mean, I think what you should read it, it'll sound like gibberish, but if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about this one. Sure. But if not, here we go. All capital letters. Line one is Wrgoababd. Second line. M-L-I-A Again, that's repeated Boaiaqc. And finally it T-M-T-S-A-M-S-T-G-A-B Go break it. Right. The eagle has landed at midnight. Which they basically said that, go break it. And no one could. No one has. Yes. A lot of amateur code breakers, because, again, they went to the media, like you're saying, go break it, and a lot of code breakers tried and failed. And then they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and they tried and failed. And either the Naval Intelligence Service or later Sleuths concluded that there was too little information to ever break it, that you didn't have a key that you needed to have. And then it may have been as simple as the first letter of a list that he was trying to remember. Right. Yeah. Because apparently they bear a resemblance, frequency wise, the first letters of common words in the English language. So it's possible that, like, it's a to do list that the guy was just trying to remember. Buy these groceries, go see this person at this time. That kind of thing. A lot of letters. It is a lot of letters. And a lot of people say, no, this is obviously a spy co book. Don't be naive. So the cops there's the code breaking thing that they're doing, and then simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local phone number. And they did. And on the other end, a woman picked up and it turned out, like you said, to be Jessica Thompson. And you want to take another break. I think it's a great place. We're going to take a break and we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. We should say, coming back from break, we just got compliments from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something like this. What happened to Caesar, though. Yeah, on your birthday, Matt said, you guys are really doing a great job. And Josh said, tell us that. Go back to sleep. All right, so we promised talk of Jessica Thompson. This is a really good lead. They called her up, she answered the phone. It's a good first step in my movie version, at least. She answered the phone and went she was a nurse, she was married. She had a kid named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy, though, right? Yeah, his son. And her maiden name was Harkness. And this was kept private for a lot of years. Her name was she asked him to keep it a secret. And I read a bunch of accounts, most of which said that she may have had a few boyfriends here and there. Affairs. The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more than once. So I think that the general idea was that she was probably just trying to keep this quiet in the 1940s. Wouldn't be outed as a trolley. Right. And the cops said, sure, no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman whose phone number was written in the Summertime Man's copy of The Ruby. But in 2013, her family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so many years that that was probably who it was. That again, it's basically taken for granted as a fact of the case that she is that woman. Yeah. Her nickname was Jesty. J-E-S-T-Y-N. That's how she inscribed copies of this rubyte. Well, I guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah. The cops are like, okay, we've gone through a lot to get to you, lady. Have you given a copy of this 12th century book of Persian poetry called The Rubyache to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have. And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure it out. Yeah. And they said, who have you given it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall. They said, okay, we'll call you back. They hung up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxhall. Well, yeah, they probably figured that's Harvey kitel sure. And they were unfairly. Alfred Boxall disappointed when they found he was alive and well in New South Wales. And he said, yeah, I got the book right here. She gave them to all her lovers. There was speculation that perhaps she gave it to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had been one of her lovers. Yeah. And I think that's probably absolutely correct. Yeah. Because she had inscribed it, like I said, with Justin, and that's how the cops refer to her on their case files. Right. So they went, oh, you're alive. Great. And he said, yeah, but I've got the book. Not all was lost and it was intact. That's correct. So they said, you got to be kidding me. This lead, the lead of all leads. I was going to break this case wide open. It's a dead end. Are you kidding me. And one of the officers developed a permanent scarf and banging his head slowly against the wall. That's right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled. And so they said, okay, lady, your phone number was in this thing, so we want you to come down to the Morgan, just take a look at this bust we made of the dead guy. And they said, Also, is there anything else anything weird happened to you in the last year or so? And she said, well, the only thing I can think of is that my neighbors said to me once when I came home one day that some man they didn't know, he called on my house, and that was it. That's literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me in the last year. Someone knocked on her door that she didn't know where her neighbors didn't know. It happens to me, like, three times a week, right. So they bring her in to look at this bus, detective Sergeant Lionel Lean. And he was one of the two leads. That was not an Australian accent. No, I know. Okay. And I don't know what kind of accident it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not trying to do Australian. And he said that she was completely taken aback to the point of giving the appearance. She was about to faint, end quote. Like, she knows who this dude is. She's a nurse. First of all, she wasn't even looking at a body. But she is a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by any of this. No. And again, it wasn't even a body. It was a plaster butt. Yeah, right? But she was like and they go, did you know him? And she goes, no, I didn't. Just got some heartburn, and I have nothing more to say about this, so don't ever ask me. And she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not at all. So immediately, the cops are like, you know way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't beat up people that they had in custody to get information out of them. So they let her go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never know the answer to this mystery. Yeah. There's a retired detective named Gary Feltis. Is it Gary? I thought Gerry. G-E-R-R-Y. Probably jerry, you convinced me. That's funny. We just crossed over to one another side again. So he took up this case later in life, and he actually interviewed her in 2007. He said she was evasive under questioning, and, like, this lady knew something. Yeah. And again, this guy was him. He's a hobbyist amateur sleuth on this case, both those guys. But he had 40 years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No, I haven't even heard of it. It is about a cold case murder of a nun in the 1950s? No, 1960s, I think. And there are these amateur detectives that have been working on this all these years, these two women in particular that were students of this and on at school that are just amazing and really get an appreciation for these people who become obsessed with these solving these cases that aren't even like family members or anything, you know? Is it like drama or documentary TID part? Documentary series. Oh, wow. I got to see that. Oh, dude, it's one of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through. And that's all I'm going to say. Okay. I've been waiting for this since I finished making of a Murderer. Yeah, it's better, I think I liked it better. What? Yeah, very disturbing stuff. Wow. I gotta go. You got to leave it. Yeah. So hats off to you. Amateur sleuth out there, for sure. Getting in the way of real police. No, for doing work. That real police. These are cold cases that they're hard pressed to get information anymore in most cases. No, it's true. I was just kidding. Sniffing people off the case after the cops say right. And I was kind of mad not to get too derailed by this, that these cold cases just sort of stay cold. Yeah. But then you think you can't just concentrate on a 40 year old murder case, and there's so many current things you got to be looking into. Plus, it's hard. It really is. All right, so back to Thompson. Evasive under questioning later on. Her son Robin, like we said earlier, he started looking into it, got really interested in trying to figure this thing out. Oh, he did? I didn't know that. And he turned out to be a professional dancer. Yes. With the calves of Lena Horn and the Australian Ballet. Right. And hypodencia in exactly the same way that the Summerton Man had. And he had the same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again, there's something that hasn't been proven, but most people take as conclusive fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't know the sommerton man was the son of the sommerton man. Yeah. What I saw was between the ear and the teeth, they put odds for both of those things at about quite a range, between one and 10,000,001 and 20 million. Okay. But let's just say it's one in 10 million. That's still pretty. It's one in a trillion at that point. It's the same thing, basically. So eventually another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry. Derek Abbott is a different sluts. They're arch rivals. It's hilarious. They hate each other. He got involved and said, you know what? I'm going to get Robin in here for a DNA test. Robin is a him. But it says here her, right? No, Robin's daughter was the one who took the DNA test. Robin is long dead. Got you. Okay. No, I think I had it backwards. And I don't think he got involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay. That's why I was kind of surprised. Got you. So he got her daughter to take a DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which would have been possibly the Summerton Man, who by all accounts, seemed like he was American, which would have explained the tie, perhaps the thread. Yeah. And what else? The fact that no one in Australia could identify them or was willing to identify them. So the only thing left then, after that is okay, well, somebody just dig up the Sommerton man, like you buried in such a way so we could do this. Right. Well, it turns out, in Australia, from what I saw, there are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume a body. One is to contest a will. There's no will or state, really, in question here. And then the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a soldier lost at war. Other than that, it's an uphill battle, getting a body exhumed. And two different times, Derek Abbott, who actually, as an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter, who took the DNA test at his Behest. He petitioned twice to have somerton man exumed, and twice he was turned down because obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to dig up a body. So he swab the inside of her cheek and that was true love. Exactly. I got to get in there over candlelight. All right. He gave her a hand pie. So here are the theories. Well, I'm going to go ahead and start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in here, but not really suicide. I think that perhaps, and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read, I like this one. I think that he was an American man. We had an affair with Jenny. Nurse Thompson. Justin and went there, traveled there, found out she was pregnant, and was rejected and went down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to do so. Okay. And the other things I've read said that he could the things that don't add up was like, the body was found with no vomit, which a lot of times happen if you are poison. Sure. Even if you're not, one of the last things you do as your life is ending is throw up, usually. Oh, really? Yeah, it's pretty common. No one ever tells you that at the dinner party? You've never been told that? No one ever tells you two things in life. That you poop when you have a baby and you poop and you throw up before you die. And you poop when you die, too. Poop when you die? I think so. I guess that's why Elvis died on the toilet. Yeah. Very efficient. He wanted to go out with some dignity. Right. Oh, man. Where was that? The thing I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline drank the poison into the water and maybe like vomited and rich there and then kind of went back up the beach and lay there to die and maybe had one less cigarette tried to very possible that's one theory. Another theory is that he died by poison but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is becoming more and more publicized the public came to widely believe that he was a spy and that as more details of the case spread out more and more over the decades this vision of aspiring emerged makes sense. Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was posing as a housewife and somerton man was a spy who worked for her or arrival spy and Alfred Boxall was a spy who worked for her which would explain why she gave both of them copies of the RubyAt and that actually the copies of the Rubyot were one time pads themselves which were actually the keys to crack the code. Unfortunately the cops in Adelaide through the Rubyte that was the summer to man away in the they got rid of the suitcase in the 80s. Maybe it was both. Maybe he was the spy who loved her. It could have been. But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxhall murdered the man or she had him murder him and then they took his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually confronted with that in the 70s on TV and he's like that's pretty ridiculous. Everybody some people are like we know you were in intelligence in World War II. It turns out he was like an army engineer or something like that. He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said that's just what a murderer would say. Right. That's ridiculous on TV. Right. So the idea that the sommerton man's copy of the Ruby up was basically a one of a kind it seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible he was a spy. Yeah in that code for sure. So that's another big strong possibility. Here's the thing I saw two in 1959 a third witness came forward the cher never before revealed story that he was on the beach in the wee hours of the morning and saw a man carrying an unconscious man over his shoulder toward that spot but was dark, could not identify anything and nothing ever came of that. Stuff like that. Give me my money for the movie. Right, stuff like that. I think it could be either it wasn't him or just I don't know. You know how people are, they just make something up to get on the news. And then I thought the same thing with the hand raising up. Maybe that didn't even happen. Well yeah, that's another thing. What I realized from researching this Chuck was that this case has been so muddied with conjecture and false truths that have just spread across the internet that did the lions ever recant their version of seeing him move. If so, then maybe he was dead when he was taken out to the beach. Who knows? You really have to dive in. But if you want to dive in, this mystery, maybe even more than any others, is just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into. Because even if they dug up over to man and found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't die, and it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the police were investigating it. You can crack the case in one major way, and it will probably lead to a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that we may never know. Somerton man. Tammy shoot stuff. I just said something in person. If you want to know more about Sommerton Man, you should go listen to the stuff they don't want you to Know episode on it for sure or watch it. I'm not sure if it's video or audio. Maybe both. And you can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday Magazine and The Body on Somerton Beach on Smithsonian, among many other great articles. And since I said many, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this on Accents. And I got to say we got more email on Stuttering and Accents that I've seen in a long, long time. For real? I don't know. I think a new accent would be big. Stuttering really hit home with a lot of people, I think. And there's a stuttering email, too. It's either going to be on the next one or the one that was just released. Okay, you may have heard it's upcoming. Hey, guys, listen to accents. And I wanted to hopefully set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name is Chris and I'm from New Jersey, and I've heard Chuck mentioned a few times he lived in New Jersey for a bit. First off, where did you live? What brought you here and why did you leave? I lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge, sort of near Morris town is the biggest town that you might have heard of. What brought me there? I lived there after college because it was a free place to live because of a roommate's, parents who were out of the country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't want to sell their house and they said, you guys are done with college. You want to live here for free, hang out in New York? We said, sure, and why did I leave? I left because they came back. That would be weird if I was still living there. Anyway, he might be able to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York accent, if any. No, you definitely have accent. You're insane. In my opinion. Many older adults have moved from New York to New Jersey. For the suburbs, seen many older people meet and talk about the street they grew up on, the Brooklyn or like I would like to make clear that no one from New Jersey says New Jersey. That's true. If anything, that is in New York accent. Chuck, can you confirm? I can confirm I never heard anyone say New Jersey, but I cannot confirm that there is no accident because definitely have an accident in New Jersey. Yeah. In fact, one of the things that I noticed is not so much an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button instead of button or like words that are split in half. Like that right. They would stop, like a hard stop button. You know what I'm talking about? Sure. Very New Jersey. And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that you heard that. Sure. Hey, kid, even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that. Anyway, I hope Chuck agrees. Also, I hope he's a fan of Pork Roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm a fan of Taylor pork roll. I don't know if that counts. I thought that was the only Pork Roll. Thanks for the endless amounts of entertainment. He's seeing you guys in Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So chris Ortado from Highland Park, New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse. Thanks, Chris. If you want to get in touch with us, like Chris did, you can send us an email with stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyoushouldnow.com. Stuffyhannow is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c329a132-5460-11e8-b38c-930c331430e5 | How the Electric Chair Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-electric-chair-works | The electric chair is an all-American invention. It spread almost nowhere else in the world as a capital punishment but worked overtime in the States. Despite the terrible sights and sounds an electrocution produces, it was created out of humaneness.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The electric chair is an all-American invention. It spread almost nowhere else in the world as a capital punishment but worked overtime in the States. Despite the terrible sights and sounds an electrocution produces, it was created out of humaneness.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=17, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=101, tm_isdst=0) | 57894532 | audio/mpeg | "Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your City Advantage Platinum Select card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the city Advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at citi comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. What if you were a 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 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, Brian over there. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Over here. And I guess they probably sound a little too chipper for what we're about to talk about because it is grim stuff. It is. And I, my friend, have a fact that you probably know, but I don't know if everyone else knows, that the word electrocute is a portmanteau that was coined during the war of Currents. I'm so happy with you. This is mine fact, too. I was like, Chuck is going to love this. I appreciate you assuming that I already knew it. Well, I assume you know everything. Let them have it, Chuck. Well, yeah, it comes from the words electric and execution. And when I saw that, I was like, that can't be right. Surely the word electrocute was around before then. But there was no before then because there was no mass use of electricity. And I don't know who exactly coined it. I couldn't find that. But it was during the war of Currents. Yes. I saw it in like a paper from that said that, and he just said it. So matter of fact, I was like, what? Oh, wow. That is right. Electrocute. Electro, execution. It's like the Sexecutioner. It's like sex and the executioner. The executioner, yes. And that's also a word I guess gets misused because a lot of people say someone is electrocuted if they just experienced a profound shock, but that's not the case. That's why it was confusing. I think, at first for us, we're like, wait, that's not sensible. I also saw one other Electrophones, asia. Okay, I know it's not nearly as good as electrocute, but I wanted to toss it out, too. And this episode has what I believe may be the best stuff you should know. Band name of all time. I know what that one is, too, so we'll just hang on to that. Okay, cool. Yeah, I saw that. And I was like, There's Chuck's band name. So we're talking electrician. And now that you know electrician, what the word means, we're specifically talking about being put to death on purpose through electricity. And as far as we know, the only way that anyone has ever been put to death using electricity is in an electric chair, which is a specifically American invention. Did you know that before you research this? I did. And we should point out that the Philippines did use this for a while, but it was because we basically were like, you guys should totally use the electric chair. Here, have one. Right? Back in 1926. And they used it for 50 years until 1976. And then they were like, this is really gross. We're going to stop using this and stop executing people altogether. Isn't that right? Did they all together? I just assumed they went to firing squad or something. I don't know if it was in 76, but I think they got rid of the death benefit, perhaps. How very civil. So with the electric chair, like I said, it was an American invention, and it's been around since, I guess, the 1880s is when it really started to kind of make its debut. But it's really kind of basic and simple for something as seemingly complicated, is harnessing electricity to extinguish a human life. Right? It's a chair that you strap somebody to and run electricity through their body until they die. It's really about that simple. Yeah. If you've ever seen a movie or, God forbid, if you've ever been to an execution, can't imagine doing something like that. But people do that. And by the way, if I say things like that, I'm just speaking for myself, everyone. Well, we did, like a whole lethal injection episode, and you came out pretty strongly against the death penalty, if I remember correctly. So it's already out there. Yeah. If I seem like I'm turned off by a lot of this is because I am. But there are a lot of people in this country that when they hear about flames shooting out of someone's head and blood count coming out of someone's eyeballs and the smell of cooked flesh, they're like, Heck yeah. Like, zap them again. Shouldn't have killed those people. You're getting what you deserve. So there are a lot of people out there that feel that way, and I'm just not one of them. Yeah, I was reading about the execution of Ted Bundy. He was electrocuted in Florida, I'm pretty sure. And it was Florida. There were people partying outside of the prison where he was put to death. I remember that holding like, a barbecue. What year was it? Like 1990, maybe. Or 89. I feel like I was in college, but I remember seeing that on the news, and it seemed like a tailgate was going on. Yeah, that's what it seemed like, from what I read. And there was apparently zero Bundy supporters. It was all people who are there to cheer on his death. So there are definitely people who feel that way out there, for sure. So, yeah, getting back to what you're saying, though, it is very rudimentary. There was a metal cap that is the electrode, and that is put onto a prisoner's shaved head. There is a natural sponge with saline, salt water in that sponge, and saltwater is conductive, and that's the reason they use that. But there have been a lot of problems with the wrong sponges. Too much salt, too little salt, too much water. Too little water. But that's generally how it works. That goes in between the cap, that metal cap in the person's head, and then there's another electrode that's usually on the leg of the prisoner, but sometimes it's on, like, the foot or the base of the spine or something. And this all just allows electricity to flow freely through a person's body until they die. Right, because the electrode that goes into the head, that's where the electricity comes from. And then the other electrode that's connected to the ground, like, through the leg, allows the current to pass through the body all the way right from that free flow of electricity. That's where you get these tremendously, horrific results, ultimately culminating in the death of the person. And then, Chuck, you said that they put a sponge on people's heads. It has to be a natural sponge. Did you say that? I did. So apparently they found, as we'll see, only a natural sponge will work. But one of the other purposes that serves, besides acting as, like, kind of a reservoir for the saltwater conductor, it fills the space between the metal cap and the victim's head, because the metal caps is like this little metal cap, and your head is not a perfect cap shaped dome. So the sponge is meant to also kind of fill that space and get the electricity everywhere going through your head. Yeah. And as far as the chair, the actual wooden chair, it could have been anything. It could have been some upright thing. Like Hannibal Lecter was strapped to, like, an upright gurney, but they settled on a chair. It's generally this big, heavy oak chair. And many times, irony of all ironies, that chair is built by prison labor. I saw that, too, and it's almost invariably called Old Sparky. But there are also some that were called, like, Old Smoky. And then the worst of all, I think, was Louisiana called Gruesome Gerdy. Just a terrible name for a chair. Yeah, actually, it's a perfect name for an electric chair, actually, now that I think about it. Yeah, but the sort of tradition of naming electric chairs these cute names is also something that's a bit of a turn off. Yeah, just a tad bit. So you're strapped into this chair. Obviously, your arms are strapped in, your legs are strapped in. Most of the times you have a strap across your chest and groin area. And again, the chair has nothing to do, it doesn't have electricity running through it at all. That is just the means to keep the prisoner strapped in. Right. Because when that switch is thrown, your muscles just contract to the point where you can just snap bones, joints, get this thrown out of joint. Literally. It's a huge muscular contraction throughout your entire body, because that's how your muscles contract is through electricity and electrochemical reaction. Right. So when you introduce a huge amount of electricity to your body all at once, all the muscles in your body contract. And it's so much so that if you're not strapped in, you would just fly right out of the chair. I think it must have been our electricity episode. We talked about how when people who have touched an electrical wire, their muscles have contracted so strongly that they've thrown themselves across the room. Like, you're not blown across the room by the electricity. That's your muscles contracting and shooting you across the room. That's why they have people strapped to the chair in the electric chair, to keep them from shooting across the room when the electricity shoots through. Yeah. And depending on what state you're in, they're all going to have their own protocol for how to carry out an electrocution. And we should also point out, too, that they are generally not used anymore. There are only nine states that still have that option. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia are you noticing a trend? I see a pattern. And then finally, Oklahoma not the only state not in the south. But it's not something that is generally still used in the United States. No, but it is a backup. And it's not a backup. I think if, like, lethal injection doesn't work, it's a backup. If the prisoner specifically says, I don't want lethal injection, I want the electric chair. Right. So depending on where you are, the protocol is going to vary. This one is pulled from Tennessee. There was an execution last year that Edmund Zagorski, I guess, asked for the chair because it was 2018 and this was the protocol. The electric chair will release 1750 volts of electricity for 20 seconds. We'll stop for 15 seconds and then we'll release another one. 7000 hundred and 50 volts for another 15 seconds. After the first wave of electricity, officials will wait five minutes and then close the blinds into the witness room. A doctor will check for signs of life. If there are none, the doctor will pronounce him dead. If he is still alive, the blinds will be raised. Another round, I assume, like an encore. The curtain goes back up and another round of electricity will be administered and the doctor will be called in again. Right. How about that? That encore thing kind of got me. I don't know. The parallels are obvious. Yeah. But I think also in the lethal injection, when we explain, like, the state witnesses, people who are hired to come and witness on behalf of the people because the state is executing people on behalf of the people of that state. And these are the representatives of everybody else who lives in that state. Yes, of course. There's no way you wouldn't get weirdos. But if I remember correctly, they try to weed those people out. Yes. I get where you're coming from. I'm not trying to shoot your opinions down or anything like that. Sure. Yeah. So one of the things, like you said, there's like 1700 volts. I've seen that's low. I've seen 2000 at least is what you want. And then the amps are really the big one because the voltage is kind of like the water pressure in a hose where the amps are like the actual flow rate of how much is coming through. So the amps are what kill you, they say. But you have to balance the amps in that you want to introduce enough amps through voltage into the inmate to kill them quickly and painlessly. Because I don't think we've said the reason the electric chair was brought around was not to set somebody on fire as you were executing them. It was because it was thought to be like a painless and humane way to execute a prisoner. Supposedly the point of executions. So you want to balance a quick and painless death through enough amps and voltage introduced with not so many amps and not a high enough amount of voltage that you cook the person and set them on fire. That's basically the tightrope that a state executioner who electrocute somebody is walking and figuring out how much juice to deliver for the electric chair. Yeah. And I tried to find if I always heard that there were dummy switches and that three guards will all flip a switch at the same time so no one knows if they were the one. And I think that was just I didn't see any support for that. And that may just be built on the old thing of the firing squad where someone has blanks. So, like, one person, everyone basically can say, well, I may have had the blank. I may not have actually had the bullet in my gun. Right. But that is apparently not the case with electric chairs. And a volunteer throws one switch. It's generally a prison guard has said, this is something that I will do. I'm volunteering for this. You can't apparently force someone to do this. It's always a volunteer. Right. And depending on the state too, they might not actually work at the prison. That might just be their job as an execution. It may be a second job they have or something like that. And from what I've seen, they're typically called electricians. The electro executioner is called an electrician. And New York had some very famous and prolific ones, kind of at the heyday of the electric chair in the first half of the 20th century. Oh, yeah. Are you ready for this? This is one of the most gruesome things I've ever heard in my life. One of them killed seven men in secession in one day. Wow. And they had all seven men in Sing Sing on death row in the death house at the same time. And so as one would be taken away, the other eleven would just be sitting there, like, freaking out. And then the next one would come, and it just kept whittling down. And as they went through this day of execution, the sense among the inmates, they were, like, almost losing their minds. It's one of the cruelest things I've ever heard in my life. At least in the modern era, there's no way to execute prisoners, and I believe they've really gotten away from that. You don't execute more than one person in a day at the same place. I think it's really kind of like your time to shine. It's your special day. You're not going to share it with eleven other or eight six other people anymore. But the executioner, the electrician from New York who did that, I can't remember his name right now, but he actually ended up taking his own life because apparently he was doing this to pay the medical bills for his wife, who was chronically ill. And this paid really well, and eventually she died and he abruptly quit and then went and took his life. Wow. Yeah. So it's not like if you're an electrician or you're an executioner, I don't think it's kind of like this is a fun thing. I think this kind of destroys everybody involved, basically. Yeah. And so you mentioned that it was supposedly the humane way of killing people, and we'll get to how that happened in a minute. But the two gentlemen, jean Louis Provost and Frederica Battery, by the way, we got an email about someone who was not happy with my Italian. Did you see that? Yeah. But we got a couple from people who were Italian American saying, like, I love it. Don't ever stop. Yeah. The one guy who said I went too far was also very upset about my characterization of New Englanders as liking Dunkin Donuts as well. Wow. So I sort of took that one with a grain of salt. That's a big fat that's a salt lick, I think. Yeah. Donut jokes. Come on. Stop ragging on Dunkin Donuts. So anyway, those two gentlemen, they did a lot of research into heart defibrillation in the 1890s, and the idea at that time was, hey, what's going on here? When you electrocute someone, is it instantly sort of kills the prisoner by massive brain damage and a stoppage interruption of the heart. And so that's why they thought it was more humane than like hanging, which we'll get to in a SEC, but that is not the case as we will see from the scores of botched electrocutions over the years. Right. That's why if you read like, these procedures for executing a prisoner using electricity, there are two rounds of juice. Invariably the first one supposedly destroys the brain, but the second one remember how I said all the muscles in the body, like, contract? Well, one of the biggest muscles in the body is your heart and your heart contracts, which ironically protects it from dying. Oh, interesting. Right? Yeah. So that's why they'll stop with the electricity, the electrical flow for several seconds to let the heart come out of seizure again. And then when they do it a second time, allegedly, that is the one that's meant to destroy the heart. So initially the first one is supposed to destroy the conscious mind and then ultimately the brain. And it supposedly happens very fast. The number you'll see bandied about is that it happens in one 240th of a second, which is faster than you can consciously register pain. So you're dead, you're at least unconscious and then you're dead right after that before you can feel pain. But the person I think I've seen associated with that is a guy named Fred Lucder, who's actually like a well known engineer of Tennessee's Electric Chair. And I believe a Holocaust and I are too. And I didn't see anywhere else like any legitimate study that showed that. But it's like somebody said it and everybody's just going to go with that. But supposedly that's what the first juice does is knock you out and kill you BrainWise. Your brain dead and then the second one kills your cardiac system. Yeah. Eric Morris did a documentary about him, actually. About Fred Lucher? Yeah. Called Mr. Death, and part of it was on his work with the electric chair and then part of it was on you're. Right. The fact that he is a notorious Holocaust denier and guess what he does now? I have no idea. He apparently works in the garden department of a Home Depot. Really? Yeah, in his old age. Wow. I'm correct that he built Tennessee's electric chair. He wasn't an actual electrician. Right. Or an executioner. No, it's a really good documentary, of course, because it's Earl Morris, but you should check it out. Cool. Do you want to take a break? Yeah, we'll take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about a very famous Supreme Court case and then a lot about hanging right after this. 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But very famously, Justice William Brennan wrote a dissent that described an execution like this. And by the way, this part is particularly gruesome. So if you don't want to hear about this, then just tune out for, like, 20 seconds. When the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner cringes, leaps and fights the straps with amazing strength. The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands. The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on his cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates and vomits blood and drool. Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly if he perspires excessively. And witnesses hear aloud and sustain sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber. And dude, we should point out, like Brennan wasn't saying, in the worst case scenario, this is what happens. That's a pretty standard. That's standard for an electric chair execution. And then there was one other thing, too, that I saw still in the gruesome zone. Everybody. Well, Brennan said that the person gurgles often, they'll also sigh, and apparently it reeks out witnesses because they're like, he's still alive. And what happens again when the muscles contract? Whatever air is in the lungs gets trapped in there because your epiglottis shuts tight. It's not opening again. So then when the electricity is turned off and your muscles relax, that air is expelled out and it sounds like you're sighing or you're gurgling if there's fluid in there. And it's just another terrible facet of this kind of execution. Yeah. So we promised talk of hanging, and that's really how the electric chair came about. In Europe, they had long used the guillotine, but here in the United States, kind of from the beginning, I guess, we're firing squads. But hanging was really the humane way of executing prisoners for a long time with the idea that in the case of a gallows, that door would drop, you would drop and your neck would snap, basically, and you would die very quickly. But that was not always the case. There was a man named Tom Ketcham in New Mexico Territory. His head was completely torn off of his body. Yeah, that's just one. There are plenty of them. That actually happened to a woman named Eva Duggan, had that happen to her in Arizona in 1930 as well. And it's not like that's not the only possible outcome from a botched hanging. Like, they can go the other way as well, where your neck doesn't snap or your head doesn't pop off and you're just slowly suffocating. There was a case of one guy, I think his name is William Williams, who was just born to lose. Apparently he dropped and it didn't strangle, it didn't break his neck, it didn't do anything. And the prison and officials had to basically strangulate them with the rope to kill him. And so all this stuff and there's plenty of them, all the stuff was making the news at the time, and it was kind of converging with a public sentiment against the death penalty in general. So if the public is kind of, like, not quite sure we should be killing people, I don't feel very good about this, and the news of, like, botched hangings are coming out, something's going to change. And there are basically two things that can happen at a point in history like this. Either the society can say, you know what, execution in general is just bad news, and let's just not do that anymore. Or maybe we do need execution, but we need to find a better way to do it in pronto because this is not okay any longer. Yeah, there was another kind of hanging. You always think of the gallows and that trap door, but there's something called a suspension hanging where the person is on the ground with a rope around their neck and weights are dropped over a pulley, and then you are jerked up instead of being dropped, and that supposedly will snap your neck. And that was the case with the execution of Roxalana drugs. She was small, and so when that roof was jerked up, her neck was not snapped and she slowly was strangled to death for about 20 minutes. And she had killed her husband. And that was a case that was controversial for a lot of reasons. It was very much a pre planned killing. But she claimed that she had been abused. She had her children involved in the killing. It's a pretty interesting story. She sent her ten year old out and then had her teenage kids help out. So one of the kids tied a rope around her dad's neck. The woman, the mother, Roxalana, shot him, but I think didn't use the gun properly, so it didn't kill him. Gave the gun to her 14 year old nephew. He shot him a few more times. The husband's laying there, unable to move, pleading for help, and then she comes barreling in with an axe and cuts his head off. Jeez. Yeah. So she takes the head and the body to the parlor. They stayed there for about a day. Then she cut the body up, burnt it and got rid of the ashes and then was found out. But the upshot of all this was when she was executed, she didn't die quickly and humanely. She died very slowly and painfully and very important publicly at a time when the public, in particular in New York, was like, we're better than this. And so, not strictly from her botched execution, but definitely in part because of it, new York said, we need to find a better way to do this. How can we execute somebody better? And they said prominent lawyer Elbridge Thomas Jerry Go. And so Jerry formed he's like, well, you guys picked me first, so we're going to call the commission, the Jerry Commission. And he assembled two other guys, including a man named Alfred P. Southwick, who was a dentist, who was interested in this kind of stuff. He was like, you know what? Being a dentist isn't scratching. That sadistic itch right. He was basically like the founder of Ohio art yeah, exactly. So the three of them get together and they spend two years figuring out, like, looking at different ways of execution. And they looked at all of them and they released this journal report, like a formal New York state government report that details and chronicles all the different ways that you could officially kill somebody, from precipitation, which is pushing them off a cliff, to boiling them alive. Whether you want it to be molten, lead or water doesn't really matter at that point, to crushing from heavy stones. And they looked at 34 different methods of execution in detail, and they concluded that none of them were an improvement on hanging, that, yes, some of them would definitely provide the public spectacle that would probably deter other people or make them think twice about killing somebody, but definitely no more humane, as inhumane as. Hanging could be especially a botched hanging. So they said, okay, well, we're back to square one. But one of us, Alfred P. Southwick, thinks he knows of a method that we haven't hit upon yet. And it was electricity. No. He had seen a Marx Brothers movie, and he said, maybe we should just drop a safe on someone's head as they walk down the sidewalk. Right. They're like, yeah, it could kind of work, but if you miss, you just really maim them terribly. Yeah. So he came upon electrocution as what he felt was. Like the best way. Because electricity was this is where we get into. Like. Kind of things aligning. And carbon arc lining becoming widespread in cities. And people having street lights and electricity in their houses was in big cities was sort of a new thing. But it was super dangerous. And there were a lot of cases of people getting electrocuted. There was a drunk in Buffalo, a drunk man who grabbed hold of a generator just to sort of see what it felt like, died instantly. And that's when Southwest was like, wait a minute, I think we're onto something here. If it can kill people just instantly, then that's kind of what we're after. Right? So the thing is, that whole instantly thing, that's a little subjective to the sky, right? Yeah, it happened one time. And then also, this is what an eyewitness standing a little ways away says, he died instantly. Are you fudging a little bit? Because instantly or not really kind of counts when you're looking for a new method of execution for a state to use over and over again and to spread throughout all 50 states. Basically, it's really important that it's instant. And they were like, yeah, it's instant. Let's just look into this one, because it's got to be better than hanging. So they did. And when they found out, that when it became public and announced that they were kind of forming a subset to the Jerry Commission called Chuck the Electric Death Commission. Best band name of all time. We have arrived at the band name, everybody. Yeah. There's not a lot on this. Even I've looked into this a little more, and it's not all over the internet, surprisingly. No, it's not. But I've seen it in some reputable sources. So it's not like it's just totally made up of a myth or a legend or something like that. I think it was basically they said, okay, the Jerry Commission has done its job. We're going to set ourselves up in this own commission, the electric Death commission, to basically show that electrocution is a good and humane way to take a life right, for the state. So Alfred Southwick fell in with a guy named George Fell. Appropriately enough, George Fell was a surgeon. He was a tinkerer, an engineer, and he became extremely interested in the applications of electricity to cause death as well. And so Southwick and Fell basically got together and formed this, like, weirdo cabal to figure out how to create an electric chair. Yeah. This part I don't quite get, because I know that I can hardly even say this and it's out loud, but I know that they practiced on stray dogs. They electrocuted hundreds of dogs, but it says here they were supplied by the buffalo ASPCA not knowingly. Right. Yes. I saw somewhere, Chuck, that at this time, thanks to these guys, that became the method of euthanasia that the local animal shelters used on stray animals. Really? Yeah. I guess they started testing on them, and it became, like, so useful. I guess, that the ASPCA said, hey, bring your equipment on over here, and they started using it to execute straight. That's what I saw. Wow. I'm sure they're not proud of that part of their history of protecting animals from cruelty. I'm sure they are not, actually. Please stop. Just keep moving on. Keep going. Talk about Thomas Edison. Wow. So at the end of this and all these dogs, they basically came to that conclusion that we talked about earlier, was that electricity will instantly disrupt the heartbeat and the rhythm, and death will be instant and painless. And New York passed a state law saying, basically in 1888 that this is the way forward for us. Yeah. And again, this is long after the time when the two guys, Provost and Bately, had shown this is, like, the early 1800, I think, that you could actually use electricity to restart somebody's heart. And then also now we know that actually electricity doesn't instantly kill you by causing a heart attack. It does the opposite. The heart becomes, like, goes into safe mode to protect itself, and you have to hit it again to make it spasm and go into fibrillation, because that's what fibrillation is. It's like in non rhythmic heartbeat to where you can't actually pump any blood out. That's a heart attack. Right. Or that's fibrillation. That's cardiac arrest. That's not what happens when you get hit with the first jolt of electricity. So I don't know if Fell and Southwick were just making this up or if it just happened that it did kill dogs like that, or what. Maybe they were using a massive amount, or maybe they were using just the right level of amps. I don't know. But they definitely demonstrated that this is something that could be done. But it wasn't just them simultaneous to Southwick and Fell, who, from everything I could tell, were, aside from the fact that they killed a lot of dogs with electricity, were legitimate scientists who were doing this to find a humane alternative to hanging. There was another guy who was the opposite of legitimate, wasn't a scientist, and was a fairly shady character named Harold Brown. Yeah. So off to the side, Fell in Southwick, built the first actual chair. So just park that there for a moment, and then we have to talk a squat. Take a seat. No, don't sit there. Sit in the other chair. So we have to talk about the war of currents, which we've talked about on this. I think we did a whole podcast on this, right? Yeah. Did Nikola Tesla change the way we use electricity? Answer yes. Yes. So we don't need to go over all that again. But just very quickly, the war of currents, there was a big war between whether or not we are going to move forward as a nation with AC power or DC power. Thomas Edison wanted that DC power. He had invested heavily in that. So he was trying to make that one out. And then George Westinghouse, of course, on the other side, had invested in AC Power. And Brown, who you mentioned, he actually worked for Edison, is that right? Yes, but supposedly unbeknownst. He even testified under oath that he did not work for Edison when he very well, very much did and had for years by that time. How interesting. Yeah. Here's a shade ball. And the one thing that I can't figure out, Chuck, is whether he was truly a crusader against Westinghouse and AC power. Like, he genuinely thought it was dangerous and then he fell in with Edison, or if he was an Edison operative from the outset. That's what I've not been able to establish. But he was definitely working for Edison secretly. Interesting. So the Electric Death Commission gets in touch with Edison and then the grabster put this together for us. And I thought this is a very kind of great comparison. He said, what happened next is sort of like if the government said to Pepsi, hey, you guys are experts on soda. How should we kill someone with a soda? And Pepsi was like, here we'll do lots of experiments that will prove to you that Coca Cola will kill somebody very easily. And that's basically what happened, is Harold Brown, working with Edison, did all these gruesome public electrocutions to show how dangerous AC Current was. So they would adopt it for the electric chair, which would in turn, in his mind, give AC Current a bad name. Right. That's as underhanded as it gets. Like, if you are in competition in business, that's like Uber calling fake Lyft rides when they started out. Do you remember that? Yeah, but this is way worse. But it's still in the same wheelhouse. But that's what Edison was doing. He was like, oh, yeah, totally great. Apparently he declined first to participate have anything to do with this Electric Death Commission. And then he was like, oh, wait, yes. Actually, I have a great idea. I would like to be involved. I suggest that AC current be used. And he used Harold Brown to just basically carry out this whole thing. So much so that Harold Brown managed to convince the Electric Death Commission that not only should AC Current be used for the first electrocution in the state of New York. A Westinghouse generator should be used to generate that electrical current. And he tried to buy some generators from Westinghouse, and they're like, no, you can't. We know what you're going to do with those. So we ended up buying second hand ones, and that kind of sets the stage for the first execution, which, if you ask me, is a really good point to take our second break. Agreed. With fewer 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. 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Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription Required terms apply visit hulu.com for plan details so, Chuck, we're in Auburn State Prison. It's August of 1890, and there's a guy named William Kemler who was convicted of murdering his common law wife Tilly with an ax. And when he was caught, he apparently had done it in a drunken range. And I don't know if he felt remorse or guilt or was just bored with the whole thing, but he had a quote where he said something like, yes, I struck her with a hatchet. I intended to kill her. The sooner I am hung and it's over with, the better. Hanged. Hanged. I always get that wrong, don't I? Yes. So the sooner I'm hanged and it's over with, the better. And I guess he was not afraid of the noose. But when he found out that they were going to use electrocution and that he would be the first ever human being to be executed by the state with electricity, he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about? Again? And started to file lawsuits. So he actually also became the first person to challenge the constitutionality of the electric chair as a means of execution. Yeah, that's kind of a crazy fact. I think the very first person to go to the electric chair was the first person to be like, I don't think this is right. Yeah, it's true. But the Supreme Court said, no, no, they ruled against Kimler and said, it does not violate the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. And he went, what about the excessive bail? And they went, I thought you were talking about cruel and unusual punishment. And he went out, whatever you want to hear. Yeah. So his execution, the very first one, was by all accounts botched pretty severely in and of itself. Yeah. So you remember how what was his name? Harold Brown managed to get Westinghouse generators used for that first execution, but he had to buy second hand ones. The first jolt of electricity that was sent through William Kembler to kill him only lasted for 17 seconds because one of the belts started to fall off the generator, so they had to stop before it had killed him. And by all accounts, he was sitting there struggling with life left in him. And the New York Times reported that, quote, strong men fainted and felt like logs on the floor at the site. It was a terrible thing to see. And also, if you look at the drawings of the execution that were used in the newspapers of the day, he's just sitting there in a chair surrounded by people like Harold Brown and George Bell and Alfred Southwick. And then the witnesses are all just milling around, like, standing around watching them, like they're watching some guy in a drinking contest or something, and that's how he was executed. So I would imagine, like, it'd be bad enough to be a witness to an execution today where it's real sterile and it's really clinical and there's a thick glass window between you and the curtain comes down to standing in the same room with somebody who's being electrocuted just a few feet away. That's got to make it even worse. Yes. And so clearly not a more humane way after this first execution. But they press forward because and I think Ed points out very astutely that there was something about the fact that it was a use of technology that wasn't tie a rope around someone's neck or just put a bullet in their head that it seemed less offensive to the public at large. I think. Because it's not the kind of thing. Like if you're not a witness to it and you just read about something in the paper. It may seem like there is an acceptable moral distance because of this technology right when hanging was under fire for not being humane. New technology that kind of put more distance between you. That just seemed more advanced. And because it was more advanced in this kind of technocratic way of thinking, it was more humane, it was more high tech, so it must just be better that was kind of how the electric chair came to replace hanging. But even though that first one was simply botched, the idea of it just allowed it to spread. And from like, not all the accounts, but most of the accounts that I saw of that first execution were just like, this is terrible. This is gruesome, this will probably never happen again. And then other states were like, oh, you cook them with electricity. I like that idea. Let me try that, too. And it spread fairly quickly and became far and away the dominant method of execution in the United States in the 20th century. Yeah. And there have been many, many, and at the end, we'll talk about some more botched executions, but I don't think there are any more legendary than Willie Francis in he was executed in Louisiana for a murder that to call his trial questionable and suspect is like an understatement. It seems like this guy was just totally railroaded. And you mentioned Gruesome Gerty earlier. That was the name of the electric chair in Louisiana in this case, for his execution. It was set up by a drunk prison guard who apparently didn't set it up correctly. It was total human error. So he goes down in history as, to my knowledge, the only person who has ever been executed technically twice, because he survived his botched execution such that he lived completely through it. They couldn't use the chair anymore, and he actually lived to fight, to say, hey, you can't do this again. Because totally, that is the definition of cruel and unusual. You tried to kill me once and it didn't work. And I'm here in court again. And the US. Supreme Court said, no, sorry, you're going to have to go to the chair again. Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard? Crazy. This wasn't like the guy survived. And they were like, quick, throw the switch again. He's still alive. We need to finish the job, or whatever you want to call it. The electric chairs broke after going through a full execution. The guy is still alive and live for another year before they're like, all right, we fix the electric chair. It's time for you to die again. Yeah. And they did it twice, and that second time, that was that. But that's the definition of cruel and unusual. I agree with you entirely. Yeah. The interesting thing, though, is if you look, there were statistics put together about four or five years ago that shows that the electric chair and like you said, we did one in lethal injection that starting in the late 70s, kind of became one of the more preferred choices for most states. But as far as what you would consider botch percentage, the electric chair kind of leads the way. Except for the firing squad, only 1.92 electrocutions are categorized as botched, compared to 7.2% for lethal injection. Yeah, that's a pretty good track record, comparatively speaking. I guess. But then there's a really big point here, too. It's like in a botched lethal injection, at least from the perspective of the witnesses, that's vastly preferred to a botched electrocution where the person catches fire or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. But here's the problem with all of these, with comparing, like, botchedness and what's preferred and oh, that one's much more that's a much more tasteful botched execution than this one, because the medical profession has said, we don't have anything to do with this. Like, yeah, doctor can be present to pronounce the person dead, but the doctor is not going to assist in any way, shape or form and still keep the medical license. We cause no harm. So we can't assist in executions. Right. Our understanding of execution is coming. It's like anecdotal, like how to carry out an execution, what protocol you should use. It's done by the people who are doing this almost through trial and error, or from people's data where they executed dogs 100 something years ago. And that was what was used to kill hundreds, if not a thousand plus humans in actually, yeah, probably more than thousand humans in the United States in the 20th century. The thing is this, Chuck, you can stop there pretty easily and just say, like, so we don't know if it was ever humane. We don't know if it caused instant death. People catch on fire or whatever, but we've never known whether it does cause instant death. Because when you are autopsied after your execution, your brain is cooked invariably. That is one of the byproducts of electrocution. Your brain gets cooked basically through and through. It can be at 120 deg Fahrenheit at autopsy, still dozens of minutes or an hour or so later when your brain is removed, it's still that hot, right? So we don't actually know if the electric chair isn't humane or isn't painless. We don't really know. But then at the same time an execution, and whether it's tasteful or appears humane, yes, it's meant to be that way for the inmate, but it really is meant to be that way for society because it has to be palatable and tasteful for society, or our society is going to be like, no, we can't do that anymore, like we did with hanging. And that is what happened actually, with execution. Because of some botched executions in Florida in the 90s, society said, we've got to find another way. I've heard about this lethal injection thing. Let's try that instead. Yeah. Should we talk about some of these awful stories? Yeah. So let me see here. October 1019 85 in Indiana, electrocution of William Van Diver, the first administration of 2300 volts. He was still breathing. The execution took a total of 5 volts. I'm sorry, five jolts in 17 minutes. The smell of smoke, of hair and flesh burning. The Department of Corrections said this, quote, the execution did not go according to plan. Yeah, they like to be drool, it sounds like. How about Horace Franklin Duncan's Jr. 1989 in Alabama? Two jolts of electricity nine minutes apart. The first jolt failed to kill him. And the captain of the prison guard opened the door to the witness room and said, I think we've got the jacks on wrong. They reconnect the cables correctly, and death was pronounced 19 minutes after the first charge. But the first charge, it's not like it wasn't painful. It was probably more painful than the second one because the second one produced death, but it couldn't possibly produce the kind of voltage that would kill a person. It was just basically torture, like a little torture starter. Like they have a TGI Fridays. And then that was followed by the entree, which was death, which is not supposed to happen. So, again, if you'll kind of hearken back to all these news stories coming out, like, oh, this is not how we're supposed to be executing people. What's going on? This is starting to go on in the early 90s around the United States with electrocution. Yeah. This one in Georgia, alpha Otis Stevens, the first charge failed to kill him. He struggled to breathe for eight minutes, and they carried out the second charge. After the first two minute power surge, there was a six minute pause so his body could cool enough so physicians could examine him. And in that six minute period, he took 23 breaths, which, if you do the math and think about how intermittent those breaths are and then the quote from the Georgia prison official was, stevens was just not a conductor of electricity. How about that? And then there were three, Chuck. There were three in Florida. That really kind of galvanized public opinion against electrocutions. Jesse Joseph Tefero, Pedro Medina and a guy named Alan Lee Davis. And Tefero and Medina both caught on fire. I think Tefera's head had six inch flames shooting out from under the crown, under the electrode on his head, and Medina had a foot flames, and, like, so much that he was just charged. His head was charged during the execution. Again, we don't know that he actually suffered, but that's not what the public wants to see or read about. When we leave it to the state to execute people humanely, that's not supposed to happen. And then Alan Lee Davis very famously had photographs taken of him after his execution, and his face seems to be very clearly contorted in a look of pain. He was a very big man, like \u00a3350 and a tremendous amount of blood loss. It looks like it came out of his mouth and maybe even his chest, but they later determined that it came out of his nose, but there's just a lot of blood. And they also said, like, well, the guy was on blood thinner, so it's pretty clear this happened, but it doesn't really mean anything. He got a nose bleed during the electrocution, and the public said, we don't care. That's number three down in Florida alone. Go find something else. Let's try this lethal injection thing. Yeah, I did a list, actually. I think Nebraska in 2008 was the last state to stop using the electric chair as their primary source. But I was curious, like, which state just has executed the most people, period, by whatever means? And Texas leads away. What? They have two stats since 1976, but Texas has executed 841 people since 1930. Georgia's number two, actually with 436. But since 1976, Georgia has executed 74 people. To Texas is 563. Oh, my gosh. And since 76, Virginia is actually second, and then Florida is third. Both have over 100. Would not have guessed Virginia. Florida, I probably would have guessed Texas. I knew. But wow, that's a significant that's a long gap between number one and two. Yeah. And Texas has always been criticized as death penalty happy. I would say that's a fair characterization. Sadly. Prove us wrong. Texas, you can't do it. Remember we said that everybody was like, no more electrocutions. Let's find something else. When they went to the lethal injection, which is supposedly more humane, I was reading this article by a law professor named Austin Serrat who basically said those two prisoners in Tennessee in December of 2018 alone opted for the electric chair because they didn't have faith that lethal injection was going to be less painful or less prolonged. They wanted the electric chair instead. And that, up to this point, every time we've changed what our method of execution is, it's been, technologically speaking, socially speaking, a step forward in that kind of area. And that going back to the electric chair is a huge step backwards. And to him, it represents a major crisis in the legitimacy of the death penalty. And he was, I guess, kind of wondering, without saying it, like, is this the beginning of the end for the death penalty in the United States? Again, interesting. I thought so, too. But that's electric chairs. You can buy one, or you could. I think it's one sold in 2012. Tennessee's old Sparky sold in 2012, if I'm not mistaken. Really? Yeah, on an online auction for $25,000. Marilyn Manson. I don't know. I heard it was being put in a museum in Tennessee, so probably not. Got you. But that's electric chairs, like I said, everybody. And if you want to know more about them, you can go look around the Internet. You can also just leave this behind forever. It'll kind of be nice to shed this one because it was some grim research. Yeah, I agree. Since I said sorry for putting us through this one, chuck, this is a Josh pic. Halfway through researching today, I was like, oh, man, I just feel just bad right now, you know? And then you had a panini, and everything was okay. Yeah, it was a good panini, for sure. Well, since we said panini, it's time for listener mail. I'm curious if this is the one, Josh, but here we go. Hi, guys. I just recently started listening to podcasts because apparently I'm a luddite, so I've been waiting my way through the old episodes. I listened to the one on saunas and I wanted to let you know there is a Holiday Inn just outside of Toledo in Perrysburg. Did you see this email? Yeah, I did. I responded, actually. Okay, well, I can't wait to hear what happened. It's called the Holiday Inn French Quarter, which used to be a holodom and to which it is possible to have, or was possible to have a pool membership in addition to three pools in a large hot tub. The hotel has a large sauna and I am positive that this is the Holiday Inn that Josh's dad took him to when he was a kid staple for over 50 years. Unfortunately, the hotel will be closing at the end of the month after losing its holiday in flag to a new build that is from Deanna Pollen. Is that the one? No, it's not, but my family used to go on stagecations at that French Quarter holiday. Oh, really? It was like two towns over and it was pretty awesome when you were a kid. I think she's kind of underselling at the three pools in the hot tub. Like, the pools were meandering and went all over the place. There were bridges over them. So you swam under bridges, they would go out. So they were like indoor outdoor pools. It was pretty awesome. But my pool membership and saw the membership was at the Holiday Inn near Southwick Mall. Okay. That Holiday Inn is now an assisted living tower, I believe. But for a little while, in between being a Holiday Inn and being an assisted living tower, it was abandoned. And one of the coolest photo sets you can look at are abandoned hotels. And somebody went to the trouble of getting photos inside this abandoned holiday. And it's really cool, including the pool. So just look up, I think. Abandoned Holiday Inn Toledo, Ohio southwest Mall, maybe? And I'll probably bring it up. Well, maybe you'll end up there one day. Bring it full circle. Yeah. I was depressed with the French Quarter going under, though. That was a great little place I was talking to. Yummy. I was like, oh, man, did I ever tell you about my family staying at the French Court? She's like, yes, you told me your family went on vacation two towns over a holiday. I was like, yeah. That's great, though. I think the best one was the pool that was in the highway median. What was that one? I just thought that was like the fourth pool. Right? You get your own risk pool. It was disconnected. You had to run like heck to get to it. That's right. Well, Chuck, you got anything else? No. Well, If you want to get in touch with us to let us know about some part of my childhood being shut down forever. We love hearing about that kind of stuff. You can go to stuffyhallow.com and look for our social links, and you can also send us an email to stuffpodcasts@howstoughfworks.com. Stuffyshornow is a 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. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. 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How Military Snipers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-military-snipers-work | Military snipers always work in pairs, and they're called force multipliers because of the profound effect a two-man team can have on a rival military. But how do they work? Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about snipers. | Military snipers always work in pairs, and they're called force multipliers because of the profound effect a two-man team can have on a rival military. But how do they work? Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about snipers. | Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:54:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=18, tm_min=54, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=165, tm_isdst=0) | 35615214 | 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. 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 Neogenrelievespane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen system. Come chat with us. That's Neogenrelievespane.com. Your patience will thank you. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. You can call us something of a podcast sniping team taking out all NPR suckers ahead of us. That would make me the spotter, which I like. Do you think so? You're the spotter. Yeah. I think it would be a good sleeper, actually. I think we could reasonably trade off with that. Wouldn't you eventually become envious? Like, I'm tired of spotting I want to pull the trigger. What's? It like Michael Douglas's teenage daughter in traffic, thinking about shooting heroin. She starts out snorting it, ends up shooting it just because she's around it so much. I imagine the same thing happens to Spotters. They eventually want to kill. I would just be good on the team. I could lay somewhere for hours at a time without moving. I'm sneaky quiet right now. I'm not allowed to be asleep, though. Okay. It would be a problem. So, Chuck, we're talking about military snipers. I have a slight intro for this one. All right, let's hear it. It's not really an intro. It's just an interesting fact. Okay. And I don't even know if it's true, so fact is probably the wrong word, but have you ever heard the old adage, the old superstition that you're not supposed to light three cigarettes off of one match? I've never heard that, actually. Well, it's a superstition, okay? And it is established it's a real thing. And apparently it has a fairly recent origins. World War One, actually, that recent, 20th century. And it was based on the idea that if you're in a trench and you lit a match, you caught the attention of a sniper, you lit your first cigarette, the sniper takes aim with the second cigarette, and then when you're lighting the third cigarette, sniper fires, and that guy is dead. I like that. Yeah, I buy that's. Why? It's bad luck to light three smokes off of one match. You know, a lot of those phrase origins are military in nature. When you go back and look at them and I buy that 100% like a wall. Yeah. It's military. It's your army. Yeah. Silent Scope. Do you ever play that game? No. Is it a sniper game? Yeah. Is it good? It's great. I mean, it's a sanctuary arcade game. I preferred the sniper rifle on Gold Nye. Yeah. And I play the Call of Duty game, and they have a sniper level where you have to take out this one guy and account for the wind and all that. And it's thrilling to me as a gun hating, peace loving, liberal hippie. Aging hippie. I still love it, man. There's something about it that's why little boys like playing with guns. Well, that's why you picked this article. How military snipers work this week? Yeah, it's interesting. This is a Chuck Bryant special. Meaning that you picked it, not that you wrote it. Right. And this was a Robert Valdez special, huh? Yeah. This guy got to the bottom of it. Interviewed an actual former Army Ranger sniper. Yeah. That was an article that enhanced it a lot, I think. Definitely. The guy was anonymous and everything, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. So let's talk about snipers checkers. All right. I guess we can reveal the end, the button of the article, right. Where the sniper wants everyone to know we're not just, like these assessments. That happens once in a while. Right, but very rarely. And we have many other jobs. And probably the biggest job that a sniper has is just reconnaissance. Yeah. Like going and gathering information by being behind enemy lines and spying on the enemy for days on end and then reporting back what they see. And they're highly trained for that. They're not just highly trained for shooting. They're highly trained observers, too. Yeah, big time. But if duty calls, if they don't have a specific assignment, like to take out whatever this general is, they can have what they call targets of opportunity. Is that what you call them? Yeah. And that's when they can really take the wind out of the sales of a battalion. If all of a sudden the officer is standing there, then he's not standing there. Or, like, the communications guy goes down. Or later on, even some dude doing, like, guard duty. Yeah, or equipment. We found out later in this article, actually, and we might as well spoil that platform. It's not even human. That's a material target. Yeah. Like blow up their generator or their ammunition bay or just anything that would wreak havoc and make their job harder. And then, I guess, also because of this effect, the effect that a sniper has is not just physical eg blowing someone away, but it's also mental and it has a real dampening effect on morale, I would imagine. The psychological effect is probably pretty huge. Yeah. Because one of the things about snipers is that you don't know they're coming, and you don't see just all of a sudden the guy next to you is dead. And that's going to shake you, especially, like you said, when there's targets of opportunity, it happens randomly, or when it's like a very well chosen person, like you said, like an officer, somebody who's, like, kind of the moral, spiritual leader of the team is suddenly dead. That has a big effect, which makes snipers what are called force multipliers, meaning just one or two people can have the effect of a big platoon charging in and shooting people. Yeah. And I know we say band name a lot, but if you're in a heavy metal band and your name isn't force multiplier, you might want to think about changing it. Unless it's Mastodon. Yeah. They have a good name, don't. That's a great name. So, yes, they are actually trained to spy on the enemy and learn who the officers are, which is you've always heard you're not supposed to salute in the field of battle because it's pretty much a dead giveaway. Right. But these guys are trained to look and stare, and you can tell they can tell at least who the higher ranks are by the way they carry themselves, by what they're doing, by the way they're acting. And they're trained to pick these people out and then pick these people off. Chuck there's a couple of other assignments. I guess the sniper can land or positions that they play roles. That's the word I'm looking for. There's the famous overwatch position, where they're, like, up in the bell tower, clock tower or something like that, with just a 360 deg view of the battlefield. That's just taking people off like Pride of the Nation inglorious bastards. Or Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, because, remember, he took them out through the scope. Yeah, I remember. Only in the movies, but that was pretty cool. Yeah, only in the movies or World War II. Yeah, I guess so. And then that's called the overwatch position. I don't remember if I said that or not. Then there's a blocking action, which is basically you are again up on a roof, but instead you're helping to defend the position rather than maybe take it. Right. Yeah. You're helping out your buddies that are hiding in the farmhouse below. Right. Because this is what we're too. Right. That's exactly right. Do you want to go ahead and reveal the big secret about snipers, the supposed lone gunman? It's not true. It isn't true. If you've seen the movie Shooter, did you see that? With Marky Mark? No. You hate him. I don't hate them. No, I don't. I liked him in Three Kings. Yeah. I haven't seen the boxer yet, but I'm sure I'll like it. The Fighter. Yeah. The same thing. Well, Shooter is actually I had very low expectations, and it ended up being a pretty decent movie. And it is buoyed by the great Levon Helm of the band. My favorite group ever. He's an actor in that. I thought tom Barringer, was it? No, different movie. I think that might have been called Sniper. Tom Barringer wasn't in that movie. No. So Levon Home was the he's the old timer who apparently had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, too. Yeah. Is this why he should act? Oh, yeah, man. He's been in lots of movies. Boogie Nights. Loved him in Boogie Nights. He was awesome in that movie. Levon Home. No. Okay. All right. Yes. Snipers work in teams always. They never, ever go alone. It's not the way that military sniper units act. They are so much so that their sniper rifles are considered crew served weapons. Like one of those heavy machine guns that's like belt fed bullets, and it takes bullets and one guy to shoot it. That's a crew served weapon, obviously. So, as a sniper rifle, not because it takes two people to shoot it, but because it takes two people to shoot it accurately, which is the whole point. It is. And a spotter is, from what we gather, sort of a sniper in training. You will act as a spotter in the hopes that one day you will actually be the sniper and lead your own team. And the sniper I mean, we're calling it a team. It's two dudes. The sniper team. I'm sorry. The sniper on the team is really the one in charge. He's the Levon Helms of the band helm. They get the orders from the higher ups. They determine the best route to get there, the drop off points, all that stuff. Right. And I guess we should go ahead and walk through the process, because those are the first two steps. Okay, let's do it. You determine your drop off point for your objective, which isn't going to be 50 yards away from your objective. It's going to be miles and miles away. Probably like a day's walk is a good bet. Yeah. You're going to spend a day walking there. You want to get the good set up position and verify that you can camouflage that spot. You're always thinking ahead when you're on your belly and you want to move to your second position, you don't just say, all right, that looks decent over there. You got to look at everything around it, what's in your way to get there, because you're going to be belly crawling, and then when you get there, what you can use to camouflage yourself. They're going to establish an escape route. Very important. Yeah. And a fallback position in case you get separated from your buddy. And then you got to locate your target, grab the gun, and get in position. Right. And getting in position after you locate the target is probably not what snipers do. They probably get in position and then locate the target. Yeah. If they're shooting somebody specific, like maybe they arrive at the location of where they're going to be shooting the person or whatever. But you're going to sit there possibly for days on end. And by sit, I mean lay flat on your stomach. What is that? Prone or supine? I think prone. Prone, I think curses. So the spotter is going to be on the ground right next to and slightly behind you, basically trying to line up their spotter scope, which is way more powerful even than the rifle scope. As close to the barrel of the gun as possible. Yeah. In the same line as it yeah. And basically say, okay, I've got this guy, and he is 1000 meters away. Clicks. Yeah. The wind is blowing at like six knots from the northeast. It's 65 deg. It's got a barometric pressure and a temperature of this humidity level is this. You'd make a great spotter. See all that? So all that comes into consideration when you're trying to you're shooting oftentimes from 1000 yards away. Yeah, 1000 yards. Well, remember, I think to become a sniper for Delta Force, remember like it was 1500 yards minimum. You had to have like 89 or 90% accuracy, really? From 1500 yards. We talked about it. That was a while ago, though. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the award winning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in as host, baritonen 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. 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, SimpliSafes 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 Simply Safe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch and Simplyafe 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. comStuff. So the sniper this is a cool thing because I saw it on YouTube. This thing creates a vapor trail. The bullet does, yeah, the spotter's not just watching. And also we should say that if you're there for days on end, the spotter and the sniper will probably trade off spotter duty just so one can get rest or something like that, too. Exactly. But yes, when the time finally comes and the shot is to be taken, the spotter watches to make sure that the sniper hit the target. And like you're saying, the bullets that they're firing out, these 50 caliber guns are 7.62 mm. Yeah, it's a big bullet. Those are the ones that look like missiles. They move through the air in such a way that they create a vapor trail. And the Army Ranger who is interviewed for this article says you can see through it, but it's distorted air, which I take to mean like the Matrix. That's exactly what it looks like. Oh, you've seen it? Well, it's on YouTube. Yeah. Sweet. I mean, you got to look, but you can see it. And it looks like the Matrix thing. And all the other movies that copied it is hugely exaggerated. Right. Obviously. But it sort of looks like that. It looks like the abyss, the little blob from the abyss traveling through the air. cavitating the air. Is that the word? I think so, yeah. Then the spotter says, you missed. That doesn't happen very often. No, it doesn't. But if it does happen, the spotter says, okay, we need to move it this way a little bit. Yeah. Maybe down a little. Sure. Probably uses more specific jargon than that. Maybe down a little. Right. And then another shot is taken. And then another shot. And the spotter is also going to be the one who's carrying something like an M 16 or an M Four or some other assault rifle. Sure. Because if somebody comes up on you as anyone who has ever played any video game, when you're in hand to hand combat or close combat, the sniper rifle is the worst weapon to have of all. You want the automatic assault rifle. That's what you want. And that's me in those games. I'm the one turning around, fumbling, trying to reload while the guy is dispatching the face and shooting me. Exactly. And the relationship between these two guys is obviously very key because they're spending hours and days and days at a time with each other in very close, quiet quarters. Trust is huge, obviously, because their lives depend on each other, and they usually don't have a lot of support from their unit. They're out there alone protecting their unit, and their unit and platoon is depending on them. If you screw up a lot of times your platoon is not in good shape afterwards. Very high pressure job. Right. They're doing recon or they're doing spearhead demoralization through selective assassination. Something like that. Right. So, yeah, if the sniper is out there, probably shortly after, a platoon is going to be on their heels and the sniper has to relay whatever information he's taking in. Yeah. So, yeah, if he screws up, it can be problematic. Sure. You want to talk about the rifles? Yeah. They don't just pull a rifle off the shelf at Walmart and go hide in the woods. Oh, some guys have. Remember Seam, Ohio? Who simo the White Death? Oh, yeah, well, sure. He had his plain old bolt action hunting rifle, and he almost 505 people with it these days. Josh it's a little more specialized than that a lot of times. It's called an M 14 with match grade upgrades. And match grade means that some professional gunsmith has honed this thing within a good centimeter. You like that? Of accuracy. You were waiting for a better reaction than that, weren't you? I didn't know if you thought that was a real word. So I think match grade means like a shooting match. Like competition grade. Yeah, probably so because they use very similar rifles for competition shooting. Yeah. Where they're hollowed out. Yeah. I never understood that. I love it though, the guys who ski and shoot. Yeah. What's the point of that? I don't know. I like it. They should add like they should snowboard and shoot and just do all sorts of things. You go up the half pipe and you stop and you take a couple of shots. Yeah. Kite sailing and shooting. Yeah, I'm sure there's some great history to that, but I don't know matt grade guns and also match grade handmade ammunition. So, I mean, it's all just like very detailed. It's hollowed out, it's light, it's usually fiberglass because you don't want the wood to warp and ends up being extremely accurate. The barrel doesn't touch the rest of the gun. I think this is cool. The free floating barrel. It touches as little as possible so that the initial explosion from the bullet being fired. Causing the recoil in the barrel that it doesn't kick as much. And adjust the rifle's accuracy to adjust it. Plus move maladjusted. Any kind of movement span. Which is why they use more often than not both action rifles. Which had disadvantages in that you have to load a single round. Shoot it. And then unload that shell. Reload another round. But their motto is one shot, one kill. So one shot is usually all you need. But they do sometimes use the semiautomatic rifles. But what you have there are shells flying out of the gun, which is not very smart. Right. Either way, you're going to be detected with movement, possibly like when you do the bolt action that's moving, the flying shell that's moving, but the automatic or semiautomatic rifles have more moving parts than a bolt action, which means the jumpers tend to prefer bolt action. Yes. Although they said they can. It's their choice. Shooter's preference? Yeah, sniper's choice between eight and 15 grand nixon's costs. Yeah. It's kind of pricey, but they look really cool. Yeah, they do. Do we talk about the scope? No, we haven't yet. I mean, we talked about how the spotter has a superior scope, right? But yeah, the scope on a sniper rifle usually has about a ten times magnification power. Just telescope? A high powered telescope, mini telescope sorry. With crosshairs on it called reticules. Right. Is that what how it's pronounced? It's targeting reticulation. Okay. I didn't know how it was pronounced reticula, and then I thought it was ridicule. What you're looking at when you're aiming, though, like we said, there's all sorts of variances in the wind and everything that will change the path of your bullet, but you're looking at the point of aim and the point of impact, and if you're firing from 600 yards away, it's not going to be what you're aiming at. And this is accurate even in that Call of Duty game. Like, you aim at the dude's head and then you end up shooting like 3ft to the right of them, and every one goes, what was that? And then it's over. What's over? Well, that little round is over. If you don't get the guy, you're done. You can't get off of the second shot. What happens? I think you got to start over. They don't come at you or anything like that? No, they come at you and then you start over eventually. So you have to aim over aim a lot of times because of things like gravity. And that was the fact that this show, to me, the gravity one, if you drop a bullet, if you aim a gun, a sniper rifle, and then shoot it level to the ground and you drop a bullet at the same height as the barrel, they're both going to hit the ground at the same time because of gravity. That's crazy. That's the fact of the show, for sure. Yeah. Chuck, what you're talking about can be adjusted for in the scope through the ballistic drop compensator, which is a little dial, so you don't have to go redo your whole scope settings and all that. You can just adjusted up or down or left or right just a little bit to compensate for gravity. And the other like wind. Yeah. And that's what you see them doing. They're like one to two knots. You see Mark, you might go quick. That's all you need to do. That's it. One little click gun shoots itself. Not true. And then there's also these things called gilli suits, which anytime you see a sniper or you don't see a sniper, and then all of a sudden he stands up from the leaves and brush and all that right in front of you and he's wearing what looks like leaves and brush. That's called a gilly suit, which has a pretty cool little history to it. I like it. Go ahead. So gillies were the Irish game wardens, scottish game wardens from days of yore. And basically their job was to keep an eye on the landowner's game wild game that he liked to hunt. And the gilly once in a while would have to basically catch a deer or something like that, say, bring it back to the castle for the landowner to hunt in a mock hunt and kill the deer. But he couldn't just kill the deer and bring it, he had to bring it alive. So this meant days of stalking a deer, staying completely silent, camouflaging himself with stuff found in the local environment and then waiting for a deer to walk by and jumping on it, grabbing it. Can you imagine these dudes? And then dragging it back to the castle for this mock hunt? Yeah. So think about how despised the nobleman must have been for his little mock hunt in between glasses of sherry of a deer that the gilly caught with his bare hands after waiting two days for it to walk past him. And then they just kill the deer when they bring it in because his gout is flaring up. He can't even get out of his chair. So yeah, it's like early internet hunting. Oh, yeah. They outlawed that pretty quickly, thank goodness, because it was awful. I almost had to write an article on that. Did you get out of it? Yeah, I refused. Really? I said, you know what, I'm not even going to put this out there as something that exists. And they went, you know what, you may be right on this one. And then like two weeks later they outlawed it. Controlling the flow of information, huh? No. Nice. I didn't want it happening. Yes, I stopped internet hunting single handedly. So the gilly suit is what they call what the sniper wears now because of that cool history. And it's usually like really reinforced on your torso because you're going to be crawling a lot, probably padded to help you out with comfort. And even though it's not like you're really comfortable padded for comfort. Padded for comfort. And you got a netting all over you so you can work in twigs. What you don't want are straight lines like the antenna from your radio or the muzzle of your gun. Because nature doesn't have straight lines like that. Right. So they make gilly suits for their guns? Yeah. Can't you see them having like the special ops barracks, like gilly suit contest? Like who's got the best one? Oh, that's elaborate. I can't believe you work that rock into it. Well, and when I envision that skit, they are putting the metal around the winter and then a guy just rises up behind him that never even falls. He comes off of the back of his gilly, too. Steals his metal. Yeah. 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 Veritude Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, SimpliSafes 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 Simply Safe 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@simplisafe.com. Stuff go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring, just go to SimpliSafe. comStuff. Well, speaking of Special Ops, these are Special Ops teams, and sniper teams are all part of Special Operations. Sure. And they train all the time. If they're not training specifically for a mission, they're studying the mission. And their goal is to know every single thing about everybody on that mission and memorize it, because if you're caught, you don't want to have paper saying, these are our signals. These are our call signs, or whatever. Why are you laughing? Because I could just think, like, being caught with a paper, like, this is Corporal Todd Thompson's call sign. Yeah. Ace. And then the enemy is like, who is this Todd Thompson? Why did he get ace? That's the coolest one, right? Because he's the best one. The USMC. Is known even though all military branches have sniper teams and schools. The Marines are obviously because they're the Marines, they have what's known as the best school, the USMC. Scout Sniper School. And the Marines actually may have been the origin of the snipers in the US. Military. Yeah, the leathernecks. The original guys who used to ride around in the 18th century on ships were. Often tasked with basically sniping from crow's nests, other people on other ships during battles. I don't think I knew what the leathernecks were. They're Marines. Well, I knew that, but I didn't know that it went back that far. Yeah. 18th century. 1700. Well, back then, they actually had next made of leather. That's pretty cool. Human leather. It is the best school, like I said. And if you get in, even fewer graduate, because it's not just about being a good shooter. You have to have the right temperament. You have to be calm and not like some hot head. You have to have confidence in your decisions, confidence in your spotter. Yeah. As this sniper who was interviewed for the article said, basically, like, you can't just be calling back, like, Can I shoot this guy? Or you have to make the decision and make the right decision and confidence in your decision so that you can say, I am going to shoot this guy. He works well alone. And their little report card growing up was probably a key for a future sniper. So it's a two month course. Josh here at the Marine Corps, they train in three main disciplines. Marksmanship, obviously. Right. Observation and stalking. Yeah. And let's talk about can we talk about the games? I think we should. Like the Kim's game. Yeah. I didn't see what that stood for. I don't know why they made it all caps. Because it's named after a Richard Tipling book. Kim a boy's name. Okay. And he was an Irish orphan who grew up in India, was trained in intelligence. And in the book, they would give him trays of stones and gems and give them a minute to look at it and then take it away and say, what did you just see? So that's what the Kim's game is. It's very similar to that. It's based on that. Well, go ahead and explain it then. Well, it teaches observational skills. Right? Yeah. And basically with this game, the guys in sniper school presented a tray, and it has 1520 things on it, and they're told to look at it for 30 seconds or a minute or something, and the trees removed, and they say, what did you see? And say, There was a paper clip. Right. You can't say, well, there was a paper clip, because they want to leave it to the guys who are analyzing the intelligence you're sending back to determine what it was you saw. So you say, Well, I saw a piece of wire bent around into an oval three times, or something like that. Do you think they ever send back and say, that's a paper clip? Right. And then as school goes along, this observational training through the Kim's game apparently gets more and more difficult, where they show you something in the morning, then you go out and practice all day, and then at night, they say, Write down what you saw this morning. Yeah. And they'll add more things and give you less time to look at it to begin with. Right. Because when I first read it, I was like, that's not too hard. It's like a wine cork and a paper clip and a CB radio. Done. But then as it gets harder, I was like, oh, there's a method here. Right. And not being able to call something what you know it is. Yes, true. Like, how would you describe a wine cork? I would say I have thousands of these around my home. Your lungs are coated with the dust of them. I could say it's a cork in a spherical cork with a red stain on one end. It would be tubular, wouldn't it? Tubular, yeah. It wouldn't be spherical. It wouldn't be conical. And then right now, there's someone standing behind us with the gun. Okay. Exactly. We'd be the worst sniper team ever, actually. And then another good game, I guess you could call it, is how they trained a stalk. Right? Yeah. That is really cool. So Stocking is moving from, say, your drop zone or wherever, to the place where you're going to set up without being identified, without being seen or noticed. But you have to make your way there, and there may or may not be people watching. You are able to see you, but you need to get to the point you need to get to. So you have to practice that. That's called stalking. And they practice it by basically saying, okay, here's a nice grassy field. You guys stay here and we're going to put two people 1000 meters away and we're going to look for you, and you need to make it within 150 meters of us without us seeing you. And they're looking for you. Not only that, they have two people out there in the field looking for you, walking around. Yeah. So apparently that's like real life on hyperdrive that never, ever would happen. But I guess the idea is if you can pass that, then you'll be fine out in the field. Yeah. It's like we're in ankle weights, which makes sense. And then they have to take a shot from the 150 meters with blanks, obviously. And then they have to move from that position, they have to take the shot without being detected and then move from that position to another position and take another shot without being detected. Yeah. Wow. Which apparently you very rarely have ever moved to another position to take a second shot. And you definitely are never within 150 meters of your target. Yeah. So they overtrain, which is a good thing. Another little game they play is just strictly observational from a distance. They will hide things in a field, very small things, like a ballpoint penn hanging from a little shrubbery brush. And you get out there with your spotter, with your scope and binoculars, and you get to pick this stuff out. Yeah. And basically just canvas. He said that? The guy in here said you just block off one little small, tiny block at a time, stare at it through your binoculars for 5 minutes, then move on to the next little block until you find something. Yeah. And Chuck, you were talking about when they were with gravity is one of the biggest problems for accuracy, right? Yeah. Well, there's a unit of measurement that snipers use to adjust for these variables. It's called minute of angle MOA. And apparently 1.47 inches for every 100 yards is the inaccuracy that's going to develop as the bullet travels, right? Yeah. So if you're 1000 yards away, like they say you can be, or more, you could potentially be off by ten inches, which means you could potentially miss your target altogether. Unless you account for wind and humidity and barometric pressure and temperature. Temperatures. I thought this was very interesting. Cold air is denser, which means it creates more drag, right? Yes. Which is pretty cool. You have to account for that. Yeah. And then the other one, depending on your distance, someone may or may not hear you. That's pretty cool. If you're 600 yards away or more, potentially, you are not going to even hear that little sonic boom crack cause the bullet leaves the muzzle at the speed of sound. You won't even hear that. So you could be 800 meters away and dudes could be standing there. And that's when you see in the movie that they see the little puff of dirt behind them. They're just like, what was that? 600 meters is where the 7.62 millimeter round is dragged into subsonic speed. Meaning it travels less than the speed of sound. Right. Meaning it makes a sound where anything over that is, like you said, suddenly there's just bullets appearing. And the guy who was interviewed from this had a great quote. He said you can basically just take shots at somebody. And the guy who was interviewed for this article has this great quote. He said if you're shooting at a target 800,000 meters out, you could be shooting at that person all day long and they don't even know they're being shot at. Why are these oil canes exploding? He hates these oils. He hates them? Yeah. That's pretty cool. And that's a very good place to end because the goal of the sniper is to not get caught. So they want to get as far away as they can from the target while still being within an accurate range. Yes. Done. Done. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Military snipers. If you were expecting like the DC sniper or Charles what was his name? Whitman. Yes. They're not military snipers. Although Charles Whitman was in the military. He's in the Marine. Remember in Full Metal Jacket? Yeah. Wasn't Oswald too, or no. Yeah, he was a Marine too. I think they were both sharpshooters, too. There you have it. Okay, well, they made an appearance then. All right. Yeah. Okay. If you want to know more about Snipers, you should type in Snipers in the handyarchbar athousedofworks.com it has some cool flash games inside of it, very cool links and cool pictures. And if you're into that kind of thing, you're going to love this article. That's Snipers in the search bar@howstuffworks.com. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this for my fan with Ms. Multiple Sclerosis. I have a very good friend of mine that has Ms. Oh, yeah. And was afflicted with it later in life. In his late twenties, I believe. It's very sad. Okay, so she writes josh and Chuck, perhaps I could tell you about the fact that I've been living with Ms for over 22 years and I founded a nonprofit called Soft Serve Matters that will empower people with chronic illnesses. But maybe I should leave with I was listening to is Bhutan onto something with their gross national happiness? Because I feel the need to tell you I believe that some people are just born with the happy gene. I am living proof of that, having started it in kindergarten, in spite of the fact that I have had decreasing abilities since my 20th birthday and a six figure debt that my husband and I accrued while getting our advanced degrees, I am uber happy. Wow. Or maybe just in denial. All of these challenges. My default is happy. Happy. Joy. Joy. I made that reference just to amuse you. It did. It may have something to do with the fact that I come from a family of armchair comedians and married a man based on his humor alone. Well, not really, but doesn't that sound good? We have a nine year old who is freaking hysterical. Nature or Nurture? I ask. I'll go with nature, since it supports my theory, though clearly nurture is a major player. So while I figure out the approach to email you guys, let me just say I love your work. And for the administrative section of this email, I implore you to check out these links. And she has a blog that I would like to plug. And it is Ms. L-O-L wordpresscom. That's awesome. And that is AmyG. And Amy. Like I said, my really good friend Billy has Ms. So it's very dear to my heart cause and anything we can do to help you spread the word, just email us back and we'll do so. Cool. That was a good one, Chuck. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Thanks for being an armchair comedian yourself. Yeah, okay. And I guess thanks to your whole family for that. Really? Husband kid. Yeah. If you find something funny that other people may not, we love that stuff and we want to hear about it. Send us an email with 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? 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." | ||
Is it possible to brainwash someone? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-it-possible-to-brainwash-someone | Brainwashing is an extreme form of "thought reform," but does it actually work? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out. | Brainwashing is an extreme form of "thought reform," but does it actually work? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out. | Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:35:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=14, tm_min=35, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=188, tm_isdst=0) | 26171856 | 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. I'm about to brainwash wash. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can't brainwash me. Yes, I can, you capitalist pig dog. That's not working. Oh, it will, believe me. I haven't even gotten started, buddy. I'm so confident my ability to brainwash you that I can even tell you how I'm doing it. While I'm doing it, you're going to come out on the other end exactly what I want you to do, which is a chicken. You do seem kind of confident. Stare into my belly. Chuck. That's not brainwashed. That's hypnotized. Hey, have you ever known anybody who's brainwashed? You ever know a cult member? No, but why do I have a feeling that you have? I've met cult members before. Of course you have. I have. In your drum circles. They were part of the Kashi yoga cult. Really? Wow. Yeah, totally. Nice, harmless people. But they were part of a cult. And they didn't do a Heavens Gate deal. No, actually, they do quite the opposite. They make, like, sandwiches for homeless people and stuff like that. And they don't wear Nike. No, they wear loosely fitting clothing. They didn't all the Heavens Gate people in. That one of the hallmarks. And all the males are castrated. They're basically asexual slick is a Ken doll down there. Wow. Have fun with that. Yeah, but, Chuck, there's kind of a hysteria associated with colts. Like, if you're a member of a cult or even tossing that word around in the 70s, big time. Remember all that? Yeah. The moonies. The Unification Church. Yeah. Brainwashing was a big deal. Jim Jones's church. I don't remember what he called it. Yeah, in Johnstown. Right. Did you know, though, that what everybody considered brainwashing? This is rubbish. What, like torture? No. Okay. There's actually a distinction, I found out. Well, it's two camps. Right. Well, here's the thing. You've got actual brainwashing, which has been empirically demonstrated to work on a person if it's carried out in conjunction with torture. Right. There's another thing called coercive persuasion. Yes. And that's basically brainwashing without torture, which is why everybody that's what they think that the Moonies did or Jim Jones did or David Koresh did. Yeah. There's usually not violence involved in cults, to be honest. No, there's no threat of violence, perhaps. Nor is there brainwashing. Or at the very least, it's never been empirically demonstrated that that actually works. I think the willingness of the participants is often overlooked, especially by family members. Right. So basically what I'm saying is that the whole concept of cults is, like these brainwashing machines. It's not correct. Brainwashing machines or brainwashing machines. Same thing. Yeah, it's good stuff. Thought reform, Josh. Yeah, but all of this can be traced back this whole hysteria over brainwashing can be traced back to a British journalist by the name of Edward Hunter. This is extra research. Look at you. Well, he was mentioned briefly in the article. Okay. But he was a fervent anticommunist. He wrote a book called, I think, Brainwashing Techniques of Red China, and it was published in 1953, and he later testified in front of the McCarthy Committee, the Senate Unamerican Activities Committee. Yes. I don't think it's quite right, but yeah, it's close. I think I got all the words in there. It's not in the right order. And he basically scared the bejesus out of everybody saying that the Communists have brainwashing down to a science. They'll do anything. They're going to brainwash us all. All not true. Well, no, I mean, it's not like the Communists didn't try. And specifically, they tried most actively in Korea during the Korean War. Right. Korean and Chinese captors did this to American soldiers that were POWs to some varying degrees of success. I think they said that 21 soldiers refused to come back to the United States when they were set free. And there's a little bit of discrepancy because it's 21 out of 20,000 prisoners. Right. So some people say these guys weren't brainwashed, they just want to come back. Yeah. Maybe they dug Korean chicks or something. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. Or Korean dudes. Yeah. We're wide open here at stuff you should know. Whatever you want to do, as long as you're not hurting anybody else, we're cool with it. But yeah, the Korean and Chinese captors of these POWs did, in fact have a systematic process of brainwashing in place, and they did it in conjunction with torture. So it could have actually worked. It could have. And I think this article is great. Just let me go ahead and say julia Layton has got the goods, bro. She does. She's a great writer. She is. And I love it when we do podcasts on her articles. Yeah. Because they're just chock full of good stuff. Where do you go late? And so when I read this article, I thought it all made sense to me. When we're going to break it down here in a minute of how you brainwash someone and it all added up. I was like, wow, I could see how that would work. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So let's talk about it. There was a psychologist named Lifton, right? Robert J. Lifton. Right. And he was the one who started studying returning POWs from the Korean conflict. And he basically, by cobbling together their information and their reports, he figured out the process of brainwashing as the Communist did it. And actually it wasn't anything new. It's a 20th century phenomenon, it appears. Yeah. Chairman Mao actually wrote about it as far back as 1929 in his Little Red Book, which wasn't published until 1964. Yeah. What did he call it? Are you ready for this? Yeah, go ahead. He called it c shuang dozeng. With apologies to Sasu over in QA, who tried to teach me that pronunciation. She did. She took a lot of time out of her day for that one. And her candy bowl. I sat there and ate candy the whole time she was helping me. Yeah. So that means fought struggle. Yeah. Which makes sense, because what you're doing is you're creating a conflict in the person. That's one way to look at it. But also there's a struggle between the person who's being brainwashed, which is called the target right. And the person who's doing the brainwashing, which will heretofore be referred to as the agent. The agent. Right. Kind of creepy. Agent and target. Yeah. So should we talk about should we just go ahead and go over the steps of how you do it? Well, let's talk about what brainwashing is based on. It's actually based on real psychology right, okay. Called social influence. Yeah. Which is everywhere. It's all around. And there's three different little zones here. Compliance, which is just do it. Yeah, that's a good way to say it, Josh. And then there's persuasion, which is do it because you feel better, more successful, more happy. Do it because it feels good. Do it because it feels good. And then the education method, which is do it because it's the right thing to do. Right. Which is also called the propaganda method, because if you don't believe what you're being taught and we talked about propaganda. Yes. Good stuff. So basically, brainwashing is all of these things combined persuasion, compliance, and education and taken to the nth degree. Right. But it's generally carried out, like I said, in conjunction with torture and using techniques like sleep deprivation. Yeah. Isolation. Isolation. You can't brainwash someone if they're reading the paper every day. Right. Or if you send them out and say, all right, that's enough for now. You can just go back home. Right? Yeah. Watch Jeopardy, go to the library for a while, cool your heels. Yeah. It's not going to happen. So you need to isolate somebody. That's the first thing. That's the first thing that needs to happen. Okay. So let's talk about it. Basically, there's three main phases that lift and figured out the communists carried out. Can I say them? Do it. It's breaking down the self, step one, introducing the possibility of salvation, part two, and rebuilding the self, part three. Yeah. And I'm not going to make any comments about my Baptist upbringing in relation to brainwashing, I swear, because I would not want to get listener mail. Yeah, no, you might just from that one. But we won't go there. So check. Let's talk about breaking down the self. What's the first step? Well, it's basically just a constant attack. And we're going to talk about this in terms of just for the sake of ease of a military type situation. Like, you've got a soldier that you've captured. Yeah. This is the one that's been proven to actually work in. We're not in a military situation called prisoner of war torture. So basically, that's when you're not defending your freedom, you're not doing anything good. You're not a man, you're not a soldier. It's just a constant verbal assault on the senses, breaking you down. Right. And you're actually saying you're not what you think you are. Like, Chuck, if I wanted to brainwash you, I would start with, Chuck, you are not a hipster. You are not a hipster. Chuck I am not a hipster. Josh exactly. Now we're getting started. Now, what I would also do right now would be to isolate you. As we mentioned. I would probably perform falanga on you, which is what do you think it is? I don't know. I would perform falanga on you. It sounds like something involving beads and sticks and oils and stuff. No, actually, it does involve sticks. Bamboo canes. It's actually beating the soles of the feet with bamboo canes. Hurts like you would not believe. I bet. Believe me. I bet you've been caned. And actually, also this isolation thing one of my friends told me about, I guess he found it in, like, the Kubark manual, which I've yet to see it, but it's called Birthday Party. And if you're trying to disorient somebody or break their grip on reality, one of the things you could do is you're assaulting them verbally. You're attacking them, and then all of a sudden, in the middle, everybody comes in wearing birthday hats with a cake, and you celebrate this guy's birthday, and everybody's hanging out, talking, eating cake, kind of fraternizing with the target. And then all of a sudden, everybody leaves, the parties over, and then you get back to business of torturing them, and it completely throws them off. Really? Yeah, because you're assaulting them, and then the next thing they know, they're celebrating your birthday, and it's not even your birthday, so you have no idea what's going on any longer. What you're trying to do is disorient the person. Okay, so once you start to become disoriented, you begin to lose your grip on reality. Right. And once that happens, you move in with the guilt, telling them that what they're doing is actually very bad and their mission is bad, and they're evil and sinned, that kind of thing. Like I would tell you, Chuck, you are not a hipster, and you should feel poorly about the state of your goatee. How long have you worked on this? This is off the cuff, buddy. No. Okay, so now I'm beginning to slip further into the palm of your hand, josh and now you are going to move in at me with self betrayal. And that's basically when I need to agree that I'm bad. So I'm starting to lose it to the point where I'm starting to say, yes, I am bad. So you do feel your goatee is shoddy. Right. And you would force me to say that, and you may force me to denounce my friends and their goatees and my family and their goatees. Right. Yeah. Once you start denouncing things that you hold dear, all of a sudden your identity is on the brink of crisis. Which brings us to the breaking point. Right. And that's when you're totally at their whim. Who am I? Where am I? What should I do? Right. And you just completely lost any faith that you've ever had in your goatee. You may be sobbing uncontrollably. You've reached what we call a nervous breakdown. Exactly. You've become unhinged, and you have lost your grip on reality, which, as Leighton put it, your identity is up for grabs. You're literally a man without an identity. You have nothing that you attach yourself to any longer. Right. So now that I'm broken down, dude, that's the breakdown of the self. You have broken me down to the point where I don't even know which way is up. Then you come in with a little good cop, bad cop, and you offer a little bit of leniency. Yeah, I might give you some water. Here's some water. I can help you out. Or you're feeling bad, even a break in the torture. And me saying, I don't want to hurt you, or something like that. Small gestures just become amplified in this situation. So now you've offered me a sip of your energy drink. And, Josh, that's the most kind gesture anyone has ever paid to me to give me that energy drink. I'm indebted to you for showing mercy on me. Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, that's leniency, Chuck, and it's the first step of the possibility of salvation phase. Right. And that leads us into compulsion to confession. Yeah, that's a good one. So what I'm going to do now, Chuck, is tell you that by confessing that you were wrong in wanting to be a hipster or thinking that you were a hipster, you were wrong in liking your goatee. Right. You can stop feeling the psychological and physical pain. Sure. Right. You can stop feeling this guilt and the shame that I've cultivated in you. I have a razor right over here. Right. All I have to do is shave. Right. Which leads us to the channeling of guilt. Right. So you've got this guilt and the shame that I've created by this point because you've entered the nervous breakdown phase. You have no idea what you're really feeling guilty or shameful about, and there's no meaning behind it, but you feel it constantly and overwhelmingly. Right. So I'm now going to give you that way to get rid of your guilt. Right. You attach it to something which is your old belief system. My old belief system, which is my goatee and my hipster presence. Right. Now I'm actually thinking, you know what? That is why I'm at where I'm at today was because of that goatee and me thinking I'm a hipster. Right. And your family's goatee and all that stuff. Everything josh. Sure. Now, here is a razor. And, Chuck, it's time for the releasing of guilt. You shave your goatee? Well, because you tell me it's not my fault, essentially. Like it's not you, Chuck. It's your belief set, right? Hey, who's doing the brainwashing here? Maybe I'm doing a reverse brainwash twist. No, you're not. Okay. Okay. So, Chuck, you're going to denounce your goatee. You're going to announce your hipster pass and your family. You have to actually say it. This is how you can gain control of your life again. I hate my goatee. It's a stupid thing on my face. And I don't know why I grew up to begin with, because it's not even a quarter of a beard. I feel like an idiot for having this goatee, Chuck. The stupid music I listen to and those dumb tattoos. I know. It's okay. It's all right. We've reached the end of the possibility of salvation. And now, Chuck, we've actually entered salvation. We've entered the rebuilding of the sale phase. Okay? You are broken down. You're nothing now. And now it's time for me to build you back up into what I want you to be, which is a preppy. Okay? Okay. So, Chuck, I want you to say now that you've consciously abandoned your old belief system, that you realize that this new belief system, being a preppy, is the greatest thing on the planet. It's what you're meant to do. Well, Josh, it is what I was meant to do, because being a preppy, is clearly the style and fashion sense that I've always craved. Yeah, I just had no idea. And, Chuck, because this is what you're supposed to be, you really didn't betray anybody else, right? In your old belief system, and by denouncing your family, because that was wrong all along. Okay? Do you promise? I do promise, Chuck. Okay, now, here, Chuck, I want you to take this Argow sweater. Don't put it on, okay? Don't put it on. I want you to drape the arms over your shoulder. Can I rub my face on it? In a minute. Okay. I want you to take the cuffs of the sweater and roll them together so that now you have the sweater over your shoulders and it won't fall off because the sleeves are attached. Now, are you trying to make me a preppy, or are you trying to send me back in time to chuck, I'm in control here, okay? I've been isolated for months. You're just grateful I have an argyle sweater for you. I am. Thank you for the sweater. It warms my chest. All right. So, Chuck, are you consciously choosing this new belief system preppydom? I do choose preppydom. Are you prepared to eat an alligator? I am prepared to eat an alligator. Do you want penny loafers? More than you've ever wanted anything in your life with pennies in them. We'll get you pennies later. But first, do you want these penny loafers? I want the penny loafer. Shash. Chuck, you are reborn. You are now a preppy. I have broken you down from a hipster and rebuilt you into a preppy, and you're better off because of it. Wow. Where did my gutige go? Yes. You look good, Chuck. My face is all fat. No, it looks good. We'll work on that. A little bit short, but we got to get you tanned first. Nice little bit of role playing there, Josh. Yeah, so it all makes sense to me. When you look at those steps, you break someone down, and then you offer them a grain of bread, a morsel, and then you gain their trust, and then you rebuild them. And when you look at these cults and not the prison of war in this case, but when you look at the cults and some of these people that may be involved, they may be to that breakdown stage already. Yeah. I want to actually hate this. This is like, if I could cut parts of my brain out, I would cut this memory out. What did you do? I went to a weekend long New Age convention, and, dude, it was rough. I was walking around just like, you people will buy into anything. And it wasn't like I just scoffed at their beliefs or the people who are peddling these beliefs. I just thought it was sad that these people were walking around looking for anything to attach themselves to, anything that they could define themselves with. And we're completely abandoning any thought of creating their own identity. Right. They had to attach it to something else. And it's clearly it's not just New Age people. You can make the case that it's anybody who uses something as a crutch, whether it's church or whatever. Right, sure. But yeah, this one particularly stuck out in my head, this New Age convention. So apparently and Chuck, this is why I could never actually brainwash you. It works better on some people than on others. Right. People who have a weak sense of identity, which you definitely do not if you have a tendency to be guilty or feel guilty, but you definitely do not in absolutes and black and white thinking and self doubt. Self doubt. Yes. You've got none of those. Dude, no one could brainwash me. I know you got a thick skull. Not you, not anyone here. I don't raise it. I definitely tend toward guilt. And I slash your face. Ow. Ow. I just committed violence. Yeah, you did. Chuck so, Josh, they can't study brainwashing. Clearly, they can't actually perform this in a laboratory on someone, because that would be wrong. Right. But thanks to Listing, we know how it works. And actually, soldiers are still to this day, trained how to recognize the steps in brainwashing, which immediately takes away most of the power of the brainwasher. Right. And also how to detach themselves from the situation. Yeah. I would think meditative techniques and things like that. Just me personally, if I was in the korean war, let's say, back then, and I had a korean captor yelling at me in probably broken english, breaking me down. I mean, I guess when there's torture involved, it's a different story. But I would be like, dude, you're not brainwashing me with that accent. Are you kidding right now? Poorly conjugated verbs and things like that. Yes. Well, that's what one of the techniques to avoid it is. They teach you to focus on certain details and things like that or details of home and to not buy into all this stuff. Yeah. And they said people who believe in a higher power apparently are much harder to brainwash, which strikes me as iron. I've got another thing for you. Are you ready? I'm ready. Mint aside. No idea. Another word for brainwashing. Oh, is it? Yeah. Interesting in that. What's the root there? Mint. Minty fresh aside, I guess mentality. It's the breakdown of a person's identity or belief system which is lodged happily in this little campground in your brain. Right. And so the side part is murder. Brainwashing. You took a lot out of me, Chuck. Did it? I'm sorry. You look like you're whipped. You look like you're whipped like levoid. Malvo let's hear it. Well, there's a couple of famous incidences of brainwashing. One was patty hearst in the 70s when she was of the famous hirst family, was kidnapped by the symbionse liberation army. Yeah. And she claimed to be brainwashed when she was robbing banks, and they used that in her defense. And she actually was convicted. She was in 76. Yes. Her sentence was commuted by carter. She was pardoned by jimmy carter in 79 and then cast by john waters in many films. Yeah, that's right. Wasn't she she's in the movies. I forgot about that. Do you know who one of her greatest proponents was? That john wayne. Really? Oh, yeah. And actually, that's one of the reasons why her sentence was commuted by carter is because john wayne was such a vocal advocate really? On her behalf and because of the jonestown tragedy. Well, after that happened, people were like, oh, wow. Brainwashing really does exist, although the courts have always been skeptical of it. Yeah. My name is john wayne. John wayne named after john wayne. Did you know that? Your name is charles w. Bryant wayne? I always figured you were named after wayne coining love. Yeah. No, that wouldn't have worked out. Timewise weird. Well, let's talk about lee boyd. Malvo yes. He famously, as you remember, was a part of the sniper shootings that happened yeah. In 20 02. 20 02 in DC. And he was just a young kid in antigua when he was plucked away by john allen muhammad. And he was brainwashed, or at least that's what his attorneys speculate. Right. And that didn't get him off, either. He got licensed prison without the possibility of parole. Yes. As far as the courts are concerned, it's a little dubious. It is, actually. And that whole coercive persuasion I was talking about earlier, the idea that brainwashing can work without violence or the threat of violence right. That all kind of went away. In 1990, in a case called USV. Fishman, there was a guy who was being convicted of mail fraud, and he entered an insanity plea, saying that he had been brainwashed by the Church of Scientology and it didn't work. And that was pretty much the end of the idea of coercive persuasion. Interesting. We're going to get people asking us now to do one on Scientology. I guarantee it. I'm not doing it. Heck no. We got to wait for anonymous to break them down a little more before we step in. Right, travoltan, the crews will show up at our door with baseball bats. There's no telling what would happen to us. I don't want to do that. All right, well, that's it. That's actually probably the last time we'll ever mentioned psychology, too. Yes. Let's do listener mail and pretend we never did this. Okay, Josh, I'm going to call these listener males. Okay. This first one is from Ben Boland's buddy, a friend here, Ben, that works here, who is the one that turned us on to the Esperanto deal. Apparently Tim, his friend turned him on to Esperanto. Yeah. And Tim says, thanks for your mentioning event. Esperanto was happy to mention Lee as well. He says he's a long time friend of Ben and he introduced him to it, although I'm sure he would have run across it eventually in his own exploration. I love that. Ben does like exploring. He does. And he plugged our podcast. We're going to plug right back. He has a website. He's actually the vice president of Esperanto USA, which I thought was pretty cool. So the name of his website is Esperanto usa.org and go check it out. I think it's kind of cool. Yeah, I think it's cool, too. Ben said I talked to Ben this morning. He said that he can read Esperanto but can't really speak it. Really? So I was like, that's a disappointment. He's been such a cool guy. He is. All right, and this next one is from Rick in Woodstock. And I don't know if this is Woodstock, New York or Georgia. Let's go to New York. I got the impression georgia. Oh, really? Yeah. What do I know? So he's got an innovation to tag onto. Our three innovations I thought was pretty cool, DNA specific killer virus. So basically he says, get our boys in the Pentagon to hook up with the fellows from the CDC. You engineer a virus which is highly contagious, airborne and bioengineered to only target one person on Earth, so he can be unluckiest. Person on Earth. Yeah. Well, he said Osama bin Laden, if we get some of his DNA, make a virus that would only kill him release it to the masses in the Middle East, it will be contagious. It'll get around to him eventually and kill only him. I don't generally advocate killing, but that is a fascinating concept. Pretty interesting. It's like, what if you could have taken out Hitler with no bloodshed, essentially, or bin Laden? So I thought it was kind of interesting. He said that Slow has one or two kinks, but so does teleportation. So touche to you, Rick. One or 2 may be a bit glib. I also want to give a shout out about the Innovations podcast. Dylan, who emailed us, and I engaged in a very spirited debate over whether or not teleportation was a good thing right now. It was good. It was very intelligent. Really good point debate. And I was interrupting. Yeah, you guys, it was good. That was a very well thought out answer. Yeah, I smacked them down pretty hard now. It was in good spirit, though. It was nice. Agreed. So if you want to engage in a spirited debate with Chuck or me, it's just not going to happen. Actually, you can send us a come on to stuff podcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more howstofworks? Check out our blogs on the houseofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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 on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
02abd29e-3b0e-11eb-947e-6bbd89ff0126 | The Ivy League | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-ivy-league | The Ivy League is technically a sports conference, but it's much more than that. Enjoy this special 3D episode with your earbuds on and learn all about these revered, elite universities. | The Ivy League is technically a sports conference, but it's much more than that. Enjoy this special 3D episode with your earbuds on and learn all about these revered, elite universities. | Tue, 11 May 2021 15:49:17 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=15, tm_min=49, tm_sec=17, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=131, tm_isdst=0) | 47244500 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney Nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. What if 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. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Bears. Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And bear is Jerry Jerome Roland. And it's stuff you should know. Back together again holy cow. About having panic attacks. Although this will be released after the other episode where we're back together again. Oh, will it? Yeah. Tips. So, like us. That is typical. We'll screw up our own reunion. That's right. Yeah. We'll have to use the Wayback machine to get things right. Okay. I think we got to tell everyone what's going on here, though. Hopefully you're listening on earbuds or Headphones. If not, we encourage you to, because this is a special episode where we are recording in 3D audio, and I think we should explain what's going on in this room. I don't know. I feel like we're transgressing if we talk about it. Yeah, because it might do something to us. No, I think we should describe this microphone. Okay. I'm a little scared of it, but go ahead. Well, I'm on one side, so Josh and I, we finally get back together to record, and it's nothing like a normal experience. Not even the same studio. Different studio. We're sitting side by side, which is weird, although I'm just pretending it's a live show. Okay. And in front of us is this microphone with human ears. Yeah. But they're like plastic snow white ears. Yeah. Like the creepiest white you could imagine. Yeah. And then they have bolts going around and stuff, too. It looks like I'm afraid of it. That's what it looks like to me. I don't like it one bit. Yeah. And the idea is that we talk into these ears and it produces a different sonic experience for the listener at our expense. Right. Because it's 3d Audio Week, right? It is. I think a lot of our shows are doing this. Right. I'm pretty sure almost all of them so if you're like, man, this is the most amazing thing I've ever heard. Just start go and start listening to I Heart shows this week because they're going to have a lot of cool stuff going. Yes, and I imagine many other shows other than ours will make better use of the technology. Not just talking to the ears. Talk to the ear. Hey, you know, little known fact, by the way, these ears are modeled after stellar ears. Oh, it's part of his forearm. That's weird. Okay, so we're talking actually not about 3D audio today, but instead we're talking about the Ivy League, which obviously is the topic you pick when you're doing a 3D audio stunt, right? Yeah. And I've got a couple of quick quotes, if you'll allow. Okay. I have two friends we share one who went to Ivy League schools. Well, my friend Rob Elzie, who you do not know, he was my roommate at Georgia for a year, and I still know Rob still friends with him. He went to Harvard Law after going to Georgia. Well, and he said this, that I want to read it exactly. I don't want to paraphrase. He said, I always had the perception if you were there in a grad school context, you weren't really considered part of the club. And then he expanded on that, and he said a huge number of your classmates came from Ivy's as undergrad. So as a grad student coming in from Georgia, he said it was almost like transferring to a new school in the middle of a school year kind of vibe. I can imagine. So, like, oh, you went to Georgia, right, and now you're up here with us. But he did say it was really coolly, diverse in law school. And he said not just, like, ethnically diverse, but he said, my class had a former New York City beat cop, a cardiologist from China, a former grade school teacher. He said, just a lot of really unique experiences. And then I asked our other friend, John Hodgman oh, yeah, that's right. With the Yale. That's right. Of course. If he wanted to provide a quote. And he said this a Yale man never comments on a podcast. That's pretty funny. I know. Hodgman talked about being invited to, I think, the Skull and Bones Club later in life in one of his books. Was A Skull and Bones, or was it one of the other ones? I'm pretty sure it was. It was a great story. It's one of their secret societies. Yeah, it is great. And I'm not surprised to hear that the Harvard Law School is pretty diverse because Elle Woods was there and she diversifies everything. I don't know who that is. That's a legally blonde reference. Oh, okay. Oh, man, the ear. Got it. It's starting to bleed a little bit. No, it switched into life also before we really dive in. Chuck, I have to say, am I dreaming right now. Why? Because we're sitting next to each other, and it just is beyond weird. I just have to go on about another minute. Like, we haven't recorded together in over a year. We haven't been in the same room together in over a year. I haven't been in a room with a person who's not my wife without a mask on. Same here. Without number one hyperventilating or doing it at all. And then the fact that we're going to be sitting here together for hours, it's just mind boggling to me. Hey, get back to everybody. That's science for you. Yes, it is. Josh and I will not die because of this. No, because we were vexed. That's right. We're going to grow that baby head out of our back that likes to boss us around, but other than that, we're going to be good. All right. Ivy League. Ivy League. Just one Ivy League. Yeah. So one of the things that I had, the Grabster helped us out with this one, and I had no idea what the Ivy League truly is like. When everybody thinks of the Ivy League, you think of, if you know what you're talking about, eight schools, sometimes referred to as the Ancient Eight. They're among the oldest schools in America. You got brown. Go Bears. Columbia, go, Lions. Cornell, go, Big Red. Dartmouth, go, Big Green. I know. Harvard. Go, Crimson. Yeah. The Crimson Tide. Pennsylvania, go, Quakers. Yeah. Like, where are you at? Go, Tigers. Princeton, go, Tigers. And then Yale. Hodgman's Almighty. Go, Hodgman. And of those eight, seven of them were founded before the United States was even around. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of one of the cool things about the Ivy League, which spoiler it's, really. Just an athletic conference. That's what I didn't know. Did you know that? I think I knew that, but when I first started looking into this as a topic, you think of Ivy League as a concept, rightfully, I think, because it is that. But at its root, it's a sports athletic conference. No, it's kind of weird because one of the other things you don't think of when you think of the Ivy League is sports. Yeah, not really. I mean, if you're in defense, rowing, lacrosse, wrestling, backgammon, sure. Backgammon track and field, you might think of the IVs. In fact, women's rowing has been dominated, apparently by the Ivy League, Brown, and oh, I think it's Cornell. Women, if I'm not mistaken, I'll look, I have it written down somewhere else, so if that's not right, I'll correct myself or totally forget to correct myself, as usual. But, yeah, for the most part, you don't think sports, even though they do play it's a Division One AA conference, also known as Division One FCS. So they're not Division One A. They wouldn't normally play, like, Georgia or Alabama or something like that? That would be funny. All right. They play teams like Howard University. Sure. Holy cross San Diego. Like the kind of universities you're like, I didn't know they had a college football team. That's the Division One SCS. Yeah. And occasionally the Ivy League will get a basketball team. That's pretty good. Yes, I'm talking about it feels like once every 15 years or so. Gail has had some pretty long good streaks. Right. I remember Harvard and Princeton. I've had a couple of teams that went to the March Madness tournament. Okay. And they're kind of fun to watch. It's a three point shooting fest from a bunch of white kids. Is it? Yeah. Those are fun, though. I like three point shooting fests. So. I really love the Golden State Warriors for a while there. Not these days, though. Yeah, they've kind of hit on hard times, chuck, I don't know if you know, I knew they did last year, but I thought they were coming back. So the thing is, though, is, like, when we're talking about sports, people are like, Why are you talking about sports? This is how the Ivy League episode how the Ivy League Works episode So we're going to basically stop talking about sports in a little bit. But you have to talk about sports because it's like you said, it's a sports league. But it's just completely disingenuous to say, like, okay, that's it. The Ivy League is a sports league. It's so much more than that. It has really so little to do with it being a sports league. It just so happens that these elite institutions that were elite long before the sport of football came around, happened to join into a conference together, informed a sports conference. Yeah. But it really is a concept, and it's a grouping of schools, like you said, are among the oldest, the most prestigious. We'll talk about their elite status and whether or not that's true. It is. Whether or not they are elitist. They can be, but they're trying to fix that. Josh, no, you know those ears can't see you. That's the point. But, yes, we'll get to all this. But it's where the presidents of the United States and Supreme Court justices and CEOs of huge law firms and companies go to school. Yeah. The idea is that if you make it into an Ivy League league school, you can basically write your own ticket in the United States. Right. Your own ticket. Yeah. And it's been that way for a really long time. And for a really long time, that is just how it was. But then when they started to kind of expand and try to be bastions of higher education that serve all socioeconomic status, give the best and the brightest, regardless of your income, a fast track to that, it became clear that that's not necessarily how it works. That in a lot of ways, Ivy League schools really are just this conveyor belt for dynasties that just serve the highest echelons of society. But it's unfair to say that they aren't doing anything about that or don't do anything about it. They do try to counteract that. If I were to write my own ticket, you know, it would be jaywalking. Oh, really? I was going to say aerosmith 76. I didn't think about that kind of ticket. Man, you got to expand your mind. Now I got to pay some stupid jaywalking fine, and you're rocking out there. You go the wrong direction with that. All right, so I guess we can talk about the origin of the name Ivy League. Well, there are a couple of stories that are not true that you still hear people say are true in certain circles, non IV circles. It's that when they first got together to talk about forming a sports league, there were four schools. So they used the Roman numeral four, which is an Ivy, and they called themselves Ivy League. That is not true. Or I saw kind of Elitist league. It was the outsider saw the Roman numeral four and called the IV incorrectly, which is even more like even worse. But, yes, it's just not true. There's another story that's a little closer to the truth, that this one sports writer in the 30s complained that he was going to have to watch the ivy grow at some of these ivy covered institutions when he was assigned to cover, I think, a Columbia football game. Right? Yeah. Columbia Penn game in 1937. And Castwell Adams was not too happy about that assignment. No. And so his editor, guy named Stanley Woodward of the New York Herald Tribune, took that Ivy thing and ran with it and created the Ivy League. That story is probably not true either, but it does seem like Stanley Woodward is a good bet for the person who came up with the term Ivy League. Right. And then in 1935 was officially used in print from AP editor Allen Gould. But it seems like it might just be as simple as the fact that these are schools that literally have a bunch of buildings with ivy colored walls not colored, but ivy growing on the walls. Right. Which is kind of has, like, a certain distinguished air to it. It lends, like, this just super upper crust vibe, letting ivy grow up the walls of your institution. It's definitely, like it's a certain thing, and it creates a certain vibe. And that vibe just happens to be exactly what the Ivy league schools are all about. And, I mean, they even have, like, ivy planting ceremonies for incoming classes, and I believe all except Yale let ivy grow still. But Yale, I think starting back in the cutting theirs back, because it's actually not good for your building. IV routes get into masonry joints. They hold moisture. It's a bad jam, basically, and it can really cut into your annual take from your endowment to fix those buildings. So Yale said, no more. They have a little bit of Ivy crawling up a couple of halls, but for the most part, it's gone from the campus. I've got Ivy, part of one of my privacy fences between my neighbor and I built that privacy fence when we moved in myself with my own hands, and Ivy started growing and now is a complete wall of Ivy. And it looks awesome. Yes. I think it's a mosquito farm is what I've heard. Yeah, but I don't want to I mean, I trim it back, but I'm going to leave it there because it looks really cool. It's also chipmunks. Love to live in there, too. So how can you do away with the chipmunk? House can't get rid of their habitat wherever they go. I know. You want to take a little break? Yeah. I'm going to go get a Q Tip for this microphone. Okay. I'll be right back. I'm going to go breathe into a paper bank a little bit. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals. Backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at Capital one. comCOMMERCIAL hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere. Synchronize online and in person sales and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. You can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to Shopify.com stuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. All right, Chuck. So we're back. And so the Ivy League, as we were saying, basically came out of the formation of the sports league itself. It was probably a sports editor named Stanley Woodward came up with the name. And what I think really just kind of underscores the Ivy League's approach to sports is that the reason the Ivy League formed and it tried there are some stops and starts in the beginning of the 20th century. Especially in the 30s. Where not all eight were involved. Not all eight were allowed in. And some people were mad and all that. And it just didn't quite come together until the mid forties. When they came together and formed the Ivy Group Agreement in 1945, all eight schools did. And they basically did it to say, we're really worried about this kind of growing influence of sports, in particular football. We want to make sure that doesn't happen in our school. So they formed a sports league to better control football as far as it's balanced with academic life. That's what the Ivy League Sports League was based on. Yeah. And I think there were some worries, too, about the danger of football early on, because back then, actually, I'm trying to think of what the helmets were like in 1945. They were not much. They were basically like a sheepskin wrapped around your head and then you hope for the best. No, I think that was post. Just leather heads, years. I don't know. I think that was still in the forties. I think it was maybe the late 50s, early 60s, when they started, like, the helmet with the single bar. Yeah. But no face masks. Right. Nothing like that. I remember at the college or the Pro Football Hall of Fame, they have, like, the helmets through the years, right. When you kind of first come in, and it is pretty jarring to look at those early ones and think that those guys were just so concussed. Yeah. The widowmaker, that's what they call that leather helmet with the ears. Ears were okay and protected, but other than that, you're unsure. I think they just took, like, the little wrestling ears and threw some leather on top of that, basically. Yeah. So, yeah, they signed the Ivy Group agreement. They said, football is dangerous, and we don't want it to get in the way of school. And then in 54, they expanded that to include all the competitions, athletically speaking. And then I think in 1956, they actually started playing these sports. They finally got around to it then. Yeah, and I think it was the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League was where they first played basketball in 19 one, and then they rolled that into the Ivy League when they finally came around in 56. So they like to claim that they are the oldest NCAA Division One basketball conference, which is true in a way, because of that first IBL. Right. Not the prettiest acronym I've ever seen. No, but the Ivy Group Agreement, and then later on, the formation of the Ivy League. Like I was saying, they wanted to balance academics with sports. They were basically like, these students are here to learn, but if they have time or they're interested in sports shirt, we'll let them play sports. So they kind of sketched out some rules that other universities and colleges would find to be utter madness. No athletic scholarships whatsoever. You can't go to an Ivy League school and an athletic scholarship. Right. Like, financial aid is supposed to be reserved for the brightest students of less means or lower means than the other kids. Right. Correct. If you end up in a championship or a playoff or something, what do you have to do if you're the team? Well, you don't go. Although I guess basketball is an exception because they have played in the March Madness tournament. Right. But I know that if they if, let's be honest, the football team is probably not going to make I know, not really a problem if you think about it. But if they did, supposedly they would have to skip the ball game. They don't allow grad students to play, although that's not the most common thing, even in other schools. They also twitched that this year, because of the coronavirus. If you were a senior and you didn't get to play in 2020, but you're going to be a grad student at the same Ivy League school, they're letting you play one more year, which is like a huge so first year Harvard Law student could play football. Yeah. Dominate. Dominate on the line. And in case law and then what's the other one? Oh, they don't allow red shirts. Right. The practice of redshirting a student. Yeah. Because you're pretty serious. You have a serious sports program. If you're taking people and being like, I think you're going to be better as a junior and senior than you are as a freshman, we want to add an extra year on to your school. So wear this red shirt around for the next twelve months. Right. Do not take it off. Should be disqualified. You're not allowed. These rules have been in place and respected for decades now, since the 1940s, when they first came together. So that's not to say, though, that even though they're not very good at football and not necessarily very good at basketball, that there aren't any teams or any individuals that excel at sports and win national championships. Like I said, Brown and Yale. It was the Yale women who dominate rowing. No, Brown. Brown and Yale. Okay. Yeah, but I think I said earlier, maybe Cornell right now. I think I said earlier, cornell. But it's Brown and Yale who are women who are both good at rowing. Yeah. If you're a wrestler, you could do pretty well at one of those schools. Yeah. You could end up on the Gray Fox team. Or if you're on the ski team. If your university has a ski team, then it says a lot already. It really does. First of all, it says you're from the Northeast. Yes. But also it says that you probably came from a wealthy high school that had a ski team, which is a thing that we'll talk about later on. Well, sure. That these sports are for people with money, generally. Yeah, basically, because there's not a really good basketball team or football team. I think the baseball teams are so so, too. Hockey team, too, a little bit. That you basically have to come from a wealthy school district in high school to excel at sports in these universities. Yeah. I guess it kind of sets us up for the big question is whether or not these are elitist schools. I think they're sort of in a I don't know about a pickle. I think they're in a constant pickle, trying to be elite without appearing elitist. That's a tough fact, believe me. Oh, that's funny. And they are elite schools. Like, if you go to an Ivy League school, they say you have a five to six fold advantage relative to random distribution of attainment of a top position in business or government. So you're five to six times more likely to be a CEO or to be that Supreme Court Justice. Right. Especially if you go to business or law school. Right, yeah. Anything finance or law. I think eight of the nine current justices went there, except for Amy Coney Barrett, who didn't know her name. Well, the Catholic IB. Yeah, that's true, I guess. Yeah. So if you're on the Supreme Court, there's an extraordinarily high likelihood you are a graduate of not just an undergraduate of an Ivy League, but also a graduate of an Ivy League law school. Totally. It's just not done to have a Supreme Court justice who isn't so Amy Comey Barrett definitely bucks that trend. Presidents tend to be I think 34% of all presidents in the United States ever went to an Ivy League school, either for undergrad or grad. And then five of the last six can you guess who number six is? Who did not go? Yeah. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. He went to Delaware and then he went to Syracuse Law. Yeah. Because the previous president went to Wharton. Well, he went to Penn, and then I think he went on to Warren as well. And Wharton's the business school at UPenn. Right. Just crushed it. Yeah. Obama went to Columbia. That's right. George W went to Yale because he was a legacy. His father went to Yale. He was a Skull and Bones guy, too. Yeah. What about Clinton? Where did he go? Clinton went to Georgetown, and I believe he went to Yale Law. I was so hoping he was a Razor back. You think so? I think they moved to Arkansas after that. They were like, what steak? Can we take over? So as far as the education goes, it's sort of one of those things where the education, of course, is great. No one's going to knock an Ivy League school education with a straight face. Right. So don't think we're doing that. But there is that weird effect where getting the job, because you have that on your resume is a thing you just can't deny that. Right. It's just the reputation of the Ivy League alone sustain their reputation. Success breed success. Exactly. So if you have a degree from an Ivy League university, doors are going to open for you just because you have a degree from an Ivy League university. Like you can spin for a position at a Wall Street law firm and be less qualified probably as far as actually doing the work goes, than somebody who went to Georgia, who's smarter and more capable than you, and you're probably going to get the job because you went to an Ivy League school. Because they have the reputation. The thing is, the Ivy League are well aware of this. They know that it would be really easy to rest on their laurels and just let anybody in. As long as your parents have the money to donate, like a new wing of the library. Why is it always a wing of the library? I don't know, but it always is. That would donate a food haul, that'd be great. But I think that they try to balance that out as much as possible, or at least to some degree, because they know that eventually their reputation is going to fall. Because it turns out that all of the Harvard people are really, actually dummies. The problem is, in the meantime, those people who are making their way to the top just by virtue of having gone to the Ivy League aren't necessarily the best and the brightest. And since they're aggregating at the top, that means the leadership is not necessarily the best and the brightest, and they're also recruiting and drafting and opening doors and creating policies that benefit people like them rather than necessarily everybody else. And then the final factor of this truck is that because those people went to Ivy League schools and the rest of us are just awed by Ivy League schools, the fact that they have Ivy League credentials means that their ideas, that those policies they come up with, that the decisions they make are inherently right because they're Ivy League credentials. So it's a big or boroughs with like multiple tails going into multiple mounts, but it's all one big thing. Yeah, it's a human centipede and it's a real balancing act because the fate of the nation in a large part not entirely we'll get to that, but in large part rests in the hands of these Ivy League schools who are producing tomorrow's leaders. That's true. There was a study that found that top executives are not dominated by these elite schools, but they are overrepresented. So like I said, that five to six fold advantage to get that top position in the business if you went to an Ivy League school. I think they're about on par, though, with MIT, Stanford, Caltech. There are plenty of non IB schools that also are kind of up there with them as far as maybe not representation, but at least reading in the same rarefied error. Yeah, there's a stratum called IV Plus, which includes Stanford, Duke, University of Chicago and MIT. Some people consider that. And then there's also people who are like, well, don't forget Georgetown, and don't forget, I think you. See, Berkeley is sometimes sure, yeah. Berkeley, probably. Northwestern, maybe. Yes. If you step back, though, and look at these schools on paper, some of these other schools probably blow Ivy League schools out of the water as far as just, like, education. Yeah. But in specific areas. Right. If you want to understand business, go to Wharton Business School. If you want to practice law, to learn law, harvard Law, Yale Law, those are really good choices. If you want to learn everything you need to know about the food service industry, go to Cornell. They have a huge restaurant hospitality and food science division. I don't know why, but it's as good as it gets. Right. But there's other schools that are, like, trying to go to Harvard for engineering rather than MIT. Like, you'd be a dumb to do that. So in that sense, MIT blows Harvard out of the water. The thing is, it doesn't matter. MIT is not Ivy League school. Harvard is. So Harvard has an extra veneer of prestige that the average Dumdum will just be blown away by. Right. Georgia has a good journalism school. Sure. Great veterinary program, large animal vet. Yeah. And then for guys like us, it's also a place where you could go and get a decent state school education and have a lot of fun. Yeah. Cheapest 40oz in the state. Oh, man. Georgia used to be really cheap. I think tuition has gone up, but back when we were there, it was like $600 a quarter or something for a full load. Wow. It was ridiculous. Wow, that is super cheap. I'll bet it's going up. And Georgia has gotten a lot harder to get into as well, since we were there, right? Yeah. These schools, too. Not only do you have to have a lot of money to go there, they are incredibly rich in wealthy schools. They have endowments totaling, for all of them combined, $140,000,000,000. With Harvard's endowment alone being 40 billion. I think the lowest is Brown's Piddly little 4.2 billion and Ed conjectures here. But I think he's probably kind of right that when you have an endowment, it's not just a big loaded bank account, but it's an investment portfolio to make more money on that money. Sure. And if you leave a ton of money as a Harvard alum to their endowment fund, and then you end up running a business, they might invest in your business or something like that. It's possible. I haven't seen anything, but, I mean, it makes sense. Then there's like such a one hand washing the other kind of thing at Ivy League schools in particular, because they are these conveyor belts for diamonds. Is that a saying? One hand washing the other? Yeah. Okay. You ever heard that? I don't think so. How else are you going to write your own ticket? Takes both hands. I've heard of one. You scratch my back out, scratch yours, one hand washes the other. Same thing. But how do you use your hand with just one hand? That's what I'm saying. Oh, okay. I got you. You don't in the right ear. I get it. Man, that thing's so creepy. I'm just waiting for blood to start trickling out of one of them. That means we're doing a bad job. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's take another break. We'll come back and talk more about endowments, because it is a thing. All right, we're capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals. Backed by the expertise, strategy, and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at Capital one. comCOMMERCIAL hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. Isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Tik, Tok, Pinterest, and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. 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.com stuff right now. 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. All right, Chuck, so we're talking about endowments. You said Harvard's alone is 40 billion. They're well endowed, just right? Exactly. Hang just from that alone, just the fact that they have in their investment portfolio $40 billion. They reaped I think $296,000,000,000 million. Sorry. They made $296,000,000 in growth off of their 40 billion portfolio, I think, in 2017. That's great. Good return. It is a great return. And it was tax free. Had it happened in 2016, it would have been tax free. Those universities endowments, even though they're private universities, they're nonprofit universities, and their endowments were non taxed until, ironically, the 2017 tax package was passed and there was 1.5% tax on university endowments. Really? Yeah. So Harvard made a big stink about how they had to cough up $50 million in taxes that year. Sure. But if you're using all 296,000,000 from that year for things like building a new library wing, maybe a food hall, I don't know. Or if you're a teaching hospital, university hospital, you might build a new hospital wing or something like that. It's always a wing. Supposedly, you're supposed to use a lot of this also to basically pay for free rides for low income students who otherwise wouldn't be able to make it. That's what endowments are meant to be for. But just the fact that these universities have such huge endowments to make some targets for ire oh, yeah. And it just kind of underscores just how unlike the rest of us they are, right? Yeah, sure. 140,000,000,000 total between the eight schools. That definitely separates them in that respect. But from that endowment, though, they're investing in their students education. That's what they're supposed to be doing with it overall. And there is a big difference. If you go to an Ivy League school, you are probably going to have about $92,000 invested in you personally each year over the course of your career if you go to an Ivy League school. Yeah. Every resource you need, I imagine, right? Yeah. The professors are well paid, so you're going to test the best. The facilities are in great shape, and I got to run out of lakes and burners. Exactly. We're out of gas again in a second tier school, and I just made air quotes in the test and soaking the ear. The second tier school, which is basically anything that's not like the top maybe 25 universities, but still really good schools, they'll spend an average of about $12,000 per student compared to, what? 91,090. $2,000. All right, so they are putting money into their students education for the endowment. But still, 40 billion is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. As far as getting into an Ivy League school, it is tough. Obviously. Their acceptance rates are anywhere from about three and a half percent to 15%, depending on the year and the school. I think Harvard has the lowest rate. Stanford, Northwestern, and Georgetown are non Ivy's with about the same acceptance rate. So it's not specific to Ivy schools. But there have been a couple of scandals in recent years, notably a couple of years ago with Lori Loughlin and who was the other actor, the lady from married? Yes. Suzanne Summer. I can't remember her name. She was on Desperate Housewives, right? What's that? Felicity Huffman. Nice job. Boy. Macy skated on that, too, didn't he? Oh, yeah. He was like, Good luck and hunt. But that was the big revelation, that parents who had rich parents who had kids that were kind of not qualified to get into these schools, let's say. Right. We're very diplomatic. Yeah. We're trying to get them into school by getting them in through the sports program. So we said that they can't offer scholarships, and that's true. But what they can do is a coach can go to the administration and say, hey, I know you save us a few slots for admission at least, and they won't get a scholarship. But can you get Lori Loughlin's daughter in here on a field hockey scholarship? And they're like, but she doesn't play field hockey. Right. She never has. Like, Well, I know, but they make quite a donation to the new science wing, right. Or the theo hockey wing. The coach said Ixnee on the Akihay, but this was bribery. And they is she in jail now, or is she just out? I believe she's out her husband now. She's out. Her husband may be out again now. I think they reduced the sentence, too. They threw the book at him for six months, and then I think they had him serve, like, a month or something. Right. Because they kind of fought things. I remember Felicity Huffman really just eight crow, apologized through herself at the mercy of the court of public opinion and the real court, which was definitely the right move. I think she was very ashamed and came out and said so, whereas Lori Loughlin is kind of like, I'm going to fight this. It's like, that's not the right move. That was a great Lori Loughlin impression, by the way. But that was a very big deal. Like, that kind of rocked the entertainmentacademic world for a little while. Yes. And I think a lot of people didn't realize that Ivy Leagues have these coaches slots where the coach can say, Let this kid in. I want them on my fencing team. Best fencer I've ever seen. Right. You ought to see this guy with a foil. Right. But yeah, the idea that not only were these kids not qualified to go to an Ivy League school, but they also weren't even any good at sports. They were just using this backdoor thing. That's not good at all. What about that other anti Asian bias scandal? Yeah. So you talked about Harvard's acceptance rate being 3.4%. That was for 2020. That's low, even for Harvard. Yeah, that's super low. It's not necessarily Harvard's fault that their acceptance rate is so low. They usually have about the same number in each class every year and have for decades. It's just that more and more people are applying to it. Apparently, there's academic coaches that basically just help you fill out forms and tell you how to apply to different colleges. Right. And their rise has been commensurated with the flood of applications in Ivy Leagues. So more and more people are applying, which means the acceptance rate is getting lower and lower, even though the class size has been the same. The point of that is that these classes are curated almost at IBM League, and if you just went on academics just a plus 4.0, somehow their GPA was even above 4.0 or four, period. I'm sorry, you would have way more Asian children in the Ivy League schools, but you don't. Right. So this group sued Harvard and said, you have an antiaging bias. And Harvard was like, It's not an antiaging bias. We more just sculpt each class. Right. Not only do they look at a well rounded student with a bunch of different interests in pursuits, in community service in addition to their grades, they tried to look at a class like that, too. They assembled a well rounded, like, what does this class look like? And for what it's worth, I think they were sued by an anti affirmative action group, and they said they won, and then they won the appeal. Yeah. Harvard won, then they won the appeal. And I think it's still in the courts for, I guess, another appeal. But yeah, I think it seems like they're trying to do that in the name of diversity, which is ironic, because if you're a minority, if you're Asian, you're a minority. Right. So I could see crying foul against that. But there are lots of minorities, and I guess they're trying to create a diverse class. At least that's what they're saying. Yeah. And one of the places where diversity really needs to be boosted, though, is on socioeconomic status. Right. Apparently there's a group called Opportunity Insights.org, and it's some X Ivy Leaguers who got together to kind of study how Ivy Leaguers serve American society. And they release these detailed reports every once in a while, and the most recent one says that the middle income kids are being left out, that Ivy Leagues are going for the real Ragster riches success stories to boost their image. Sure. And as a result, they're also leaving out some of the middle, where if you just took kids who had scored at least 1400 on the Sat as qualification and left income out of it, middle income kids would I think the representation would go up by like 10% or something crazy like that. But that's not the case. You have very high income kids. Like, for example, if you're student with parents in the top 1% of American economic brackets, you're 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League than a student with a parent in the lowest 20%, which is crazy because there's only 1.2 million households in the top 1%, but there's 21 million households in the bottom 20%. But those kids in the top 1% are still 77 times likelier to go to an Ivy League school. That right there is just drop the mic right there. There's no argument like they serve the highest echelons of American society and help the next generation stay in the highest echelons of American society. If you drop this mic, you're going to injure that ear another stat here. In 2017, more than 20% of Dartmouth students were from the top 1% of earning families, and 14.4% came from the bottom 60% of families by income. And I don't have the stat, but I guarantee you that most of those fell between the percentile. I'd be curious to see what the bottom 10% looks like, but it's probably super low. So I saw another study from the Opportunity Insights where they were saying, like, okay, the key here, what you're looking for to raise people up are the lower socioeconomic levels to the higher ones. Through a college education, there's two factors. One is access. They've got to be able to have access to that education. So how many lower income students is this university accepting? And then mobility, which is how many go from the bottom quintile to the highest quintile? You mean in their career and life? Yeah. Like, say, ten years on? Yeah. Right. Or yeah, over their lifetime. What's the stat there? Well, they found that Ivy's are not they're great at mobility. If they can get people out of the bottom 20% and in the top 20%, no problem. But so can second tier schools. And second tier schools have much greater access. It's much easier to get in, and they're also a lot cheaper over there. I think Harvard is like, 50 grand a year now or something like that. Yeah. But although if you are in that bottom income bracket, you're going to be getting grants out the wazoo. Right. But it's hard to get in. Access is shut down. The mobility is pretty good, but it's also just as good as second tier. Now, if you take away that moving people from the bottom 20% to the top 20%, and you look at moving people from the bottom 20% to the top 1%, then Ivy League is below everybody else out of the water. There's a good chance that if you are from the lowest 20% of earners, we're talking $25,000 a year less. Right. There's 22 million households in the US. That make that if you come from that quintile and you get into an Ivy League school, there's a pretty decent chance you're going to be in the top 1% of earners ten years after you graduate. Yeah. This stat doesn't make sense here. At the end then, 22% of Princeton students were pell grant eligible, but only 1.3% of their students entered poor and became rich later in life. Yes, that'd be right. Yeah. I think different studies turn up different stuff, so it's just from a different study. And also it has to do with the measurement. I mean, like, maybe this is over lifetime earnings or something like that, right? Sure. Who knows? That was startling. There is a good quote here. I think we should read that. And it's sort of on the idea that just because you got into Harvard, your problems are solved as far as your connections and socially. And I think it has the reputation if you're a student there and if you are from one of those lower income families that sort of like Robbie coming from Georgia to their law school, they're like, well, you're still not really one of us. You got in and you're getting these grants. I know you're smart and everything, but you're not a blue blood like we are. And we're going to have a bunch of clubs that are expensive, have really expensive dues and secret societies, and we can still segregate within the school pretty successfully. And you're not going to have the connections we're going to have even though you went here with us. And this one student from, I think it was Haitian, said in the Washington Post article, they're constant reminders they have to forge a place for myself within a world that has been constructed for someone else. So it's great that they are getting some of these kids in the school and trying to diversify, but that's only step one into truly integrating. Yeah, that's exactly what happened to Ellwoods. Yeah, I get the reference. Now. You got anything? Have you not ever seen Legally Blonde? I don't think so. It's great all the way through. Emily has for sure. Good one. And Legally Blonde, too, is one of the better sequels ever. Blonde Ambition? I think so. Yeah. She goes through the same exact thing, but this time in DC. I'm not sure how I do that. Well, you just pulled it out. Thin air. That's right. You got anything else? Nothing else. Okay, everybody. Well, that's Ivy League. And that is also the end of our 3D recording career, at least after this listener meal, because I said 3D recording career. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm over here. I'm over here now. I'm down here. You think that does anything? Probably, yeah. It just made Jerry tickle. You got to finish your part now. Did you already forget listener mail? Yeah. No, I said that it's listener mail. Oh, you did? I said and that means it's time for listener mail, because I said you did say that. Yeah, it's my cue. All right, well, here, I'll do it again. You're ready? Yes. We should leave this part in. Okay. I didn't forget already. Well, then I guess I did. Well, since Chuck said, I guess I did, that means it's time for a listener man. Hey, great set up. I'm going to call this feminism from Emily in Chicago. Hey, guys, in the Era episode, you mentioned doing at least the short stuff on Betty for Dan. I, for one, think it's a great idea because she's done a lot of important work. It doesn't really get talked about, but I wanted to bring up to you guys, if you decide to pursue an episode on her, you should know that she led a movement that was exclusive to white, middle class heterosexual women. The sixties and seventies was a time period. It was really rich in movements for women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. Yet all these movements, namely second wave feminism in the American Indian movement, was guilty of this too. They excluded poor women, women of color, and women who identified as LGBTQ. Women in these groups were advocating for the same rights as the leaders of these movements, but oftentimes their voices were just straight up ignored. Betty Friedan was notorious for butting heads with and kicking out these types of women, like Rita Mae Brown, who was a great feminist writer. This wave of feminism in the is definitely important and did deliver great strides for women, but not all women. I do want to don't want to reign on anyone's freight here in any shape or form, but just shed a bit of light on the many layers of these movements. It's important to celebrate the victories for women and minority groups during this period, but it's also important not to gloss over the many flaws that were present. You guys are great. Your show is in absolute delight. Can't wait to listen to future episodes. Please keep up the good work. Take care of yourself. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Emily from Chicago. Thanks, Emily. It's a great point. Totally great point. I've learned over the years and from being a history major, that even the most celebrated things are rarely just perfect. Yeah, like us. Well, we may be an exception to the rule. All right, great. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Emily from Chicago did, and say, hey, I'm Blank from Blank, let us know. You can email to us at stuffpodcast. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know you're 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 pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopeet.com." | |
Does Kin Selection Explain Altruism? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/does-kin-selection-explain-altruism | There's a curious puzzle unanswered by the theory of evolution: why do some animals give up their chance to reproduce to help others reproduce instead? For decades biologists have suggested family was the reason, but that has recently been challenged. | There's a curious puzzle unanswered by the theory of evolution: why do some animals give up their chance to reproduce to help others reproduce instead? For decades biologists have suggested family was the reason, but that has recently been challenged. | Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:59:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=13, tm_min=59, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=112, tm_isdst=0) | 31550572 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Puzzling. US, as always, with her jibber jabber. That was funny. Should we say what happened? No, and you should leave. It mysterious. All right. Like, whether Jerry exists or not. Oh, she exists. You know, a lot of people out there are not convinced. Yeah. Still, even though she's shown pictures of her with her face blurred, it could be a work a day actress. She's appeared at scores of live events and met people in person. Same actress, but with, like, a gig, a regular guy. And she even spoke on our Guatemala episodes. That was Stanley Kubrick's doing. How are you, sir? Good, good. I'm excited about this one. This is Nedo. Are you a kin selection? Yeah. I thought it was me. Like any, you bring up the name Charles Darwin and you just see my face light up. Yeah. So you know, that how stuff works. Trivia event that you and no longer hosted, you guys had some hard questions, but one that my team got 100%. Right. It was a six part one. Yes. And there was a couple of tough ones in there, but it was Charles Darwin or Chuck D. From Public Enemy. Yeah. Charles D or Chuck d. Right. And then we named off five or six things. I think it was six. And it was basically who was it? Charles D or Chuck D. Yeah. Like who's the pescetarian? You don't know. We did. It was Chuck T who married his first cousin, Charles Darwin. That one I definitely knew because I remember Darwin was kind of anxious as he was learning about evolution and natural selection and genetics right. That he had married his first cousin. He started to get kind of worried about his kid. Yeah. He said, should I marry her? And they said, Jennifer Connolly. She's beautiful. Where did you pull that one from? Well, she played Darwin's wife in the Darwin movie. Oh, well, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Had I known that, it would have been, like, great reference. Sorry, man. He's like, I got to marry her. Did you see her? And who played Darwin? Paul Betty. Yeah. Well, he was her husband already. Were they married? I don't know if they are or not anymore, but they were for a while. Okay. Whatever became of him? He was great. He's around. Good. I bet he's treading the boulders. Oh, yeah. I bet he is, too. Sounds like something you do. Yeah. I didn't even get to see the Jennifer Connolly movie. I was going to say proof. No, let's just move on. What was it? I can't think of the name of it. The Darren Aronovsky. Oh. Requiem for a Dream. Yeah. I got to marry her. Did you see her in Requiem for a Dream? Man, that was a crazy movie. Great movie, but not for the faint of heart. No. So, Chuck, we've got a whole evolution suite going on here, and this contributes to it. Evolution, natural selection. We've covered charles Darwin. The man himself. That's right. We've done evolve in isolation, all sorts of stuff. Also put together extinction. Yes. Bam. That's probably all of them. But this one is kind of like a nuanced version of the evolution suite of the idea of evolution, but it actually is a fulcrum or lever, something on which a buttress the whole idea of evolution and natural selection and what drives it, or if it's even real, kind of swings. It's easy to overlook. But there's a real problem. Like, Darwin had all this great stuff laid out with his theory of evolution by natural selection, and it basically goes, as everybody knows, a little something like this. A one and a two. I wish we had a natural selection song we could play. Well, it goes like this. Animals need to reproduce for the species to survive. And it's hard sometimes for little eggs to survive harsh environments and seeds and things. So they make lots and lots of them. That's right. That's part one. Yeah. And they make lots and lots of them because a lot of them don't survive, like you said. But a lot of these things that try to reproduce don't have the good genes. Right. So they fail to reproduce. They've got tuskins, not levi's. Right. So the tuskskins tend to die out. Right, like Tuftskins did. Instead, the levi's continue on because they've got the good genes. So therefore they are more apt to survive and reproduce and be successful than they are the tuscan counterparts. So what we have there is called survival of the fittest. You are reproductively fit if you are likely to go on and bear fruit, as it were. Yeah, little baby fruit. Darwin realized early on, too, that variation was a big key to all this. You take two sets of pigs and they have baby pigs. They're not all going to be identical. Some of those pigs will have little, seemingly insignificant details about themselves. Brown spots, maybe. But it turns out that brown spots drive the lady pigs wild. It might be that easy. So this guy's mating left and right and has a bunch of kids, so his brown spots make him reproductively fit. That's right. Or not even looks like what could be a random variation could really lead to the survival of that pig and maybe an entire species. Yeah. I read this really interesting article on nautilus, I think, recently, and it was basically the idea that the human body is just a hackathon of, well, we need to fix this problem, so let's come up with this. Human started standing up on two legs, so we need to fix it with this. I love that. But if you stem back and look at it, the human body is this really Kludy thing held together with, like, duct tape and bubblegum, right? Yeah, like a VW. You buck and the author interviewed, I think, ten different biologists and said, what's something you would change about the human body to improve it. That was basically hack. It was pretty interesting. That's awesome. See if I can find it. Is that going to be in your best things? I've read this week post. Blog post. I think so. Maybe it should be. And you read it while you were working out on your nautilus machine? No. I read it on Nautilus website. Got you. And they have a clever website. It's nautil us. Oh, I see what they did there. So it's Nautilus. I us. Not us. Okay. So you talked about fitness. The more offspring you have, the more fit you are as a parent. Right. And as a mammal or animal or whatever, you've hit the nautilus so often that you're just totally fit if you had a bunch of kids. That's right, because as we all know, not 100% of your genetic material goes into each one of your little babies. Because you have sex with someone else. You got to share compromise. So in order to increase the chances of one of your little babies having all of your genetic material, you just need to have more and more babies. It's amazing. That's weird, because I always thought that the amount of genes that you pass on was set like 50% or whatever went to your kid, right? Well, yes, but you have sex and 50% of these genes goes in, you have sex again, and another set of your genes might get picked. I've never heard it put like that. That makes sense, though. Yeah. I always thought the more, like the drive to keep having kids and reproduce was because you were going to have 50% of your genes out there in the world no matter what. But all those kids could bite the dust. Sure. So the more you have, the more insurance you have that those 50% go on. Never thought of it the way well, it's both, though. I think it's pretty interesting. Either or. But the upshot of all this, and by extension, the upshot of Darwin's entire theory of evolution by natural selection driven by variation, is that any traitor organism has that improves its capability to reproduce or likelihood of reproducing is going to be selected for, and that's going to lead to the evolution of the species. Right. And that basically the whole point. This is the unspoken part. The whole point of everything is to reproduce, to pass your genes along. That was Richard Dawkins contribution with the selfish gene. Right? Yes. The problem is in darwin saw this while he was coming up with his theory, was that there is behavior found in nature that does the exact opposite of that. Where organisms choose, it seems to live a life where they don't reproduce and instead help others of their kind reproduce. Which is called biologically altruistic behavior. And it makes no sense whatsoever under Darwin's theory of evolution. And it's just been a puzzle and a challenge to the theory ever since he first noticed it. Well, I think that's a great place for a break, my friend, and we'll talk about this weird thing after we get back. So Darwin talked a lot about competition. That was one of the big keys to his theory. Working is, unfortunately, in nature, it can't be like elementary school field day, where everyone gets a participant ribbon. There's going to be winners and losers, and the winners will go on to survive, and the losers might not. But where this wrinkle comes in is what you mentioned before the break. Biological altruism. It's remarkable that there are and we'll talk about some of them that there are species that don't even try to reproduce. Yeah, well, there are members of certain species, right? Yeah. So a really good example is the bee. A drone is a female, and a female that I think in some bee species are totally sterile, so they can't reproduce anyway. But even if some of them could, they don't. Instead, they go out and collect honey, or they collect the nectar. They make honey, they chew the pollen and spit it back up and then do that a bunch of times, and all of a sudden, you have honey, which, as everybody knows, is nothing but bee vomit. Lead to our B podcast. That was a good one. It was great. They tend to the offspring, the young. They bring food to the queen, who is the only one to reproduce. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Right? Yeah. They serve the queen, because not only does that so there's two things that play here that make the whole thing weird. One, if an individual organism is basically here to pass along its genes, then why would any individual organism not attempt to do that? Right. Yeah. And then secondly and this is the real mystery how could these traits that the organism is driven by to be helpful and altruistic rather than be reproductive, how could that possibly be passed on from one generation to the next if that organism isn't passing that trait along? It's a big question mark. Man well, it was. It's not proven, but in the 1960s, there was a kid in school who would later go on to be a very famous evolutionary biologist, but he was a graduate student in the sixties named William Hamilton. He said, you know, I got this idea. It's called inclusive fitness, or kin selection. K-I-N jerry selection. Not like a Ken doll, but Ken selection. Inclusive fitness. Basically, here's what's going on here. It's not random. When you see in nature this altruistic behavior of a part of a species, of a member of a family helping, most times they're helping their family. Yeah. This is actually supported by some studies. Very famously, it was supported by a study of a number of studies of Florida scrub jays, which are pretty little blue birds, and some members of the Florida scrubjay species don't mate when it comes time to mate during mating season. Right. Instead, they help gather food, they help defend nests and protect the eggs they help build. They're like, Here, let me build you a little sex room, brother. Right here to protect it. So I'm going to put a tie on the nest. I'll bring your food later if you're tired, but you just go in there and do your business. Hugs, brother. Deeply it's like the whole family's powder, but I'm going to go out here and not have sex. I'm just going to stay in guard and maybe listen. That's what the scrub is doing. Exactly. It's remarkable. So it doesn't make any sense, right? No, it doesn't, until you investigate it through the lens of kinselection. And so this one study in particular that followed scrub jays as they didn't mate and instead carried out this altruistic helping behavior, they found that of the 74 relationships that were observed, 48 assisted their parents. Family rose, 16 helped their father again grote. Seven assisted a brother, two assisted their mother. And then one out of all, 74 helped a stranger. And you can imagine, that bird was probably just a little dimwitted. Well, I was about to say, I bet it was confused, maybe. And I thought like you're my brother. Right. Or the researchers were confused and didn't realize that this was their close kin. But the point is. This altruistic behavior. The study supports the idea that the organism. The animal. The person. Whoever is helping somebody related to them. And therefore it does make sense in evolution. Because the person is helping ensure that some of their genes. Not necessarily their specific genes that they are passing down through reproduction. But some of their genes. Through their direct blood relative. They're helping make sure that those get passed along. And then altruism starts to make sense. It's amazing. You want to hear an evolutionary biologist joke about this? Yeah. I would gladly die for two brothers or four cousins or eight second cousins. Yes. That's pretty good. Yeah, that makes sense. I read that and I thought that kind of describes it perfectly. It's not very funny because it's an evolutionary biology joke. That's right. But it does describe it. So this happened in the 1960s and like I said, Hamilton went on to write books and he actually came up with math that he says proves this to be the case. Yes. Because they use letters instead of numbers, so, you know, it's legit. It's actually a pretty smart little equation. It's called Hamilton's Rule. I like it. You like it? Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. It's succinct. I can understand it. You can dance to it. Right? It's got a good beat. I'm not threatened by it, so I like it. All right. Well, should we talk about it? I know it's a little esoteric to talk about a math formula that is easier looked at. Well, just close your eyes, everybody, and imagine this. Okay. Well, in math terms, what we're talking about, it's an individual's relative genetic representation in the gene pool in the following generation. So if you literally look at it, it's be the letter B greater than the letter C over R. Right. So in this case, the B is greater than so that's the benefit, which I guess would be the likelihood that their genes were passed down. That would be the benefit. So the benefit is greater than the cost incurred by the person or the organism, not reproducing divided by the relationship. Right. So the closer you are, the likelier it is that you're going to enjoy a benefit over the cost. Yeah. There's a PhD online named Bjorn who is much smarter than me because I had a little trouble wrapping my brain around around how this math proves it. We'll get into the alternative theory here in a minute. Proves it. Over the alternative theory of group success. And he basically said the altruist act must be at least double the receiver's fitness in order for that altruist to gain representation in the next generation. Yeah. And it makes sense. So here's how it makes sense. If you are going to have two kids yes. If you did reproduce and you were going to have two kids, but instead of having those two kids, you helped your brother, and he was able to have three. There you go. Yeah. So I saw Hamilton's rule expressed differently somewhere else, and it made it easier for me to understand. All right, let's hear your version. RB minus C is greater than zero. So if the relationship coefficient times the benefit minus the cost is greater than zero, then go for it. Says nature. Okay. Then it makes sense. Altruistically. All right, well, my math brain hurts, so let's take a break. We even bragged about how we got that. I sort of get it. We'll take a break and talk more about some more animals who do this in the idea of group selection. All right, so we mentioned the scrubj. The Scrubby. Little scrub jay who likes to build sex dungeons. We talked about bees. There are also ants and wasps and other insects who serve the queen. These workers, it's sort of like insect socialism, almost working side by side for the benefit of the group. Forget my own reproduction. I want the colony to survive, and this is my job, so I'm going to do it. Well. Another example is some animals have a call, they will signal out, hey, there's an intruder coming. Family for the house. And I might be giving it my own life by drawing attention to myself, but I'm still going to do that. Now, I actually did see an explanation for that that doesn't have to do with actual altruism or selection. Among meerkats, they have sentinels. Anytime a gang of meerkats is out hunting, one of them is just standing up looking very cute in all directions. Yes, they're the best. And when they see danger, they call out to a warning to the rest of the group. But this one study that included like 2000 hours of watching and observing these meerkats found that not one sentinel was killed during this time. And as a matter of fact, they were the ones that get away first because they're the ones watching. Right. So they see first and then they call. But it's actually that call is not much of a cost to the individual. Well, that's a meerkat. They're super smart. What about the dumb squirrel? I don't know. I mean, maybe. Yeah. Although meerkats do very famously engage in altruistic behavior themselves. Like meerkat pups can't feed themselves, but apparently they can squeal and beg and most of the time they will be fed. But the meerkat feeding them is not necessarily, in most cases isn't their biological parents. It's somebody else. And meerkats definitely have that whole village to raise a child thing going on, for sure. And it makes a lot of sense through kin selection in not in other ways. Interesting. It's hard not to think of politics when you're reading this stuff in the animal world, for sure. That's a good model for it. Well, it depends on what you think. Well, I mean, it's a good model to understand it, I should say. Yeah. It's funny, I was driving home from the grocery store the other day and there was a major intersection near my house where the traffic lights were out, like four way intersection. And each one had their own turn lane and it was rush hour and I just laughed looking around like the American political system was entirely represented. Yeah, man, some people just barrel through, didn't care. Some people just wouldn't go. They were just like frozen in fear. Some people are like, no, you go. Well, no, you go, you go. And then someone behind one honk was like, all right, I'll go. And you could just really kind of see everything. It really opened open my eyes. Yeah. And I think I don't know what you would call me because I'm by the book guy. Oh, yeah. I'm like blinking yellow doesn't mean stop. It means proceed slowly, cautiously. But one is red and one is yellow. Everybody was stopping because it was just so crowded. Exactly. Yeah. And there's definitely people who do see it the way you do and then go ahead and do that. But it does seem like humans have recently decided, like no, if it's red and blinking yellow, the people with the yellow are going to stop eventually and let the people with the red go. Altruistic act. Very interesting. All right, so we teased multilevel selection or group selection. This is something Darwin talked a little bit about in The Descent of man, but his main focus was on the individual. But he dabbled in it. He dabbled in group play. But this is a theory where there are these altruistic traits. No one's denying that. We see it all over the animal kingdom, but it's not necessarily toward a family. It's just for the good of the whole group. Yeah. So the whole idea of kin selection apparently has been challenged, although not widely challenged, by the idea that if you really look at some species, the species that are closely related, some of them don't do anything altruistically. Right. And then others that do engage in altruism don't necessarily do it for close relations. So if that's the case, then the whole idea of kinselection is challenged because the basis of kins selection is that these are organisms helping to pass on some of their related traits that their relatives are passing along through reproduction. And if that's not the case, then the question mark returns. Well, yeah. And then there's the whole thing that there are in groups of animals. Some are related, some aren't. So it's hard to tell where group behavior stops and family behavior begins. So you have a lot of biologists saying this is just sort of semantical, we shouldn't be arguing about this. It's sort of the same. They're equivalent. Basically, helping the family is helping the group. Right. But then a few years back, very famous antman, E. O. Wilson, actually. Awesome guy. Like, as far as sciences go, this guy should have statues directed to him. He's a very brave scientist. He's known as the father of sociobiology. Right. He also, when he was a teenager, was the first to observe and study fire ants when they just happened to be transported to South America, from South America to New Orleans as ballast in a ship. He happened to notice them for the first time. Fire ants in the Southeast, red ants. Wow. He was there when they came about. They didn't originate here? No, they were brought in scoops of dirt from South America. It's crazy. And they just took over. But he was a teenager and he was studying them, so he's a really great scientist, but he has attracted the ire of his fellow scientists by saying kin selections bunk. Yeah. He reversed his position, though, right? Yeah. He was an early and longtime champion of kin selection, and he apparently changed his way of thinking and now says it's group selection instead. Yeah. And Richard Dawkins, we mentioned him earlier, he fired back at EO. Wilson and was basically like, you know what, dude? You're wrong. I know you wrote a book about it, but he said there are quote pervasive theoretical errors in your book, sir. And Wilson, is he still alive? I think he is. Dawkins isn't. Wilson is old, though, because he's 85 in 2011. So he'd be 90 now. Right. He may be eleven. I'm not sure if he's not or if he is. Well, Dawkins is very famous for his freeloader effect, too. Yeah. As part of the selfish gene. And that's the problem. I think that's one of the reasons why EO. Wilson has attracted so much higher from the scientific community, because a lot of scientists built their careers on things like kin selection and explaining it, and they were doing so following in the wake of EO. Wilson, who was a huge proselytizer for it. And then all of a sudden, this profit turns around on them toward the end of his life and after his own career, and a lot of people were ticked off by it. But it makes sense. The group selection doesn't. Basically, it's saying, like you said, a lot of people are like, this is just semantics. We shouldn't be arguing about it. But group selection says it's not the relatives that these organisms are looking out for. It's their group. It's their species. They're making sure their species continues along, and that's enough for an altruistic act to exist. Yeah. So like I said, with all these other scientists that were upset by this, dawkins is included. And one reason Dawkins would be upset about that is because he wrote The Selfish Gene, which helped explain kinselection and altruism. And yeah, he was taking shots at EO. Wilson in the press over the whole thing. Yeah. And his freeloader effect, which I mentioned a few minutes ago, is basically he said, you know what we call it? A mutant freeloader. One of these freeloaders can take it down, take down this altruistic society or species because they're just lazing about and they have more time to have sex and reproduce, and they can reproduce faster. So everyone else is out there working for everybody altruistically, there's freeloaders just having sex and having babies. So that's going to be the gene that gets carried down the most, I guess, that supports kin selection. I don't know. Not sure either. I'll have to read The Selfish Gene and find out. Yeah, I just thought it was interesting. Yeah, I do, too. But then also Chuck with the whole idea as well of whether kin selection or group selection explains anything. If you are helping somebody, if an organism helps related or just a group organism reproduce, and that organism who gave up reproducing was going to have two kids, but only helps that other organism have one, then isn't that a net loss for the species or the family? Well, yeah, but I think that's what that math formula was all about, is it has to be double or else it's not going to keep happening. I got you. So I wonder then, if there's been studies that show yes, it's typically double. I think that's what he said. The math proved crazy stuff, biologists going nuts on one another. Yes. And we're just sitting on the sidelines eating popcorn, talking about it. If you want to know more about socio biology and other stuff like that, including Kin selection or group selection. You can type in Kin, kin n into the search bar howstepworks.com? And it will bring up a pretty interesting article. Since I said Kin, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this companion to the previous listener, male Finland rules. And I'm going to call this Sweden rules. Starting some static, huh? More crazy Scandinavians. Hey, guys. Long time listener. Just finished with the dark money and want to give you some insight about our socialist paradise of Sweden. Yes, we do pay quite a bit of tax. A regular Joe pays about 30% of his or her income is tax. If you earn more, you pay more tax. There's also a VAT tax and everything between 6% on food to 25% on everything else. So, yes, we never stop paying the man. So what do we get? Well, we're guaranteed healthcare. There is a small fee, about $10 for a medical situation. But after that it's all free. X rays, cancer treatments, it's all free. Also, if you have enough visits to the hospital, I guess you get a punch card. You get a free card, which means you don't even have to pay that $10 or pay for medicine. Sweet deal. He says school is naturally totally free. We actually even get a salary for attending university. About $300 a month as a stipend, all for free. We can also take out a student loan with very affordable payment plans that don't kick in until after you've graduated. That makes it so it's common for all people of all ages to go to university. And lastly, we have kids. When you have kids, the parents can take out 480 days of paid paternity leave. Oh, yeah, the US is so far behind other industrialized nations. Yes, they're like two weeks and then good luck. Right, get back to work. And we need you responding to emails the whole time, too. I must say our company had more generously than that. So I'm talking about even for dads. Yeah. If they take an equal amount, they get a bonus payment. After that, there's a system of kindergartens that takes care of the kids until they reach school age again, free. We do have some problems, of course. A lot of the healthcare has been privatized in recent years, which hasn't been all great. Also, there's a movement of xenophobia sweeping the nation, fueled by the terrible refugee situation in Europe third largest political party has its roots in far right anti democratic, even Nazi movements, is what he says. That's really surprising because usually they point to the rise of things like that as the result of economic woes. Yeah, it doesn't sound like Sweden has too many economic woes. So I mean, what accounts for that? I need a follow up. He says. On the whole, it's a great place to live. Thanks for the show, Edutainment. At its. Very finest. And that is from Guerin Beckstrom. Great name, GB. He said if I can pronounce his name, I get a prize guaranteextrom. Going to send you his thumb because you got it right. That'd be great. Thanks, Karen. I'd like your other thumb. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyhannow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseworks.com. You always join us at our homes on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
How Drag Queens Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-drag-queens-work | You can trace the origin of men dressing as women in public back to classic Greek theater, but modern drag queens owe their real inception to vaudeville. Dip your toe into the politics and culture of this unique phenomenon with Josh and Chuck. | You can trace the origin of men dressing as women in public back to classic Greek theater, but modern drag queens owe their real inception to vaudeville. Dip your toe into the politics and culture of this unique phenomenon with Josh and Chuck. | Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:05:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=15, tm_min=5, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=162, tm_isdst=0) | 40069400 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Chuck, Sasha, Shantay, just a couple of drag queens hanging out, we should say. Chuck and I are both in full drag right now. That's right. You did a nice job with the hair, the wig I like. Thank you. You find it big, is it? No, you can't get too big if you're a drag queen. I'm a little more fishy than glamour. The lashes are nice, and I noticed, keeping with the tradition set by Julian ELTONE, your hands are quite feminine. Oh, well, I'm holding them in a very feminine manner. Well done. Thank you. They're powdered just right. The knuckles aren't as hairy as usual, and I like your camping drag. Thank you. I had no idea that your forearms were so big and that you had an anchor tattoo. That's right. And if you notice my crotch, you won't notice anything. Smooth is a Kendall. That's right. It's taped and tucked. You're wearing a gas, so that's really all you need to know. I went online and looked up how to make a gas or gas. I was like, I think I understand what this is, but I need to find out. And I saw a YouTube tutorial by a drag queen. Sure. How to make one out of an underwear waistband, like an elastic band and a tube sock cut on either end so it's open. Okay. And you just slide the tube sock or no, you slide the elastic band through the open tube sock and step into the elastic band. Right. Because it makes two holes that way for your legs. And then I guess everything gets real compressed. Got you. Yeah. Well, that's great. I use duct tape. It's a little more uncomfortable. I'm going to use your method for that video today. Yeah. It looks cheap, easy, quick, and as comfortable as that kind of thing can be. So, people, if you are not one that reads titles to podcasts and you just say, I'm going to hear what's going on, we're talking about drag queens, and it has an interesting history, and it's an interesting culture, and we like to cover those things. Yeah. So let's do it. Well, this is a conger article. Yes. Kristen conger. From stuff mom never told you. Yeah. She did a really good job kind of tracing the history and really getting into the culture of drag queens. And it turns out that there is a considered father of drag queens, although he went to great pains to suggest that he wasn't gay. That's because he was totally gay. I think so. I noticed she pointed out that he was a bachelor. Yeah. I looked up more on that. It was often rumored that we're talking about who we mentioned earlier with the hands julian ELTONE. ELTONE. And born William Dalton. And this is early 20th century, and he made a big name for himself dressing like a lady and performing in vaudeville. He started out, I guess, as a voltville performer. But then he was in a play called The Fascinating Widow in 1911. Apparently, the ladies loved him, of course, loved his drag because he was just really good at it. And from there, he ended up on screen in films, sponsorship deals. Yeah. He apparently was the highest salaried performer of his age. That's crazy. There were fan magazines dedicated to him and dressing up as women. He had zines. Multiple Zines. Yeah. At least three. And he performed for King Edward I 7th of the UK. He was delighted by his performance. Of course he was. So this guy, Julian LTE is like making quite a name for himself. And again, he went to great lengths to be like, look at me. I'm a guy. See, I'm smoking cigars and I'm fishing. Yeah. But like I said, I looked into it more and apparently he would attack people in the audience sometimes when they would yell out derogatory terms about his masculinity. Oh, yeah. And he would challenge people to fight and things. And he was a lifelong bachelor, so I think that probably meant that he was gay. Right. Which is fine, because as a cross dresser, you can be gay or straight. Doesn't matter. You can be transgender. It doesn't matter. Yeah. They're all different stripes of people who like to put on the opposite clothes of whatever their gender is because they're kings as well and perform on stage. It's fun. It's a light hearted fun thing. Right. Well, that's the whole point of it. It's supposed to be light hearted and fun. It wasn't always, though. There was a very long period where when men dressed up as women on stage, it was because women weren't allowed to perform on stage. So men were frequently, like, doing this straight, very seriously in dramas. In Greece in ancient Greece, it was considered dangerous for women to be on stage and they were not allowed to be in any of the Greek dramas. Which is kind of ironic because the Greek theater arose out of the Rights of Dionysus, which were performed almost exclusively by women. But once it was established as theater, the men were like, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Now go over there because it's too dangerous here. Very interesting. Yeah. And in the Middle Ages, of course, the Christian church chimed in and said, you know what? Here's what theater is. It is Bible stories on stage in church pageants. Basically, it's like, oh, you used to like the theater. Well, get a load of this, because this is what it is now. Yes. And women were not allowed to take part in that. Of course, men would play the parts of women. And it wasn't until the 17th century in opera that women finally the stage opened up and they were allowed to tread the boards. Yeah. In Shakespeare's era, men played both roles. And I think what was it? 1660, that one of the kings in England, Charles Two. Yeah. The sequel. He said, you know what? Let's let the ladies back on stage. But even after that, this idea of men dressing up as women still continued on. Yeah. And women are actually dressing as men in what they call breaches roles. Right. Because they were breaches. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward terminology. But King Charles called the bluff of all the performers. He was like, you know what? You don't have to dress as women anymore. We'll just let women on stage. And the guys are like, Fine. We really like this. Yeah. And well, what happened to was men started to play women in a funnier way, and it was more for comedy because they wouldn't try to look super feminine. They would try to look like a big, burly man in a dress, which is sort of like in the Monty Python tradition. Although they weren't exactly feminine. They were not fishy at all. But we'll get to that. That's actually a thing, fishy drag. Yeah. Well, you might as well tell them. Well, I already mentioned it earlier. I said I'm more fishy than yeah, but I don't think they understand fishy. Fishy is going after you want people to confuse you for a woman. Exactly. Like, as feminine as womanly as possible. It's like dead on. Right? Yeah. And then campy is obviously more for comedy. You're more masculine looking. And then there's, of course, the glamour drag, which is huge hair, everyone huge eyelashes and glittery dresses. So back to history, though. Interestingly. When the west was loosening restrictions in Japan, in the east, they were tightening them and making men once again play the onagata roles. Female impersonators in Kabuki productions, they're like, the ladies cannot do kabuki any longer. Yeah. And that lasted through the 19th century in Japan. Really? Yeah. Wow. So it's weird how it was like, I guess if you're a woman, you could have been in Japan, and then when they closed it down in Japan, you could have gone over to England. Yeah. Bam. I guess so. You're all set, traveling performer. So in the west, in England in particular, that whole King Charles II bluff that was called, that became eventually the idea that if you were dressing in drag on stage, it was for laughs. Right. You weren't trying to pull off being a woman. You were trying to just make fun of the juxtaposition of you big burly dude wearing a dress and acting as a woman but not doing a very good job of it. That gave rise to a type of theater called pantomime, and the shortened term of it is panto. And I guess mine is the other half what came out of this. But panto theater is like a big, burly dudes and drag playing the women and then a woman playing like a young male who's now being inducted into the world of sex and the adult. Yes. And I think the first panel play was from 1723, right? Yeah. It started out there and then spread over to the United States in the form of before movie theaters and things like that. America's favorite entertainment was when the vaudeville show came through. Sometimes it was your only entertainment that are, like, shooting at things in your yard. So it's their favorite and also their most hated form of entertainment because that was it. Yeah. So the Vault field act would roll through town, and there'd be all kinds of theater and weird performances and jugglers and ventriloquists and acrobats and things like that. Banjos. And then actually drag performances to the delight of families and children. And it was all seen as just good fun. There was no link to homosexuality at the time. At the least, America wasn't putting its hang ups about homosexuality onto drag performances. Yeah. Well, then that really came about at the turn of the century. That's when people got a little more like, hey, what's going on here? As gay people came out of the closet a little bit more and then to the forefront a little bit more. And we mean in very small steps, obviously, back then, people are like, well, wait a minute, why are these guys dressing up like ladies all of a sudden? Right. Is this fun or is this, like, wrong? Right. You like this, don't you? Right. And because of Prohibition, people needed their little speakeasies or little secret places to go drink. It also birthed secret places for gay dudes to go hang out. Yeah. So we created the first gay bars initially. Right. Which ultimately, in turn, about 40 years later, started to give rise to the first discos. You remember that? Yeah. They grew out at gay bars. That's right. And New York, Chicago. Big towns, probably Kansas City at the time. Sure. San Francisco went through what was called a pansy craze. Not our term. No. And where basically it became like the era of the gay man coming out of the closet. Like, there are lots of bars to go to, there are lots of nightclubs. It was like the first gay culture in the United States really started to come about. Yeah. And I remember I read somewhere that cocaine used to be a gay drug. Oh, really? Yeah. They called it I'm sorry to say this, they used to call cocaine fairy dust. Yeah. Because it was so favored by gay guys around this time because I guess you could get it legally. When was this? In like the 50s or? No, 20s, maybe. The 30s. Got you. Yeah. Interesting. So by the 1950s, this is when there were actual laws against being gay and laws against dressing as a woman. And in fact, in New York City, which you would think would be super forward thinking, in the 1950s, they had a cross dressing law, or I guess anti cross dressing law that said that you as a man were legally bound to wear no fewer than three pieces of male clothing in order to not be arrested for being in drag. Right. And this is a problem for these gay bars because they frequently had drag shows. Sure. So I guess I was thinking like, you just maybe do like a full on, full circle cross dress where you dress as a woman. Dressing as a man, as a woman. Victor Victoria. It blew my mind. That was Victor Victoria. That was the movie with Julie Andrews. It was a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman. I thought that was burnt. Reynolds no, Julie Andrews, she did a really good job. You're thinking of Deliverance. Yeah. That went way different then. So by the time the mid 60s rolled around, there's Conor sites a book called Mother camp, where they estimated about 500 regularly performing drag queens by 1966. Yeah, it's pretty high number for back then. Yeah, I would imagine. Although I'm sure it's quite a lot more than that now. But we're talking the this is a time when if you were at a gay bar just being dressed in drag, there was a pretty high likelihood the cops are going to come busting down the door and take you to jail and probably beat you up for being gay. 500 performing out in the open, I would imagine that's a pretty good number. But at the time, there were newer performance that like, Elton wanted this one guy, Bailey, Jim Bailey, who apparently did a spot on Judy Garland, and he was very adamant about saying, no, I'm not a cross dresser. I'm not a drag queen. I am a female impersonator. And he had a long run in the business as such. It was a big distinction for him. Yeah. He wanted to be called an illusionist. And that makes the point that I think he said earlier, not everyone who does drag is gay, and not everyone who does drag crossdresses in their off stage life. But for the most part, if you're going to put money on whether or not a drag queen is gay, you can probably bet that they probably are under normal circumstances. Yeah. I don't think we even mentioned the drag queen where that came from, the term. Oh, no, we didn't. That would have been good in the intro. It would have been, let's do it here. Well, when we were talking about theater, it would have been a good one. All right. So the term drag was the original parlance for men dressing in women's clothing. And I didn't it's a theater term. Yeah, theater term. But I don't know where that came from, though. I don't either. Okay. And then queen, of course, is a slur for an a feminine gay man. Sure. So drag queen put together, you just got the term drag queen. That's right. So it's underground. And also, we should say transsexual. Not really favored terms in the gay community, especially these days, because up until not that long ago in the DSM, and possibly still listed in the DSM, those are mental disorders. People who do that are mentally ill, according to psychology, which is fairly ridiculous. We should encourage people to go listen to our what do we call that one? Gender reassignment. Gender reassignment. That was a really good one. So in the 19th, 60s, things start coming out. People start coming out, drag queens start becoming more visible. And then, of course, in 1969, I know we've promised this podcast we'll do it at some point. The famous stonewall riots took place, where in June 28, new York city police raided the stonewall inn, which was run by the mafia. At the time, it was New York's only gay bar run by the mafia. Yeah. Interesting. And they fought back, and there was a six day, basically riot fight going on between cops and these gay guys. Yeah. They just said, you know what, we may dress like ladies, but we fight like dudes. That's right. We're not going to take it. Exactly. So pretty much from there, the gay rights movement in the US. Was born. And not even pretty much like, yeah, it happened right there. But Conger kind of describes the scene that it was a six day skirmish with high heel wearing drag queens, but you can imagine that probably was quite a scene. Quite a tableau. Yeah, they should do a movie about that. They did. Oh, they did. Yeah. I can't remember what it's called. This is documentary. Oh, documentary. I'm sure there's a bunch, but there's one before stonewall or after Stonewall. Maybe just Stonewall. During Stonewall. Yeah. Perry Stonewall. So in the mid 1960s, when all this is blossoming, a guy named Jose Julio Saria in San Francisco, harvey Milk was not the first openly gay political candidate in San Francisco. No, it was actually Saria. And he founded something called the imperial court system. And it was basically a drag community organization to help people out and throw drag balls and, you know, now is philanthropic with HIV and AIDS organizations. Yeah. So they're still around. Yeah, they're bigger than ever, Captain's. All over the place. All over the place. Different countries. Canada, Mexico. Yeah, but the imperial court system was a really big step. This was in the mid sixty s, I think it was before Stonewall, right? Yeah, I think so. And this is in the face of, like, crackdowns, getting arrested, getting beat up, really being mistreated, and not having any civil rights, this guy forms the imperial court system, and it's like one of the first big steps at unifying. Not just the drag community, but the gay community. Sure. And really kind of provided this basis or this template for integration and support among gays around the country. And I guess a way to say, hey, there's a lot of other people over here that feel the same way you do and think the same way you do. And it's not just here in San Francisco, not just here in New York. They're all over the place. And this was one of the first cohesions of that mentality. Right. Which is a big deal. Yeah, it was. And the drag balls that they initiated and started became very popular within the African American drag community. And these days, Conger described it as like a fraternity system where if you're an up and comer and you're a drag queen, you can get sort of like a sponsor, a mother or father to help you out, show you the ropes. Maybe if you were kicked out of your house by your parents because you're not accepted or out of your hometown, they'll put you up and find you a place to live. You know who else does that? Cindy Lauper. That's really? Yeah, I think found it and definitely funds, like, some sort of rescue system. Halfway house. Yes. For teens who were kicked out for being gay. Nice, isn't that? Yeah, she's awesome. She is. I think I told you. Halloween party when you're in New York. You did not tell me that. Yeah. My friend is a huge fan, and on the inside, as far as fandom, she knows who he is. And he got an invitation to her Halloween party at her loft in New York. And I went and it was awesome. I met her and got a picture made. That was cool. She was as sweet as she could be. Yeah, she seems like she's living the personality. Yes. And, boy, what a party, man. I can imagine. Yeah, you mean. I went and saw her a couple of years ago and Dr. John opened for wow. So we were there for the Doctor John show, too. And when Dr. John ended, like, everyone got up and left, and then new people came in and sat down for the Cindy Lawford. Yeah, it was a weird mix, but that didn't end up mixing. It was cool to see both of them. Like Zach Brown opening for Dolly Parton. Yeah, something like that. Maybe even weird. They're both country, quote unquote. Right. So if you're interested in seeing more about the African American drag balls, there's a great documentary called Paris is Burning. Have you seen it? Yeah, I've not seen it. Super entertaining. Cool. Really good. We mentioned drag kings earlier. That is a thing. Women can also dress as men. Yes. Which is not a stretch. Once drag queens were established, a guy named Johnny Science, about 1989, said, what about drag kings? And bam, there they are. That's right. So let's talk about what you need to do. What kind of transformation needs to take place. I know we kind of hinted at it earlier with our jokes about tucking and plucking, but jokes that's where it starts. And we remarked about your hands, Julian ELTONE. You think all the work goes on the face, but he said the most important thing is the hands. Well, that was the one that he worried about the most. Sure. You remember that seinfeld manhand? Yeah, I can imagine. It's very distracting if you have a couple of chunks of ham and you're acting very effeminate or whatever. That's weird. Yes. They went so over the top in that episode. I'm sure it was like the key grip or something. Breaking the bread. Yeah. Disintegrating got something on your face. All right, so what do you do? You got to get the hands powdered. And he said, there are certain ways of holding them to make them appear to be more dainty. Well, he did. I got the impression that he was particularly obsessed about this, but he might have a big hands. Spend like an hour and a half just working on the hands. That's just the hand. So you can guess how long it takes to do makeup, because not only are you doing makeup, you have to do it right, but you have to do it to cover up the fact that you're a man. Sure. So you have to cover up the fact that you're a man and then do the makeup as a woman, I imagine. Yeah. And I think things really picked up in the 70s with this as far as really going all out after a San Francisco drag show collective called the Coquettes. Apparently they put on a not so great show, and Gorvidal himself said famously in his review, no talent is not enough. Yeah. So he's like, great, you're drag queens. But this is awful. Basically, you still got to give the audience something. Well, they were also not necessarily like real drag queens. They were a bunch of hippies on acid. Oh, sure. And they basically did their own pretty much improv musical. That sucked. Yeah. But the fact that they were doing it in drag made the real drag community. And I may be wrong, but I have the impression they weren't representative of the real drag community. Whoa. People are paying attention, and people want, like, a good show, so let's give it to them. Give them some talent. Yeah. So that show, that Cockette show was kind of a turning point as far as, like, let's do this right. If you're going to dress up like a woman, do it right. Yeah. And if you've ever been to a drag show, I've seen them before. You? I've been to a few, and I've been to some ones that were great, and I've been to some ones that sucked. And it's like any other theatrical experience. It makes a huge difference. If it's bad, it's real bad. Yes. It's the same like watching improv or whatever. Yes. If you see people who are really good at improv, and then you see people who are just trying improv. Yeah, you can't even put in the same link. It's like Dolly Parton. Zach Brown. All right. So in order to kick it up a notch, they had to start taking more care with their appearance. And the first step, if you're interested in giving us a shot and your dude is to shave, that's a pretty good first step if you're going fishy or glamour. Yeah, real close shave. As close as you can get. If you're doing camping, you might not necessarily have to shave. Yes, that's true. Like, I could get up there with my beard and be thoroughly disgusting as a woman, just kind of hump the air without moving your arms. The next thing you need to do is you need to apply lots and lots of makeup in a traditionally tradition called beating your face or beating your mug. And that's what they call it in the drag community. That's really, like, a lot of cosmetics. You want to hide, like, heavy jawlines and stuff like that and just slather it on, basically. The more the better. Depending on what you're going for, of course. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're going, like, real feminine, you got to be careful. Sure. You can't just kick it on. You have to take some skill. I would think that's right. And then the tuck. Yeah, the tuck. We talked about the gas. You can also use tape, I guess. You could also tuck if you're just going to walk like a penguin or whatever all night. Yeah. Or like Buffalo Bill. Right? Yeah. Or I think a scary movie, too, when one of the Wayne's brothers is like, there's a shot of the waist up. He has his arms out, like he's showing off his shirt. He's like, what do you guys think? Tucked or untucked? And then they pan out, his legs pressed together. But I didn't see those movies. That sounds funny, though. Oh, those were surprisingly funny. Oh, really? Yes. I like the Spoof movie. I just sort of grew out of them after Airplane and the Naked Gun movies. I didn't really see a whole lot of them after that. They're good. At least the first four. So after you've done your tucking and your taping and you're all fit tight down there, you might want to add some breasts. It's probably a pretty good idea. You can add silicone, although they can be expensive. And I'm not talking about implants. I'm talking about a silicone implant that you would like to put in a brazier. Right. Or there's ones that adhere to your body and your body temperature. Adheres them to your body and they're like really? Well, that's what this article says. It's not like I'm in the fake breasts. I didn't notice that part. That sounds gross. Yeah. She's saying Congress says that these things are like a couple of $100 for the really good ones that are really realistic. So I imagine, again, if you're going fishy. It probably just takes a lot more time, a lot more effort and a lot more money to be a fishy drag queen. Yes. I would say so. It's a lot easier just to be campy and look funny. Sure. And then, of course, the name is a big part of the culture. Generally, the names are sort of like Bart Simpsons prank calls. Amanda hugging Kiss. Yeah, exactly. Most of the names are like that. Heather Lettuce. Yeah. Hedalettis. I looked up some of my favorites. Okay. Madam Ovary, Jean Poole. And obviously, a lot of times, too, it's toying with the fact of gender and stuff like that. Yeah. Wilma Balls Drop. Good Lord. Tess testosterone. And then a nice clean one for everyone out there. Della Ketussen. That's nice. Those are just a few of the funny ones. That's like a throwback to the vaudeville and drag shows. We're family friendly. That's right. Good, clean fun. Still good clean fun. Delicatessen at a Lettuce. Wilma Balls drop. But the name is a big part of it. Coming up with a great name can really like that. Just kicks it off. Right. Because when you're announced if it's a great name, the audience is tickled from the very beginning. If it's a bad name, they're like, what's this going to be? Right. So what are you doing this for, Chuck? Well, there's all different kinds of things. A regular drag performance that I've been to is either lip syncing or actually performing, like karaoke style on stage, one after another. And there's usually an MC and drag handling the whole show. Right. And it's basically like just stage performance singing. Right. But they can also get real gigs. Well, yeah. Hosting or being, I guess, kind of a party promoter and just kind of circulating around a party, like keeping everything light. What's more fun than hiring a drag queen to come to your party and just kind of lighting things up? I think that's a great idea. Yeah. As RuPaul said, the whole point is to not take life too seriously. Exactly. So when you have somebody dressed as a woman not taking life too seriously, your guests are probably going to lighten up a little bit, too. If you have somebody wandering around saying, I'm head of Lettuce. Right, yeah. And then we can't not mention Australia because for some reason, even though Australia is the center of masculinity on the planet, it's rife with drag queens, thanks to a particular movie. Is it because of that, or was that already a thing and they just highlighted that? I wonder. I took it that the movie was its own thing and just created this huge cult following that has basically put Australia on the map. That's how it's priscilla queen of the Desert, of course, is the movie. Yeah. Which you've seen, right? Yeah. It's a good movie. Yeah, very good movie. And I've seen parts of, like, two Wong Foo. Thanks for everything. To. Yeah, I never saw that one. Something about Suzie. I just couldn't get it. Swayze. Wesley Snipes. Yeah. Like Guy Pearce. Perfect. Suzie. Holy cow. Guy Pearce is one of the ones in silicon. I didn't know that was anybody else. That is a star now. Well, yeah, it was definitely got Pierce and Hugo Weaving from The Matrix. Oh, yeah. Wow. Mr. Anderson. Actually, he was a mr. Anderson. He was whatever his name was. And then Tarrant stamp, of course. The legendary Tart Stamp. And it was the adventures of Priscilla, queen of the Desert. Yeah. So if you're looking for it on Netflix or whatever, you should watch it. It's a fun movie. Yeah. And Taran Stanford. Drag that's something else. He's the limey. Right. So ultimately, what you're trying to do is get a job in a movie about drag queens or to become RuPaul. That's true. And they have, apparently, a show last year in Australia, reality show, where drag queens are taking that same journey that they did in the movie. Right. And it's on TV now. Right. Apparently, though, there's not a lot of money that you do it for the love for the adoration. Yes, of course. There is a study of drag queens down in Key West, which is like, drag queen central. If you've ever watched CNN's New Year's Eve broadcast. I have not. It's like all drag queens down there. It's crazy. Oh, yeah. And then they drop like a drag queen in a giant high heel, I think, is what they do. Instead of, like, the star, the ball or whatever. But they did a study of drag queens down in Key West, and they averaged about $200 a week. So they're doing it for the love people tip them. Yeah. And I think probably every drag queen out there spends way more money than they're making, hosting, and doing gigs like that. So we mentioned RuPaul. Yes. We did not mention May West. No. Well, she apparently took a she based her character or her persona on a drag queen named Bert Savoy. Okay. Born Everett Mackenzie. So it's weird. He's a drag queen, but he changed his name to another male name. Anyway, he had a very familiar catchphrase, you must come over. And she took that and turned it into, come up sometime and see me. Yeah. And people out there are going, no, Joseph, no. It's why don't you come up and see me sometime? Yeah, you're wrong. Yeah. That's a misquote. Yeah. And similarly, Clint Eastwood based his throaty voice on Marilyn Monroe. Shut up. I swear to God. What do you mean, his throaty voice? He based it on her. He didn't really talk like that. He's like, Hi, I'm clinician. He talked like the generic teenage cashier from The Simpsons. Wow. No, he said as far as Uncle John's bathroom reader that he based his voice on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, that he said. That crazy. All right, so we mentioned a few of these famous drag queens. Yes. Danny Laru. If you're in England and you're not into Eddie Izzard, then Danny Laru is probably your guy, or at least until 2009, when he sadly passed away. But he was big back in the day and in, like, the yeah. Earned a lot of money. Doris Fish, another Australian, who moved to San Francisco and wrote and starred in the film Vegas and Space. Have you seen that? No. Have you? No. It's cult film, apparently. Yeah, not about cults. It has a cult following. And sadly, he died of AIDS in 1991. Devine, of course, anyone who's a John Waters fan, or should we say a Harris Millstead fan. I didn't know that wasn't his real name. Harris. Gwen Milstead. I didn't either. Devine was John Waters one of his favorite people to put in his films and did some kind of gross things in earlier movies, like Pink Flamingos. What did she do with dog poop? Ate it, I believe. God, I'm not mistaken. But Devine, of course, made her biggest role in Hairspray as Edna turnball. Turnblad. And that's who Chantravelta played in the musical version. I didn't know that. Did you ever see it? No. It's an abomination. Is it really? It's pretty bad. Where did you see it? It's a movie. Yeah. They did hair spray on Broadway, and then they turned the Broadway show into a musical right. And started in the movie version of the musical. Okay, but wait, where did Divine star in the movie? Right. Hairspray, the original Hairspray before it was a Broadway music. So they did a movie, turn it into a musical, and then turn the musical into a movie. Yes. That is mind bending. Very much there's. Dame Edna. Not a fan. Oh, no. How are you? Yeah, so she was pleasant. Yeah, I'm not a big fan, but that is definitely one of the more famous and I think who played him? Barry Humphreys, another Australian. Yeah, but wasn't he also keen to say, like, I'm not a drag queen? Yeah, she was a character that he played, and he didn't consider it like drag. Right. And she's retired. All right. I just showed Josh picture Travolta in that movie. Stop that. She's retired. As of 2012, dame Edna has moved off to Florida, I guess. All right. Anyone else? Lady Bunny. Who is Lady Bunny? Lady Bunny is Jill of all trades congress as a multi talented comedian, DJ, and actress. She founded Wigstock. Oh, I've heard of wig stock. So here's a picture of Lady Bunny. She's got huge wigs, which is awesome. Yes, I know. Wig stock. That's fun. And Wig stock is no longer either. That ran for about a decade. I'm sorry, two decades. 85 to 2005. Yeah, right on the nose. So that's drag queens. Yes. Go see a drag show if you've never done it. If you're visiting New York in a big city you never been, and you're from? I don't know, Kansas. You don't even know you're going to New York, man. Like, the drag show I went to was in Savannah. That's a huge drag town. Yeah, but I'm saying if you're visiting the big city for the first time, go check out a drag show. Be open minded, have some fun, have a drink, and it's a good time. Yeah. That's why we didn't really describe them much, because you kind of got to see them for yourself. Well, you never know what you're going to get. Yeah. It could be terrible or it could be great. Exactly. Yeah. If you want to learn more about drag queens, you can type those words into the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said drag queens, it means it's time for message break. Now it's time for looking at it. Good, because we're actually going to give advice to this kid. Okay. It should be good. Good advice. I don't know. We'll see. I think we should just wing it. Hey, guys. Jerry. First off, I'm a huge fan and about to graduate after five long years at the University of Washington in Seattle. Instead of getting a degree in something practical that would set me up for a great job like business or engineering, I followed my interests, which I think is great, by the way, and I will be getting a BA in Spanish and a BS in Astronomy and Physics. Awesome. That being said, guys, I'm about to graduate in five weeks and I really have nothing lined up for when I enter the quote, real world. Can you send me some money? I know I want to go back to school eventually for something involving education, but I was curious if you have any suggestions or advice on what I should do in the meantime. I'm a little stressed about it, to be honest, so I thought I would turn to the duo that never Leaves me astray and this is Owen, and he says it's pronounced something like caffeine. I'm going to say Owen Kafis, but it's got a lot of consonants in it. Let me see. Jeez. Yeah. So that's kafus, apparently. Okay, so Owen advice, of course, the first thing I'm going to say is travel. And probably Josh too, because it's always good. After you finish college, get out there and see a little bit of the world because it might inform your decisions in life. It might open you up to something you might want to do. I have some job advice. Okay. I would say just like college, follow your passions. Yeah. So if you find if you think about it, like, wow, I really am hardcore into Spanish. Figure out something to use that some way to use that. Or astronomy. It's pretty narrow use of that, but you never know. Like, there could be a company out there that loves employing astronomers. He just hasn't sit around all day worrying about astronomy. If he's into education, eventually you could go get a job at a science center. Yeah. And work with a big telescope and a planetarium and delight and entertain schoolchildren. Right. But if you're studying Spain, dude, and you have some time Spanish, I would say go to Spain. Sure. Get a ticket. Go to Spain. Check things out. Might fall in love, might decide on a job. You might just eat some good paella and have a good time and go home and be broke. I say get a job, hippie, but make sure it's a job you love. Yeah. I mean, that's the point. To me, it's like, that's what we both did. We figured out what we loved and we correlated them into jobs. Yeah. Later in life as well. So kids, you don't have to have it all locked down right after graduation. Yeah. And also, Owen, one thing that I've learned is that you almost never use the actual degree that you majored in. Like, it's almost never applied to the actual job. You get I don't know, I'll think about this. I'm an English major, right? I was a history major. That has nothing to do with my job. Are you kidding me? Anthropology. We do history all the time. Right. We're hired as writers. Right? Yeah. Okay, I see your point. There was a guy, I can't remember who was the NBC chief that Seinfeld used to, like, mocking, actually became, like, a character when they were trying to sell the TV. He fell in love with Elaine. That's a real guy. And he actually was, like, the head of NBC for a while in, like, NBC's. Heyday, he did a beautiful job of picking shows and sticking with them and steering them, and that was when NBC was dominating. He had a degree in psychology. That had nothing to do with it. Yes, but don't you think psychology helped him with dealing with high powered people? No, I'll tell you what did it. He was doing what he loved and hence what he was good at. And if you do that, you will always succeed. Unless you're a philosophy major. He sold me good. All right, so that was from Owen. Thanks for that. You're awesome. Let us know what you do. Like to follow up. I'd like to know. Owen. Yeah. If you go to Spain, I'd like to hear about it. If you get a job, I want to hear about it. How old is he? Five years. So he's probably, like, 23. Yeah, probably somewhere in there. Whatever you do, Owen, good luck. He's, like, 47. He didn't fail to mention that. I got a late start. I worked in a factory for 20 years. Should I go? Travel to Spain? Yes, if you want some advice for me and Chuck, man is going to open a floodgate, I think. Chuck, sure. You can tweet short questions to us at Syspodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can always go check out our website for answers. It has all of them@stuffyshogneum.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. This podcast is brought to you by BASF the Chemical company. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to news. Two episodes of my favorite murder one week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
How Dungeons and Dragons Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dungeons-and-dragons-works | Despite what you've heard, Dungeons and Dragons isn't just for geeks, it isn't satanic and it's actually a pretty great way to exercise your imagination. Find out about the basics of D&D, its place in pop culture and the controversy the classic role playi | Despite what you've heard, Dungeons and Dragons isn't just for geeks, it isn't satanic and it's actually a pretty great way to exercise your imagination. Find out about the basics of D&D, its place in pop culture and the controversy the classic role playi | Thu, 02 May 2013 14:02:31 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=2, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=122, tm_isdst=0) | 43576088 | 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. I'm just a I'm just a simple cleric minded my way out. Are you down the primrose path? I was going to ask you what you were. Got my staff, got my sword. Yeah, you would be well outfitted, ready to battle some nerds. So have you played before? Okay, this is about Dungeons and Dragons, and I think that is a good move is two things. One, caveat. If you're a big D and D person, we're not going to get everything right. We'll get what we can write, obviously, but it's not going to be as comprehensive as you want. Now I'm going to go over the basic addition. And two, I think we should both relate our own experience so people just know I played a little bit because this is right in my wheelhouse, dude. I am really surprised that your community let you play this community? Yeah. I didn't hear it talked about much in church, but wow, that's surprising. In school, there were some of my friends started to play, and I played. I started to a little bit, but it was always way too complicated and involved for me. I played a little top secret. That's another role playing game that was like the Espionage. James Bond. Nice DND. So I played a little bit of that, but I never got into it, man, like other people did. And I think it's because I was so active and I would always rather be out riding my bikes and playing at the creek near my house and building forts and zip lines and setting things on fire and putting fireworks and bottle rockets and model planes and flying them off my roof. Nice. I was doing stuff like that. I wasn't so much inside playing DND, or I was an early gamer. So I'd be like, screw DND. Let's play Adventure on Atari and be a block with an arrow, right? Exactly. That's the real cutting edge stuff. Yeah, that was my deal. Mine was I did all that stuff. Like, I had a fort in the woods and I could make a pretty good machine gun sound, and I did all that kind of stuff. But I also played DND fairly extensively for several summers that were just basically spent in a friend's basement playing Dungeons and Dragons. I think it depends on who your friend said is. Unless you're the initiator, you'll just fall in and do whatever your friends are doing. And here's the deal. I think this affected it, too. I grew up on a street in the woods with like, six houses. I didn't grow up in one of those big sprawling neighborhoods like all my other friends. So they would walk down the street and play D and D in the basement. It was just me and my bro. I went out, like, in the woods I would walk across the street for one group, and there was another one where I had to ride my bike. A pretty decent distance. I was secluded. I was sequestered out in the forest. Got you. And I got made fun of because of that until later on when all my friends were like, dude, you live on two acres in the woods. That's right. Let's have a bonfire. Exactly. And we did. So we both played DND, and we both are not experts in any way, shape or form. No. From the time I last played D and D till we started researching for this episode, I forgot everything, basically, over those three months. So it was like a pretty cool trip down memory lane, like, going back and researching. Yeah, me too, because I don't think I remembered how much I had played it. And it was a little bit more than I had remembered because a lot of stuff was like, oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I remember that cover. I remember that box exactly. There's a ton of new stuff that I didn't know that I learned in researching that. Sure. Like Gary Gayaks Gygax. Oh, man. A bunch of people just put their robes on, put the hoods on, their heads removed. Gary Gygax. Yeah. Let's call him Gary G from now on. Okay. He is the co creator, along with Dave Arnison of Dungeons and Dragons. And he started out as a war gaming fanatic, so much so that he started genk at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, his hometown, which is this huge gaming convention still. But he started out as a wargaming convention, and that's basically where you roll dice, move little mint. It's like Risk. Risk is a war game. It's like that. And Axis and Allies are like quintessential war games. I used to love risk. It's a great game. But Geigax and his buddies were doing this before there was ever any risk. Like, they were making their own boards. They are reenacting battles or doing alternate universe battles of them. And then along came Dave Arnison, who kind of had this idea for something a little less stilted, a little more free form. And he didn't quite have a conception of it yet, but Geigax did. He was working on something called Chainmail. And they got together, and that ultimately became kind of the first dry run of Dungeons and Dragons. And they liked what they were doing, and they kind of took it from there and then ultimately made Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. Yeah. I didn't find out a whole lot about Arnison. It seems like Geigax is always the ask because he was the originator of the idea. He's always the one that's revered and bowed down to it seems like. Yes. I get the impression a lot more of the self promoter than Arnison is. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, they were both very much intimately involved in the creation of this game. Right. Kygag, also, by the way, sidebar says that he is a descendant of Goliath. Is that right? Yeah. Let me rephrase that. The interview I saw, he wasn't like, I'm a descendant of Goliath. Yeah, he wasn't like that. He was a cool guy. Yeah, he said the guy GAX means giant. And supposedly, like, the family lore is that we are descendants of Goliath. So I thought that was sort of interesting. Who more appropriate than descendant of a biblical giant than to make this fantastical fantasy game, right? Exactly. And there's actually, like, a really neat Wired article on him that includes a pretty decent amount on Ernison, too, called the Dungeon Master. It's about Gary Gygax, who died in 2008. But the two of them get together, and this is when things are really good. And they set up something called TSR, which is a company called Technical Studies Rules, which sounds like the most boring company you could ever think of. But this company is what produced what became the role playing game. Yeah. Like you said, top secret was the James Bond DND. Yes. You didn't say Top Secret was the James Bond role playing game. No, DND was literally become synonymous with role playing games, and for good reason. In 1974, when Dungeons and Dragons came out, there was nothing in the entire world that even remotely resembled it. Yeah. It was super unique. And that's one of the reasons why people always say it's like a nerd game and you sit in your basement by yourself, and they did have adventures you'd go on by yourself. But they pointed out in this article, it's a very social game because you'd get together with your friends and sit around a table and you could play it straight and just sort of play, or you could start acting things out and doing funny voices and make it more like a dramatic portrayal of this game. It was really kind of up to you. But it may have a nerdy connotations, but it is a social game. Like, there's a bunch of nerds together playing. Right. Well, and if you look at some of the recent ads for Dungeons and Dragons in some of the gamers magazines, they are still appealing to the fact that it's a social game. They're trying to get people who play World Warcraft, like, start playing D and D again. And they're using taglines. Like, if you're going to sit in your basement and pretend you're an elf for hours on end, you might as well do it with a group of friends. That's a great tagline. Yeah, for a company. So it has been social from the beginning, and what Gekk and Erneston came up with was essentially a book of rules that use dice to advance imaginary characters along. So and then in 1977, they released the basic set. That's the red box. That's the one that makes us nostalgic, right? Yes. And then they also simultaneously released advanced dungeons and Dragons, which kind of had stricter rules. It was more sweeping in scope. But they both came out in 77. That's right. And then in 79, the DM guide was introduced. And if you play Dungeons and Dragons in a group, you got to have someone running the game. And that is the Dungeon Master. That is the person that sits behind a little cardboard screen and hides all of their stories. And they're the ones who create these basically kind of write the game. Some people will spend hours and days and weeks creating these campaigns and these games for their friends to bring to life as characters. And it was definitely unique at the time. So you got all these additions right there, I think ten. Now. They're working on the 10th, depending on who you ask. Right. And with every edition of Dungeons and Dragons, there's a change. Sometimes there are really big changes. Like in 1989, they released the second edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and it did away with a lot of the evil monsters because the India got in a bad rap. We'll talk about later. And there is a kind of role that you had to figure out how many hit points you lost or how many hit points were inflicted. It was just different. And so with every addition, it's been different and different and different. And you get adherence to different sets, different versions. Sure. Which is kind of led to this weird fracturing in the Dungeons and Dragons community, apparently. And you know the grabster at Grabanowski, one of the writers of many of the articles that we've talked about, he's a bit of a dandy expert, it turns out. Oh, yeah, and you can go check his stuff out. He should read the article. Agreed. Yeah. He writes extensively on IO nine.com about D and D. So you check out his stuff, he's basically saying, like, okay, you've got this big fractured community of D and D players. Everybody has their own edition. That's their favorite. But everybody still wants to be able to play together, but it's just incompatible. So what he's saying is Wizards of the coast, to people who made Magic the Gathering and ultimately bought DND yeah. They have said, okay, this fifth edition is going to bring everything together. We'll see about that. Well, that's what Gravitaski said. He says there's no possible way to literally unify the various additions under a single rule set. It would be like trying to build a car that uses parts from a 2010 Mustang, a 1950 Packard, and a tractor. So he's incredulous, but they have it in, like, open gaming testing right now, the fifth edition. I don't see what the big deal is. I think that's one of the cool things about DND is that depending on who you play with, like find your people, they might want to play a certain addition. I know that some players like to play with the little figurines. And some people think that's an abomination. You should only use your imagination. Some people go and make up their own campaigns. Some people stick to campaigns that are in the books. So I think that's the cool thing about it is there's something out there for everybody. Unless you're just not into it. Yeah. Then there's nothing for you, nothing for me. So let's talk about how to play. Like, we'll just give a brief primer, and we since we're nostalgic for the red box, which is the basic set, the basic rule book that came out first, and 77, we're just going to go with that. Don't yell at us. But it's a very basic, good intro to D. And for all the other people who are listening to this one who don't know what is going on yeah. This is a single episode on DND, and you could have an entire podcast that's about DND that you did for five years. You know what? I'll bet there are sure. And write in. Let us know. We'll tweet about it. Okay. So like we said, it is a role playing game. So the basic concept is, by the way, you can't win. There is no, like, endpoint. Right. It's all just about the fun of continuing with these characters that you create. Right. The only beginning and end, really, is the creation of a new character and the death of that character. Sure. And even still, if that character dies, it sucks depending on how far along your character was. But you can always create another one. So what bother me about it, I think, is I was too late. Like, I would cheat it and just make up characters. You can't do that. Well, that's why I was never invited back. Oh, you are that guy, huh? No. I mean, I don't remember if I was. I just remember not getting it and being like, well, my guy's good at all this stuff. I'm going to go sit some on fire. All right. So you create your character, and in the red box and the basic set, you have these different attributes and abilities that will come into play as you play the game. And they are strength, of course. It's pretty easy. How much damage you can inflict with a weapon. Wisdom, how intuitive you are. Dexterity, which is good. If you're nimble, it could help you with a weapon. Or getting in that high window on the second floor, especially like a missile weapon, like a bow and arrow or something. If you have a high dexterity dexterity score, you want to pair that with a bow and arrow, for sure. Right. Intelligence, how smart they are, how much they can learn things as a character. Constitution, which is your stamina and how much stuff you can carry, how long you can fight. But if you have that bag of holding, you're all set. And then charisma, which is your likability. So if you want to hook up and make friends or get out of a fight with some bad character, that's when that's going to come into play. And all these are determined by rolls of the dice. Yeah. Everything we just talked about is represented by a number, and then in addition to the armor class of the character, which is a number that represents how easy it is to inflict damage on that character, and then the number of hit points, which is, I guess, a representation of basically how much life you have left. It's your health. Right, exactly. Like in a video game, it would be your health bar. Exactly. And you put all these together and you have a character that, so long as it can stay alive, can go out and go forth into the DND universe and adventure indefinitely, basically. All right, so there were seven playable characters in the basic set, and I think I remember being a cleric, but the first one is a fighter, and that's what you think. They're stronger and they're better at fighting, and they're probably not as smart or as charismatic as, like, another character might be. It depends. You can have high charisma, like in the DND, the basic Sets players manual, the first character they hook you up with has high charisma and high strength. But strength is the prime requisite for being a fighter. Yeah. Okay. So cleric, I think that was a cleric that's sort of a fighter and a wizard. So they have good fighting abilities, but they're also very dexterous and wise. And you can cast spells, which is very important. Right. But the difference between a cleric and a magic user, which is the next one, is that a cleric receives spells through meditation. That's right. So they have to sit around and rest sometimes before they can get a new spell. And they also can turn undead, which means literally turn the undead the other way. Sure. So if you have a zombie on your trail, it's good to have cleric to say, hey, zombies, turn around. Do they actually have zombies? Were they called zombies? Zombies is one. Ghouls is another. Undead skeletons. I didn't see I didn't play enough. I don't know any of this stuff. I didn't either, until I went back and read the entire players manual again the other day. So magic user can do cool things like throwballs of lightning and learn other spells, learn new spells without meditation? No, it's learning from book learning, which means you have to have the prime records as a high intelligence score for right. It's not a meditative thing. Right. It's just from learning books. You have the dwarf, of course. What fantasy game would be complete without it? 4ft tall, got that beard. Males and females have a beard. Yeah. And just like in like Lord of the Rings, they're kind of ornery and super strong and have great constitution, and of course they're good fighters because they're little, short, mean boogers. Right. You've got the thief, which you would think and it took me a long time to figure this one out, too. The thief. Why would you want to have a thief around the person is going to steal? Thief? Well, a thief typically doesn't steal from people they're adventuring with, but they do know how to find secret doors, traps, pick locks. Pick locks, yeah. And so they have a very high dexterity score. Yeah. But they're also going to turn their back on you in a battle because it depends. They're not great fighters. Okay. Right. You don't want them near the battle. You want them off to the side, get out of the way, and let's get the fighter in there. Maybe a dwarf or two as well. But yeah, the thief is just kind of meant to stand back and maybe be like, yeah, get them over there and just cheer along. You've got half wings. They are even smaller than the dwarfs. They're only 3ft tall, about \u00a360. And they are demi humans, and they're dexterous, and they have a great constitution. They're tough to hit because they're tiny, and so they're good fighters. They're very spry. Yeah. They're also like dwarves and elves capable of sustaining magic attacks. Right. Which leads us to elves. It's another demi human character. And they're a cross between fighters and magic users. So they have high strength and high intelligence. You don't just say with any of these, like, oh, I want an elf. So you roll until you have something with high intelligence and high strength. Yeah. You can you're not supposed to, but you're supposed to roll and come up with your ability scores first and then figure out what you have based on those scores. Yeah. And it is interesting, and one thing I do remember is that it is about the imagination. And even though these characters exist as a series of numbers on a chart is all it is. You create them in your mind. And that's the fun part about it. I never started acting things out like I've seen other people do. Yes. Which can go overboard pretty easy. Yeah. And I guess that was sort of the precursor to what ended up being Lap was just sitting around the kitchen table doing accents and things, and some people thought, hey, let's go outside and take these broomsticks and actually do this fight. You got some cardboard. I'm in the move for making some sorts. I'm really an active guy. I think sitting around this table is no good. Right. So you said that everything's represented numerically, and that's absolutely true. Yeah. Except there's one thing that kind of lends itself to acting or at the very least, decision making of a character in this alignment. And there's three kinds of alignment and basic DND. There's lawful, which is what we would equate with good, good guys, where if you have a lawful character, they're probably the hero type. They're going to put their own skin on the line in order to save the group. They're certainly not going to turn and run without the rest of the group doing the same. Chaotic is the opposite of that. It's what we would equate with evil. Yeah. They just sort of look out for themselves, forget the group and you'd think that would be the worst one, but apparently the worst is neutral because you can't tell they're just going to do whatever is best for them no matter what. Well, neutral is very animalistic where it's basically just about the survival of the individual. And if you have a neutral person, they might fight with the group if they feel like the group's going to win and we'll protect them, or they may just turn and run with, hey, no hard feelings, I got nothing against you, but I'm just very instinctual. That's what neutral is. That's right. Those are the Alignments. There are all manner of like shelter and weapons and foods and all these different things you can pick up along the way, and even languages that if you approach a character and they don't speak your language, then you can't communicate and you have to take a different path on your adventure. But everyone can speak at least two Universal and then Alignment Tongue. Alignment Tongue allows you to speak to other characters in that same alignment right. Without the other people knowing what's being said. Right. It's your private little conversation. Exactly. So if both of us were Chaotic magic users, right? Chuck yes. And there was somebody playing and there was a fighter who was lawful, we could say, hey, let's put a charm spell on this guy and make them do our bidding. Right. So the player is going to know what we're doing, but the character wouldn't. Yeah. And the person responsible for keeping all this separate, you mentioned earlier the Dungeon Master, the head nerd. Right. The Dungeon Master is in charge of saying things like, you wouldn't know that when the fighter says, I want to kill the two magic users who are about to use a charm on me, dungeon Master would say, your character doesn't know that because they just spoke in their Alignment. Tom yeah. And boy, Dungeon Master is a specific kind of person. It takes a lot of work and you can get as involved as you want to, but no matter which way you slice it, if you're the DM, you're going to be putting in some time coming up with these things, even stories, even before the beginning, even before you sit down. And I'd be curious to find some correlation between people that were Dungeon Masters when they were like twelve, in the late seventies and early eighties and what they ended up doing with their life. Yeah, it would be an interesting study because I would say that a lot of them are probably running companies and running the show wherever they are, because it takes a great deal of initiative and patience and stamina and creativity and all these things to be a great Dungeon Master, plus a sense of justice as well. You have to be fair. I'm sure it doesn't always sit well with the group. Like you were saying, it does take creativity. It takes also a total and utter awareness of the game. While everybody is just creating their players. The DM has to show up to that very first game having read the players manual, having read the Dungeon Masters Guide, understanding all the rules. And then if you're using a game module, which CSR published tons of games, which essentially are maps of an area that the Dungeon Master has access to sure. And then running the whole game as a whole, like understanding what players can do, what players can't do, you have to understand how much damage a monster can inflict. Let's give an example. Like the Dungeon Masters Guide is intimidating to me as an adult. Yeah. So I don't know how these kids at twelve were sitting down and figuring this stuff out. Well, they have the appearance of omniscience, and any Dungeon Master kind of cultivates this idea that they are all knowing. But like you said, they're hiding behind a cardboard screen, and behind that screen it's like the Dungeon Masters guy, the game module, which has everything clearly marked and all that, they have everything at their disposal, but they're still a revered person. Typically the Dungeon Master, they're omniscient well, because I don't know how many twelve year olds had the initiative to take this on. I think it's about right. It's probably about one out of every ten kids has the initiative to be the Dungeon Master, and the rest just want to be characters. Well, that worked out. That was a big problem with the game, was like, sometimes you couldn't find somebody in DM because it was a lot of work. Yeah. So let's give an example of play, if you'll indulge me. Okay, we got a group of characters, they're on a campaign in a dungeon. And by the way, the reason why it became Dungeons and Dragons, why they chose Dungeons, was because they didn't want players being being able to just kind of wander all over the place. They wanted to kind of keep them together in small confined spaces in a dungeon or a cave system or something like that was a pretty good way to keep everybody together. Catacombs man. It's all about the catacombs, right? So your group of characters are on a campaign in the dungeon, and the DM might say something like, this is in the middle of the game. The DM is in charge of telling you what's going on where you are describing your environment. So he or she may say, you're in a long, dark corridor, you see a faint light at one end to your right. Is a 10ft by 10ft door. It is locked. Do you want to try to pick the lock or continue down the corridor toward the light? And so the players decide to have the thief pick the lock, right? Because that's what you do. Now, here's what I don't get. I don't know if you know this. Do you get together as a group and decide and take a vote, or is it someone's turn to say, no, it's my turn, and I make the thief go? It depends. First of all, on a campaign, you have a caller, and that's the person who speaks to the DM for the group, okay? But the caller is also in charge of saying, hey, what do you guys want to do? And then send it to the DM. Okay, so they're just the voice of the group, right? They don't make any decisions. The group is supposed to decide as a whole, okay? And the DMs are sitting there going, little do they know. Exactly. And then there are turns as well, especially in combat. Now, if, like, you have three fighters and a thief and they're suddenly battling minotaur, okay, the thief is going to be like, I'm standing over here, and the DM will leave them out of the turns, okay? And there'll be the thief in the minotaur or the one fighter in the minotaur and the next fighter in the Minotaur and blah, blah, blah. It will just keep going on like that. Okay, that makes sense. All right, so back to our little story. The door is locked. Do you want to pick the lock? We decide. Let's send our thief in to pick the lock. Okay, so what happens with the DM? Well, they got to roll the dice, and that's how you figure out if things work. So if you're a thief, that means you're really good at picking locks. So let's say it's a 20 sized die, and all you got to do is roll like a four or higher to successfully pick it. So that just means your chances are really good that you'll be able to pick the lock. If you don't have a thief, you can send your fighter in to pick the lock, but you may have to roll like a 16 or higher. You would think so, but fighters can't pick locks at all. Not at all, okay? They just bang on the door. So only certain characters you can't even try if they don't have that, I believe. So in basic D and D, like, only thieves, okay, are definitely not fighters. So if you don't have a thief in your campaign, the DM wouldn't even say you want to pick the lock. They may say you want to try to bust the door down. But the DM might also know in the game module, it's unbustownable. It can only be picked. A lot of work is on the DNA. It is for sure because you're rolling for. Everything. And you were saying they rolled to find out if the thief was successful, and that would be based on that low number. Like, if you just need to roll, it for sure that's in relation to the Dexterity score, because it takes high Dexterity to pick a lock. So the higher Dexterity score, the lower you have to roll, which gives you, on a 20 sided die, a lot more of a chance that you're going to be successful at picking the lock. It's all rolling of the dice in numbers. So in this case, the DM knows that on the other side of that door is the Gelatinous Cube. And that is bad news if you're playing DMD, which if you're an experienced DND player, that 10ft by 10ft door probably would have given it away, because that's the exact dimensions of a Gelatinous Cube, which has evolved to move through the doors of a dungeon. So I'd be dead so soon. So what happens? The door opens. There's a gelatinous cube. Boom. And then you got to do battle. And when you're doing battle, you do it again by rolling dice, and you get these hits. You have the hit points that we referenced earlier. And let's say you got to roll, all right? These two four sided dice, you got to roll each one once, and those will be the licks that the Gelatinous Cube puts on you. Right. And if it totals seven or higher, then you're dead. Yeah, exactly. If you have depending on your hit points, if you have seven hit points, you'd be dead. So that's generally the game. You can get experience points, which are huge. It's interesting to know experience points. That's what you do to grow as a character, to get more hit points, to become more invincible, more kill a monster, and you'll get experience points, but you get way more experience points for getting treasure. And the authors of the basic DND rulebooks point out, like, we want you to use your head. Right. How do you get around confrontation? Oh, to go find the loot. Right. Which if you battle the monster, you deserve something. Sure. But the point isn't killing. The point is using your head to get around problems as well. And that's why you get more for treasure. I had a thing I think we made it up because I looked it up and I couldn't find it called a bag of plenty. Not a bag of holding. The bag of holding was you could put, like, anything large in it and still be able to carry it. Like, I found all this food and I normally wouldn't be able to carry it. But your bag of holding would allow that. Right. Is that right? Did you have to keep sir it? I don't know what that means. Like, up the butt. Yeah. You're the first person who's ever said up the butt when somebody said Keystone, what are you supposed to say, did you just know what keystroke? Otherwise you would just say up the butt. Yeah, all right. No, I would not keep stirring. But I had something called a bag of plenty. You guys made that up. I don't remember, man, because I didn't find it anywhere. The only thing I found was something called a Bag of Plenty plus one in Balder's Gate, which was a video game I had played once. But I think those Baldurs Gate related to DND somehow seemed like one of the variations. Yeah, so I didn't know that. Or maybe what we played was with a bag of Plenty, which is it would double whatever you put in it. So if you have like 20 gold coins, you put it in your bag of plenty, you have double that amount. Right, but I think we might have made that up because I can't verify that anywhere. I wonder how many you just inadvertently admitted to playing baller skate. I wonder how many people are just like, well, his credibility is out the window. He's a gate player. I think people enjoyed that. Now. I don't know, maybe I vaguely remember it too. It was one of those games that I played on, like PS Two for three months until I completed it and then I was done with it. Got you. So if any of that even slightly piqued your interest, I would strongly recommend going and researching and maybe trying out there's. Usually if you go on Meetup.com, you can find in probably just about any even semi major city DND group. Oh, sure. And apparently Wednesdays are typically days at like, comic book shops and gaming shops and stuff like that that have DND groups where it's just kind of like anybody who wants to come can come by and try their hand at it. I think it's a very open community. Yeah, well, it depends, really. Sure. Like, if you tried to come in and just plop down and like, hey, I want to join this game that you guys have been playing for seven years. They wouldn't like me. I'd be like, oh, I got a bag of plenty. They'd be like Baldish gate. I did try last night to play the online version because I thought, you know what, I'm going to give it a whirl. I downloaded this Mac beta version that was like eight gigs. It took a couple of hours to download and then there was some error in loading and it wouldn't work. I was like, all right, well, that sucks. Let me go get my PC laptop, because me, I'm rich. I have, like, eight different kinds of laptops. I know they're like, falling out of your pocket. So I went to my PC laptop and tried to sign up and download the PC version and it wouldn't recognize me. It wouldn't let me because I'd already signed up with that name. And so it was like midnight and I said, Screw this, but I think I might try and play the online version just to see what it's like. Yeah, it's called DDO. We're not getting into that. It's a whole other thing. But there's a good article by Jonathan Strickland on Dungeons and Dragons online that you can find on how stuff works. So I say go check it out, and if not, if it didn't really pique your interest, at the very least, I imagine you would be interested to know that for many years there were a lot of people with loud voices who considered Dungeons and Dragons to be thoroughly Satanic. Yeah. And it didn't help that. What was the year that the guy 79. James Egbert. James Dallas Egbert III. He went by Dallas. Yeah. This was a kid at Michigan State University. And so sad, he went missing and the story out and the one that was later disproven, but the one that really got around in the news was that he disappeared into the tunnel system underneath the school playing DND and died doing so. Yeah, he was a 16 year old, by the way, computer prodigy in 79. So there's, like, not such a thing as computer prodigies then. He's like one of the first he's at Michigan State. And he actually did go in the steam tunnels, and he went to go kill himself to take an overdose on Barbiturates. Yeah, but it didn't work. And he came to in the steam tunnels. Yeah. And it had nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons, but it was announced so in the news. And that's sort of what people remembered at the time. And they use that as fuel, of course, to fuel the fire of this is an evil game. Satanic. They made a movie with Tom Hanks. Yes. Mazes and monsters. Mesas and monsters. Man. Do you remember seeing that when it first came out? It was a TV movie. Yeah, I guess it's just sort of loosely told a slightly fictionalized version of James, the sensationalized version of the real version. Tom Hanks plays a guy who gets so wrapped up in his character that he just has a break with reality. He disappears. They find him again, but he still thinks that he's Pardue the cleric and I call him Paduk, who lives with his parents now because they take him back home and he's just some crazy dude. Yeah. I don't think there was any better reaction to Dungeons and Dragons than Dark Dungeons by Chick Publications. I don't know about that. So Chick Publications make religious tracks on everything about they're extremely fundamentalist Christian, and they have tracks on everything from how the new Jesuit pope is in league with the devil to how if you are a Mason, you become possessed by a heathen god. Okay? And they're basically like these easy to read comic books. You're not familiar. Now, if I saw one, I might recognize it. And then they publish them and they sell them so you can go hand them out and proselytize to people on the street. It's like an ice breaker, basically. Okay. The chick publications came up with the creme de la creme of anti D and material propaganda. Yes. It's called Dark Dungeons, and it's a comic strip about a girl who becomes who starts playing D and D and then is recruited into a real life witchcraft covenant by the dungeon master because Dungeons and Dragons is just a front for Satanist to find the best of the best to come do the real thing. And one girl who becomes so wrapped up in her character, once her character dies, she goes and hangs herself in her room. That sounds familiar. I might have been forced to read that at some point in my life. Check it out. And as a matter of fact, I wrote a blog post on these and some other ones about how it's called back when people thought Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic. It's on our sitestepysheno.com. Nice. And it's really interesting. Like, there was this period that coincided with that whole satanic ritual abuse scare yeah. With the heavy metal music got Judas priests on land to the west, memphis Three in prison. It was a real thing in Kostaia. Yes. And Dungeons and Dragons was, if not the originator of this huge part of it. It was in the center of it for a long time. Wow. But it came out because thanks in part to the dozen Dragons cartoon. Yeah, I had a cartoon. They had a movie, which wasn't very good. I'm surprised they haven't redone that movie. Yeah, I bet they will at some point. I wrote a Time magazine article that was saying, like, why is Dungeons and Dragons not, like, a huge franchise? They didn't really get to the bottom of it. They kind of settled on well, it's made a billion dollars for its owners. Yeah. It's in, I think, a dozen languages. I think 20 million people have played it, so it doesn't have a huge following. But they were saying that it's not the Lord of the Rings. And why not? And I think possibly because it's just totally open ended, and that's what I think. It's the individual Lord of the Rings. You go read and there's a story, and it happens. And yes, you're kind of imagining it, but you're just imagining what Tolkien has explained to you. And Geigex, by the way, thought Tolkien sucked. Oh, really? Yeah. He was a Nicotine. Sure. Not O'Brien. No. The barbarian. Right. So with Tolkien, you're told with DND, like, man, you're totally using your imagination. And even more than that, something as strange as a group imagination, a group of people using their imaginations together and kind of that interlocks, like that's high level stuff. Well, it is high level, and that's exactly why a movie failed and probably wouldn't not succeed, because for a D and D movie to work, you have to satisfy the DND fans. And no matter who for a movie, you have to create some hero character. Right. And that's not going to satisfy all DND people. No matter who you create and what story you create, there are going to be D and D fans that think, now my guy was way better than this jump, right? Exactly. And you call that a white dragon? A white dragon would never do that because it lived in my imagination. Is this I agree. I don't think it'll ever happen. It's a great success, although the cartoon was pretty well received, I think it is. So it's a classic. Yeah, but that's different. It was nominated for our greatest cartoon shows of all time. I do no by listeners. I put a list up and said if they have any other nominees and on our website, people nominated more. And Dungeons and Dragons was once so it's up there, I think. Scuba do one. Oh, of course. Ducktails is a hard contender. Yeah, I never watched that. I was surprised. Let's see. You got anything else? No. I mean, there are dozens of offshoots and different games and different modules, and we only covered a very small part of it. The universe is vast. The D in the universe is vast. It is. Go forth and check it out. Yeah. Say we tape up those glasses and check it out. If you want to learn more about Dungeons and Dragons, type those words into the search barhouseupworks.com and it will bring up some cool stuff. Oh, by the way, it has sort of been known as like a guy's thing, but there's a rabid female community with DMD. And I saw I watched the documentary last night on Dungeons and Dragons. It was pretty good. What is it called? The Dungeons and Dragons experience. I think, you know, there's like a pretty serious other documentary that's being got kick started. Oh, really? It's in production right now. Yeah, this one was okay. It wasn't great, but it did interview a female, a woman, and she was like, yeah. I think a lot of girls, they see it as a guy thing, and these guys nerd, so they're reluctant to get into it. But the girls that I know that I have gotten into it have found that it's really not like a guy sing after all. They have just as much fun and I don't know. It's a fun community. It is funny. They showed them playing, though, at one point, and they definitely get like the dungeon masters just sort of going on and on. And the players will say things in character like, I'm not sure what to do after such a long story and stuff like that. And they're taking barb shots in character. It's pretty funny. That's cool. That's the way to do it. I guess so, actually. However you and your group of friends want to do it and have fun doing it, that's the way to do it? Yes. Unless it veers towards Satanism and like, real. But it doesn't. That was all made up. I know. If you want to learn more didn't I already say this thing? Yeah, I don't know. Okay, so I said search bar, which means it's time for message break. And now it's listener mail. Right, Josh? I'm going to call this listener mail for DND podcast. That's a really clumsy title. How amazing is this? This is pretty cool, actually. Hey, guys. I'm a big fan of the podcast and the TV show. I work for the Ford Motor Company at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville. And I'm an assembly line worker. And you can imagine my job gets pretty monotonous. I put on passenger side doors on trucks, 140 a night on specific trucks. He does. He can't sew any door on any truck. No, it's all very specific. But if you own a Ford Super Duty and you open your passenger door, you can thank this dude for it. That's true. You can thank Jeremy Elmore. So anyway, he's been listening for a little while and he's listening to all but five of the shows and he's getting on his wife's nerves. We hear this a lot. When one spouse is sort of annoyed that doesn't listen about the other one getting smart. Right. And I think everyone just needs to start taking care of business in the household. What does that mean? Get the other spouse on board, get them listening. That way you can circumvent this defense mechanism of feeling threatened. So that's what his wife does. She's like, yeah, I know what you learned from Chuck and Josh. Just listen. So he goes on to say, the great thing about the show is you two are very relatable to me. A couple of years younger than Josh. So I love hearing about your childhood stories from GI. Joe, adolescent shoplifting and Dungeons and Dragons, going to panic shows, watching seinfeld and now marriage. I feel like I've grown up with you guys. So I want to send you something. My father is where it gets good is Larry Elmore. He is a freelance artist. He used to paint for TSR and D. And D? Yeah. So like the blog post that you used, that was his father's artwork? Yeah, I wrote a blog post on it. Right. On DND. Being safe hands. Yeah. And that was like, just by chance, this dude's father, his name is Larry Elmore. Like I said, DragonCon and DND have been mentioned on your podcast before. It made me want to send you something. So he has the 20 Years of Art book. I can't wait to get that. I can't either. It came out a decade ago, but it's still really cool and I want you both to have one. He has a new one coming out in August as well, so consider this a plug. I guess he has already personalized them for me, for you guys, and I need to know how to get them to you. That is so cool. It is very cool. He asked me this is even cooler because he asked who they were for. He explained it to Pops and now he is listening to the show in his studio while he's illustrating. So by the time this comes out, hopefully Larry Elmore is listening to the podcast about DND. What's up, Larry Elmore? He was like one of the first or maybe the first artist early on when they did this. He was definitely an early one because the illustration that I used from the 1983 edition of the Basic set, yeah, that's pretty early. Well, I went to his website and looked at his art and all those iconic images that I remember were him. Really? I can't wait to get that quote. It's very cool. So thank you, Jeremy. Elmore in Louisville. And thank you, Larry. And that was it. Yeah. Thanks for you both. If you want to send us something, especially if your dad is an inadvertent idol of Chucks in mind agreed. We want to hear from you so you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepyshotoe. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And then why not just go see if we're sitting in our home, on the web, on the couch, maybe watch a little TV. That home is called stuffyshonowcom. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Jacktheadscom 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 Urban 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 Amnesia Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-amnesia-works | Those movies where someone gets hit on the head and can't remember who they are anymore? They're actually not too far off from the reality of amnesia. Learn everything about this bizarre and life-robbing condition with Josh and Chuck. | Those movies where someone gets hit on the head and can't remember who they are anymore? They're actually not too far off from the reality of amnesia. Learn everything about this bizarre and life-robbing condition with Josh and Chuck. | Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:01:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=20, tm_min=1, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=84, tm_isdst=0) | 55792186 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And it's stuff you should know. The rodeo. Ironically, I asked if we'd done a podcast on Memory and neither one of us could remember. No, I'm looking it up on our site, and I don't see it anywhere. I got to feel like it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't. I know it's tough now with 630 about 40 plus. Yeah. I mean, we'll delve into a subject, but it's not necessarily what the whole podcast is about. Yeah. Every once in a while, we come up with one of the stupid non How X Works titles, so that just throws it off even further. Right. We may have named it, like a Podcast to Remember. Boom boom. Mnemonic device, bitching. Yeah, we totally did one on Memory. Yeah. Wow. Good job. Thank you. That was real time. I just worked it out. All right, well, we're definitely going to go over memory some, because you can't talk about an issue without talking about memory, so we'll just reinforce that. Right? Knowledge. I'm excited about this one. I thought it was pretty good. Sometimes it's like TV and movies, but not usually. It can be. That's a very rare case. So rare that whoever has that kind of amnesia gets to be the intro for our podcast. Okay, who? A guy named Clive Waring. Yes. Man, this dude. I feel sorry for him. Did you see the cover of the book? He has this look on his face like, what are you doing? That's because he wakes up again every 20 seconds and goes, what just happened? Yeah. There's a poor man named Clive Waring. He's a musician and a musicologist, and he is the man with the world's poorest memory, which means Oliver Sacks sleeps on his couch. Yeah. And he has a memory that refreshes itself every few seconds. He comes out and goes, who's that guy on my couch? Yeah. And he goes, I'm Oliver Sax. He goes, oh, hey, Oliver tattooed on your forearm. And then he goes, Oliver, what are you doing here? That's how it is. It refreshes like that. So this guy there was a New Yorker profile in him that congreg who wrote this article sites saying that eating an apple is kind of like a magic trick to this guy. Like, 1 second, he's got the apple in his hand, and it's intact, and then he'll look down again, and it's just the core. A few seconds later, he has no memory whatsoever of eating the apple. He doesn't remember getting the apple right. He just knows there's an apple core in his hand now. Yeah. So he must have eaten it. Yeah. And we'll go over this later. He has a journaling system because you kind of have to like in the movie Memento, and it had some excerpts, and it was literally, like, 905 woke up feeling refreshed. 908. Completely awake now, feeling really good. I am fully awake at this point. And he scratches through previous entries just to keep track of where he is in the day. And then it takes like a really jarring turn once in a while to be like, 912. I no longer trust my wife. Yeah. There's some weird guy on my couch. She's out to get me. She could really mess with this guy. Yeah. She could be like Joey Pants and memento. Yeah. I mean, how many times in an argument do I say, I don't know what you're talking about? That would be so great if that was actually affected. I mean, an argument would just stop yeah. After a few seconds. But that would be one of the horrible side effects of having amnesia like Clive Waring has. Imagine coming to and you're adrenaline still pumping and you feel the sensation of anger. You have no idea why that is. What happens to this guy. Yeah. So we should say that he's not just like a walking noodle, he does have some memories. He has the ability to still play the piano, which is amazing. Yeah. He's an accomplished piano player, but he can play the piano if you ask him to, and he'll play it well, but then when he finishes, you can say, oh, what was that piece? And he will say, what piece? And that's that. Yeah. He has both retrograde and interior grade amnesia, which is pretty rare to have both of those at once. And we'll get to what all that means. And we'll get to why as well, that he can go make a cup of coffee. We're going to get to it. Maybe we already have. That's a nice tease. Yeah. He remembers his wife, which is good. Apparently, one of the symptoms that he first exhibited was he couldn't remember his daughter's name, though. Really? One of his earliest symptoms was a headache. And then all of a sudden he's like, what's your name, kid? Right. And then he thought, maybe something's not right here. Well, and this is one of the things about anisha that it's different for everyone and it's all dependent on what happened to you and the extent of whatever damage you may have suffered. Right. And even two people who have identical types of amnesia, it's going to be different for them. And here's why. Memory is different for everybody. Exactly. We all form memories following similar constructs, but for each individual person, what we remember, what makes us remember something, all of that is highly individualized, highly personalized. So much so that chuck, have you ever wondered if we all see the color green the same? No. You've never wondered? I've never wondered that, but now I am, and it's fascinating. You haven't ever wondered that? Really? Yeah. Our visual cues are subjective. Well, I mean, I see green and you see green, and it's similar, but haven't you ever wondered if the shade is slightly different or I never wondered that just because of the information coming to our optic nerves. Our eyes are slightly different. All of those little nuances like, what's green? To me, it's not necessarily green to you, even though it really is, because we both say that's green. Yeah. But if you think about it, there would be no way to really describe that, because if it's all subjective right? What do you say? Green is like a combination of these two colors, but what are those two colors? Yeah, it's easier to just point and be like, that's green. And you go, no, it's not green. Yeah, we should do one on colorblindness. I have it on the list, but it's pretty tough. Believe it or not. I did. Don't be dumb on color blindness. Dogs being colorblind, right? They're not. They're not. No, they see how to improve that. They see a spectrum. I can't remember. You'll have to watch the don't be dumb on it. Okay, so let's talk about the memory process that humans typically follow, even though it is highly individualized. Yeah. There's a couple of types of memory we all know and love as short term and long term. Short term is good because you remember what you want and you get rid of what you don't. If you didn't, you would be like Mary Lou Henner from Taxi. Oh, did she have an amazing memory. She has a condition that only another dozen people have in the US. Called HSAM. Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. Wow. And they just discovered it in 2006, period. Not just in her. And it's only autobiographical, though, but for these people, you say June 1, 1976, and Merrily Lou Henner can go, oh, well, that was an off day for Taxi. We weren't shooting, and I went shopping at Sax and bought the scarf and had a cob salad. And like I said, though, it's only autobiographical. They can't necessarily remember everything just about details of their life. Yeah, but it's just nuts. Like, she literally remembers everything that's ever happened to her. So that's cool that she remembers that Cobb salad, because it's probably pretty good. It's pretty tough to screw up a Cobb Salad Sachs trip. That's fun. So that's good. But if she had a low lightening inhibition where all of the things like the click of a light bulb turning on, buzzing from somebody's electric razor next door, the sound of water rushing, the look of everything, the feel of everything, all of that information is coming in and flooding her memory and asking for her attention, she'd go crazy. Yeah. So one of the roles of short term memory, specifically the hippocampus, is to say, keep that keep that throw that away. Throw that away. Throw that away. This one seems kind of important. Oh, this one has an emotion attached. We definitely need to keep that. Yeah. That's what's going on with short term memory. Apparently we keep about seven pieces of information up to 30 seconds, which sounds to me like a statement that is going to be utterly debunked as ridiculous in ten years when we understand memory more. But for the time being, that's our concept of short term memory. It does seem sort of like a stab at something. It's overly concise. Agreed. So that's short term memory. And short term memory is basically just holding immediate information in the front of your mind, figuratively and literally. And if it's sorted, it's sorted into long term memory. That's right. How we store memories, how we make memories. The first thing that happens is we have something called sensory memories. So you hear Josh past gas and you hear a sound and you might smell something. You would not hear that. That's true. You're an SPD guy. Or let's say you see a strawberry and you taste the strawberry and you see what it looks like. That is red and you taste it and you know it's tart. Right. Those are sensory memories and our nerve cells detect that. They send that as an electrical impulse along to the end of a nerve. It turns on the little neurotransmitter, which sends a chemical message. That hops. We've talked about synapses those gaps between nerve cells. The neurotransmitter sends it across that little great divide to the neuron, which is your brain cell, and immediately your brain registers that as a short term memory. And whether or not it becomes a long term memory is whether or not you need to remember that and encode it. Right. And that encoding process is what moves it to the deep freeze. You know what I'm curious about? I wish I thought to look this up. How does science quantify the present? Is the present .8 nanoseconds? Is it the 30 seconds that your working memory is chewing on something? How quickly does a sensation or an experience become the past? The nanosecond after it happens, I guess. But why a nanosecond? Why not a microsecond? Why not 5 seconds, whatever the smallest amount of time is? Yeah, technically, probably. I guess so. That's a pretty deep thought, though. And after that green. It's like I took acid earlier. Sweet. So encoding for long term memory is where we were, right. All of this stuff is coming to the hippocampus, and the hippocampus works in concert with some other parts of the brain. The amygdala, the thalamus. The amygdala is big on emotion. The thalamus is big on routing sensory stuff and pairing it with emotion. Emotions play a big role in memory. Yeah. Because if you pair an experience with an emotion, it's going to have that much more of an impact on our neural pathways that are formed. Yeah, that's what encoding is like the things you remember most. You're basically leaving a trail of breadcrumbs along this pathway if you want to retrieve a memory. And the stronger, like you said, if it's tied to a motion, it might be stronger, more reinforced, or if it's something you have to remember a lot, that breadcrumb trail is going to be with larger pieces of bread. Yeah. The more spot, the more times it's traversed, the more well worn the path grows, the stronger that memory is. And that's a mechanism called long term potentiation, where an initial sensory experience becomes a hard encoded memory in our long term memory, and you could crack open like one of our brains and say, see this neural circuit right here? That's my memory of my last birthday. Yeah. See that donut that's just there? It just started growing a few years ago. I'm waiting for it to fully mature before I harvest it. That was always one of the early Simpsons had that. I think it showed people's thought bubbles at one point, and Homers was just a donut. Yeah, it was pretty good. I could see that. So, like you said, this is all part of the limbic system. I don't think we said that. No, we didn't. Which is your reward system. You experience emotions through it. Yeah. Learning memory, all that is tied to the limbic system. And our thoughts are being stored in the cerebral cortex. Is it our episodic? Well, short term, that's in the cerebral cortex, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Because if you take a specific type of memory, which we'll get to in a second, it usually gets stored in the region that's responsible for processing it as it happens in the first place. Right. So, like brokers area responsible for processing language. Yeah. There's also your language related memories are stored there. Yeah. That time that guy shouted at you in Spanish, you didn't know what he was saying. You can crack open the brokers area, and there it is. Yeah. So the cortex is where you temporarily put it. It works with the hippocampus to send it to, like you said, whatever part of the brain. I didn't know that. That's interesting, though. It lives where it was originated. Makes total sense. Yeah. Again, I have a feeling that our understanding of memory is tenuous enough, that a lot of this stuff is going to change in ten years, five years, 15 years. Right. But for the time being, this is our understanding. Well, like with anything in the brain, it's just like there's still so much mystery. Yeah. It's shrouded in it the gray area. All right. So there are many types of long term memory. They are as follows, and these will come up throughout the show. Your explicit or episodic memory is what we do when we study for a podcast. Basically, it's like facts and information, specific stuff. Right. We read it, we learn it, we know it. Yeah. Cramming for an exam. That's how you do it. You've got procedural or implicit. These are sensory and motor memories. That's how you know how to make a cup of coffee. It's like muscle memory. Yeah. It becomes less of memory and more something that you've done by repetition over and over. That's why Clive clive can make a cup of coffee or can play the piano still. Yeah. He doesn't remember how to play the piano. His fingers just do it from muscle memory. Right. He doesn't consciously remember. He does have procedural memories. Exactly. We've got semantic memory, which is organized and categorized memories. So it's kind of like a meta version of type of memory, right. Where if you're thinking about what your favorite bands are or something, you have a file of all the bands you ever listen to that maybe there's a subfolder in that file of the ones that you've ever heard that you like. Right. And all of those are based on your experiences of listening to Led Zeppelin or Boogie Down Productions or The Carpenters. I can go on. So when someone asks you what your favorite band is, you're scrolling through that folder, right. And what you're doing is accessing your semantic memory, right. Or you could just say Pavement. You could be like, look at the T shirt, bud. You just default and save Pavement and you're good to go. Let's go. Pixie for you probably, huh? Yeah. I would say these days I would go more with Morrissey. Oh, yeah. Whoa. He's always been up there nipping at the pixies heels. But I would say Morrison may have taken the lead recently. Yeah. I remember hearing The Smith for the first time in 9th grade. I was like, man, who are these guys? They still hold up. Oh, yeah. And if you listen, though, it's like, well, no, you mean The Smith. No, I love the Smith. But if you listen to Morrissey's career, all it was the evolution of Morris started with The Smiths, and he just kept going. Yeah, and he just hit his stride even more after The Smiths. I like Morris even more than the Smiths. All right. It felt good to get off my chest. You won't find me dissing, Maz under any circumstances. No, why would you? He's the man. So you've got emotional, long term memory. Those are well, emotional, like super intense memories about something that may have happened to you and then spatial, which are just the spacing of an area. I remember that in the dark when I go to the bathroom that I have to walk around my nightstand. Oh, yeah, it's a good one. Running right into it, man. That'll break your toe. Although that happens and I don't necessarily take issue with emotional memories being broken out as their own thing. But it seems like emotion is one of the drivers of memory formation. Even if it's just the slightest feeling, it seems like emotion is attached to all memories. It's a signal. Remember this. Right. It's an aspect of memory as well. Like when you recall a memory strawberry. If you have your first strawberry after somebody mashes it in your face and, like, twist your nipples and walks away, right? Yeah. You're probably going to associate that bad feeling with strawberries for a while. There's nothing worse than strawberry tough. So all memories have some amount of emotion to them, which means all memories are emotional. But, Chuck, that doesn't mean that for the rest of your life you're going to have kind of a sour taste in your mouth when you're eating a sweet strawberry because of that initial experience. Because memories are subject to change because of neuroplasticity. That's right. Although you may as well you might remember it, but I'll bet you don't have the emotional experience of it over and over again if you eat enough strawberries and experience them in different situations and settings. Right. I guess you're right. Like, if something has made me sick in the past, I have an aversion to it. Right. But I don't power through it. I just leave it there. I won't drink Milwaukee's best beer anymore. Really? Get sick off that, like, 25 years ago. And just the smell of it now, immediately, I'm just like, that's funny. If you wanted to, you could power through it, and after enough times, what you'd be doing is activating that neural circuit, that long term, potentiation and refreshing it a little bit, changing your idea of what Milwaukee's Best is all about. That's a commercial. They should send us some beer and I'll get over it. There you go. But I won't get so drunk that I pass out and forget, because we'll get to that. That's a real thing. Yeah, it's a kind of amnesia. It is, literally. You can get amnesia tonight if you want. No, thanks. I'm going to see Stephen Mountains tonight, full circle. You want to remember that? I do. And then the third type of memory is where you combine short term memory with long term memory, and you come up with working memory. One example I saw during research is when you're looking at a menu, you're going down a menu to decide what you want to eat. You're taking in that information from that menu, and you're creating a little bit of an episodic stimulus in your short term memory. And then you're accessing your long term memories, maybe from having pork chops before. Right. And you're comparing the two. That's your working memory. Okay. So that's a huge aspect of memory as well. And they think, as it stands right now, that it's basically a combination of short term memory and long term memory, mixing them together. And there you have your menu choice, and that's just your day to day kind of deciding things. Exactly. That's what your working memory is. Yeah. It's a really dumb way to say it, but you know what I meant. All right, so I guess we can talk about Indonesia a little bit now, right? Yeah. Forgetfulness is good. It's not a bad thing to forget. You should remember the important things. But like we said, it frees up your brain of the stuff we don't need. And amnesia is nothing more than a really bad case of the forgets brought on by it can be brought on by a lot of things, but a lot of time. It's literally an injury to your brain. Yeah. Well, that's neurological amnesia. Yes. Which is the first time that we're talking about here. It can come on from a stroke. Yeah. It can come on from you're just not having enough oxygen for a little while. Drugs. Drugs can bring it on. Drugs can bring it on. Alcohol. Yeah. What else? Like blunt force trauma. Yeah. Tumor. Electroconvulsive therapy. That's another good episode we did. Yeah. In the case of Clyde Waring, he had herpes encephalitis a viral infection that can do it. It destroyed his basically cut the cord of the hippocampus in the cortex. Well, give him that analogy. That's a great analogy. This telephone cord. Yes. And this is thanks to Kristen Conner, who wrote this. I don't know if we mentioned that if your memory is a telephone, the hippocampus is the phone cord. And the synapses that we talked about in the cortex, those are the voicemail messages. So in his case, he had damaged to his cortex, I believe, and the hippocampus. Right. Yeah. He has one of the more severe versions of amnesia. So because the phone cord was cut in the hippocampus, that's why he has no ability to form any long term memory, because there's just no pathway. And the voice messages are erased, essentially because of the damage to the cortex. There's no way they may be there still, but there's no way for him to access his voicemail account any longer. Right. So he has a really bad case of neurological amnesia and analogy. I had Mr. Telephone man in my head. That New Edition song. Oh, yeah. Always to go listen to it. It worked, too. So when you die, your baby's number, you get a click every time. Mr. Telephone man. It's a good song. It is a good song. New addition was pretty good. Yeah. And while we gone over Belbivo, when I've dropped a couple of references over the years oh, yeah. That very few people noticed. Were you a Bell bib Devot fan? Sure. Okay. A little bit. I mean, that wasn't really my music, but I'm a New Edition man myself. Got you. I was a big Bobby Brown guy. So with neurological amnesia, there is damage to the structure, and it just shuts down the whole system. Right. Cuts that cord. And we talked about all of the different ways you can get that. Yeah. And it can be, like we said, depending on how severe the injuries are, it's not always completely cut, but it just may be damaged. So you may have either really bad amnesia, like Clive wearing, or maybe not so bad. Right. And neurological amnesia is very often permanent but it's also very often stable unless it's associated with the degenerative brain disease. Right. It's usually like after whatever event happened to you, whatever you come to remembering, or maybe after you fully recover, after you hit that point where you're like, I don't remember anything else, or I can't form new memories after X number of minutes or seconds or whatever. Right. It's going to stay like that. And we'll talk about how people with amnesia navigate life in a little bit, and we'll talk about the other type of amnesia, dissociative amnesia, right after this message. So, Chuck, we're talking about neurological amnesia. That's one type, yeah, and the other type, and there are different ways to break them out, but the other main type is dissociative amnesia, which is brought on by intense amounts of stress. Yeah. It can be a trauma. The good news is it's usually temporary and it can come to light in a couple of different ways. Let's say you had some super traumatic event that can either damage your memory as a whole because of massive amounts of cortisol from stress, or it could just be the one event that you blocked out, like a really bad mugging that scared you, or a car accident or something. You might not have any memory just of that. Right. That's actually how they divide or subdivide dissociative amnesia. Yeah. There's a global dissociative amnesia, which is autobiographical, which is like, who am I? What happened after witnessing your family be murdered? Or something horrific like that. You don't remember anything about anything. The other type is situational dissociative amnesia, where you remember yourself, you remember who you are, your address, everything except that that murder that you witnessed. Yeah. Which can be a good thing. Yeah, it can be. Get rid of that memory. You could definitely interpret it as like a safeguard by the brain. Either way, though, what's happened is, like you said, cortisol has been released, which has been shown to affect the hippocampus, and it also affects the brain's plasticity or its ability to form new memory. So basically, one way to put it, especially with situational dissociative amnesia, is the brain says, this is so stressful that I'm overwhelmed with cortisol and I can't form new memories right now, therefore this never happened. Yeah. You know, one thing that was interesting is hippopotamuses. I saw this on Animal Planet the other day. They are so stressed out, especially sadly, little babies that are orphaned because of poaching for rhino horns. Did I say hippopotamus? Rhinoceros? Yeah, they feel for the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros. I was thinking hippocampus, I think. Yeah. They can die from too much cortisol, from being stressed. So sad. Like, a little baby rhino might die because their parents died just from cortisol. Like massive amounts of cortisol. We have to update our can you die of a broken heart episode then? I think we just did. Okay, we can check that off the list. That's right. Okay. Yes. Stress is a killer. We know this literally, and it can cause amnesia. And this is not I think a lot of people suspect that when it's not neurological and there's not an organic cause, like a brain injury for amnesia, that it's possibly somebody faking or something like that. Now they are so stressed out that the chemical composition in their brain has prevented new memories from forming. Not plastic anymore. No. The thing is that the associate of amnesia is very frequently temporary. There might be something that triggers a memory that leads to a cascade of memories that restores the person's memory fully. Yeah. You see that in movies, too. That's a big popular one for fiction. Yeah. It's crazy that there's like I mean, in movies, it happens far more frequently than in real life, but it's not terribly far off. Not because the movies are really kind of keeping it closer as to reality, just that amnesia can be that crazy. Right? Yeah. You can kind of do anything, and someone's probably had that kind. Right. So we mentioned weaving. Clive Waring has both retrograde and interrogate, and that is a couple of other ways that doctors can categorize. It is by the type of memory. He has both. Retrograde means you can't remember the past. Anterograde means you can't make the new memories. And since he has both, he's in big trouble. Intro grade is a little more like the movie memento, right? When every 30 or 40 seconds, you're born anew. But even still, if you haven't seen memento, just go ahead and fast forward through this part. Yeah, but he wrongly remembers his own past, which is the symptom of retrograde amnesia that you can fabulate. You basically come up with imaginary things your mind does to fill in the gaps. Yeah. And you believe them to be real, but they're not real. It's imagined. Remember that's how he turned out at the end. Like he wasn't the insurance adjuster. That wasn't a case. Like, that was his life. Right? Yeah. And also, especially in that movie, very easily to be taken advantage of. Right. The ones being with us when he was paying rent. When he kept paying rent, your rent is due, right? Yeah. Like I was a jerk. But he has a system. And we'll talk about that coming up, too. So let's talk about anterograde. Anterograde is the inability to form new memories. Yes. And it's pretty simple. Basically, there's something wrong with the hippocampus. Right. Then it could be permanent, in which case you end up like Clive wearing, and you can't form new memories. Or it could be temporary. It could be drunk. That is why anterograde amnesia is far more common than retrograde. It's one reason we can easily assault our hippocampus through booze. And as an example of how procedural memory still stays intact, you can walk and talk and move around and everything and then wake up the next. Morning and be like, how did I get here? And no matter how hard you try, you're not going to remember specific details if you fully blacked out. Because when you're fully blacked out, your hippocampus was no longer taking all this information and forming memories like they just don't exist. Yeah. That's in terror grade amnesia. And it depends on who you are. Some people might have an alcohol blackout way easier than others, but if you're blacking out from alcohol, you're drinking too much. Sure, yeah. Even if you're someone with a super low tolerance and blacks out really easily. Yeah, blacking out. Blacking out the line for everyone. It doesn't mean you're passing out. You're still doing stuff right. And saying stuff. You're blacked out, you're blacked out. But it can be kind of tricky because if you think about it, you wake up the next morning and you're like, how did I get here? What happened? And by that time, last night was the past. Which makes you think, oh, that's retrograde amnesia. No, the amnesia is related to your ability to form memories or access old memories. So with anterograde, your ability to form new memories in the present, which was why you were drunk and blacked out. Right. That was anterograde amnesia. That's right. Retrograde amnesia is totally different because it is the destruction of those voicemail messages of your past. Yes. Which is super sad. Yeah. Because what's life if it's not a collection of memories and hope for the future? Look at you and this microsecond right now. With retrograde, if it's severe, basically your new memory or your most recent memories, which aren't as strong and reinforced yet, are the ones to go first, and then, depending on how severe your retrograde amnesia is, it'll go further and further back in your little memory file and start destroying them. Or if you're in the case of wearing if you have it super bad, you might not remember your past at all. Right. But he does remember his wife. He does remember his wife. And that theory, or that is called is that Ribot's law? R-I-B-O-T-I would say reboot. It looks pretty French. It does look French. That is that pattern of destroying those newer memories first and then going back and back depending on how severe it is. And there's a reasoning to it behind the whole thing. It's that your more recent memories haven't had years to potentiate and become these well worn paths, so they're easier to wipe out than your longer term ones. But it is totally different, retrograde amnesia, because it can attack those parts of your brain where those memories are stored. So it might not have anything to do with any kind of damage to your hippocampus. It can say, attack the part of your brain where, again, the language memories are stored in your broker's area. Yeah. Like if you have a stroke, you might not remember how to speak. And that means that brokers area has been damaged via lack of blood flow and oxygen. That might be different. That might be like you lose your ability to speak. I wonder if it does have to do with memory, though, now that you mentioned it. I don't know. Like when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talks, but they weren't words. Oh, yeah. But he thought he was talking. Like in his head he was saying, now you turn left up here to go to the gas station, to his wife. But it came out as walk and walk and duke and walk and be super. But that was unsettling. It was sad and unsettling. How long did he live? The frustration, too, because in his head he was saying the right words. But could he hear himself? Like, what was coming out of his I don't know, because he couldn't tell us. Or he could see on your faces that he wasn't saying what he was saying. I was pretty young, so this is all kind of distant. But how long did he live like that? I feel like a few years. Yeah. Could he write? I don't remember. That usually that's separate. So Betty could write still. You should find out. I'm curious. Yeah. I should ask my mom. Was he a good guy? I used the best. Yeah, well, I'm sorry, Chuck. Yeah, that's right. It happens. It's in my bloodline, too, so I'm sure the same thing will happen to me. Is it really? Well, I will pop you up in front of the microphone and we'll do a podcast like that and you'll just translate for me. Yeah, that's very nice. Be like, I think he's saying he likes pavement. You could just default to that. And I'd always be sort of happy and be like, oh, that's fine. I was really saying I was hungry. But you go Walker. Yeah. It was weird, though. His language was very consistent. It had the familiar. Like there was a lot of walking. Walking like that sound like he made up his own language. Yeah, sort of. It was really interesting. And that's interesting. And the thing is, that's how they figured out that different parts of the brain are responsible for different, I guess, different aspects of our personality or life. Like speaking is different than hearing and writing. Just because you can't talk or form words doesn't mean you can't hear and understand words or write words right. Or think in your head the right words, even though they're not coming out right. Yeah. So with both of these kinds of amnesia, we should point out that your explicit or episodic memory is what you're losing. But your implicit or procedural memory is usually still intact as long as your cerebellum is good. That's why you might be able to make a cup of coffee or ride a bike. These things that are just ingrained in your brain. Right. And that's why clive Weir and can play the piano, but he can't remember who his favorite composer is. No. So Wearing is a really good example of how somebody can live with amnesia. Number one, he has an amazing caretaker, his wife sure, who basically she takes care of him. Yeah, I bet. She does little things, though, like just where she wants to eat that night right now. We ate there last night. I'm not going there again. Right. We did. Sure. Or she can really get him going where every time he looks down, he's like, oh, Hershey's Kiss. Right. Just to delight him a little bit. It'd be fun to do that. Yeah, exactly. But, yes, he has a good caretaker, which is important. Yes. Because there's no treatment for amnesia. There's no till. Right. They can't inject you with something and all of a sudden your memories come back. So most treatments for amnesia deal with figuring out how to navigate life under the new change to the way you remember things. Yeah. It's all about systems. You have to have a system in place that you don't deviate from. In Clive's case, in the case of a memento, he's a tattoos and Polaroids. Yeah. And notes for himself. Yeah. Sticky notes. And that's what Wearing does, basically. Keeps a journal. And like I said, he crosses things out as he goes. So he knows where he is in the day. Right. He can look at his journal and says, no, I woke up three times already. I don't need to keep writing that. Yeah. The other aspect of forming routines is that they involve habits. And habits. Remember, your procedural memory is still intact, so you end up, like, just knowing. How does he know to get up and go to the journal if his memory refreshes every few minutes. Yeah, exactly. Every few seconds. It's because he's formed a habit, a procedural memory, of there's a journal and you should go to it. So he knows what we would call instinctively, through his procedural memory of using the journal over and over again. He's formed a habit that helps big time. Also, smartphones help big time, too. Yeah. Because he can access all sorts of stuff. Set reminders. It's got a calendar right there basically what most of us do, except taking to the nth degree. I have a terrible memory. You know this. So I rely heavily on calendars and notes and reminders, and I don't even have amnesia, as far as I know. Can't you imagine, like, every time he pulls his iPhone out, he's like, wow, right? Look at this thing. It's reminding me. And it's a computer in my hands. Yeah. The future is here. His wife is so sick of hearing him say, the future is here. We really poked fun at this guy a lot. Yeah. I hope he's not listening to this. He won't remember anyway. There he was. Psychotherapy. If you have disassociate of amnesia, can help out I imagine that's a tough case to tackle. Sure. Because not only do you have to get to the root of this, you have to figure out everything else first and then sort through this lost. You have to regenerate the autobiographical information and figure out which part of it is the real problem. So it's like this huge, massive layer on top of a normal case. Right. That's already a very pronounced one because the stressful event was so bad that it wiped out their ability to form memories. Yeah, that's a good point. That's got to be I'm sure not every psychiatrist can handle that. No, I would say you'd go to a specialist for something like that. An amnesia specialist. Do you think there are those? Sure. Well, I'd like to hear from you if you listen to the podcast. Okay. An early shout out. Yeah. If you have amnesia from drinking too much, corsakoff syndrome, you should quit drinking so much and maybe take some B one. What's it called? Thiamine deficiency. Yeah, that's all it is, b vitamin B. Didn't you remember you said that? I can't remember which episode it was, but we were talking about hardcore alcoholics degenerate, basically. Physically? Mentally. Yeah, that's that. And part of it is the Thiamine deficiency, which leads to amnesia, which can be treated by laying off the sauce and taking B one. So sad. Have you ever known someone that was truly, like, pickled themselves? No. It's sad, especially when you know it's from drinking. Sure. It's like a form of dementia. Really? Yeah. From booze. Yeah. And I like to drink. I'm not, like, poopooing the whole thing, but, like, when you're blacking out and forgetting things and getting the DT's. Yeah. That's like that's bad news. I know that's obvious. But we should point that out because we have kids that listen to this. That's true. All right, so Chuck habits. Oh, I read another one. I wrote a review of a woman who wrote a memoir, and she had amnesia. Huge, big time amnesia. Was it short? No, but the first line is something like everything you're about to read. I don't remember. It was told to me. Oh, wow. She was playing with her kid, and she's spinning him around, and I guess he knocked the ceiling fan loose, and it was, like, poorly installed, and it came down on her head and it was like Gilligan's Island level amnesia. Like, she gets bonked and forgets things, everything. Wow. Yes. She has world class amnesia, almost on a Clive wearing level. And she wrote this memoir, and in it she's basically saying, like, how she navigates through life with amnesia, and a lot of it is just faking it. Really? Yes. She didn't lose her ability to pick up on social cues, so she can pick up on what's expected of her, and she can kind of guess a lot of fabulation. Probably. Yeah. She says she has no idea why people celebrate birthdays or holidays or anything, but she still does it because she realizes she's expected to. No, it's not with her. Surely there probably is confabulation. Yeah. She doesn't believe what she's imagining. She's faking it. Okay. And apparently she's so good at it that people forget she has amnesia. Right. But she's saying, like, no, I really, genuinely don't remember. I'm just good at making it seem like I do so I can fit in. That must be so weird and frustrating. That sounds pretty weird. Like, if to have to sing Happy Birthday at a birthday party and she's like her singing the song. I know I'm supposed to do it, but I don't know why a lot of these people do this. Yeah. Wow. All right, so, Chuck, you want to talk about amnesia detection, which seems like, oh, that person can't remember anything. They have amnesia, or they just got hit on the head with a coconut. Right. Well, for wearing he had a headache. That was the first thing that happened. The next thing that happened a couple of days later, like you said earlier, he couldn't remember his daughter's name, so warning signs flashing at that point, and it really spiraled out of control from there. In his case. Sometimes it's super obvious. Like you said, if you injure your head and you can't remember things, then you've got some form of amnesia. Can you recall your past events? Do you confabulate? Do you confabulate? And the difference between a confabulation and a lie, by the way, is there's intent with a lie? Right. This person is honest intent. Like, doesn't realize they're filling in the gaps with imagined stuff, or if they do, they don't want to think about it. Yeah. There's no malice involved. They're just trying to be normal. Right. You might have trimmers or be uncoordinated. You might be confused and disoriented. It could be in a fugue state, which is where you're wandering around. Yeah. That's with the disassociated identity that can be present, for sure. You remember when John McCain entered that fugue state in the 2008 debate against Obama? Did you see that? Yeah, man, I couldn't believe it. Even Obama was like, what is this guy doing? Yeah, he made that face, and I think he pointed his thumb off to the side. You went to a different place briefly. One thing you want to do is get a Cat scan or an MRI or both and see a doctor immediately and find out what the heck is going on. Yeah. If you can't remember things that you usually can, don't mess around. It could be a sign of early Alzheimer's. It could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment for both kinds of dementia. Yeah, you don't want to mess around with that. You can get amnesia from those, or it can be a symptom of dementia, but dementia and amnesia are not one in the same. Chuck, why don't you see people wearing like prevent amnesia. T shirts on, like, a five k run walk to fight amnesia. I don't know, because there's no way to prevent it. Aside from maybe wearing a helmet when you're riding a bike. Sure. Avoiding trees with loose coconuts, doing what you can to prevent a stroke, or cut down on your risk of stroke, and steering clear of highly stressful events. Apparently, there's really not a lot you can do with amnesia. Yeah. It's bad luck is something pretty much something that happens to you that causes it. That's right. But again, there are possible they're working on some treatments. There's no pill now, but they're working on treatments in the cutting edge field that's starting to yield possibly results that could be used to treat amnesia. Are studying fear extinction? The opposite. They're trying to induce amnesia and PTSD patients, which I think we talked about this in our PTSD episode. I think so. If you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine, the Spotless Mind, that was one of the greatest was that on your top 100? No. And I actually had people say, how was that not on there? That was a good movie. It was a good movie. We'll call it 101. Okay. And in that movie, people would pay money to have certain in the case of the movie, certain people remove their mind. Right. Like a former girlfriend. That was so painful, you just want to know trace over in your memory. Yes, but they are researching that. At Led Laboratory at NYU in New York, they did an experiment with rats where they would associate the sound with them being shocked. And they found that in adult rats, when they heard that sound, of course, they would freeze up like they were going to get shocked, but in baby rats, they didn't. And what they learned was, after about three weeks of age, a sort of a molecular sheath would form around the cells in the amygdala. So they found a drug that would dissolve that sheath and basically leave it prone to manipulation. Replaceation. Yeah. And then they basically found that if that sheath is gone and dissolved, that they could erase fear memories. And the adult rats were not affected any longer by the sound, the buzzing sound. And they don't know about humans yet, but that's obviously why they're studying it. I don't want to learn about rats in their memory. We know a pretty decent amount of human and memory formation thanks to a specific patient named well, for many, many years, until just a couple of years ago, he was known only as HM, and he was a man who now that he's died, his identity has been revealed as Henry Molson. He was a lot like Clive Waring. His memory didn't refresh quite as frequently. But he was the initial memory patient. Yeah, he had a bike wreck when he was a kid and was epileptic from then on. And those seizures to relieve those seizures, they removed part of his amygdala I'm sorry, all of his amygdala and most of his hippocampus, and it stopped seizures, which is great. But then they found out, hey, we've got a really good memory patient on our hands now. Right. Because he just couldn't remember. No. And he was also a very good, easygoing guy. Yeah. They studied him for life. Yes. From like, 1953 on, I think. Or 1955 on. Yeah. And by on, we mean to 2008. He just died semi recently, and they're still slicing his brain apart and sending it out to people to study. And his brain, I should say, prove that memory is not one long circuit. The process isn't one long circuit where, like, with a string of Christmas light bulbs, if one bulb burns out, the whole thing does. Because he could remember stuff from his past up to the time when he got the surgery, he just couldn't form new memory. So they figured out that long term memory storage and retrieval was distinct from new memory formation, which, as we've seen you and I explained fully. Yeah, they should do. I wish more people like Henry Adelax and HM were honored. These people should have statues in front of hospitals. These people who suffered for the greater good as far as research and scientific study goes. Or like those twins that were separated by the New York Family Services for twin studies. Yeah, those kids need some statues. Or who needs a box? The girl in the box. No, the most awful case ever. Oh, BF. Skinner's kid. Was that the one that they basically tortured as a child? Oh, very recently. Like she was recently discovered. I think it was a boy. I heard about a girl who was kept in a closet for her whole life in Texas. I remember that too. Yeah, but not to study as abuse, right? Yeah, it was total abuse. Now, there was some I know we've talked about it before. Some boy who was purposefully sort of abused for the purposes of research. Oh, are you talking about and they didn't have his real name and know who it was? Little Albert. Little Albert, where they studied fear extinction in him by making him scared of things. Yeah, he definitely deserves a statue. See, you remember that and I didn't. So you said something that they couldn't remember. His name, I think, is what triggered it. Yeah. So that's part of encoding. I encoded it. That's right. The idea. Little Albert. They didn't remember his original name. Your trail of breadcrumbs is more solid. So let's talk pop culture real quick, man. Good movies. Memento. You mentioned Eternal Sunshine as follows Mine. What else? One of my favorites is Mall Holland Drive. I don't remember amnesia being a part of that, but yeah, the one girl couldn't remember anything. The main character. Yeah. The Burnett. Yes. Vanilla sky. Yeah. I did not care for what's wrong with it. I know everybody didn't like it. No, I didn't like it. There was original open My Eyes I think was the original Spanish language film. Oh, yeah. It was based on was really good. Got you. What else? Oh, well, Jason Bourne. Yeah. He had amnesia. Yes. 51st Days. That was the cute one about amnesia. It's a cute movie. I didn't see it. I used to see it. Okay. And if you reverse your perspective a little bit, groundhog Day where Bill Murray has a tremendously excellent memory and everyone else has amnesia. And I think this is a great time to acknowledge the great Harold Raymos of Groundhog Day and Stripes and Animal House and Caddyshack and Ghostbusters. And Ghostbusters. What a loss. He defined comedy for our generation. He died at 69, which is so young. So young. And check. There's no way we could do an amnesia episode without mentioning Benjamin Kyle. You remember him? He was found in 2004 in a dumpster, naked and unconscious in Richmond Hill, Georgia. What? We've talked about him before and like one of those 1 minute BS things. Oh, yeah. He cannot remember anything. He has complete autobiographical episodic amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and nothing is helping. They've put them on NPR. They've put them on CNN. They put them on ABC, they put them on news. They've done stories on them around the world. He has a website called Finding Benjamin Benjaman.com and they want to figure out who this guy is. He wants to know who he is. They have not figured it out. The case is still cold. So he's not faking it. No, if he's faking it, he has totally given himself over the idea that he will never be found out because he has put himself out there. He lives in a bureaucratic limbo because he doesn't have a Social Security number. Yeah. He can't get a new one because he's like 60 years old and the feds are like, what do you need a new use your old one. We gave you one before. And he has no idea. There's a documentary that's coming out about them or that might be out now. Interesting. But yeah, it's totally legitimate case of full retrograde amnesia. Waking up in a dumpster naked in Georgia. That is nuts. And the reason he's called Benjamin Kyle is because he's pretty sure his first name is Benjamin. But when he was taken to the hospital, there was already a John Doe there. So they called him BK because he was found behind a Burger King. So he took the name Benjamin Kyle. His name could have been Mickey D. It could be anything. Wow. Well, thinking it is a thing, I think Hess, rudolph Hess, the Nazi. I didn't look this up, but I think I remember somewhere that he faked amnesia to get out of his war crimes. I believe it. That guy was sob all around. Yeah, he's a Nazi. I know. I think he did fake indonesian. I think he even fooled his doctors for a time, but then later admitted that he had faked it. I might be wrong, Degenerate. I didn't do specific research on that. So we'll see. He was a black shirt, though. No, wait, he was a brown shirt. I got it wrong again. Brown Shirts were the German. Black shirts were Italian. Okay. All right. Well, that's amnesia. You got anything else? No, sir. Man if you want to read more about it, you should type amnesia into the search bar@housetuffworks.com and it will bring up this article. Since I said search parts, time for listener mail. This is from a termite expert. He was a pest control operator for seven and a half years and on the board of the New York State Pest Management Association. Wow, that's high up. Hey, guys. When you talked about a termiticide treatment, you stated it is injected into the colony. This isn't quite right. Could be misleading to the average homeowner. It makes them think that the colony will be killed off. What really happens is that termiticide is injected to form a barrier on a few inches of treated soil around the foundation of the house. When termites come into contact with it, they shortly die. Eventually the colony realizes something is wrong and send out alarm pheromones for the others to avoid it. As to debate, you'd say that it might leach into the soil. This makes for good radio or podcasting, but again, it's an alarm to the homeowner. That's not necessarily true. Bait is solid and small and it will not leach, but it will explode. When I was in the business, there were two types of bait. The first was a poison like bait for mice you put in your home. We didn't use that, but that's about it and simple to understand the ideas. Hopefully they will realize something is wrong and not come back. The second type of bait, which we use, interfered with the molding process. You could actually see them turn a milky white as young termites could not grow. The colony died as a nation would die if no new children were born. Like the movie Children of Men. That's a good movie. This program was the only one at the time that would eliminate a colony. I hate to nitpick. You guys run a good show and I just want to see it done right. And that is from Sean Duffy of Pittsburgh, a termite expert who likes to pick nits. Hey, thanks, Sean. Right. Yeah, we appreciate that. Actually, I'm just teasing. If you want to tell us something we missed, dated slightly or otherwise, you can let us know. Join us on Twitter at sciskpodcast as our handle. Join us on facebookcom stuff. You shouldnow send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Check out our YouTube channel to search josh and Chuck. And as always, join us at our home on the web, the luxurious estatestuffytenow.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 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." | ||
20e7e2b4-121b-11eb-85ed-9b4818185d57 | Short Stuff: Cellphones on Airplanes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-cellphones-on-airplanes | Are we finally at the place where we can make cell phone calls on airplanes? PLEASE NO! Listen in to find out. | Are we finally at the place where we can make cell phone calls on airplanes? PLEASE NO! Listen in to find out. | Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=83, tm_isdst=0) | 12605282 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's guest producer Jerry sitting in for days. And this is short stuff. Getty up. No time to explain any of the Jerry every day thing. No, not at all. Because we're on an airplane and there's a jerk in first class yammering on his cellphone. Oh my God. Because it's now okay to talk and take cell phone calls on planes. Why would you do that to me? Why would you even create that little situation, that sketch of a horrible day just to drive fear into people? Because it's not really true. It's been a while since I've flown on a plane. Exactly one year, actually. Oh, yeah. To the day. Not to the day, but about a year. I hardly say exactly then about a year and a week, you jerk. 54 weeks. But yes, you cannot make cell phone calls because there are a couple of bodies in the United States that make sure you can't the FAA and the FCC. Oh, I thought you were going to say Rob Lowe and Tom Selic. Just a couple of bodies. Yeah. So yeah, there's actually two federal agencies that ban the use of cell phones because everybody hates it so much that everyone wanted to get in on banning it. The FAA says, well, the reason we ban it is because we're pretty sure that that could conceivably interfere with the planes instrumentation. And you don't want to do that because you could make a plane drop out of the sky, probably. And the SCC says, yeah. Plus also it'll totally mess with calls on the ground because those ones up in the air will be jumping from tower tower and it'll just be a big problem. Yeah. And I think pre 2013, didn't you even have to power down your cell phone? Yes. Just take your cell phone and throw it out the window. Like Mitt Rodney says, roll down your airplane's window and just throw it out mid flight. We don't even want them on here. They were basically like, just do not do anything with your cell phone. And then finally somebody told them about airplane mode, appropriately called airplane mode because it cuts off the cellular service on your phone, but it keeps the WiFi intact if you have it turned on. Right. And ever since then you could at least go through and spend a couple of hours deleting pictures that you don't need. Clogging up your storage space. That's right. One of the things that was always great about a flight is you're just disconnected for an hour or 5 hours or something. You were just discount. Like you could bring an actual printed book with you and read it. But with the advent of WiFi on planes and everything, it's like now it's connected and you can communicate and it's just you can do other stuff that you do under normal circumstances and it's ruined everything. Yeah. Unless I really legitimately have stuff I have to get done for work, I will still not get my laptop out and get online just to surf the web. I'm like, I give myself that break. Yeah, no, it's good to do. It's so easy to be addicted to computers and the Internet and everything that sometimes it's hard. It is the deal with whether or not it could really interfere with communication systems or the planes flight systems. That is probably not the case because planes are hardened. Meaning all of those electronics that are important on a plane, like the flight control system, are covered or boxed in this electrically conducted material that prevents any kind of electromagnetic interference. So they've kind of taken care of that for the most part, but they still are on the side of caution and they're like, but let's just not do it. Still. Yeah. They do know that electromagnetic interference can affect planes. Things like lightning and solar flares have affected instrumentation on planes and especially with GPS, which is critical in take off, but especially landing. It's really sensitive to electromagnetic radiation interference. So you don't want anything messing with that. Least of all somebody who just has to talk on the phone. That's the worst reason to allow it. Right. So they know that it can happen. But they couldn't find in this one study in the 2000 odds, any smoking gun that said, yes, this plane fell out of the sky because somebody was talking on a cell phone. It was just they knew it was conceivably possible. Even though they shielded or hardened the stuff to prevent that, they still said it's just not worth it. Everybody hates people talking on cell phones anyway, so why would we make it an exception when it could also conceivably mess with the planes instrumentation? Agreed. Should we take a break? Yes. Right. We'll take a break and finish up with this stuff right after this. All right, so here's what they don't have on planes is any kind of alert to a flight attendant that says, hey, there's a jerk on row 15 in the middle seat that's hunched down and using their cell phone. Go back there and stop them. They don't have prejudice. Yeah, totally. They should bring that pot of coffee. They should have that stuff, but they don't. But generally, I think anybody, if they saw their seat mate next to them trying to make a phone call or calling somebody would be smart enough to alert the flight attendant and say, hey, you can't do this. Get this jerk off. A year. My hand would shoot up like a third grader with the right answer to the question the teacher just asked. I'd be like, oh, they're on the phone. I would call on somebody so fast, so loud. Yes. And I wouldn't even care if they gave me stitches for snitches. That's right. At 36 0ft, though, you're not going to be connecting with the cell tower anyway. I think we have all been in situations where we may not have realized that our phone wasn't on airplane mode. And when you start to land, you'll hear your phone ding like a message has come through and you're like, oh boy, I didn't know that could even happen. They must really mean it when they say, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah, that's what the FCC's whole position was, that air traffic would mess with ground traffic and that cell phone towers are basically designed to hand off from one tower to the next in the cell as you're walking by, driving by tops, not flying a couple of hundred miles an hour at 10,000ft as you're coming in for landing people. Yeah, exactly. A bunch of people on a plane all doing at the same time because you're going to tax the capacity of each tower. They're not designed to register and hand off calls like that that fast. And so the FCC is like, that could really interrupt ground communication. So that's another reason not to do it. Yeah, but generally they're not looking up anyway, which is why you can't get that signal at 36,000ft. But like I said, anything less than 10,000ft and it might be possible, so you just shouldn't try. Yeah. And Richard Branson said, what is one way that I can fully ruin the experience of flying for people? And in 2010, I believe around then, he came up with the answer, and that was to offer a cell phone service via little what are they called? PECO. Yeah, PECO cells. Pico sells little tiny cell towers that use the plane's WiFi to transmit cell phone calls. So on some Virgin flights that are not in the United States or within 250 miles of the United States, you can make cell phone calls aboard the plane. Yeah, I think he probably thought that would enhance the experience because he's all about I mean, we both flown Virgin. It's the best. It's awesome. Oh, yeah, there's that pantry. You can stand up and just go get candy from anytime you want. I love it. That Australian flight was like one of the nicest experiences I've ever had in the air, for sure. I suspect he's promoting his Virgin mobile business, though, by maybe, but it is weird that someone that has taken such great care to make the flight such a great experience, then ruins it by saying everyone can talk on their cell phones now, mate. Yeah, nice chill lights, lavender aromatherapy. It's so good. It is such a nice experience. For sure. It really is. We're in the wrong country. Hey, while we're here, I just want to say I want to take a second when we're talking about Virgin. My niece Mila just recently flew to New Zealand for eleven weeks because she's costarring in a major motion picture and that's where they're shooting. Are you serious? I am dead serious, man. She and her parents are there right now for eleven. She did? She is ten. Oh, wow. Yeah, she's one of the co leads. She's one of the main characters. I think her hands are going to be on the poster. That's amazing. Isn't it huge? Congratulations. It's really exciting. I'll keep you posted as I can. To be honest, I'm not entirely certain I can include this. So we may end up editing it out, but at the very least, you know, now well, and when the time comes, we can promote it on Movie Crush. Oh, nice. Thanks, man. That's very good. Of course. So the FCC basically spent many years saying, like, okay, is this really a problem? Should we allow, like, Richard Branson is making us look like total jerks. Should we allow this? And after several years of study, they concluded they said no, not Sir Richard Branson. Exactly. They said the flight attendants, they asked a lot of people. They didn't just do the studies about safety. They asked actual people who work on planes. And the flight attendants were all like, no, they need to be listening to us. Especially in the case of an emergency, the first thing everyone would do would be to get out their phone and try and call their loved ones. And that's when they most need to be listening to things. Right. That's a big one. But then there's also the annoyance factor. And this, to me, is where it just becomes the most important thing. Just everything else, forget it. It's so obnoxious, even while you're on the tarmac waiting for them to shut the door. Agreed. And there's people sitting there talking on the phone that's obnoxious enough with your big plate of food from the food court. Even that I'm like, okay, at least they're providing their body sustenance. And nourishment, I can live with it. The phone is like and you can tell from the conversation there's just no point in this transpiring. And yet it is. And there's another one. Being on a plane like that for many hours is awful. It's an awful idea. Yeah. It's that situation where John Hodgman always talks about being aware of the impact that you have on others, and I've always subscribed to that. But the person that has their shoes off and they got their Panda Express, like, piping hot meal in their lap, and they're talking on their cell phone before the flight takes off, that's the person that's like, I paid for the seat. I just do what I wanted and I paid for the seat. Don't be that person. I know. Yeah, because you do have an effect on everybody. No, be kinder. Think about other people. Yeah, but, hey, enjoy your Pantry Express, because you're providing there's got to be some nourishing nutrients somewhere. Sure. Yeah. Those green peppers or something. There you go. There. Okay. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, then that means short stuff. Says stay off your phone. 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." | |
544bfe68-44cf-11e8-9719-4fdfd9ec5a4b | SYSK Selects: How Mirrors Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-mirrors-work | Whether using polished metal surfaces or clear glass, human beings have enjoyed admiring their reflections for centuries. In this episode, Josh and Chuck reflect on the types, mind-melting physics, superstitions and rather interesting history of mirrors. | Whether using polished metal surfaces or clear glass, human beings have enjoyed admiring their reflections for centuries. In this episode, Josh and Chuck reflect on the types, mind-melting physics, superstitions and rather interesting history of mirrors. | Sat, 21 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=111, tm_isdst=0) | 27157397 | 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. Good afternoon and welcome to Stuff You should Know. Select. This is Charles W, chuck Ryan here. And my pick for this week is How Mirrors Work from September 14, 2010. And boy, this one was a tough one. I remember when we had the idea of doing a show on mirrors. I thought, well, that's going to be short and not so interesting. But then I thought, oh, wait a minute. How do mirrors work? How are those things made? Where did they come from? It's pretty amazing. So we get into all that and more, and it's a pretty fascinating episode. And this will be one where you can kind of whip out some of these facts at your next dinner party and amaze and delight your friends and family. So enjoy how mirrors work right here, right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. We're about to talk about mirrors. I set up Succinct. Huh? How are you? Were you in the mirrors growing up? Now that we said, I did it Succinctly, we're going to just blow, like, three minutes, right? No, I was asking you if you were in the mirrors. Were you in the mirrors growing up? Yeah. Didn't every kid go through a phase where they're, like, very obsessed with their looks and mirrors and things? Oh, yeah. I was into myself. I wasn't into mirrors. They were just a means to an end. Yeah, but I was reading this and I kind of was just thinking myself, remembering laughing about I remember being, like, 15 and stopping to look at mirrors anytime there was one to see what it looked like. Yeah. And now I just break them. I'd forgotten all about that phase of my life, though, until you brought it up. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. It's nice to be able to not look at a mirror. Like, some days I'll go out after getting ready in the morning, and I have no idea what I actually look like. This is this cross pollination with an earlier podcast. I suffered from body dysmorphic disorder so badly that I don't really know what I look like. Anyway, what do you think you look like? I think I look a bit like the top seller from Taxidermia. What's that? It's not pleasant. Okay, well, you don't, my friend. I don't even know what he looks like, but I can tell you don't look like him. I appreciate that. Chuck. Chuck, do you want to hear what I had in store? Like, I could not come up with an intro for this. Let's hear it. Webster's defines mirrors. I'm kidding. I was going to say something equally bad, though. It was going to be something along the lines with mirrors are ubiquitous. I've seen at least six of them today. Wow. They weren't always that way, though, Chuck. Well, it says in the article here that full length mirrors have only been around 400 years. That didn't seem right. That's not right. Oh, really? No. Full length mirrors. There's a type of full length mirror that has been around for about 400 years. Full length mirrors, as far as I know, are mirrors capable of reflecting a full image of a person. Have been around since about the first century Ad, actually. Wow. And mirrors, us using polished surfaces to see our own reflection has been around since about 6000 BC. Holy cow. Yeah. The earliest ones were found in Anatolia, Turkey. Wow. And they're polished subsidian. Yeah. It's a volcanic glass. Yeah. So it's dark, it's interesting. But it still produced the best reflection, I guess, at the time. At the time. You got to go with what we have to work with, right? Well, yes, but then after that, it led them to, like, silver and bronze and copper. Polished, polished reflections, basically. And truck. I don't know if you've ever held a hunk of copper. I have. Or bronze. I haven't. Or silver. I have. Okay. It's heavy. Yeah, it's really heavy. Right. So this actually limited the size of mirrors for centuries, right? Yeah. And they were just kind of decorative at first, too, right? I think so. And you also had to be extremely rich to own one of these. Sure. Right. And then around, I think, the Middle Ages, we became capable of making glass. Right. And all of a sudden, it was like mirror technology just takes a huge leap forward. Well, true, but not super forward, because the sand was pretty impure. Back then, they used to make the glass. So I think they said in the article, it wasn't until, like, the Renaissance that it kind of really started becoming a little more polished, if you will. Terrible. And then the Venetians are who really, with the glass and everything, they just took and ran with it. Well, even still, if you successfully made a mirror, it was probably extremely expensive as well, because they were so rare. The process of manufacturing a mirror very infrequently produced a usable mirror. So what you're doing was adhering melted, molten metal onto glass, which almost always broke the glass. Sure. So when it didn't, I'm sure you're just like, oh, my God, it's the first one in seven years. Right. But when I was reading this article, I didn't really think about it. That's what a mirror is, isn't it? I've even seen the back of mirrors and been like others, like, metal looks like spray painted on the back. That's exactly right. And that was a process. What's it called? Silvering. Yeah. That was invented by a guy named justice von Leebig. And in 1835, he figured out how to spray a very thin layer of silver or aluminum on the back or on one side of a glass. And they're my friend, you have the modern mirror. Yeah. I think they make it now by heating aluminum and a vacuum in kind of much the same way or different methods, but the same concept. Right. Go ahead. Well, I wanted to say, when you were talking about the Renaissance, the Venetians, I guess they had the secret of mirrors under wraps, like the Masons. Very much so. And if you were a mirror maker and it got out that you had told someone how to make mirrors, you were frequently killed, right? Yeah. Trade secret. But when mirrors were introduced, when good mirrors were introduced, not polished obsidian, things changed a little bit, especially with art. Right. Yeah. I never really considered that. But it spawned something that would become a hallmark of the art world, which is the self portrait. Right. Before that, you couldn't draw yourself because you could not see yourself. That's exactly right. And you could, but I mean, you're going to use maybe a pond or a piece of polished metal or something like that. Imagine, like, going out and looking at a pond and going back and sitting down, as opposed to having a mirror there. Yes. Really simplified it. It's also not coincidental that good mirrors came about at the same time that linear perspective was introduced into art. What? Yeah. There's a guy named Philippo Brunelleshi. Philippe Brunelleshi. Nice, Chuck. Thank you for doing that. And he, I guess, discovered linear perspective because I think it's one of the things that was always there. We just stumbled upon it through mirrors. Oh, really? That's how we figured it out. Yeah, because if you look at a mirror, all of a sudden, linear perspective really comes into focus, if you will. Well, and then scientists said, hey, we could use these to make, like, reflecting telescopes. And that was what you were at? That was a long time ago. The first reflecting telescope was invented by a guy named James Bradley in 1721. Just off the top of my head. Very well done. And the mirrors were also used by a very famous scientist, early scientist named Archimedes, supposedly. Yeah. I wrote an article on Archimedes death ray. Oh, did you write that? Yes. Did you ever read it? I did a while ago. Just out of interest. How about that? Thanks a lot, man. Sure. Did you see in it? I can't remember. It was one of the Ivy League schools. They tried to set things on fire with the system of mirrors. The architect MIT did. That's who it was. And they succeeded. Yes. And the mythbusters claimed it was busted, like they set a small fire. But I think they busted it because they said it wasn't enough to sink a ship. But MIT, they caused quite a fire on that boat. Sure. And of course they had. I mean, I saw this set up online today. It was pretty massive. I don't know if Archimedes had that kind of technology or at least that many mirrors at its disposal. Or maybe he did. And plus, I think they used pretty good mirrors, too. Yeah, well, it was legend. Now they don't know if the Archimedes thing is true. Right. We know that he invented the water screw, and that saved countless lives. What's that? It's a way to deliver water from the ground, top side. Oh, really? Yeah. Cool. You have to check it out. Smart dude. So, Chuck, we now know the comprehensive broad strokes of the history of mirrors, right? Yes. Let's talk about mirror physics. We work for Housetepworks.com, which means we're pretty much obligated to discuss the physics of whatever we're talking about anytime it applies, right? That's true. And mirrors are definitely one of those times. Yes. So, Chuck, take it away. Well, I can cover the first part because it makes sense to me. The law of reflection. Josh says that when you bounce a ray of light off the surface, it bounces back off in a certain way. And the angle of incidence is when it comes in, the angle of reflection when it bounces off and it matches. So the way they pointed out in the article, which makes sense to me, is, like, at sunset, the sun is very low on the horizon, so it bounces off at a low angle or approaches the water at a low angle, like at a lake, let's say. Then it bounces off of that lake at that same low angle, like right into your face. Right. But it seems brighter. If the sun is overhead, though, the sunlight is coming down under the lake, and it's reflecting back up, basically over your head. You're looking at a horizontal angle, pretty much. Right. And this is happening on a vertical angle? Yeah. That's why you'll get like, more glare at a sunrise or a sunset scenario. Right. And what, you're saying the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Right? Indeed. If a beam of light is shot at a 90 degree angle or no, let's say 80 degree angle, it's going to bounce off at an opposite 80 degree angle. Right. So both are at 80 degrees. But if you look at the whole thing, the incidents and the reflection, it's going to cover 160 degrees, right? Yes. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals prepare for certifications, get hands on experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride career prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. All right, so that's the first part that explains how light reacts with reflection, and that's with a smooth surface with most things, like, say, look at my hand, man. Take a look at these hands. Yes. The light that's bouncing off of them, what's giving us the ability to see these huge, awesome hands? They're not huge, are they? Are they smaller than average size? No, they're bigger than mine. I got small hands. I wouldn't say you have small hands. Let's see. Those are totally normal. I don't have hair on the back of my hands either. I've got hair on my first knuckles. Robin Williams what's allowing us to see our hands right now and judge their size and scale is what's called diffuse reflection, which the light that's coming off of all of these light bulbs right now are hitting all these different areas, these different surfaces on my hands, and it's bouncing off. It's being scattered. Right. The mirror, the highly reflective surface. What we have is called specular reflection. And that is where it's pretty close to the law of reflection, where the angles coming in at one or the lights coming in at one angle and coming off at the same degree right. In the opposite direction. Right. Which is why we're allowed to see ourselves in a piece of glass with metal on the back. And what this creates when you're looking at yourself is called the virtual image. Right. I found this fascinating. Yeah, me, too. And it's a little brain melty for me, of course, but at the same time, you realize, like, well, you've grown up around mirrors the whole time, and no one has any real concept of how they work. Right. Yeah. We just take for granted that they do work, but you don't really give much thought to how they're working. Right? Yeah. Like the Venus effect. Did you read about that? Yeah. Explain that. Because this is where when we talk about actually, the Venus effect is two different things, and both of them kind of melt my brain, the left and right being reversed, which is not actually true. And then the Venus effect. So let's talk about both of those. Okay. Well, the Venus effect basically just shows how little we can grasp or how little we grasp mirrors and how they work. If you look at paintings of the Venus de Milo or Venus the Goddess. Almost always she's holding a hand mirror. And in the painting. You can see her face in the mirror. But she's looking at herself in the mirror. And her face is painted in the mirror for the benefit of the viewer. But you take for granted that she's viewing herself. When. In actuality. If you could see Venus's face in the mirror. She wouldn't be able to see herself. She'd see you in the mirror. Right. Because of the angle or the law of reflection. Yeah. And that's the only way I finally understood that was when I remembered in my film set days, when you shoot a person looking in a mirror, they don't see themselves in the mirror clearly because you would see the camera behind them. So the mirror is angled, and it looks like they're looking at themselves in printing, but they're not seeing themselves as pretty cool. Right. So that makes sense to me now. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay. The other thing you were saying is left and right. Yeah. It's not actually left and right. Yeah. This one was a little brain melty, but I think I finally got it, too. Okay. So consider that what you're seeing isn't actually a reflection, but another version of yourself in the mirror world. Right? Right. If you look at it that way, then the mirror represents the halfway point. It's always halfway between you and your virtual self. Right. Right. Because your virtual self, the image of yourself in the mirror, is always twice, as always, two times away from you, with the mirror representing the halfway point. Right. So you're 2ft from the mirror, and your virtual self is another 2ft away from you. Right. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And the left and right thing isn't really left and right. It's really front and back that's right. That are reversed. Again, think of yourself as the virtual image. Yes. You walk into the mirror world, you go another 2ft away from where you're just standing. So you're 4ft away from where you're just standing and turn around. Right. Which is weird, because it actually gives the virtual image something of its own identity, doesn't it? It does. It's a little creepy. Yeah. So when you're looking at a mirror, it's not a reflection of you from the mirror's perspective. It's like the one example they gave was if you wrote something on a piece of paper and then held that paper up to the light and looked at it from the back, it would appear backwards. But it's not. You're just behind it. Yes. Crazy man, isn't it? Yeah. It's pretty interesting stuff. And I got to say two things. When you mentioned doing mirrors, I said to myself, really? And then when we told Jerry what we were doing this on, she was like, really? Yeah, but I think it's much more interesting than I originally thought. Well, again, it's like the butterfly swings. We just have to know that if we're going to understand absolutely everything that's going on in the world, which is our mission. Yes. Should we talk about curved mirrors now? Yes. Because we were talking about virtual images, there's actually a way to project a real image where this thing isn't in the mirror. It's outside of the mirror, but it's not really there. It's a projected image. Right. And that uses concave mirrors. You might be familiar with holograms. Yes. Right. Is that the same concept? It uses concave mirrors, and actually, if you want to see a really cool example of a hologram produced by a set of concave and flat mirrors, you should type in mirage in YouTube and look for the one that's lowercase. Just Mirage. And it's a little piggy, and it's pretty cool. The demonstration that this guy does. Oh, really? Yeah. Check that out. But, Chuck, there's concave and convex, right? Yeah. Convex is the one that curves outward, and it reflects at a wider angle near the edges in the center, so things are actually smaller and you can cover more areas. So that's why they'll use those. They'll stick them on, like, your passenger mirrors, so you can see more area around your car. Right. And it also notes objects are smaller than they appear or closer than they appear. Right. Objects are smaller than they appear, but they are smaller than they would then they appear. But that doesn't matter. It's whether they're, like, in your back seat or not. Yeah. And they actually have been rumors over the years that department stores put convex mirrors, slightly convex mirrors, in their changing rooms to make you appear taller and thinner in the clothing that you try on. Remember that seinfeld where Elaine, like, buys that dress and she figured out they had a skinny mirror? And I think Barneys or Bloomingdales. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. I don't know. I think that's probably urban legend, but who knows? Chuck, the other one, like we said, was concave. Converging. We use those for holograms. They also use that to light the Olympic torch. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. I think that's a nod to archimedes, too, probably. So you're probably a little more acquainted with convex mirrors. No. Concave mirrors for, like, shaving or those horrible mirrors that show your hair and detail. Those are awful. They really are. Don't ever look in those non reversing mirror, which really is pretty simple. It's just two mirrors perpendicular to each other. Right? Yeah. And the deal is with that, they meet at the angle, and so you technically can see a non reverse image, but you've got that line running down the center of you. Right. They don't make, like, a flat, single, non reversing mirror. No, they don't. I think it's physically impossible. Yeah, it's not like they don't make it like they're not interested. It just can't be done. But what's funny is there's a guy named John Derby who has a patent in 1887, when he was alive, he had a patent for a non reversing mirror by sticking two mirrors together. I could get a patent for that. I could fill out the patent application for that. You could yeah, it's like take mirror A and stick it perpendicular to mirror B right there. Give me my patent. Well, but then John Derby's family would come after you. Hopefully it ran out by now. Just for simpleness Josh two way mirrors as seen in every cop Shakedown movie ever made. Yes. This is fascinating. Chuck, how does a two way mirror work? Well, it's really pretty easy. It's the same concept of the mirror here, but it's very much a lighter reflection. The material they use and the coated side, when it faces the lit room, some of the light reflects and some goes into the dark room behind it. So basically, like, you know, you can only see one way right. Because of the light mainly. Right. So it's just like very thin reflective surface where if you turn on lights in both rooms, you'd be able to see through that reflective surface. Right? Yeah. It's all about the lighting. Yeah. And that's a movie. There's several movie mirror things that are done in every movie, and that's one of them with the cop movie. And inevitably, the person getting question will always walk right up and be staring into the face of the person on the other side that they can't see. Right. And then the other favorite of mine, which one of the SNL shorts ape was the classic horror movie scene where you look in the medicine cabinet in the mirror and then you open the medicine cabinet and then you close it and the dude is right behind you. Yeah, that's a classic. It is. Again on YouTube. I think there's a montage, like a four minute, 20 montage of that being used over and over time. Dude. And it still gets people. Yeah, but now the whole spin is to do that and then there's not someone there and then they'll turn around and that's where they are or something. Yeah. Just jerking the audience around. That's in there, too. Oh, it is? Yes. It's not just people closing. There's someone saying there's one where they're not standing there. I love those movie conventions that are the other one, too is it doesn't have anything to do with mirrors, but the scene where someone is searching for the files and the person's office after dark and they're coming up the steps and they open the door and you're like, they're pinched. And then they open the door and the person's gone and there's like a window open. Right. And it's just like the curtains hundreds and hundreds of time is still done, yet I'm still like, oh, my gosh, here they come. What about Poltergeist? The great classic mirror scene where the guy's like, kicking at that little blister and ends up pulling his whole face off? Yeah. That's pretty creepy. Yeah, classic. Thank you, Toby Hooper. Did he make that? Yeah, I got this. Right? Yeah, he overproduced it, right? That's right. I always think he directed that. 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. What else, Chuck? Well, there's some superstitions around mirrors and folklore. Summoning Bloody Mary by saying her names three times in a mirror. Or Candy Man, if you're Candy mirror a little more recent. That's a good one. Breaking a mirror supposedly bad luck for seven years because they believe that the soul regenerates every seven years. Yeah, that explains it, doesn't it? Yeah. And that's why vampires have no soul. That's why they can't see themselves in mirrors. And a couple of them I haven't heard of are if you give birth and look in a mirror too soon afterward, you will see ghostly faces peek out from behind the reflection. Right. I'd never heard that one, had you? No. I had heard of sleeping Shiva, though. Yeah, what's the deal with that one? Well, if you're Jewish and somebody dies, part of the morning processes to cover all the mirrors in the house. Can you say that in the Talmud? Shut up, Chuck. Also, we have gotten conflicting information about whether or not it is taboo among Judaism to be cremated. Did you notice? Yeah. And I'll stand behind what we found, which was that Reform Jews will do it, but it's still not like encouraged. Right, but it is actually forbidden in the actual Jewish text. Right. So there fine. Is that it? I think that's about it. Oh, New Year's Eve. Right. Yeah. I hadn't heard of this one either. If you go up to a mirror on New Year's Eve with a candle in your hand and you say the name of a dead person, probably a dead loved one in a loud voice, their face should appear in the mirror. Never heard that. And this is my favorite one. Ancient Chinese mythology. You know how you see weird movement in, like, the corner of a mirror every once in a while? Have you ever noticed that? Sure, I just figured it was like your mind playing tricks on you. I'm sure it is. Unless you're Chinese, pal. Then what it is are the mirror people, the mirror kingdom. There's a group of opposites who live in the mirror kingdom, and they are sworn to do battle with us. Really? Yeah. And if this were north mythology, we'd lose. Creepy. And we may lose in this case, too, but they are in, I guess, a magical slumber. But when we catch little weird, unexplained movement in the corners of mirrors, this is these people stirring in their sleep, right? Waiting to wake up and kill us all in our sleep. I'll remember that next time I see something in the corner of my eye. Yeah. So that's it for mirrors. That's it. I mean, that is it. Nothing else? There is literally nothing else to say about mirrors. No. And if you think that there is, we defy you to go to houseoffworks.com and type mirrors into the search bar, pal. Dario. Listener mail. Listener mail. Josh, this is a little cool organization that we want to support here. And how long you been smoke free, buddy? It's over four months now. Crazy, isn't it? So proud. Thanks, man. Hi, Chuck and Josh. I travel outside the city every weekend, listen to your podcast and always share my new knowledge with friends. Needless to say, I'm the Friday night smartypants and I rather like it. While I'm writing, I want to promote the New York City Walk to beat lung cancer. I'm one of the head chairpersons at 28 years old. I never thought I would share anything, but I love my new responsibility as I am making a huge difference to an underdog cause. How could cancer be an underdog, Josh? Is that a question? I don't know. I think it's pretty bad. When you hear someone has lung cancer, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably, did he or she smoke? It never fails. It is a valid question. Funding for lung cancer is completely dwarfed by other cancers that are nearly as fatal and is completely due to the stigma of a smoker's disease. I get turned away by sponsors and media all the time because no one wants to support a disease that is so preventable. But the thing is, it isn't. People who get LC secondhand for no reason at all. It happens all the time. Why don't people ask those with skin cancer if they wore sunscreen? Or people who have heart attacks if they ate? Well, it's just silly. But looking at the numbers, it just doesn't add up. So here's what we're going to do. Jess, since you were the chair. There's an event in New York City. New York City? It's called the walk to prevent I'm sorry. The walk to beat lung cancer. Lung cancer. And it is October 24, 2010, in Battery Park. And if you would like to take part in this Walk to Beat Lung Cancer, jess would really appreciate it. You can go to our website, www. Dot. Longevity. See what they did there. Orgnycwalk. So that is L-U-N-G-E-V-I-T-Y orgnynycwalk or twitter. You can follow this and get information at walk. No. Four lung cancer all one word. Or Facebook at Walk to beat lung cancer. And Jess would appreciate your participation. So our New York City buddies that we met while we were there spread the word and get out and walk. Yeah. That's awesome. And if you're one of those people who poopoos lung cancer or helping battle lung cancer, maybe it's time you took a long look in the mirror, because you could be a jerk. If you have any kind of organization like Chuck and I to give a shout out, too, we consider those on a case by case basis. Don't we, Chuck? We sure do. It definitely doesn't help, or it definitely doesn't hurt to grease the wheels. Do you know what I mean? And we're not talking about cash prizes. No, we can't legally do that, can we? No, you can tell us about your organization in an email to send it to stuffpodcast@housestuffworks.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. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1222708807044hsw-sysk-delta-force.mp3 | How Delta Force Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-delta-force-works | With the world's best weaponry, a shadowy legal status, and almost no oversight, Delta Force is the stuff of military legend. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn why Delta Force was created, and how this group works. | With the world's best weaponry, a shadowy legal status, and almost no oversight, Delta Force is the stuff of military legend. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn why Delta Force was created, and how this group works. | Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=274, tm_isdst=0) | 19476135 | 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. This is Chuck over here. Say hey, Chuck. Hey. Hey, Chuck. I should probably slow it down. Sounding so like a morning talk show hosting. Have you heard about the bombing in Yemen of the US. Embassy? I haven't. Did that just happened? Yeah, it happened very recently. I think the 16th, September 16. Feel like a heel now? It doesn't feel too bad. For some reason, any bombing that happens in Yemen doesn't make the biggest news. I don't know why, because this is an Al Qaeda bombing, and actually, it could have been a lot worse. There was a group of guys who were loaded down with explosives. Their car was just laid down with explosives, and they were going to go through the first checkpoint, blow up the gate after the first checkpoint, and then the second car was going to come through and kill anybody and everybody. Wow. Well, the guards at the checkpoint didn't buy the first car story, so they opened fire and they blew up. So these guards were killed, but it alerted to everybody what was going on. There's a firefight between the Yemeni security around the American embassy and the second car, and eventually all the terrorists were killed. Wow. But I think 16 people total died. And most of those were American. Well, no, there's one American, but most of them were working at the embassy. It was a big deal. It was the first major terrorist attack on a US. Target since September 11, 2001. But we haven't heard anything about it because Sarah Palin's eyeglasses are making front pages. Her updo is capturing the head. No wonder I didn't hear about it. I was reading an article in Time, and they were saying, like, this is the most recent clear indicator we have a real problem with Al Qaeda in Yemen. It's a hotbed. Like, it's very friendly to the west. And actually, this attack was supposedly a retaliation for your many security forces staging, like, counterterrorist activities. And al Qaeda is like, what do you think you're doing? So it is friendly to the United States, but at the same time, it's still kind of a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity. The thing is, we're pretty fairly entrenched in Iraq right now. I don't know if you've heard. Right. Yeah. We invaded in 2003. Henry left. It doesn't look like we're going to anytime soon. And now Afghanistan is boiling over again. Right. The last thing we need is another front, and Yemen doesn't sound like the kind of country we're just going to walk into and invade, basically. Right. So what do you do? What do you do when you have a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity? You know what I mean? You need surgical precision. Take out as much of the guys as possible. You know what I do. What? Two words delta Force. Oh, I've heard of these guys. Actually, I haven't heard of them. You know why? Because they don't officially exist. I know that's kind of creepy, but kind of cool. It is. Yeah. We should probably warn the listeners right now. Chuck and I will most likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of all the sick stuff Delta Force has done over the years. Right. So just be forewarned. If we start tutoring or get really excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't be offended. Okay. I know I did find myself when I was reading your article because I would say classify as anti war, not for this stuff, but when I was reading the stuff about the Delta Force, I just thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Well, I think that's what's so cool about Delta Force is you send them in, you don't need to go to war. Yeah. They take care of business. Sure. Maybe that's what I like about it. Clean and precise and quick, and that's kind of how it should be. So we should probably get some background here. Delta Force is essentially, as we said, unrecognized officially by the US government. Right. I had a lot of trouble in writing an article on them because you really have to piece everything together. There's lots of hearsay. There's no concrete evidence. Exactly. There is, but it was sadly disappointing and clearly run by some guy. No. Which, by the way, the Chuck Norris movie Delta Force. Highly inaccurate. Wildly inaccurate. I'm sure there was another movie he made called Invasion USA, which in that movie, he much more resembled the Delta Force operator. He didn't wear a uniform. He had an Uzi. I think both of those movies lee Marvin was in both of them. Right? The great, great, late, great Lee Marvin. Right. Well, specifically in Delta Force Lee Marvin's character, but also an Invasion USA as well. Lee Marvin's character was very much based on this guy named Colonel Beckwith. Yes. I don't remember Colonel Beckwith's first name, do you? That's Colonel. Yeah. Well, just call him Colonel. Yeah. He's like a murderous version of Share Kernell. Right. So Colonel Beckwith was this guy who basically had been over in Great Britain to train with the SAS, right. The British Special Forces. Right. So he's over there. He's really impressed with this group. We have our own version of Special Forces. I can't remember it's. Special Forces Operational Detachment A, I believe. And that's our regular Special Forces, who in and of themselves are just complete and total just they're rough. Right. Did you say badass? I don't think there's any way to get around it. Let's just get it out of the way right now. Delta Force is badass. Yes, they are, most decidedly. And the Special Forces, in and of themselves, these are the thinking man's arm of the army. Right. They are. Basically inserted into enemy territory, and they identify dissenting groups against whatever government we want to topple. And one or two Special Forces guys assemble guerrilla armies out of these descending forces and create insurgencies from within. It's been done before. Right. That's just Special Forces. Delta Force actually draws from Special Forces. They're not even army. No, they don't identify with any particular branch. Right. Because they draw the toughest dudes out of all the branches. Right. Yeah. And have you read Blackhawk Down or Killing Pablo? No, I saw the movie. Okay. And I saw a great documentary on it, too. I saw that one, too. Excellent. On an unnamed channel, the author of that book, Mark Bowden, is apparently just loved by the Delta Force because he's actually interviewed Delta Force operators, which is what they're called. They're not soldiers, they're operators. Yeah, I kind of like that. And they don't wear uniforms or fatigues. They shoot anything they like, which we'll get into later. That gets certain private companies who hire Delta Force operators in trouble. But Mark Bowden put it pretty clearly. He said they are professional soldiers who hate the army. I know. Which actually really think about it. That's the definition of a mercenary. Yeah, basically. But they're under control. They're ostensibly under the control of the US. Military. Right? Yeah. But apparently, like we say, all this is kind of conjecture, but only answer to the President. That's kind of my favorite part. Yeah. Well, that whole thing came out of their second mission. The first mission was to guard the Pan American Games, I think, in 1978. Right. And that went smoothly. Nothing noteworthy happened. Maybe because the Delta Force was there. Sure. I don't know. Their second mission was Operation Eagle Claw. This is the hostage take over in Iran in two years after Delta Force had been assembled. And this was back when Colonel Beckwith was really hands on and he was in there and basically like the Lee Marvin character, he's leading the charge and shooting commission and all that kind of thing. So this is Operation Nagal claw. They're flying in to do a strike on the American Embassy that's been taken over by Iranian extremists. Flying in what? Plain black helicopters? Yes. It's not like a TCS. Rainbow colored island. Hopper on Magnum Pi. No, it doesn't say us. Army. It doesn't say CIA. To tell you the truth, it would probably more resemble TC helicopter than your normal Huey. Yeah, sure. They have their own aviation platoon that can get them from place to place and actually creates plausible deniability. It could just as easily be a bunch of crazed, wealthy American businessmen bent on patriotism as it could be Delta Force. Right, but Eagle Claw distracted you, so Eagle Claw, they're going in, there's a helicopter crash, and they never get to actually carry out the mission. The problem was Delta Force was being commanded by traditional Special Forces commanders at the time. After that they were taken out of command. As I said in the article, no one has any idea whose command they were put under. Right. And you kind of get the impression the more you find out about Delta Force that they're not under anyone's command. Like I say, the answer to the President, I think that's probably about it. Right. And no one knows where their funding comes from. I think you call it a Black Fund. It is a black fund, yes. There's some sort of appropriations that I'm sure Congress deals with every year, two years, whatever, and then gives X number of millions and millions of dollars to this Delta Force Black Fund. And they do whatever they like with it. And actually in 1985, that was a banner year for getting actual documented evidence that there is a Delta Force. Some Delta Force operators were being investigated for basically misappropriating money from that black funds. They had been deployed to, I think, Sicily for counterterrorism activity. Right. And before they could leave the country, they had to be cleared by the Justice Department because they were all under investigation. They've been basically pilfering money from a black fun. Right. What do you do? How do you pilfer money from black fund you just put in your pocket and walk away? I guess. So there's got to be a money trail somehow, but nothing that is public. Also, what are you going to do? It's Belgium Force. Like, hey, give us our money back. No, sure. We'll come in there with a submachine gun. Right? Yeah. Talk about it. And their weaponry actually is the stuff of legends as well. Apparently they favor Heckler and Cotch tremendously MP5. M four M, four S and MP5. Yeah. Which are pretty cool. Submachine guns. Yeah. Look them up on the Internet. And I don't even like guns. No, but these things are awesome. Exactly. This is the heart of Delta Force. Okay. This is what Chuck just said is exactly the heart of Delta Force. He is against war, and yet he is awed by Delta Force. He doesn't even like guns, and yet he's awed by the guns the Delta Force uses. This is Quintessential Delta Force. Yeah. Well, part of it has to do with the fact that they're operations. They have some of the names Eagle Claw and Operation Urgent Fury was one of my favorites. What was that? Grenada or yeah, that was Grenada. And then Panama was operation just cause. Operation. Just cause was the operation where the United States, including Special Forces. I think the Army Rangers were there. Basically, we sent a contingent of our best of the best down there to get rid of Manuel Noriega. Right. And CIA guy. Yeah, there's a CIA guy who'd been operating in Panama, basically doing a radio free broadcast, and he'd been captured. And so Delta Force went in and I believe rescued him. Yeah, rescued him. And they also captured Noriega. Right. If it wasn't Delta Force, somebody captured Noriega, because as far as I know, he's still in a prison in Miami right now. Well, I think they helped capture him. Okay, so it might have been one of those things where I have a feeling Delta Force, a lot of times I can get the public credit for some of these things because they don't exist. Right, yeah, exactly. And the other impression I have is that Delta Force really doesn't care about the public credit. I think they just like to be deployed. Whenever I think of delta force. Supposedly they're headquartered at fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is the home of the army special forces as well. And apparently it's very well funded, great training center. But when I think about Delta Force training, I just see a bunch of guys who are either bored or frustrated. They want to be around the world, in Yemen, for example, illegally hunting down Al Qaeda operatives and shooting them while they're unarmed. Well, the other thing that you'll find if you were to see a Delta Force training operation is some excellent marksmen. Yeah. This is really something. You want to tell them what the requirements are? As far as we know, again, this is conjecture, but we got this from, I think, VFW magazine. You want me to tell them? No, I'll tell you. This is reputed, of course, the Delta Force recruits must show 100% accuracy from 600 yards away. Okay, so that's six football fields. Six football fields. You have to be able to hit some target in the heart from six football fields away, where's the 90% accuracy 90% is at 1000 yards. So they'll give you a little bit of leeway if you're shooting from 1000 yards away. Ten football fields. Right. Ten football field. Now, we were talking about the armaments, the weapons. They like, there's a Browning 50 caliber sniper rifle. That's a very large shelf. It is enormous. And apparently they use that for targets up to 1750 yards. Right. I mean, that's the kind of thing that can go through a wall, then through another wall and through a brick wall and then into someone's head, probably. Yes, sure. And then through somebody's helmet and head. Right. That's what a 50 cow will do. And then go out the back and wrap a Christmas present on the way. Right, yeah. I tell you what, though, man. If I was stuck in Grenada, if I was a journalist and I was blindfolded and potentially going to be beheaded, you know who I would want coming to visit me? Oh, no. I realize delta for sure. Of course. Nobody else. And they have had some sterling operations that have made it into the media. There was a hijacked airliner, and I think what country was it, Chuck? Was that Yemen? If it was, then wow. Okay, it wasn't Yemen. Let's just say, okay, we'll go with airliner hijacking. These guys, I don't know how many members were on the team? They stormed the airliner. Now there's four hijackers in there. Indonesia. Right. Okay. They stormed the airliner that was on the tarmac, the jet. There's four hijackers who had this whole plane load of hostages. Delta Force goes in there, and as far as I know, they use the two tap method, which Colonel Beckwith came up with. The two tap method is where you put two bullets in the head of each target. Right. It's not a left half. No. So I think I point out in the article, when you see somebody in a movie or on TV and they've spared some enemy that is dying, but he picks up a gun and tries to shoot, maybe kill, for instance, this doesn't happen with Delta Force. You get two bullets in the head from a Delta Force operative, you're going down and you're not coming back. Yeah, it's definitely a shoot first. Don't even ask questions. I think this was a TWA flight or something. They stormed this flight. Two taps to each hostage taker. Not one casualty. Not one casualty. As far as I know, only the four hijackers died. Isn't that crazy to think about? This international incident in these hostages and eight bullets takes care of the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of cool. I agree wholeheartedly. Now we are getting a little drooly, as I warned. We're pretty excited about Delta Force. We want to be in Delta Force, although you wouldn't know if I was. So there's plenty of criticism of Delta Force. They were reputedly part of the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco that went horribly Awrying cross in the article, but some of the sources that I read, it sounded very plausible. Yeah. And that's definitely one of the black eyes. Definitely the Clinton administration in our country as a whole. I think the other thing for researching this article is Clinton seemed let me put it differently the Delta Force was operating within US. Borders, which is not what's supposed to be done. The military isn't supposed to operate in the borders of the United States unless martial law has been declared. As far as police police, that happened a lot under Clinton. A disproportionate amount. Right. That happened supposedly at Waco. Well, actually, what I love about Waco, though, is they admitted that there were three Delta Force guys there and one was supposedly an observer. I don't know. He was just standing there watching. Yes. From what I get from these guys, they're not ones to stand around and go, wow, you're doing a great job. Right, exactly. Padding the backs of the FBI, like, way to firestorm that place. Way to go, buddy. We know for a fact that they were at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in which went horribly Awry. Yeah. They do a lot of guarding of dignitaries and how big cars are. I, apparently is being protected by Delta Force right now. Right. And it's so weird. When I was researching this again, I saw photos of cars. I with guys that were identified as Delta Force operators. And you'd start looking, and all of a sudden, you start to recognize that this guy or that guy really? Same guys, but in different locations. There's a very famous photo of a Special Forces guy out of uniform wearing I can't remember what they call it, but basically that head wrap. It goes around the head, and then it's not a turban, but it's somewhat similar. It goes down the back. He's riding a horse through Afghanistan with, like, laden with guns to tap into his way. Exactly. He was Special Forces, but you see that guy around here there. So it's really interesting to start to root through their history and come to the present and start to see the same people over and over, and you're like, I'm pretty sure I'm looking at a Delta Force operator. Somebody who doesn't exist, somebody who's a shadow, somebody who is basically the closest thing we have to a license to kill. Sure. Like, you don't send Delta Force in to rough somebody up, send them into completely slaughter everybody. Two taps. Hopefully Chuck and I will survive the night after recording this podcast. I know. Find out. We just want to say we're glad these guys are out there. I much prefer Delta Force going in, a few guys doing something efficiently and quietly than sending in 10,000 troops. Oh, sure, yeah. It's much less clumsy, and it gets the job done. Although I'm quite sure there are several human rights activists that would disagree with us on that matter. Yes, Josh, I'm sure you're right. That's a good point. Yeah. Well, I'm sure the Delta sports would disagree with them, and I would not want to be the human rights activist. No, thank you. While we're sidestepping an international incident, don't forget to look up how Delta Force works on Housetepworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcasts@howstepworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | |
b2c847bc-1fe9-4675-a968-aebd012ceb3a | Selects: Chiggers: The Phantom Menace | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-chiggers-the-phantom-menace | Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 25 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=176, tm_isdst=0) | 31275556 | audio/mpeg | "How d everybody, it's May 24, 2016, or at least that's the date of this selects episode. I picked this one out. Triggers The Phantom Menace. Cuz boy chig are terrible, and they make you itch. And I would say that listening to this episode will make you itch. So that's my goal on this Saturday, to make everybody itch. I'm really sorry, but here we go with The Phantom Menace. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Jerry's had chickens. Yeah, me too. I have not. I'm really glad I was, like, triggered. Seems like Tracy is making a pretty big deal out of this in this article. Yeah. Tracy Wilson of stuff you missed in history class wrote this. Who recently got married. Congratulations, Tracy. Yeah. And she wrote if you've ever heard her say the word mouth parts in the show, tracy wrote it. Chances are she wrote it. She wrote ticks and mosquitoes meals. Did she write bees? I think so. She did a whole insect. Sweet. She spent a lot of time knee deep in insects. Yeah. And this isn't even an insect. Spoiler. Oh, you just removed the fact of the podcast. I think so. I don't think you did. I'm just teasing. Okay, but I know what you think it is, because I think the same thing. All right, well, we'll see. Okay, I challenge you. I challenge you back. We throw down the gauntlet, which is glove. So Tracy did make a big deal out of triggers, but apparently it's a big deal, right? Well, sure. Have you ever had them? They're no fun. No. The deeper I got into the article, the more I was like, oh, yeah, this does sound really kind of awful. Yeah. And just warn everyone this is another itch inducing episode. And speaking of, I got my first little bout of poison ivy. Congratulations. Thanks. That's great. Yeah. I was clearing out stuff over the weekend, and I was in poison ivy, and I knew it. I was like, I've never had it before. This sounds very familiar, but I was still I'm no dummy. I know how Murphy's Law works. Okay. So I said I just said that out loud. You just said that out loud, or you just said I said I'm not allergic to Emily. I thought you were saying, like, I'm no dummy. No, I said that too. And I said, so you know what? I'm going to be careful, and I'm going to go take a shower pretty soon afterward. Smart. And so it's not bad, but there are probably five or six little tiny little sets of bumps on each leg. Pustules. Yes. They're not bad, though. And I looked at them, I said, you know what? That's frigging poison ivy after all these years, finally got you. Yep, but not too bad. Like my dad always said, poison Iville gets everybody one day. Is that his big thing? So anyway, speaking of itching, that's my itch story of the day. And this will make you itch. Because it made me itch while reading it. I think you're right, actually. That's funny. It didn't make me itch. Maybe because I've never had it. You're scratching yourself right now. No, I'm pointing to myself. Okay. In a weird place. I'm pointing my finger to my skin and moving it around, but I'm not scratchy. So everybody knows that triggers are insects that burrow into your skin and suck your blood. I'm sorry, you're being coy, my friend. I am? Because you just lied three times. Burrow into your skin. Oh, insects that burrow into your skin that suck your blood. That's right. There's three lies in there. This is like a highlight. We have to go pick out what's wrong with this picture. Suggirs are not insects. They are arachnids. They are the larvae of the harvest mite. They do not burrow into your skin and suck your blood. No, but then so what are the bumps? Well, you're being coy again, but what they are actually doing is maybe even grosser than sucking your blood. They are liquefying your cells into a slurry that they can drink from a straw made of your body. It's pretty amazing. Is that the fact for you? Yeah. Alright buddy, we'll get there. We have the same one. High five. First one. First what? First time we've ever high five in an episode. Is that right? Sure. I would have imagined that you could make like a video montage of us like highfiving during episodes. No, guess not. So you said that these things are the larvae of harvest mites, right? Yeah. And harvest mites are arachnids. They're related to spiders, so they're not insects. But you can understand why people would think that are insects. Because triggers, the larvae of the harvest might have six legs. Yes. So you'd be like, well, it's an insect. No, they haven't grown their adult legs yet, apparently. Yeah, I guess they get those two more legs at some point. Yeah. The adults are red and the little larvae are red, but you're not going to see that's. One of the problems with triggers is you're not going to see like a mosquito landing on you or a flea. Even if you think a flea is small, the trigger is like a tiny little dot that you would never notice. No. And you may not even be able to see it all with your eyeballs. All right. But sometimes you can see several of them together, basically forming a clump. Like the smart together. Yeah. One of them has kid from Kitten, plays haircut or Aman Schumpertz. More contemporaneously. Yeah. That is a total kid. And play haircut. Did you know that Iman Shunt delivered his own child in his apartment? Oh, wow. On purpose? Accidentally. The kids just came very quickly and the 911 dispatcher had to talk him through how to do it, but he delivered his own child, he and his wife or girlfriend right there in their apartment. Everything was good. Totally great. Wow, that's great news. He's a basketball player, by the way, people. Oh, yeah? People like who's? A mud jumper. He plays for the boo, for the calves. So if you're an adult harvest mite and you've grown up from a sugar into an adult, you're going to eat it's actually a beneficial little arachnid to have around, because they're going to eat the eggs of other pests, like mosquitoes. Right. So you want the adults around as an adult or as the second step, the nymphs, right after the larva. Yeah, it's the larvae that suck. But they don't suck. Well, yeah, but the larvae, you got to have them. Hopefully, they just stay in the yard. Although these things are holy terrors to see if you are on their scale, like, if that thing is coming after you and your eggs, I'll bet it's just really terrifying. I bet they are parasitic, though. They don't the larvae are yeah, they don't eat the blood, though, like we pointed out, like the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes. No, they eat your skin cells. Right. So here's what happens. Larva hatch. Apparently an adult female harvest mite will go into the dirt and be like, there's a bunch of eggs. Yes. And iman jumper is there to welcome them for them to hatch so we can hasten their birth. And then the eggs do hatch, and the harvest mite female tends to layer eggs all in one place. Sure. So if you are familiar with triggers, if you've ever had them in your yard, like, one little patch of grass can be totally overrun with triggers, but then you just turn a few degrees to your left, there's another patch of grass that is totally devoid of them. Yeah, I get the feeling they don't get around too quickly either. No, they don't. They're pretty stupid, low level animals, if you ask me. So the eggs are laid in one place, they hatch, and the little larvae come out, and they're like, Blood meal. Give me a blood meal that's not actually made of blood. That's basically what they say. Okay. They hatch pretty much anytime during the year, except for the hard winters. And like you said, they want that first meal. And the reason they want that first meal is not just because they're ravenous little jerks. They actually cannot progress to that nip stage and then grow up to be adults unless they have a complete first meal. They can have half a first meal. They can have three quarters, seven, eight, and get scratched off the body or brushed off the body, and that's pretty much it. They generally will not go back and finish that meal. So there's no starting over. They're just like, well, that's it. That's the end of Mill House. I had my one chance. And so it's like a complete lose lose situation when a chigger bites a person because once you start itching as a person, you go to scratch the area and there goes the trigger. They don't latch onto your skin, they don't burrow into your skin. So the moment your finger makes contact with them, they're gone. The welt they leave behind is there and persist for a while. But they didn't finish their meal and they die. But you still get the scratch or the horrible itch. It's loose. Loose. It is loose. They need to stay away from humans. Well, they do because there are a lot of animals that don't mind the trigger on their body. So they can get their full meal deal there and go on to live a great and healthy life without getting scratched off. So they don't want to be on a human. I mean, you would think, like, how long could the meal possibly last? We're talking like buffet level, length of time? Four days. Four days to eat a four day meal and think about it. That's time for us. Like, how long is four days to harvest mite larvae? You could probably do the math. It's like seven or eight days. Figure out trigger years or yeah, probably most of their life. Yeah. So there's a bunch of different kinds of triggers around the world and they're actually I mean, they are pests, they are parasites, but there's only like at least one as far as this article says, that is really problematic for humans. The lepotrobidium diligence nice might it's common to Asia and it can carry typhus, a form of typhus which can kill you if it's untreated. Yeah, it's cured with antibiotics pretty easily, but if you're out in the middle of nowhere, it can kill you. But don't worry, unless you are in certain parts of Asia, not a problem. Right. Chiggers will just annoy you. Yeah, that's it. They're basically just a total annoyance and by annoying humans, they die. It's stupid. Alright, well, let's take a little break here and we will come back and talk about some of the wonders of the trigger. All right. Do we cover fleas? Yeah, I want to say yes. They definitely eat a blood meal. We've covered fleas, ticks, mosquitoes. Yes. Spiders, scabies. Did we? Oh, yeah. Man. It's really getting a little too much to try to remember now. Yeah, I mean, there's like lost episodes just because we forgot them. It's officially, officially getting out of hand. I guess we should stop. No, we keep going, my friend. My brain hurts so bad, Chuck. Alright, so what I was talking about was the wonders of the trigger. They have a lot of little things that they have about them that make them able to perform this surgery on your skin. Well put. It is kind of like surgery. It is. But again, they aren't latching on, they're just kind of hanging around. And when you get a trigger on your skin, it actually will spend usually hours looking for a good place to go try to get a meal. Because they have these little tiny mouth parts. There's the word that makes the appearance, which lets you know it's a Tracy Wilson joint. Right. But they don't pure skin very easily, at least not human skin. Tough skin that you would find in most places of your body, trigger can't bite through, which is why you will get sugar bites in places like the back of your knee, like in your armpit. Places where the trigger can get its mouth parts. What are they called? Chilliceraceris callistriae. Explains it all. That's why you'll get those bites in those areas because that's where they can get their closure eye into. That's right. They are light sensitive, which means they're going to hang out in the shade mostly. If it was up to them, at least the sun is going to dry out their body. So that's why they head toward the shade. It can kill them, basically. Sure. And so also when a host comes near, there's like your dog casting a shadow, the triggers go, look over there. I think it's pretty clever. There's a shadow that means something is alive with skin. That means that in some weird way, triggers are aware of shadows. That's right. I mean, like some dogs aren't aware of shadows or don't understand them. I think probably most dogs. Have you ever seen that baby? Two, three year old toddler who sees her shadow for the first time and just starts freaking out, trying to get away from it. Oh, really? Cute. So it was a possessed baby? Kind of. That's sad. It's cute. I saw that movie. That was The Exorcist. Right? That's what I'm talking about. They are very temperature sensitive as well. So when they come into contact with a host and the host is the thing that it's going to feed on, it's not infrared, but it's going to detect that body heat. Right. And say, all right, there's something I can try and latch onto. So it's like Predator in that respect. Yeah, a little bit, kind of. No dreadlocks. No, those are a nice addition if you ask me. What else? I think it's hilarious. Tracy called it upward mobility. Yeah. They like to climb to the tops of stuff. And I remember this one from Ticks. Yeah. Remember that? The ticks would just like grasp at things like little tiny lobsters. Yeah. Just stand there and wait for something to pass by. And as it does, they grab it. Yeah. They don't stand there with their arms outstretched the whole time. No, that's a stress position. There's something called the questing response, which is another hilarious term. They're questing. Yes. They get up on their tippy toes. They're standing up with their arms raised up toward the heavens. Yeah. I'm asking for a meal of human cells. Imagine John Cusack can say anything but take away the boom box. Right. That's a questing position. Yeah. The chickens are there and they're a little overcoat and they're spiky hair and they're bad attitudes. Yeah. I just saw John Rodrig, a friend of the show. John Rodrick. Great Seattle musician. He tweeted the other day about Silverfish, the little insect. Sure. He said, Why don't we call silver fish what they were clearly meant to be called sink lobsters. Really struck me as funny. Yeah, they don't look fishy at all. Silver. Sure. Sink lobster. That's a great one. Yeah. Right. And finally, they are touch sensitive. They have these little hair like sensory organs on their body to help basically to help them find everything from host to each other. Yeah. They're like, let's get together and really do some damage on this guy's armpit. Yeah. Or you see that waistband? It's a great place to hide underpants band. Yeah. Underpants band, yeah. Is that what it said in here? No, that's what I said. Okay. But that is a great place to hide because, like we said a few times, you'll easily scratch them off. So they want to go somewhere where you may not be thinking about scratching. Yes. I was surprised, though, that they go I could see kind of the outside of the armpit, back of the knee, the waistband, underpants band, they're protected. There they are. But at the same time, it's warm there and they're temperature sensitive. So you would think since they're seeking shade, they would go to a cooler spot, but there's probably not too many cool spots on the human body that are protected. Yeah, good point. Not really. I just said a bunch of contradictory stuff. So all these things help the triggers find their hosts, but as Tracy points out, that's half the battle. Yeah. And when you find a trigger on you, it's probably sorry. That it shows you as it's one four day meal, because they don't like humans. They'll climb onto anything just about any vertebrate animal. Snakes, turtles, birds. Poor little birds. Chipmunks. Yeah. They don't like us because we take hot showers every day. That's right. And a lot of these animals don't have any kind of response to being bitten by a chicken. So the likelihood of the chicken being undisturbed for four days while it's having its meal fourth meal, is what we're going to call it, like Taco Bell. Do you remember that? They tried to invent another meal, so they're not going to get brushed off on these things. Humans almost invariably brush triggers off because right when we start scratching again, it removes the trigger, so they don't seek us out as prey. It's just total happenstance. Yeah. And like you said, since they need that thin skin, little kids are more likely to get bitten by a sugar than an old leathery old sea captain, let's say. Yeah. And little kids who can't take being teased really are vulnerable to sugar butt because they're thin skinned. Very nice. You know, the ones who wear, like, shorts with knee socks pull all the way up through those kids. Yeah. And their nose are always running because they're crying or they just stop crying, those kind of kids. So, like I said, a hot shower is a great way to kill. It's great for a lot of reasons. Great way to kill sugars. It's a great way to keep your body clean. It's a great way to unwind at the end of a long day, working in the yard, because that's where you're going to get your Chicker bites, most likely, yeah. In the yard. Yeah. Especially if you are the type who gets, like, letters from the neighborhood association saying, mow your lawn, you might have Chickers. I will never live where there is a neighborhood association. Yeah. No way. No way. Yeah. You know, in some places it's not my thing. In some places, a neighborhood covenant supersedes local law. Yes. Unbelievable. Like, your mailbox has got to be like this. You can't paint your house that color. Not for me. And you got to pay us a certain amount of money to boss you around every month. Nope. Yup. That's why I have stack of car batteries aside my house with, like, old wood that I haven't used still, and, like, Sanford and sun house there and then, like, in paint with a brush that says, welcome, children, on the side of your truck. All right, so should we take another break and talk a little bit more about that weird fact of the day? Yeah. All right, buddy. We talked about the mouth parts. So what they do is they get that callyceride, and they make a hole in your skin. Normal enough. They inject saliva, which contains digestive enzymes that make a slurry of your skin cells. We talked about other insects that do similar things like this. So it's still pretty like, all right, no big deal. Then it gets weird. It does. And I don't know if it's because they have, like, specific enzymes or something, but I didn't see this happening with anything else, did you? No. You drop it on them? No. You refuse? I refuse. All right. So what happens is they have in these secretions what happens is they break your skin cells down, which makes it slurry, which is good, makes sense. Slurp it up, but then the surrounding tissue hardens, and it actually creates a tube, a little hard straw in your skin. In the wound. Yeah. Called a stylusone. Right. What do they do with that? They drink out of it. They use it like a crazy straw to slurp up your wrecked cells. Yeah. And the longer they're in there, the longer the straw is. The style of stone, the stylus dome. Yeah. I saw a paper from 2004, and in the abstract that said something like, it seems that stylist domes form as a reaction to triggers. So I don't know if they thought like, maybe this was part of a chicken or something like that, but I guess it's a recent finding oh, really? That styles don't form and that's how chiggers actually eat because they don't have any promiscuous or anything like that. Now they're pretty much really weak proboscis one of those. They're just not great insects or arachnids at all. They're not, they can't bite very easily, they can't suck anything out. They're useless. Yeah. But your body just happens to help them out. Well, they have that magic juice, I guess, so it's pretty cool. Yeah. So with that magic juice, that's going to be one of the two reasons you're going to be itching a lot some people react quite adversely to that juice. Right. Other people, it's not that bad, but it's still going to itch no matter what. And it's not just the juice you're reacting to. I think that's probably what first gets your attention. But the thing that causes the persistent itch is that stylus dome your body's own reaction, which seems to be forming basically a hollow tube of temporary scar tissue in this wound area. Crazy. And then that actually causes some sort of itch reaction as your skin heals. And that can take a very long time to heal. This is the point where I was like, oh, having triggers actually does suck terribly. Yeah. I think if you had a chigor that was able to complete its full four day meal, your toast means you haven't showered for four days. Yeah. That's when your style of stone is going to be at its peak of hardness and length right. And it's going to have the worst reaction. Right. So what can you do? There are home remedies, you've heard maybe like painting over trigger bites with a clear nail polish, right. Or any kind of nail polish, really, I think, yeah, sure. If you got flair, some sparkly gold, I get to put some dots on my armpit and then why not? I'll put some around my eye as well. So what's the deal there? You just choking it out? A lot of people would say, yes, you're covering up the trigger that's burrowed into your skin and it is now suffocating to death. It's like choke on your meal. But that's wrong because again, sugars don't burrow into your skin. Right. And Tracy points out very acutely, by the time you even notice it, it's very likely the sugar is not there any longer. Right. So if you're painting something over your skin, really what you're doing is protecting the wound area from the air, contact with the air, which can aggravate it. So it does help. But Tracy says just use anti, itch cream it's way better. Yeah. Like cortisone or something. Is that what it is? Yeah. I don't know why she felt the need to put this in here, but we might as well, say it. Don't try to remove the stylus dome. I can see people doing that, trying to dig it out. Yeah, no, you don't need to. No, I can definitely see people doing that. I think that was worth it. She also says don't use turpentine. Yes. I've never heard that. Yes, people do all sorts of dumb stuff. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you could soak in a tub of gasoline and that would probably kill light it on fire. Problems. Yeah. Most of these home remedies you should just shy away from, I think. Yes. Only use remedies approved by modern Western medicine. Modern Western medicine. The only treatment you need the name trigger, they believe. You ever heard of sand fleas? Like in Florida or anywhere. Yeah, they're like tiny crabs. Yeah, those are chico fleas, chigoe. And another name for that is the jigger flea. And they think that sugar came from just sort of matching those two names together even though it's not the same thing. No, it's not. Those actually do burrow into your skin and lay eggs there. And then the eggs like to feast on you. So not good. But I guess there's just nothing but confusion surrounding triggers. Nothing. So, Chuck, if you want to protect yourself against trigger invasions into your armpits and your underpants bands, what do you do? Well, if you work in your yard and your garden a lot, you wear long sleeves, wear pants to cover up as much body as you can physically. You can wear deep if you want or any other kind of insect repellent. You can also use sulfur. I've never heard of that. I haven't either. I wonder if you'd like to just burn incense near you or something. I don't know. It would smell like bathe in egg water. Yeah. God, bathe in like I will never ever try because I hate pickled things anyway. But pickled eggs, they're not bad. They're usually a little too sweet. They see those things floating in a jar and it's like I feel like I'm in a hospital. Like where you found the head? Yeah. I think it's the Chinese. Probably Japanese and Korean, too. There's a type of pickle eggs where they soak them in a brine and it's the saltiest thing you will ever eat. And they're mucky and brown. Yeah, those are not good. The other ones are fine. They don't taste that great. I think I don't want food soaked in liquid. I think pickled stuff is really good for you. I mean, I hate pickled things, but just love pickled everyday period. Like soaking something in a solution, I just don't want. I don't even like marinades. I'm a dry rub guy. Are you really? Oh, yeah. You know, I didn't know that about you. Yeah. So you know, like sauces of any kind or is it the pre soaking? Like pre cooking soaking that pre marinating, I don't like. Okay. If you have a quality french saucy at your disposal. Sure. I'll take a little. All right. But put it on the side in a plastic cup. Like, there was this place near Emily shop that it's now closed. I kind of feel bad for saying this, but I think I know why. Because they use too much sauce, dude. They had this delicious crispy, crispy fried chicken that they dumped this gravy sauce on top. They never just put it on the side now. And by the time it got to the table, it wasn't crispy fried chicken anymore. That's terrible. I just don't get it. But, yeah, I'll eat a sauce. Yeah. What you're describing is smothered chicken. It's totally different. But it was fried. Fried and smothered can't do that. Those two things are never supposed to come together. If you want to see if you have triggers on your property, tracy says you can take a piece of black paper. Black construction paper maybe from your child. Right. Give me that, you stupid kid. And go out and lay it on the ground near where you think there might be triggers and you might see little tiny, tiny red things. She doesn't just say that. She says to take a piece of paper and defy physics by standing it up on its edge. Is that what she says? And then the triggers will follow their natural urges and climb to the top of the paper. What world does Tracy live in? Well, you're in the grass. You can stand a piece of paper up in the grass. Maybe not if you take care of your grass. This isn't like that Twilight Zone episode where Darren from Bewitched, like, flipped the coin and it lands on its side. Oh, man. You know what happened in PE. In college? One time, my PE. Teacher, a basketball teacher, threw a pen. Remember the paper mate pins that had the cap with the just sort of flat top? Yes. He just flipped it up in the air and meant to catch it. Didn't it hit the ground bounce and landed completely straight up and down on its cap? That's exactly like that Twilight Zone episode. He could hear everyone's thoughts after that point now. Well, I dropped that class immediately. That's smart. I was like, I'm out of here. Very smart. Were you like which ran out the door. Yeah. You're doing Satan's work. Oh, man. All right, well, that's triggers. Oh, we didn't say if you really want to control chiggers in your yard, just take care of your yard. They will go away. They won't want to hang out there. There won't be long stalks of grass for them to climb up to inquest from. That's right. If you want to know more about triggers horrible, horrible little things, you can type that word into the search bar athousedoforce.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. Hey, guys, I'm a new fan. I must admit, I'm getting addicted. Recently listened to the Anesthesia podcast, and I heard the listener mail. The Harvard student needed five numbing injections to the nasal cavity for breaking her nose. That was terrible. She thinks she can run up it here. It's not bad. Oh, man. I know. I'm sorry. In college, one of my mowers became infected. I need a root canal. The day of the procedure, the dentist gave me shots and the gum, which Chuck said was the worst thing ever in life. After a few numbing shots, he got to work drilling into the infected tooth. Unfortunately, he didn't give me enough. Once he got down to the root, I felt it and it felt awful. So I said to the dentist, hey. I alerted the dentist. He then pulled out what must have been the largest needle in existence and gave me a shot directly into the infected root of my teeth and nose beat me. She said that she takes pain. Well, she said, but this made me sob uncontrollably. It was ten years ago, and I can still vividly recall the flash of blinding pain when they need to make contact. To make matters worse, that evening my gum swelled, dislodged the temporary crown. I had to go back the next day to have it refitted. So that's my injection story. Like I said, I'm not sure if it's worse than the five in the nose, but I'd say both were pretty terrible. I hope you enjoyed the read. Julie Yeast from Honolulu, Hawaii. It's a lot for that Julie man. I'm making air quotes when I say thanks. That's like scarring, right? She'll remember that for the rest of her life. Way to go. If you want to try to gross us out, it's going to be tough to top that one, but let's keep it going, shall we? You can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Twins Work How Twins Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-twins-work-how-twins-work | Twin siblings are common enough that most people know a pair or two, but why does twinning occur? Josh and Chuckers explain where twins (and babies) come from, discuss different types of twins and debunk some "twin myths" in this episode. | Twin siblings are common enough that most people know a pair or two, but why does twinning occur? Josh and Chuckers explain where twins (and babies) come from, discuss different types of twins and debunk some "twin myths" in this episode. | Tue, 11 May 2010 18:11:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=18, tm_min=11, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=131, tm_isdst=0) | 36755563 | 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. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Someone asked me on Facebook what the W stood for. Did you see that? No. I thought you said Willemina. Yeah, it's not true, but I'm not telling. I know what it stands for. Well, sure you do. I don't know if I know your name. I'm not telling. Why don't I know that? I'm doubting reality right now. Okay. All right, moving on. What's your setup, buddy? I don't really have a set up, Chuck. Frankly, I'm getting a little sick of my own setup. Do you have one? No. Okay, let's talk about twins. That is not a tumor. How's that? That's pretty good. From the movie Twins. Yeah. No, that's from Kindergarten Cop. It's not a tumor. So lame. Yeah. I can't believe I got that. It's okay, man. You got the accent down. Perfect. Twins was when he sang the jacket act. Don't talk back, don't talk back, don't talk back. You don't call the kitchen floor okay, so twins. Yes. We're talking about twins, obviously, or we're talking about Kindergarten Cop to toss up at this point. Actually, let's go with twins, Chuckers. Okay. All right. So you've known some twins, I'm sure, in your life? Yeah, I've known a few. I used to know a lot more back when I was in school. Sure. I knew twins. I don't know any now, I don't think. Yes. I don't know. I don't actively know any twins. You never jog with any of them? No. Okay, so you are familiar, then, as I'm sure most people are. They're not entirely uncommon, although there's a lot fewer of them than one might imagine. Especially identical twins. Right? Yeah. Fraternal twins are actually way more common, and we'll get into how these things are made. And by these things, I mean people who are twins. They will soon be corralled like gingers, right? Yes. Two thirds more common, I think, is the fraternal twins. Okay. I guess to get to the point of how twins are made, we should maybe talk a little bit about how babies are made. And what we're talking about are called singletons. Like you, me, Jerry. You're not a twin, are you? She's not a no. Okay. Jerry says no. So we're all singletons, is what people like us are called. That's right. Very unique little snowflakes. That's right. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk about how a singleton is made. Okay. I'll get the ball rolling. We're not going to talk about the nasty, dirty things that go into making babies. We'll just go with the science of it all. Okay. About midway through a women's menstrual cycle, she releases an egg. Yes, that's what it sounds like. I understand. As it travels down the fallopian tube. Sure. And then that single egg is fertilized by a little swimmer little spermy guy. Right. And a bunch of them are coming at it at once. Yeah, I imagine that's rather intimidating. And apparently I understand that brother sperm related sperm can recognize one another in the uterus and will tag team to get there faster. They'll draft or they'll connect and they'll try to fill other people out. Like teammates in a NASCAR race. Exactly. Interesting. But when they get to the egg, it's every man for himself. Right. And so the sperm gets to the egg and fertilizes it. Yes. And then what you have about a day and a half later is conception. And then it's called a zygote. Right. And then after that, it divides into the fertilized egg. Divides into two. Yeah. And we're talking about single tins. Don't get all crazy yet. The twins, the fertilized egg divides into two and then right. Four days later, it is about 100 cells. It's dividing. And now it's called a blastocyst. Right. Well, you keep hogging all the great words. Sorry. And then the 6th day after that, the blastocyst implants the uterine wall and that's where it gestates into a human being. And along the way we all develop vestigial tails. Did you know that? Yeah, I've heard that fall off for most people. Sure. Yeah. And if not, what do you call or what is it called? It's called a vestigial tail. Okay, I can't remember. There's a name for being born with stuff like that. Right. And I can't remember. We have an article on the site. I think Clambert wrote it. Yeah. Okay. So Chuck, week nine, you've got a fetus prior to that, it's an embryo. Yes. And as the baby develops, it's surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac. Right. That's where it gets all the food and oxygen and all the things little fetus needs to progress. Right. And it evacuates its bowels and it's little tinkler into the umbilical cord. Right. Nine months later, approximately, you have a singleton. A little singleton, right. Not necessarily a simpleton, but definitely a singleton. Right? Right. So that's normal. Regular old, straight up. I have a new little single baby. So what happens when you have twins? There are two types, right? Yes. We talked about identical and fraternal. There's much more egg heading names for those than that. Yeah. Monozygotic is identical and dixygotic is fraternal. Right. So we'll go with them. Can we call them identical and fraternal? Sure. Okay, thanks. So starting with we'll start with fraternal, right? Yeah, that's the easy one. Yeah, they're pretty simple and fraternal. Twins, by the way, don't have any more shared DNA than Chuck and his very handsome brother share 50%. Yes. I wish I shared that much with my brother. So what happens is the mom releases two eggs rather than one, and the dad hits them with the sperm. Yeah, like 50 million sperm. Right. And then one gets in and then another gets in, and you have two developing cygots. Yeah. It's basically the same thing. It's like having two singletons at the same time, right. Baking two buns in the same oven. Right. And with the diezygotic twin I'm sorry, fraternal twin. You've got three possible sets of combinations. Two males, two females are male and a female. And actually, male and female are the most common. They represent half of all fraternal twins. Yeah. Those are my favorites. Mine, too. Love it. Steven, Katy, Duty. I don't know any personally, although Scott and Stacey Fralich were my brother's age, and I just always thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah, they're very close. They're always very sweet. Where you're sweet. Yes. And plus the whole the brother protecting the sister and the sister setting up their brother with her friends. Right? Yeah. It's a perfect super relationship. Boy, girl. Fraternal twins are super cute. Yes. We need a T shirt that says that. Not like those weirdos that look alike. All right, Chuck. The same thing can happen with multiple birth. Triplets. We have triplets that. Listen to us. As we know trizygotic. Right. And so on. Sure. Now, with a monozygotic birth, you've got one egg that is fertilized by this sperm, and it splits into two after it's fertilized and starts developing two identical human beings. Yeah. That's called cool science. It really is. The fact that this can happen, I love it. And the sooner the split happens, say, within day two, the more independent the children are going to be in utero. Right? Right. They're going to have their own amniotic sacs. They're going to have their own placenta. As time wears on and the division occurs later, they could have the chance of having fused placenta fused amniotic sacs. And this is not necessarily a good thing, actually. No. If you share a placenta, sometimes the twins will not develop equally because one twin is hogging all the nourishment than the other. And that's called fetal growth restriction. Right. Just like Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Was that the scenario? Yes. Remember they said Danny DeVito was like an accident, they weren't expecting him. He comes to realize that he's after birth. Right. And it was really sad. It was a sad point in the movie. That's what he said. He's like, I'm after birth. Right? It was sad. Funny. Frank yeah. But I imagine that that's what happened. Arnold just kind of took all of the nourishment for himself, leaving little Danny to Vita with very little the stingy governator. Yeah. And, Josh, another thing can happen called twin to twin transfusion syndrome, and that is when the twins are sharing circulation, so they can actually transfuse blood from one to the other. But that can be bad because the donor twin can hog some of the blood and will be unusually small, whereas the recipient twin will have too much blood and be unusually large for their age. Developing big baby, small baby. Right. In the same womb at the same time fighting for their stuff. Right. It's something that I thought was really interesting in this article, which was written by Katherine Near. She's one of our head editors and the twin, she refers to herself in first person as the author in this throughout. Right. She mentioned that twins that have undergone twin to twin transfusion syndrome, or TT s for those in the know, can actually the circulation can be separated yet by lasers. Do you know how much dough the surgeon who performs in utero operations charges? I imagine. Where does that fit into the health care package? That's what I want to know. That accounts for 60% of it. And that's like, one surgery. Wow. Yeah. That's my calculation. Sure. I would imagine that's really tricky, specialized stuff. It really is. But it can be done. And you kind of want to do it because one twin can come out anemic the other can just be enormous. Again like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Right, right. And identical twins, Josh, obviously can only be two males or two females because they share identical genetic material. True. Debt check. There's also a syndrome that's pretty a lot more frequent than we once imagined, called vanishing twin syndrome. Yeah. Where you start out with twins or multiples, then all of a sudden you're down one. Right. And they used to think that this was a very rare infrequent thing. And actually, I imagine, an old timey era, they had no idea that this was happening before the ultrasound. Sure. Right. And then once the ultrasound came around, we could start to kind of track what was going on. And we discovered that the mother was actually absorbing one during her pregnancy. Yeah. That's got to feel a little odd. Well and they said up to 21% to 30% of multifetal gestations. This happens. Yeah. That's way more than I ever thought. Yes. And I wonder if it's just nature's way of saying, like, no, eight is too many. Right. Seven, that's fine, but eight now, eight is enough. And then, of course, Chuck, we get to a different kind of twinning called conjoined twinning. Yeah. Got to mention this, and this is awesome in that no one really knows how this happened, but the prevalent theory is that the zygote right. Yeah. Okay. The zygote splits very late, like twelve days, which apparently is late during the station. Right. And it never fully divides. Yeah. It doesn't have the chance to fully divide. And so all of a sudden, you have conjoined twins. Yeah. That seems to be pretty logical. It definitely does. And there's a whole slew of different kinds of conjoined twins. It's all based on where the body is fused. Right. Yeah. I won't go all the different categories within the subcategories, within the category, but I will give the three main terata cathedema that's if you're joined at the lower portion of your body, I have to say that includes ishiophagus, which Lakshmi Tatma, the little Indian girl who was born with her twin, her headless twin. She basically looked like the goddess Lakshmi. Yeah. And actually, I checked it out and make sure she's still going strong. And a January 28 article in the Daily Mail had a picture of her post surgery, going to school wearing a little plaid skirt and a tie and waving. Cute. Cute as a button. I thought you said Padma Lakshma from my Top Chef. No. Or whatever her last name is. I thought she was a conjoined twin. No. Nice work. Well, she does have that scar on her arm, but I knew that was from a car arm going I just thought it could have been she could have been joined at the forearm. You know a lot about Padma. I'm a Top Chef nut. So then we have the TERRADA ana, Didema, and that is with one single upper body with a double lower half. Or if you're connected by a single body part, like connected at the head. This also includes kids from the waist down have two sets of legs. Right. But everything else above is just single. Right. And then the final one is TERRADA anacadema. And that's joined somewhere at the mid section. So maybe joined at the chest, you might share a heart, you might share some other organs. Or back to back, let's say, above the spine, that kind of thing. Right. And Chuck. That includes amphalopagus. Right. And you know who is amphalo Pagas can join twins, don't you? Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie and Donnie Gallium. That's right. The world's oldest living can join twins. Yeah. From Ohio somewhere, right? Yeah. And they turned 58 last October. Yeah. We did a bit on them on the Webcast. And they're, as you would expect, kind of cantankerous with each other, but also, like, love and hug on each other. I think it's Donny who is afraid of the dark, so Ronnie like, cuddles him. It's really sweet. If you haven't ever seen any footage of Ronnie and Donnie Gallion hanging out, you should look it up. They also punch each other in the face when they're watching TV. Well, they have two TVs. Right. And then they'll be watching them, obviously, at the same time. Sure. And one will turn the volume up and the other turns his volume up, and it keeps going and then somebody gets punched in the face. It's kind of funny. Yes, it is. That moves us on, Josh, to another form of conjoined twin called parasitic twinning. Right. And this is when one conjoined twin is a lot smaller and maybe not as fully formed. And sometimes this is when you can get like a limb and an odd part of your body, like an arm growing out of your back or something like that. Right. And a subset even rarer than this is a parasitic twinning. And by the way, Andy Garcia was born with a parasitic twin. Didn't know that until I read this. I didn't either. But the very rare form of parasitic twinning is fetus and Fetchu, which is where the twin, the unformed or underdeveloped twin, is found in the body of the living twin, the surviving twin. Yeah. And often in the form of a teratoma. You'll find teeth, hair, spinal bone segments, bones, and these are all just called terraformas. Right. What makes it a fetus and fetch you is when there's a recognizable trunk and limbs. I know. Imagine finding that in your abdomen, which is commonly where it grows. Yeah. It's really sad, is what it is. It's about to say creepy, but, I mean, imagine it's just a tragedy. Imagine if you and your parents never had any idea that you were part of a twin. Then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, here he is. That's where he got to. Right. That would be kind of shaking. That happens a little more often than I'm comfortable with. It said one in every 500,000. Oh, I thought you were about to reveal your own story. No, but I just saw one in every 500,000. My first thought was, oh, wow, that's really rare. Then I thought, there's a lot of people on the Earth, and that's not as rare as I would like it to be. Yeah. And with conjoined twins, actually, they're rarer than I thought. Apparently, by Katherine Nears estimate, there's only about 50 unconjoined conjoined twins unconnected conjoined twins, right. In the world today. He said, I think, one in every 40,000 bursts, but only one in every 200,000 live births, because 40% to 60% of conjoined twins are still born or die a day or two after birth, which is really sad. Right. So about 95% of conjoined twins don't make it past the day. Right. So the ones that do yeah. And then that 5%, probably most of them are going to be disconnected at some point. Yeah. If possible. Of course, there have been some famous ones. Right. Same sides. Ronnie and Donnie yeah. Who are the Guinness guy. Ain't Chang Bunker. Right. Archie their brother. Is that his name? No. Aang and Chang were born in 1811 in Siam, which we call Thailand now. Right. And pretty early on, they realize, like, hey, we can make a lot of money off of ourselves. Yeah. So they started touring the world, and they did make a pretty respectable sum for themselves. And they actually retired, I think. Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Did they get married, too? They married sisters Sally and Adelaide Yates. Right. And the couples together had a combined 21 children. Wow. And they were never separated. That's the word I was looking for. I know. It was connected. Now, they were at the chest. They were at the chest, and an autopsy performed on them afterward, after their death, which accounts for the word autopsy found that they shared no organs. They could have just gone skin graft. They had two sexual organs. They had two of everything except they were joined at the chest. So they had two sexual organs and they fathered 21 kids with two sisters. Yeah. But they had to be a weird Saturday night. Yeah. Well, yeah. Everybody's in the room. Wow. That's a minor or whatever. I don't even know what that is. But they live to be 63, actually, and I think they were the oldest living conjoined twins of their time. I imagine it's probably in history. And there was another set that's fairly well known, I guess I didn't hear them until it's article. Did you read this part? I did not. About the bid and didn't maids? No. Mary and Eliza chalkers. They were born in 1700 Ad. Woe in England, I take it. And they were pygopagus. That's a fun way to say say that. Pygopagus. Pygopagus. They were pigopagus. So they were connected along their lower back and the butthaws. So they're not facing each other. No. Which I think would probably be a real pain. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's probably no scenario that's really easy to live with. Thing about it, they live to be 34, though. That's pretty old for conjuring twins. Yes. Actually, back then, I think changing. And the biden maids died within hours of each other, which is fairly frequent. Remember when we were researching Ronnie and Donnie? The doctor was talking about how sometimes people can live up to 18 hours, but usually it's not very long. Right. Can we talk about my other two favorite types of twinning? Now? These are my favorite, too. Sometimes, Josh, a woman can release two eggs like you would when you would have fraternal twins, but maybe one might be, let's say, two weeks later than the other. Your husband or boyfriend or whoever you're having your baby with. Fertilizers. You are so liberal. Fertilizers both eggs at different times and you're actually pregnant with quote unquote, twins. But one would be born two weeks after the other right. Depending on a moment of conception. Yeah. And that's called superfication and I'd never heard of that. I'm kind of blown away. Yeah, I am too. I'm even more blown away. Shot. This is great. By a little term called super feet condition. Yeah. They added a little extra fee letters in there, right. Because it's like, wow, bonus. Yeah. If a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation and two different males fertilize the eggs, so you got sperm from one male and then sperm from another male, and both of them are fertilized and take ingestate. She can have half siblings at the same time, virtually the same time. Boom. Super feet condition. And actually the first one you talked about, super feetation. Yeah. They can lead to half identical twins where the egg splits before fertilization and is infertileyed by two separate sperm. So these twins actually share 75% of their DNA. Yeah. Polar body twins. Yeah. Pretty cool term. Yeah, it's the same thing, except it's not two eggs to begin with. It's one egg that splits. Right, that makes sense. So, chuck about some do you want to just put some twin myths down? Yeah. Take them around the barn and shoot them? Sure. Or we can validate them. Yes. Okay. There's a study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, and it's an ongoing four part deal where their study fraternal and identical twins raised together and separate to see what all the hull of blue is all about. Right. And what they found a lot of times is that twins separated at birth. Identical twins are, I guess, fraternal, too. They share a lot of the same characteristics in life. Yeah. And Jim and Jim Lewis and Springer were separated at four weeks old. Right. And they were adopted. So no, both of their first names are the same. They were given the same first name by their adoptive parents right. Instead of the same last name. Very odd. They were apart until they were 39 years old. They both grew to 6ft tall, weighed exactly \u00a3180. When they were little boys, each one had a dog named Toy. Right. Each one had been married two times. Yeah. The first wives of both were called Linda, and the second wives of both were called Betty. Yeah. Weird. Each one had a son they named James Allen, which is interesting. The spelling was different. Right. And here's another little fact for you. My dad's name is James Allen, and he had a twin that died at birth. This is getting out of hand. Yes. I remember when my dad first told me that, I was like, oh. And then a couple of years later, I was like, wow, that's so weird to think that I would have had an identical twin uncle. Yeah. That just never happened. It would have changed the course of your life entirely. Sure. Uncle look alike, I have to call them what other things they have in common. Each one had driven, had a light blue Chevrolet, and they both vacationed at Pass Grill Beach in Florida. Right. Here's my favorite. They both enjoyed Salem cigarettes and Miller Light beer. Yes, I love that one, too. They were both nail biters. They both held part time job as sheriffs. They both had migraines. And then the little love note thing. Yeah. How the mind works, I think, is what it's called. Steven Pinker's book. He offhandedly mentions that, and he's saying, is there a gene for leaving love notes around the house? And he's saying, Twins rude apart kind of suggests yeah, right. They both left love notes for their wives. It's so odd. It is. What an odd characteristic to share. So they were obviously studied in that Minnesota study of Twins Reared apart. But they do mentioned I thought this is funny, that they had different hairstyles. Well, yeah. I mean, it is easily sensationalized. You got to say, like, those facts lead you to believe that they were the exact same person in every single way. One they said, had like the mop top beetles haircut and one had like the pompador johnny cash with sideburns. Even longer sideburns. Yeah. So maybe they just listen to different music. Right. Well another one was more articulate than the other and the other was a better writer than the articulate one, right? Yes. Interesting stuff. Imagine having a twin with the same first name being like, hey jim, hey jim. They get old really fast. Nice sideburns, nice mop top. Let's go smoke some Salems. Oh boy. And then 48 hours, the TV show, did a special on identical twins raised apart and they found interesting things like barbara and daphne that were twins and they both had miscarriages and then had two boys and one girl. A little bit of a connection there. I don't know how over the top that is though. Are those the giggle twins? Yeah. Because they apparently have the same laugh. Well they cross their arms and giggle in the same way. Right. Which you could have picked up from watching alf. They could have both been watching alf. Yeah, you never know. Yes. Did you watch alf? Yeah, I didn't watch alf. I never got it. It was like a puppet. Have you ever seen permanent midnight? Oh yeah, that's the guy who wrote the first season of alpha. That's what permanent midnight is about. If you go watch permanent midnight and then you go watch the first season of out, there's a lot of like kind of really quick dark, funny things in there. My favorite part of that movie is when he and owen wilson had lost their drugs and owen wilson says, if I was a perkidan, where would I be? Great line and chuck twins rude apart is like a perfect natural experiment to try to settle nature versus nurture. Yeah, absolutely. It's not always a natural experiment and I'm making air quotes for those of you who can't see. There is a group in New york that was affiliated well they had an inn with a major adoption agency in new york and I think the they were basically like, oh, you've got some twins up for adoption. Make sure that this goes to this family and this goes to this family. And then they kept tabs. So they were like purposefully separating twins in the adoption through the adoption agency and then studying them like this huge longitudinal study. And actually they apparently got some really great results but they became so afraid. It's apparently the public sentiment of separating twins for the study of nature versus nurture, public sentiment changed. So by the think they concluded this 20 year study, they were like, okay, we're just going to never talk about this for the next 60 years. So they sealed it and I think it's in the yale university library under lock and key, but it's coming out in the next ten or 20 years, I think. Wow. Yeah. It's going to rock our world. Yes. That and the whole Kennedy assassination. The truth will be out there. I don't know if that one's ever coming out. Well, now, is there a date set for it? Is there? Yes, I think so. Where the records are going to be open. Awesome. Can't wait. I need to watch more stuff they don't want you to know, huh? Yes. Our awesome conspiracy theorist podcast. Yeah. So, Josh, we don't know what causes the MZ twins right now, but we do know that the rate is consistent throughout the world, which is about one and 250 right. Now. That doesn't necessarily mean that every time there's what did you say? One in 250 or four and 1001 in 250 is a little easier. Okay. But it doesn't mean that every time there's a thousand births, there are four equally distributed. No, of course not. Right. But if you take the birth statistics across the entire world, you're going to find about four per 1000. Sure. And actually, by ethnic group, it changes. African Americans tend to have far more twins than any other group. I'm sorry, people of African descent. Yeah. And Africans themselves. Sure. I think they said the Yaruba tribe in Nigeria has 45 per 1000 births. And that's a lot. That is a whole lot. On the low end, chinese people have 11.2 per 1000 births. Right, right. And that's in the United States, by the way. Nice. Chuck not in China. Chinese people living in the United States. So Chinese Americans have 112 per 1000. But if you go to China, it's like 800 per 1000. I don't think that's the right number. That is not the right number, but there are a couple of factors involved. Chuck, really quick. I think the follicle stimulating hormone can cause a woman to have more than one egg. Sure. And that's usually found more frequently in heavy women and older women. And we've been kind of trending toward heavier and older right. As far as parents go. So twinning, as a result, in the US. Has risen or 38% since 1990 and 65% since 1980. I know. Pretty big jump. Okay, so let's move along and get rid of some myths. Dude, twin language. Josh right. Also known as idioglossia and cryptophagia. That is when some people say twins have, like, a secret language that they speak to each other. Sort of. Not true. What the deal usually is, is, let's say when they're developing, let's say the first little twin has, like, a slower development with the language than the second twin. The second twin will kind of hang back or mimic and mimic mirror neurons, maybe mimic the other twin, and then all of a sudden they kind of develop this code, if you will. Right. So twin language. No, technically, no. All right. And then you always hear about twins having ESP. Like, one of them gets. Injured somewhere, and the other one across the country knows about it right then or worried or something. So this has been tested, actually, and in one experiment it's kind of clever, they took two twins and they put them in separate rooms. They always split them up. Well, yeah, you got to, or else they'll just cheat like crazy. I wonder if they faked it, though. And they're like they really thought they had Donnie when they had Ronnie, although they clearly were split up. Yeah, you have both, but you split them up and you give one some cards to pick to choose from with different illustrations on it, and then the other one has the same set of cards in another room. So you have the one that chose the card, the sender send the image telepathically to the target, the recipient twin, and then the recipient twin is supposed to choose that card. Well, the crazy thing is, in the first round of this experiment, they got it right like half of the time, which is pretty significant. But then they altered the experiment a little bit, and they had an assistant choose the card for the twin, and then the twin sent the image telepathically and all of a sudden it dropped to 25%. Right. And they think that it was because the twins were hitting at 50% because of shared preferences. Right. Not telepathy. Telepathy. There's something really wrong with me today. Yeah, I think that's probably the deal. But a lot of experiments don't show any kind of special bond. Some do, but the same experiments show that special bond between, let's say, a mother and a daughter or brother and a sister that aren't twins. And they think that it probably just has more to do with, like you said, growing up together, shared preferences and interests, that kind of thing. Yeah. So you want to do celebs or movies? Famous twins. Josh. You ever heard of Mario Andretti? Race car driver? Yes. Do you ever heard of Aldo? No, neither. I highlighted the ones that I was like, I didn't know they had a twin because some of them obviously like Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yeah, but they're fraternal, right? Yeah. Giselle bunch in the smoking hot model. Yeah, I imagine a smoking hot sister. She is good looking. She's her manager. She's not model hot, but she's very attractive. Are they identical or fraternal? They're fraternal. Okay. Vin Diesel. Really? Yeah. He has a kind of a funny looking brother named Paul Vincent. Nice. I'll show you a picture of him. How do you name your kid? Paul, Vincent and Vince. Vin Diesel's. Stage name. Dude, I wonder if his name is Vincent Paul? Oh, maybe his parents were very unimaginative. Or maybe Paul Diesel changed his name to Vincent because he thought it was too Gearhead. Scarlett johansson has a brother named hunter. Right. They look a lot alike. Ashton Kutcher. Did you know that? I think that rang a bell, actually. Yeah. The Kutch has a brother named Michael who has cerebral palsy. Sadly, yes, that does ring a bell. Yes. And he like kind of lives for him and has brought a lot of awareness to that. That's cool. Alanis Morrissette has a brother named Wade. Who cares? And Wade Morrison is as a singer, yoga dude and a Kiritan, which is like an Indian chanter. Can we be done now? Parker Pose has a brother named Chris. Cool. I'll bet he's cool. And then keefer. William frederick Dempsey. George Rufus Sutherland. So crazy. Did you know he had that many names? Yes. He has a fraternal twin sister named Rachel. Why would you give a kid that many names? Donald's probably smoking a lot of something back in the day. At least he did an Animal House, right? And then of course, my favorite twins, Kim and Kelly deal. Kim of the Breeders? Yeah. Well, they're both in the Breeders and Kim was in the Pixies. And before we move on, I want to put a call out because I saw a special one time on a TV show about these two twins. Two, I think like twelve year old black girls in England. Okay. And they mimicked everything exactly. They spoke in stereo at the same exact time. Creepy. They walked exactly the same in synchronicity. It's like the twins in the shiny. It's very creepy. And that's exactly what they were. And you know what happened? What? One day they found one of them drowning the other one in a creek. Did they save the one? I don't know. I saw this like years ago and I have never, ever been able to find anything on it. That's crazy. Putting the call out there to the SYSK Army. Yes. Anyone knows about this? I'm dying to know the story. Well, if you want to read one of the better articles on how stuff works, check out twins type twins in the handy search bar@howstuffworks.com. And that leads us to listen or mail. Yes, Josh? I have a couple of quick ones. This is from Adrian and Canadian city Frederickton NB. What does that mean? I have no idea. Oh, New Brunswick. Yeah, probably. He's eleven. It's called canadian City. New Brunswick. Or he's saying it's Canadian city. Yes. Hey guys. My name is Adrian, in case you're wondering. I'm a boy. And surprisingly enough, I am only eleven years old and I listen to your podcast every night I can. I believe that thanks to you guys, I'm the smartest boy in my class. Awesome. And the subject of interesting facts. And Jerry, I have not forgotten about you. I believe that without you, the sound effects would run for the hills. Keep up the good work, people. Please put this in your next podcast because if I heard myself on the show, then it would be one of the highlights of my life. Well, technically you're not hearing yourself, but you're hearing Chuck reads you, Adrian, but that's close enough, right? That's right. Jerry loved this. When Jerry forwarded this after we had already seen it, did she go cute? Well, the sound effects, they would run for the hills. That's adorable. No, she just wanted to remind us of her placement. Exactly. And then this is from Abu. And this is another kind of call out to the fans because we said something about Arthur the weatherman in our little YouTube sidebar. Which one was that in? Do you remember? It had nothing to do with whatever we were talking about, but now I don't remember. It'll probably come out after this one. No, it all came out okay. But we heard from Abu that Arthur the weatherman actually perished in the Haiti earthquake. I don't think that's true, but we don't know if that's true. I looked it up on the internet and everything points back to the single source that isn't reputable. So if anyone out there has any information on Arthur no. Arthur, if you're out there, let us know you're alive, please. Yeah, we're praying and hoping that you're alive. It's going to be hot. Yes. If you have any information on Arthur the weather man or you live in a Canadian city and by the way, thank you, Adrian and Abu. Send us an email. We love getting emails. Chuck loves responding to emails. Jerry loves forwarding emails. Just send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want morehousedofworks? Check out our blog on the housestepworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1225394890350hsw-sysk-mortgage-securities.mp3 | How Mortgage-backed Securities Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-mortgage-backed-securities-work | The 2008 US financial crisis has been blamed on the excessive use of mortgage-backed securities. But what exactly is a mortgage-backed security? Learn more about these securities and how they contributed to the crisis in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | The 2008 US financial crisis has been blamed on the excessive use of mortgage-backed securities. But what exactly is a mortgage-backed security? Learn more about these securities and how they contributed to the crisis in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=311, tm_isdst=0) | 18150382 | 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 howstepworkscom. Welcome to the podcast. Located from deep within the bowels of HowStuffWorks.com headquarters, it's Josh and Chuck. Say hi, Chuck. That makes us sound really fancy or creepy or something. I don't know. I like it. I was going for creepy. Okay, I'll take it. Did it work? I'm creeped out. Yeah. Okay, good. Chuck, did you look out the window today at all? I have. Did you notice that everything is spinning very quickly clockwise? I have. You know what that is? A downward spiral. It is. It's the US. Economy circling the drain very quickly and taking the entire nation with it. It's pretty bad. Have you heard about this economic downturn? Yes. I mean, you can't miss it, man. It's everywhere. It is popping up everywhere. Huge investment banks, whether the Depression are starting to go under. There's all sorts of financial groups that are suffering as well. AIG, the largest insurance company in the United States who insures all these people is going under. Right. Well, now it's owned by the government almost completely. Yeah. 80% stake, 79.9% stake is owned by the federal government, owned by you and I. We own part of that. I feel it. I feel it in my body. I know that you feel richer. I noticed you're wearing your top hat and monocle today, very appropriately. So all this stuff is going on. Yeah. It's impossible to miss it. The crazy thing is that all of it can be traced back to a single thing, a single investment instrument that caused all this problem. Right. And I was happy to learn this. You know what it is? Yes. I'll go ahead. And it's called a mortgage backed security. Yeah. And you're kind of the expert. I want to go ahead and preface this by saying that Josh wrote these articles and I'm an economic idiot basically. So I learned a lot by reading them and hopefully people will learn a lot by listening. I learned a lot by writing them. So if people learn a lot listening then it'll be a trifecta perfect. Everyone will have learned. So yeah what we're talking about today are subprime mortgage backed securities. There's different kinds. Some mortgage backed securities are worse than others and the worst of the bunch are subprime mortgage backed security. Right. Well go ahead. I think the raw definition probably would get people interested get their juices right off the bat. So basically what it is is a mortgage backed security is an investment tool that is based on a pool of mortgages. So you take Chuck's mortgage and our producer Jerry's mortgage and everybody at house stuff works mortgages. You pull them together and then you divvy them up into basically shares of all this one single pool of mortgages. Right. And as long as everybody like Jerry and you Chuck are paying on your monthly mortgage payment sure everything's fine. Right. They're like dividends. It gets distributed across the shareholders of this pool of mortgages and everybody's happy. Right. Well who are the shareholders though? They're the people who bought these mortgage backed securities which are banks larger than the banks. It could be anybody. It can be anybody. Yeah. What you're talking about is the process of how this works. Okay so what I just said that's a mortgage backed security you could purchase a mortgage backed security no way. If you wanted to you could. Sure. And actually ironically enough because these mortgage backed securities are based on mortgages and because they've been so divided up and repackaged and repurposed we'll get to that in a little bit. It's actually possible that if you have like a invest in a mutual fund or something like that you may actually own a share of your own mortgage. Right. I read that in your article and I was blown away. Isn't that cool? Is that cool? I don't know. Well it depends. Weird. If the economy's in the tank then yeah it's not good. But yeah it could be cool if you're making money off of your own mortgage back yourself. Right. It's positive outlook kind of yeah. So what you just mentioned Chuck is how a mortgage becomes a mortgage backed security. Right. So say you go in and you get a mortgage. You go through all the rigmarole and they issue you a mortgage. The bank when mortgage backed securities were hot would turn around, put it together with several other of their mortgages that they issued that day and turn around and they sell it to an investment bank. Right. Okay. An investment bank takes your bank's mortgages and some other banks mortgages and pulls them together even more. So now you have several hundred different mortgages and all of a sudden it's a single mortgage backed security. Right. And then they start selling shares, the investment bank starts selling shares. Then the investors, your mutual fund manager or somebody at JPMorgan Chase who's looking for an investment, they buy these shares and they start collecting the dividend. So that's how it works. Right, okay. It's actually a lot simpler than I thought. It's very simple. Like if you look at it, it's a very basic method of investing. Right. But it was completely and totally radical when it came about. Sure. I think it was the late 90s when they first really hit the scene, maybe early 21st century. And here's the thing, it's a really safe way to invest as long as the housing markets going well, the economy is doing well and people are making their monthly mortgage payments. Right. There were rich times there for about a decade, probably in the housing. And the housing boom was keeping mortgage backed securities, it was making them perform well. Right. So because of that, because of the interplay between the housing market and mortgage backed securities, mortgage backed securities become this hot commodity on Wall Street. Everybody's buying them, everybody wants them, they're just money in the bank. Right. The problem is that demand created a situation where we needed more mortgages. Exactly. So, I mean, basically say you're a good prime borrower. You're somebody who based on your credit rating, your credit history, your employment history, that kind of thing, you pose little risk of defaulting on your loan. Right. There's a finite amount of prime borrowers in the United States. Right. And after a couple of years with the mortgages being pulled together and put into mortgage backed securities, this pool of people dried up and then I know what came next was the subprime market. Yes. Which is a big reason why the housing boom bubble burst. Exactly. Because subprime borrowers, a lot of people think that subprime has something to do with the rate, the interest rate. It's a below prime rate. That's what I always thought as well. But no, it refers to the borrow. Exactly. If people that don't have enough income or the right credit, basically they were just writing things. It's kind of like a blank check, a false market almost. Very much. But when banks change their lending practices to include subprime borrowers, all of a sudden there's this huge untapped pool of people who can create mortgage backed securities because you can't have mortgage backed securities without mortgages. Right. So basically to answer this clamoring for more mortgage backed securities on Wall Street, banks had to start issuing more mortgages and the investment banks were more than willing to buy all these mortgages no matter what. Right. So your local bank that you go to say you're a subprime borrower and subprime has this really evil connotation here in 2008. Yes, it does. But really, if you think about it, it's just somebody who has a credit score maybe below, I think right now it's 630, right? It could be 629. You're a subprime borrower. Or maybe you've even changed jobs in the last year. That could make you a subprime borrower. There's a lot of factors. It doesn't mean that you're this nefarious, drug dealing cat burglar. Right? You're not taking the bank, drawing welfare checks and swindling houses out of banks. Exactly right. Necessarily some have. But for the most part, you can't really categorize these people beyond their credit score, right? Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get 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. Hey, Chuck. It's summer, which means school is out, sun is 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. 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So the banks, since they're no longer hanging on to the mortgage time, was you went to a bank, you got a mortgage that sat in the bank's vault, that piece of paper did, and you made monthly payments to the bank, they took it in, and then after 30 years or whatever you pay, you made your last payment and they sent you your mortgage. Right? And they did a lot of investigating into your history at that time, because they were the ones that had the most to lose. They were carrying all the risk. Exactly. If you defaulted on your loan, that bank took the hit, and that was it. It ended there. Right. With the mortgage backed securities. That all changed. Banks no longer had any risk whatsoever. They would almost literally issue you a mortgage and possibly that same day turn around and sell it. That really explains it. Yeah, right there in a nutshell. So whoever ended up with this mortgage in whatever form, whether it was a mortgage backed security and it was divided among like 50 or 100 or 1000 people, whoever ended up with it in the end assumed the risk. So these investment banks didn't necessarily carry the risk either. The risk of you not paying your loan went to the individual investors. Right. Since all of these mortgages started to become based on subprime mortgages, all the mortgage backed securities became based on subprime mortgages. When the foreclosure started, the market almost immediately plummeted. Right. Because it was directly tied. Yeah. It wasn't a trickle down effect. They were directly linked. There is another instrument too that we're based on mortgage backed securities. All right. So think about this. You have a mortgage, it's turned around, sold, packaged with some other mortgages and then divided into shares. Those shares can actually be divided further and repackaged into something called collateral debt obligation. Right. And some of these can be based on all sorts of different things. You can take just mortgages from a mortgage backed security and that will all mature in five years, or that are all interest only, or that are all fixed interest. There's all sorts of ways to package it. But one of the hottest items on Wall Street for collateral debt obligations were these instruments that were made exclusively from subprime mortgage backed securities. Because you're a subprime borrower, you get a higher interest rate. Right. So the security, the investment on whether or not you're going to pay your loan, it's riskier. But the dividends are higher because the interest rate is higher. Sure. And not unlike a lot of just the regular Wall Street stock market stocks, great risk equals great reward. Right. And that pays off. But really, if you look at a long enough arc, it never pays off. It always goes under. What you have now is a bunch of people playing hot potato sure. With these things. Were they short sighted or were they they are greedy. Greedy. It's as simple as that. Was it a live for now type of thing? Do they plan on dumping these? I guess I would assume yes. That once people started realizing, wait a minute, eventually when you follow these down the line, you're going to get to a house. And that house is basically its value in this situation based on whether or not the person is making payments. Right. And we're betting on subprime borrowers making payments and if they don't, this security tanks and we lose all of our money. Someone somewhere down the line around, say, 2006, figured out that these things were going to tank because of foreclosures and that's exactly what happened. So it started this domino effect. Well, who's at fault here? Or is that even important? I guess everyone kind of shares in the blame because the homeowner that really doesn't have the money shouldn't go out and try to get the house. The lender, certainly they were making the commissions. Correct. The mortgage broker. So they were making money and then selling them immediately. Or actually, I think the mortgage lender immediately goes to the bank, so they're not even really tied to the bank, necessarily. And then the bank sells them. And it seems like the more it gets spread out and split up, the more fractured it gets. It's really hard to even tell who's to blame anymore. It is. And I mean, ultimately, finding the person to blame isn't going to help anything now. Exactly. But it kind of eases the pain a little bit, or at the very least, you have someone to direct your eye or to. Well, I know in an election year, though, a lot of people are looking to point fingers. If this is not an election year, it'd probably be going down a little bit differently. I think there's a lot of people to blame, as you said. I don't think it's just the lending industry or the investment banking industry. And I don't think it's just the people who are homeowners. Yes. Or the hockey mons. Don't forget them. Right. I don't think it's the average subprime borrower who took out a loan larger than they can afford because they were sold a bill of goods oftentimes because I wrote an article on subprime mortgages and a lot of people didn't know what they were signing. These mortgage lenders would kind of use tricky dialogue to get them to sign on the dotted line so they can make their commissions. Yeah, there was a lot of predatory lending going up big time. So regardless of who's to blame, these foreclosures start happening and they start happening big time, widespread all over the place. Right. And like I said, it starts this domino effect. The weird thing is new houses that were being constructed stopped being sold as quickly because all of a sudden they had to compete with these foreclosed homes on the market exactly. That were maybe half price. Yeah. I bought my house in foreclosure. Yes. And this was even before the big foreclosure bus where they were all over the place. So we just got kind of lucky. But, yeah, all of a sudden these new houses are sitting empty because, like you said, they can't compete with the house. It's 40% discounted. Right. So all these foreclosed homes have this effect on the market, the housing market. Right. More new homes or more homes on the market means that the new homes aren't being sold because the foreclosures are going. It's like a fire sale out there in real estate in the US. But the presence of more homes on the market, the presence of more anything, the more supply, the lower the price, the housing prices drop. So you've got people all of a sudden who are like, wait a minute, I'm in this huge, terrible, maybe hybrid Arm, adjustable rate mortgage, right. And all of a sudden they owe more on their house than it's worth. Right. How long are you going to stick around? When are you going to leave and start renting? So foreclosures keep going and going and going. And as this wave of foreclosures takes over the US housing market, it also directly impacts the investment market as well, because everybody was so heavily invested in subprime mortgage backed security. Right. And then you have the construction companies who own all these houses that aren't selling, so they have to lay people off and then it leads to unemployment. It's a huge domino effect. That's exactly right. Everything pretty much in the modern economy, in the global economy and the US economy, everything is interrelated precariously, so right. But it all goes back to mortgage backed securities in this case. That's exactly right. Whose idea was this to begin with? I don't know. I've never found that out and I've actually looked. I think that they are laying low. There's got to be a dude. There's one guy who had this idea. Yeah, well, there's a lot of financial instruments that are out there and they come out of places like Harvard Business or Wharton School and among other places, and they're modeled that. You can run them through an economic model, but it's really just a model. You can't really tell what kind of effect it's going to have until after it's introduced in the market. Right. In the real world, it's a little different sometimes. Right. And as far as I know, there's no regulation over introducing a financial instrument to the market. We regulate whether or not you can introduce a non native fish into a lake, but nobody's watching over the financial instruments that are being introduced to the market. Right, right. So I'm thinking basically, if we had regulation of that, things were tested out on a small scale first before being released on math, that could be helpful. Sure. I think there's a whole lot of regulation that could take place. Well, maybe these guys should start listening to Josh Clark. Yes. I guess this is a pretty dense subject. Do you agree, Chuck? It's dense or I'm dense. One of the two. I don't think you're dense. It is. It's a very dense subject. I would recommend anybody listening to this podcast going on to how stuff works.com and typing in how can Mortgage Backed Securities Bring Down the US economy and stick around to find out which four articles Chuck and I consider essential reading right now. So, Chuck, four articles essential reading. Right. I'll say them because I know you're shy. They're all articles that you wrote and they're really great in depth articles. And they are about before 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 credits while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah, and with so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite, Murder, and Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you. 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 candidates for President and Vice President for this upcoming election. So we have how John McCain works, how Obama works, how Sarah Palin works, and how Joe Biden works. And I haven't read the Joe Biden one yet, but I'm hoping there's something in there about his teeth. Nothing about his teeth. A lot about his foot in mouth condition, right? Well, if there's room in that mouth for a foot from all those teeth, then pass it. He does have amazing teeth. They're great. I need some choppers like that. You can check all four of those out by typing in joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, John McCain, any of them. In our wonderful search bar on HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housetofworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. 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How Grow Houses Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-grow-houses-work | As many as one in five houses in Vancouver, British Columbia are used to grow marijuana. Join Josh and Chuck as they step inside indoor grow houses to see what's going on. | As many as one in five houses in Vancouver, British Columbia are used to grow marijuana. Join Josh and Chuck as they step inside indoor grow houses to see what's going on. | Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:54:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=16, tm_min=54, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=222, tm_isdst=0) | 34502602 | 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. We also want to extend a welcome back back to Yeti. Jerry. Yeah, we just got back from Guatemala. Yeah, her second tour of duty with Coed. Yes, she just got back. Yeah. You know what? Quickly, Josh, I should mention, because I promise Anne I would do this. Coed still has their text donation campaign going. Oh, yeah, you can still do it. Yeah, they left it open. So if you want to buy school books for life for Guatemalan child, you can do that for $5 by texting the word stuff. T020-2222. Very nice. And text and data rate supply and all that. Gobbledy cook. But yes, we would raise a lot of money and it's still open. So she said you should remind people from time to time. That's great. Then Jerry just came back all like, Rosie from Guatemala again. I know. That country got under her skin. Yeah, now she's getting under its skin. I don't even know what that means. Oh, I know what it means. So, Chuck yes. Are you familiar with the state of California? I live there. Yes, you did, didn't you? Yeah. Well, Callie's got a proposition on the ballot this November, right. Have you heard of Prop 19? I have. Prop 19, if California passes it, it would make California the first state to legalize marijuana consumption by adults. What's on the ballot right now on Prop 19 is if you're over 21, you'd be able to possess and consume and make a hat up to an ounce of marijuana. Just like alcohol would be treated much like alcohol, you wouldn't be allowed to have it around. Schools. Sure. Can't sell it. Can't pick up your kids with your ounce tucked in your front pocket or something like that. But you can also grow it in an area up to 25 sqft. Really? If you can. From what I saw, this was an outdoor garden. I didn't see anything about indoor gardening. Interesting. Which just so happens to be what this podcast is about. Look at you in your little intro. It's been a while. Oh, yeah, it has been. Nice. Sorry for the hiatus. That's right. We're back. So what you were talking about was a grow room. If it's a 25 sqft. But what we're going to do, it could be a very tiny house. Yeah. It could be a dwarf house, a doghouse. We're going to talk about grow houses. And Robert Lam wrote this article. That's all I need to say. Yeah, you know it's good, Bam. Yeah, he always gets real cheeky in his articles. He does. He started out this article, which is a fine, fine article, and if you ever want to see a lot of pop plants in an article on HowStuffWorks.com this is your chance sure. He starts out talking about how people like house plants, and if you have a house plant that could net you a $1,000 after harvesting once, why not do that? And if one can do that, why not dedicate your whole house to growing these plants? And that's pretty much what a grow house is. Yeah, well, because it's illegal, Josh. That's the answer. That is the answer, actually. And thank you, Chuck. I think we should start this one off by saying we Houselift Works, Discovery or anybody we're affiliated with don't endorse grow houses in any way, shape or form now. And this is just about how they operate. That's all right. Nothing else, right? I've got a load of stats. Can we start with that? Let's do it, man. I dug out some stats on marijuana use, Josh, from a UN report. Worldwide, 147,000,000 people use marijuana regularly as of 2002, and percentage wise, it is led guess what country would you think? Percentage percentage percentage wise? Luxembourg. It's a good guess. I would have guessed Jamaica. Just because I'm an idiot and I'm like, yeah. Bob Marley. Right. Papua New Guinea. 30% of their country regularly uses marijuana. The only country in the world where an outbreak of kuru has occurred, and followed by Micronesia and Ghana. And then I think South Africa is right after that. South Africa is pretty populous. Yeah. Wow. They're smoking a lot of weed. That's about worldwide, that's about ten times the number of people that smoke it in the US. Right. Well, there's different stats. When you talk about POTUS, I'll bet you can't leave the pot heads to compile decent stats. Well, there's always the one stat where they're like, have you ever tried it? And so if you're talking about that, 41% of the American population over the age of twelve has tried marijuana one time. Jarringly 80% of the population under the age of twelve has tried it not true. You didn't see that one coming. Not true. But as far as regular use, I think 14.8 million Americans regularly I'm sorry, I do have that they use marijuana in the past month, 14.8% and 25% of Americans report that they've used it in the last year at least once. So don't you always feel bad for that one person who used to smoke pot all the time, and then quit smoking for years and then smoked it, and then three and a half weeks later surveyed, and it's like, yes, I have, but really, that's not an accurate reflection. It was a college thing, and then again three and a half weeks ago, but that was it, right? Yeah. When my college friend visited. Exactly. So those are the stats on marijuana use. If you're talking grow houses, robert included a couple of cool ones in Humboldt County, California, which is known for its good marijuana and lots of it. I think it says 1000 out of the 7500 homes in that county are grow homes. Yes, because they supply a lot of the medical marijuana in california. Yeah. And they enjoy some protection from the government, at least the county government. If not, I guess the state government, too, because California has had legalization of medical marijuana since 1996. Yeah. But apparently that covers the growers and the sellers, but not the people who transport it. Yeah. Which is interesting. It is. That's got to be a nerve wracking job. It's like you're the only one left out there. Right. And I think Vancouver is. The other cool stat was in Vancouver, Canada. One out of every five houses is a grow house, they say. Apparently, the pot growing industry in British Columbia employed an estimated 20,000 to 60,000 people in 2000. Really? And their 2000 yield was, like, $4 billion worth of something wholesale. Jeez. I've got one more stat, because I promised in Atlanta stat, when we did our prison podcast in Georgia, was, like, the number one in prisons. Either that or you will eventually make that promise. I'm not sure which order we're releasing these, but Atlanta, Georgia, 41% of the people arrested in Atlanta say they have smoked pot within the past month. Arrested for whatever. Really? Yeah. And that leads the nation in the Atlanta Dirty South. Yeah. Stone. Like them white boys smoking them white buds. All right, Josh. Grow houses. Let's do this. All right, Chuck, if you are a grow house operator, like you said, it's not just a grow room you got going. Your entire house is dedicated to growing marijuana. It's a big business. It's a huge business. You're running your own business, essentially, right. And you have a lot of stuff to put up with. It's a very high stress job, especially in areas where it is in no way, shape or form legal, which is most places. Not only are you primed for being robbed by armed gunmen who just want to basically take all your pot or your money or unarmed pot heads. Right. You just want all your pot rippers is what they're called of yours. Homegrown. Billy Bob Thornton. Yeah. Is that what they're calling? Yeah. I haven't seen that in a while. Let's see. So you've got being ripped off or being shot while you're being ripped off. You've got the cops. You have, basically the people who are buying from you that you have to keep happy. But really at the center of this, from what I understand, is the plant. Right. These operations are not just I've got some plants growing around. These are incredibly intense farming operations. Yeah. Very sophisticated. And people have figured out what the ideal conditions to grow marijuana is, and we will share them now. Yeah. And not only grow marijuana, but they figure out the ideal conditions to grow the most potent, the most dense marijuana per plant, so you get the maximum bang for your buck when you go to sell later. Apparently, a well informed indoor operation produces pot with 52% more THC than the stuff grown outdoors. Really? That's what I read. So, Josh, there's a couple of ways you can do this. You can grow it in soil, like just a regular old plant, or you can grow it hydroponically, which is pretty popular these days. Sure. Hydroponics, Josh, is you probably heard that name on the news and if you didn't know what it was, it means that you're not using soil. It's a plant growing without soil. Right. They use a nutrient rich water. Yes. It's not just pot plants. You can grow anything. Hydroponically, right? I don't know about anything, but yeah, I think pretty much any plant you could grow hydrogenically. Anybody who's been to Epcot has seen hydroponics in action. Exactly. Yeah. I think they grow big old hydroponic tomatoes down there. Oh, really? Yeah. Basically, you are showing human domination and exploitation over a plant when you grow it without soil and just a nutrient rich solution. Yes. And so what you're talking about are containers and trays, drip systems, automated watering systems, or manual humidifiers. Humidifiers. These are just a few of the things you need for hydroponics. Well, not just hydroponics. I mean, you're probably going to need a dehumidifier, a drip irrigation system. No matter how you're growing, the plants can be fairly demanding, right? Yes. And you're also going to need light, lots of light. Because with the grow house, you'll find, as we keep talking, most grow houses are totally sealed off from the rest of the world for very good reasons. So they're creating this artificial environment so there's no sunlight whatsoever that ever touches these plants. Right. It's all basically 1000 watt horticulture bulbs and apparently those can sustain twelve to 15 plants. And as Robert puts it into perspective, this is 1000 watt bulb and the average incandescent light bulb in a house runs from 40 watts to 150 watts. Right. Chuck, have you ever turned 150 watt light off and unscrewed it real quick? Yeah, it's very hot. It's 150. It's awful. These guys are using 1000 watt light bulbs and that's just for twelve to 15 plants. So if you have a couple of hundred plants in a house that's sealed off hermetically, it's going to get kind of hot, right? Yes, it is. Let's talk about those lights for a minute. Okay. 1000 watts apiece. What you're doing is trying to mimic the sun. So obviously you want it to be very powerful. Right. And the other thing you're doing is you're affecting how this plant actually grows. The life cycle and the growing and the budding cycle of this plant you can completely control if you're growing indoors because the sun is not there to get in the way. You can fake it all. Yeah. You can use reflectors to get as much light as you can. So it's being exposed to light directly by the bulb and indirectly from this reflective, I guess, material. Right. I think I figured out that what is it, 16 to 18 hours days are optimal to get them started. Yeah. That's the beginning of the growth period. And then when you want your plant to flower, you slow it down, you shorten the days and then all of a sudden, boop. And this also makes for bigger, denser buds. Yeah. And for those of you not hip to the cause, that's where the money is. That's where the THC is. Yeah. It's a flowering plant and the flower is the bud and it's the female that flowers. So all the plants in there in the grow house are female. They weed out all the males and they're essentially controlling the sun to an extent where they can produce this super potent pot. Right. And if you look for this article on how to forks, you will find it very appropriately in the flowering plant. Sub channel, is it? Yes. Interesting. This could go in a lot of sub channels. Definitely. Like the Adventure channel or entertainment, I don't know. So you talked about the heat. That is a big problem. It is a problem. Also electricity is a big problem too, Chuck. Because think about it. Remember we said the average incandescent bulb is 40 to 150 watts. You're running several thousand watt bulbs and your average living room is just wired to handle one. Most living rooms can handle 1000 watt bulb. Which means you better know an electrician A and B, that electrician better love free pot. Because you're going to need to rewire your house. Yeah, rewire the house. A lot of times they'll jack into the a lot of times they'll hire former or current power company employees to help them out. Current power company. Oh, very nice. Pull that. And sometimes they will rewire that the home or the grid on that street, they will re route power to your house which matches everyone else up and potentially maxes out the grid in your area. Yes, it does. It could do that also exposes everybody to electrocution. If you didn't use a power company guy and you tried it yourself, which is a really bad idea. Yes. No matter what you're stealing power for to grow pot because you don't like paying utility companies, it doesn't matter. Rewiring the electricity that's coming into your house is a really bad idea. Yes, that's how my granddad died. No, it's not. No, it's not. Yeah, he was knocked from a telephone pole. He was an electrician. He wasn't like rewiring for grow houses, but he was like 30ft up in a telephone pole. And you test out the wire by hitting the back of your hand to it. Or you did back then, because if you do the front of your hand, it can grasp ahold of it. Oh yeah. So he hit it on the back of his hand. It was a library. And it knocked him out of the pole and he landed on his head and then spent the next few years in a hospital bed what? Drooling. And then he died. What? Yeah. Crazy. I was a weird kid. I didn't know. Wow. That's the most amazing dead grandfather story. I know, I know. Very sad. Wow. And I never hardly know him. So, getting back to the heat, though, finally, marijuana. If you have a house, a grow house, full of these lights, it could potentially be 100 degrees Fahrenheit inside your house at night. Right. So that's a problem because it's really hot and that's not comfortable. And by the way, that's 38 degrees Celsius. Thank you for friends who don't live in Liberia. But it's also a problem because marijuana grows best between 70 and 80 degrees and can do okay up to about 95 if it's a CO2 rich environment. Right, right. And they have to do artificially. They figured out that that's kind of what you want, I guess, from indoor grow houses, these horticulturists, to figure out that you do want to keep it hot because you do want the CO2 environment richer, because again, it produces thicker, denser, bigger buds, which is bigger money. Again. Yes. And so to combat the heat, though, what they do is they put a lot of air conditioning units, ventilation fans, to maintain their temperature. And Robert pointed out that 1000 watt bulb requires a fan and a single fan, and 2800 British thermal units of cooling. And a typical 500 AC unit puts about 60,000 BTUs out. Right. So your central AC unit outside of your house could conceivably handle a small house grow operation, right? Yeah. But it has to run constantly, which again, means that you are using up the juice and a fan on each plant. If you got 200 plants, you got 200 fans running on top of the AC unit. You can assign a fan to a lot more than one plant. Well, if you don't know what you're doing, chuck just proves his innocence. That's right. The other thing that's a problem is just like any plant that you're growing is insects and mildew and spores, fungus. I got more on that in a second, but yes. Well, let's hear it. No. Well, the way they combat that jerk is charcoal filtration, increasing CO2 levels that kill these things. It's also good for the plants. Yeah, I thought that was really clever. Because you think about it, an insect needs oxygen to live, too, right? Sure. So you just jack up CO2 levels once in a while. It suffocates everything, but your plants are like, oh, yeah, bring it on. And the other thing they'll do is they'll just seal it off from the outside world. Hermetically sealed off? Yeah. As few insects as possible. Yes. So, Chuck, not only does sealing off your plants, your whole grow operation, your entire house from the outside world, good for your plants. Number one, you have completely climate controlled conditions. Yeah. You have a natural gas burner to introduce more CO2. You know exactly what the temperature is going to be because you know how many lights you have going. You have your AC set to the perfect temperature. It also prevents the cops from getting hit to your operation. Right, yeah. Because it's illegal. You mentioned the charcoal filter for outgoing air. You still have to vent your air, right? Yeah, sure. So you have a charcoal filter. It's going to cut down on the smell of pot, because, as Robert points out, pot has a very distinctive smell, and hundreds of pot plants have a really strong, distinctive smell. Right. Yeah. Coffee can isn't going to cover that up. No. A paper towel tube with downing sheets on the end? No, that's not going to work. So you're right. They use the filtration systems to send the air back out. And hopefully your neighbors are never wise to the fact that the person living next door to them, or probably isn't even living next door. It's probably just full of marijuana plants. Right? Many times, it is. Well, remember you said that you want ideally, if you're going to steal electricity, you want a guy from the power company to do it. And one of the reasons why you would steal electricity is because the power company will notice if you have a power bill that's six to seven times the average for a house your size. And it's like that every month. That's going to tip them off. A lot of growers will stagger the days. Like, let's say you have a grow house, but your house is set up into several different rooms, so each room would represent you have a day going in one room, and then it's night time and a couple of other rooms, and it's starting a day in another room. So you're using the least amount of electricity at once. Right. And it's staggered. Power companies know to look for that kind of thing, and they'll turn you in. They will. So a lot of growers will use generators. Right. But these, first of all, are very expensive. $10,000 to $20,000, right? Yeah. That's for the Big Daddy that can run your whole house. Right. Apparently, a 50 light, 50,000 watt grow operation needs about 80 kw. So you do need a Big Daddy generator. Problem is, Big Daddy generators are super loud. Yeah. And again, if you are not in a rural area, which most grow houses are not out in the sticks just because there's not that many houses out there, right. Yeah. They're in the suburbs. So you really have to figure out how to adeptly steal your electricity or you have to figure out how to mask the noise of your generator. Yes. The other problem with the generator is it can break down. You're not tied to the grid, and if your generator breaks down at the wrong time and you've got $200,000 worth of pot growing in your house, that means your business is in jeopardy. So it's a fire hazard. I mean, generator is not necessarily the smartest way to go. No. And in the same way that electricity or the need for electricity presents a problem and a requirement, so too does a need for water. Right. You got to water your plants. Even if you have an extremely efficient system, an automatic drip system, you're still going to use a lot more water than you normally would in a house. So remember, when you get the water company keeping tabs on this water usage, that in the house's history has never been given remotely like this. They'll turn you into right. But again, people have figured out how to steal water. Those water meters, they have paddles that are spun by the water that's coming into the house. So people have figured out that you can drill holes in these paddles so more water passes through than is detected. Crazy. Isn't that just primitively ingenious? Yeah, it is. I didn't know that until I read this. Josh, let's talk about managing a grow house. A grow house and how you would do that. There's a lot of factors, because it is a business. You've got a lot of money coming in and out. You've got people you got to manage. Yeah. I didn't realize this, that a lot of them are set up by secret investors. It's not just organized crime or really ambitious potheads. It's very likely not a very ambitious pothead if you've got a grow house. Like a grow room. Maybe so. But a grow house is very likely run by somebody else in a larger organization. Right. And that person probably will never set foot in that house. Oh, no. They'll fund it with cash that can't be traced back to them, but they will probably never go near it. Right. Through a crooked realtor. They probably don't even smoke pot. That's my guess. They look at it like units. Yeah. They're just making money. Sure. We talked about people that work there. It is not necessarily like the Billy Bob Thornton movie with a dude and his buddies running their grow house. A lot of times it's more nefarious, and it's someone who has been brought into the country illegally to repay a favor for being brought in. They may say, all right, you've got to sort of be our indentured servant here and work at this grow house for so long, for this one season or whatever. Right? Yeah. There's a big problem. One of the big arguments against the poorest border in the south of the US. Is that coyotes make people smuggle drugs, act as mules when they're running through the desert getting into the US. Right. They tend to have lots and lots of drugs on them. They're being exploited. I didn't realize that they were forced to manage grow houses, too, but that was pretty interesting. Well, it's either that or prostitution, but it's specifically in California. He said the Vietnamese immigrants tend to have to do this to pay off debts? Absolutely. Well, I think I'd rather work in a grow house. And be forced into prostitution? It would take you forever to pay off your debts as a prostitute. I appreciate that. I think. So that is how you would manage it with temporary workers during the season, when it's the harvest season, you might bring in additional workers. And chances are these people aren't on the up and up either. They're not your buddies. It's maybe illegal immigrants once again. Right. And one of the reasons why you would not want this position is because, again, this is a very dangerous job to have. Even if this isn't your stuff, you have no idea what's going on. You just came to the country illegally. You're nervous about that to begin with, or even more nervous because you are spending your first few months in an illegal grow house. Which is why, as we said, most grow houses are not in the rural areas. They're in the suburbs. Here in Georgia, tons of them, all over the county. They're always in Gwynette. Henry. They're all over the place. And so you want your house to blow lend in every way, shape, or form. Right. And as Robert said, this can include buying garden gnomes. Yeah. Just like a regular dude. Yeah. You want to keep the flow of traffic to a minimum, but you don't want it to look like no one ever comes there, because that's pretty suspicious as well. You want to be friendly, I imagine, but you don't want anybody to feel comfortable asking questions, personal questions, that kind of thing. You don't block out your windows with aluminum foil. No, you don't. Not that kind of thing. You want your grow rooms within the grow house to be, like just like I said, within the house. Right. And also, remember we talked about infrared cameras that cops used to bus grow houses because they could sense heat. Do we talk about that? We talked about this, like, in some other population a while back. Remember? I cracked the case on it. So apparently one way to combat this in a grow house is a room within a room, right. So when you're sealing it off, you're not using the whole room in the house. You're basically setting up a room within a room to go in so that the outside room can kind of keep it cool. So from a helicopter, when you're looking at a house, it doesn't look like it's putting out more heat than average. Right. Or like, look, that guy is clearly an illegal Vietnamese immigrant because he's sweating bullets in there. Exactly 100 degrees in their home, yet they're running their AC unit constantly. Right. Those silly people. So, Josh, you got a neighbor, they're pretty cool. They never cause you any problems. They're real quiet. They keep their yard nice and trim and their garden gnomes shiny. What's the problem, then? If someone has got a grow house next door to you. Why wouldn't you want that? Well, first and foremost, you don't want people coming to rob them. Okay. That's one thing where we talked about the electrical grid so it can mess up your electrical system. Yeah. Or pose a fire risk to your neighborhood. Sure. If you are in any way, shape or form an environmentalist, the idea of somebody using six to seven times the average of a normal single family residence in electricity, you realize that that adds to a lot more pollution. Yeah. And it also can add to it much more directly. In 2008 in Humboldt, there was an environmental disaster where 1000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into a local creek and it was from a generator really, that was operating a grow house out in the sticks, out in the woods. Crazy. And actually as a result of that, humboldt county has undertaken a public service announcement campaign for local growers urging them to go to get greener in their practices because they're really not an environmentally friendly means of cultivating plants indoors. Well dude, if it's going to happen anywhere, it's going to happen in Northern California. Right. Because they are very green and they love their weed. Another problem chuck, if I may. You may. Oh, thank you. With indoor growing, all the conditions needed to encourage an outbreak of black toxic mold or all present apparently toxic mold outbreaks have been linked to grow houses and those actually drive up the homeowners insurance of everybody in the area. When one house has black mold, everybody's insurance goes up. Yeah, and that's the other thing too is chances are when you leave the grow house behind or when you're busted, it's probably not going to be some great house left in good condition. It's probably ransacked and maybe water damaged or heat damaged and that's going to obviously bring down the property value in your neighborhood too. Most decidedly. That's another good reason. But if your neighborhood already has low property values, thanks to foreclosures and abandoned houses that have boarded up windows and doors, you are basically living in an area that is absolutely perfect for grow houses. One of the unintended unexpected consequences of the current housing crisis in South Florida. Grow houses in huge neighborhoods that have abandoned and foreclosed houses, like really high acres. Yeah, we're in apparently are big into it down there. Well, Florida's way into it. I was trying to find the biggest growhouse that's ever been busted. And by the way, if you type into Google News search for the year 2010 grow houses, you get 184 articles just on grow house busts this year on Google News. They're all over the place. They are. But the biggest one I found, and this may not be the biggest, but there was one in Lake County, Florida where there were 2000 plants in this home. Wow. And I remember there was one I saw an article when I was. Working at my last job where this I think it was in Tennessee, where they showed this dude's grow house and he had in the basement rear of the house, there was this hatch, and all of a sudden in this hatch was you open the door and there was a 15 foot diameter tunnel that went like 100ft into this mountain where there was more operations going on. Like this dude tunneled into the side of a mountain oh, my goodness. From his basement. Well, and they busted him. Wow. And these are just the bust. I mean, imagine how many there are still operating on a daily basis all around the country. Well, that was another thing, too. You talked about real estate prices being driven down by a busted grow house. Prices can also go up, especially if, like, an organization who's funding these things decides that they want to buy a dozen houses in a suburban area at once in a small enough area that's going to really affect the housing prices in the area and drive them up because it's reducing the supply of available homes. Yeah. Pretty interesting stuff. I thought this whole thing was good. I thought so, too. If you want to read this great article by Robert Lamb, you can type in grow houses on the search bar@housesteporks.com. Again, I cannot stress this enough. This podcast in no way, shape or form, represents any kind of endorsement of any illegal activity whatsoever. Yeah. People always ask us, you should cover pot legalization or cover drugs in different ways. And we wanted to because it's really interesting and it's a part of the American fabric. You can't just ignore it and be like, what are you talking about? That's not interesting. But it's tricky for us. It's hard to talk about grow houses and explain how to do it without sounding like we're giving a tutorial on how to do it. But the way I look at it, Chuck, is ultimately, our goal is the goal of the site is to explain absolutely every aspect of the world, including ticks, one at a time. Including Route 66, including grow houses and everything else in between. That's right. So, Chuck, what is it time for listener mail. Do we have it? Yes. I've got one today. Be with Josh. I'm going to call this our best Voodoo email. Dear Chuck and Josh, I just listened to your Voodoo podcast and thought I had a fun story you might like. I was dating a guy back in 2007 who I thought was deeply religious. Lots of statues all around his house, saint candles, and a very odd, quote, spice rack. Around our third week together, I found out he practiced voodoo and was an actual bokor. Wow. Bokor are voodoo sorcerers. I think we pointed this out on the podcast. As he told me, they served aloe with both hands and practiced both white and black magic. All the statues were for the Voodoo rituals he performed and he could keep them out, keep the bad spirits out and not worry about his very Catholic roommate who would also not stay around. Clearly, even though he should have explained to him that there were a lot of synchronization of Catholicism in Voodoo. I was not on good terms with my parents at the time. They were Mormons who work in the temple. Oh, yeah. Mom and dad. This guy I get back. And this is a guy too. So he is obviously gay as well. He's probably not popular with his parents. His Mormon parents, I would think. As far as we can tell. As far as we can tell, they may have loved him being a gay guy dating a Voodoo bokor. It's like COA fest. So anyway, the black magic practicing boyfriend was right up my alley at the time. This is from Mal and Tricides Washington. And I actually confirmed that I could read this on the air because it's a little tricky. And he said, sure because he was a big jerk. So go ahead and read it. I was like, okay, thanks, male. That was far and away the most interesting Voodoo email that we got. And I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologize to everybody else who sent us voodoo email. Yes. Seriously, if you want to send us an email about anything at all, we'd love to hear from you. Just wrap it up, send it to Stuffpodcast at Wait Chuck, where on Facebook. We got a killer Facebook present. Yeah. Thanks. Especially to you. Well, more than 15,000 fans now, which warms our hearts, right? And people are active and commenting and sharing things. And it's exactly how I hoped it would be. We've got almost 6000 followers on Twitter. You are killing the Twitter, my friend. Very funny. Stuff. We have blog stuff you should know on Howstepworks.com. Great blog. And we have a ton of other blogs on how Stuff works as well. And we have a Kiva page. We are trying to make it to a quarter of a million dollars donated by the first anniversary of our team's inception, which is October 6, I believe. Yeah. And big thanks to Glenn and Sonya who have sort of been running the team for us. And we just made it to the $200,000 loan mark, that's awesome, man. Yeah. So if you want to join, you can go to Kiva.org. It's www.kiba.org teamstuffyoushouldnow. And again, if you have an email you want to send us, wrap it up, send it to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want morehousedofworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com homepage." | ||
872f8380-3b0e-11eb-9699-d74d1bf282c8 | Python-a-palooza! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/python-a-palooza | Pythons are big snakes. Really big. But there's more to them than their size. Learn all about these big daddies in today's episode. | Pythons are big snakes. Really big. But there's more to them than their size. Learn all about these big daddies in today's episode. | Thu, 25 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=329, tm_isdst=0) | 41388895 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's, Chuck. And this is stuff you should know about Pythons. Take it, Chuck. You mean take my two pythons to the vet because I have two sick pythons? Do you have two sick pythons? You never heard that joke? No. About muscles? No, it's here. Well, I mean, this is kind of it it's just an obnoxious way to say you have big biceps. Say, like, I need a vet because I've got two sick pythons. Oh, no. I've never heard anything like that. I don't think that joke even made it into The Hangover. It was like, two tickets to the gun show. Yeah, I've heard that one. You haven't heard two sick pythons? No. That's terrible. I think it was in The Hangover, too. Oh, I never saw that one. It was not good. Was the first one good? Yeah, it was okay. In fact, I just watched some of that recently on a plane flight because I just needed some comfort food. And that movie was really funny. No, it was. Did you see it? Yeah. Oh, dude. Jack, alfredckos was great. Ed Helms was great. What's his name? Ken Burns was awesome. No, the main guy. Ken. The guy who's the doctor in real life. The Asian actor. Oh, Ken Jung. Yeah, Jung. He was hysterical. Yeah, he's funny. Okay. Mike Tyson. So funny. Tyson was funny in that. Actually, he wasn't that good in it. Now, never mind. I'm not going to talk about that. Okay. Correction. Wrong. I'll let everyone guess who I didn't think was good out of all the remaining characters. Oh, man, you're so hard on that guy. Why? You didn't know what I'm talking about. I do, too. Of course I know who you're talking about. Should we talk about pythons? I think we should. And we're not talking about the muscles, as the joke everybody knows goes. No. Instead, we're talking about snakes. Real life snakes that will mess you up. Yeah, I'm not so scared of pythons. No. Largely because I'm never around them. But there's something my snake fear, and I don't have that much of a snake fear, but my snake fear is around having fangs of a snake enter my body. But pythons, they have been known to kill people every once in a while. But from what I read get this, Chuck. Every single person that's ever been killed in the United States by a python and take that with a grain of salt because they're not native to the United States. Was it killed by a captive python? Usually it was their pet, and they messed up by not following the proper procedures for feeding it. Right. Or they, like, went to sleep with it wrapped around their neck because they thought it was comforting. Or sadly, they didn't keep their snake in an enclosure like you're supposed to, and the python got a hold of a kid in the house. Yeah. I can't even put my mind there no nightmare fuel. But we don't want to give python's bad name, because in a lot of cases, there are definitely plenty of them that are pretty docile, nice, friendly. And if a python does try to eat you, it's probably a case of mistaken identity to begin with. But also, there's differences that make python seem less threatening. They move just like 1 mile an hour. They're very slow. They're not venomous. That's another big one, right? Sure, if you're scared of venom. Yeah, I think I'm scared of any venom. Really scared of any venom snake. Not like a phobia or anything. I think that's just like a legitimate fear. That's right. They are found in Asia, Africa and Australia. They are old World snakes, and there are 41 species of python. We're going to concentrate on just a few of these, but along with the anaconda, which maybe we should do, like, a shortage on anaconda at some point. But these are the big daddies that are just amazing. You can see a python that's 20 to 30ft long, and to see a snake that big and that heavy, it looks like a holdover from ancient times. Yeah. There are very small pythons, too, though it turns out. There's one called the Ant Hill Python. It's only about 2ft long and it's adult size. But for the most part, if you're talking about pythons, one of the ways to I think this is probably one of the reasons why they do seem so impressive to their bulk to length ratio is substantial, which means they're, like, pretty big around. Even though they're really long, they're also really big around. So when you see a snake like that, it definitely stands out in your mind. Yes. And even among big ones, there's not the same color pattern or anything. They can really differ depending on where they are and what they need to camouflage themselves. Sometimes you see those really pretty pattern scales that look almost like a copperhead in some ways. Sometimes they're solid, though. You've seen those big, gigantic, bright green ones or brown ones that are solid brown. Yeah. Really good looking snakes. Yeah. That's the Green tree python, right? That's right. One thing I found, Chuck, that I found totally fascinating, is a lot of python species eat warmblooded prey, right? Yes. So they've developed what we call labial pits, which are these little heat sensing organs in their face, around their mouth, and it allows them to sense it's, basically like the predator. Remember, they would switch to what looked like thermal imaging. That's what the label pits pick up. But these snakes still also see visible light, too, so they use their eyes. But the labial pit information is transferred up their trigeminal nerve through their face and eventually hits, like their optics, the optic center in their brain. So and this is really tough to wrap your head around. But the thermal imaging from the label pits and the visible information from their eyes is superimposed so that they see in a way that this one site put it's impossible for us to imagine. Isn't that awesome? Unless you've seen the movie Predator, and the labial pits are so sensitive, they can detect changes in temperature of as little as zero one degree Celsius. That's amazing. I think so, too. Good luck. If you're a rabbit, I know you don't stand a chance. Sadly none, because if you do get a python around a rabbit, they will grab a hold of it with its triangular shaped head, and they have these sharp, backward, curving teeth. If you ever looked at if you just look up pictures of python teeth, they have a lot of sharp fangs that are kind of pointing in the backwards direction. They don't, because they're not venomous. They don't have those two giant big daddy venom injectors at the front, which those are the things that really scare me when it comes to snakes. So pythons don't have those, but some of them, arboreal pythons, have these prehensile tails that there are legends of pythons, like leaping from trees to kill people or kill prey. Right. That is not true, because that would hurt the snake to leap from a tree. But they said in the articles I read, they were like, well, they don't do that, so don't worry. But they can really hang from the tree and then come down and grab you, right. They're famous for wearing a hat, swinging down in front of your face and going, hello. Yeah, basically. So there's some other things about pythons that stand out even among snakes. One of the things that they have that most snakes don't is two lungs, which is weird because it makes them primitive. Then that seems odd. We have too long, we'd think. Well, it's evolving towards humanity. Of course, it's not primitive, that's the opposite. But apparently all snakes, or at least pythons, I should say, evolved from four legged, two lunged vertebrates of some sort in the great distant past, and they just haven't evolved into just a single lung, like plenty of other snake families have. That's right. And because of that evolution, they also have remnants of that stuff. They have remnants of the pelvis and these little hind limbs, and they're called spurs, located on the back beside the cloaca, and they use those for a bunch of different things. But one of the things they do, and we'll talk a little bit more about mating, I know you're going to say they'll kind of stroke the ladies with what's left over of their vestigial limbs. I like that. Does that creep you out? Yes, it does. It seems very sweet. So if you wanted to find a python in the wild, Chuck, where would you go? Well, I already said Asia, Africa and Australia. But what parts of those continents you would go to where it's warm and wet. You would go maybe to a rainforest, maybe in the woodlands or grasslands or the swamps. They like to hide under rocks and things. They like to hide in little animal burrows. Like I said, they can hang from tree branches. This should scare everyone. And we'll get a little bit more into how they've made their way to Florida in the United States. But when they are found in urban areas, they shelter in urban debris. So you could pick up a spare tire or turn over a wheelbarrow and find a python under there. If you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, somewhere in Florida, right. The inner cities are littered with overturned wheelbarrows well, you never know. Remember I said that pythons move it about 1 mile an hour. There's a reason for this that's really slow. Just if you stop and think about it, the reason they are so slow is because they're using a form of movement called rectilinear progression, which is where they brace themselves on the ground with their ribs and then lift their body up a little bit in front and then push themselves forward. And then just keep repeating this. It's just kind of like herky jerky moving forward in a hurky jerky motion. Yeah, I was looking at python movement, and it looked like a slither to me. It didn't stand out as much as I thought it would. Is looking really different, I guess I should say. Well, that's how they fool you. Well, I guess so. I mean, they were definitely slow, but I think I expected a lot more of a straight line. And they do go in a straight line, like as opposed to a really big S shaped slither. Right. But there was still some slither to their dither. You know what I'm saying? Sure. I mean, they are snakes, after all. Sure. They're also, like, frequently you can find them in water. Apparently, pythons can stay submerged in water for up to a half an hour. And one of the ways that they hunt is by basically hanging out in water and waiting for something to come over to get a little drink and then copa. And they're able to do this because their skin tones really camouflage well with, like, muddy mucky bottom. So it's really tough to see a python, especially a Burmese python. Yeah, there was a lot of alligator similar. It's interesting. When I was studying this stuff yeah. They hadn't stuck out to me, but absolutely, you're right. Including how to get away from them, which we'll get to. But maybe we should take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about their hunting and feeding in more detail right after this. Yay. Yay. So, Chuck, we're talking about their hunting and feeding habits, and like I said, they sometimes hang out underwater waiting for something to come up. They might also just be hanging out on a tree branch. They might just be hanging out under some brush, but what they're doing every time they're hanging out is performing the type of hunting they do, which is ambush. They just wait around for some prey to come and then come out. They get you. Alligators. Yeah, it is. It's like alligators. You're right, man. Please stop proving your point now. But that's what they do. They ambush, hunt, they bite, and then they constrict. Bite and constrict back into the left. That's right. If you're a little python like the little guys that are two or 3ft long, you're going to eat mice and rats and things like that. Lizards, maybe. Some birds might get in there if they're not paying attention, if they're bigger, you name it, man. Pigs, antelope, monkeys. I think they found a rock python that had a leopard in its stomach. A small leopard. Yeah. But that's terrifying. That leopard doesn't win that battle well, so that's something that pythons are known for, and we'll talk more about it in a second. But they are capable of eating things that are even bigger than they are, which doesn't make sense even for snakes. Like, that's really crazy. Some of the stuff that they've eaten, I saw a picture, it's a really sad, terrible picture of a python that tried to eat an alligator, and it was too big, and the python actually burst in half and the alligator was spilled out. But they are willing to eat really large things because their body actually changes to accommodate this huge load of food that they've just not taken on. Eyes got too big for his stomach. Exactly. Now the body's like, oh, now I got to change and adjust because this guy doesn't know his own size. So you mentioned constriction. They are constrictors. And we'll talk a little bit about what they have in common with Boas a little bit later. But I think for many, many years they thought that well, they thought a few things. Constriction at first they thought was like they were crushing their prey and breaking their bones. That's not true. Then for a while, they thought that they suffocated their prey and just, like, tightened up on the lungs so much that you can't breathe. That makes sense. All of this sort of makes sense. But in 2015, there was a scientific paper that came out that basically said, hey, with Boa constrictors, we now know that what they do is they don't suffocate you. What they do is they cut off your blood circulation, basically, so you don't get any blood to your brain, and that's how you die. So it may be true for pythons as well, because they are also constrictors, obviously. Yeah, it would make a lot of sense. And that actually makes even more sense than preventing you from breathing. Because you would lose consciousness much faster if they can cut off the blood supply to your brain. Which is what you want to happen. Because when they capture you by biting your head. Like you're eating head first by a python. You would probably hope. No matter whether you're a person or a bunny. That you have lost consciousness by the time it starts to swallow you head first. Yeah. I saw a video of someone feeding a dead bunny to this python on a porch. It's just not fun to watch. Sure. I mean, it's super interesting. And again, it wasn't a live bunny, but when you see an animal consuming, like, unhinging that jaw and working this bunny's body into its mouth, it's amazing in a nature sense, but I didn't watch it all, let's put it that way. Yeah. I don't blame you. So, Chuck, I think we should talk about the studies of trying to figure out how pythons can eat things that are so much bigger than it or just so enormous to begin with. Not necessarily even bigger than the snake, but way bigger than anything you or I could eat proportionately, right? That's right. And they figured out, thanks to genetic sequencing, they sequenced the genome of the Burmese python and found out that it's actually their genes change the way that their genes express things like proteins or affect their metabolism. All this stuff actually changes when they eat, and it happens really fast. And the changes that it creates are really dramatic. Yeah. I mean, the fact that this was naturally selected over, they think that happen quickly as well, right? Yeah. During its evolution, it started picking up these positive adaptations, like, really fast. And the main thing they found out that it allows pythons to eat things that are as big as they are, is their organs shrink when they're eating to make room in there, like their liver and their kidneys and their intestines. And their heart even gets smaller while they're eating these things to create space. And after, like, some of these things, I think the liver actually doubles in mass in the two days after they're done eating. Yeah. Their heart actually increases in size by about 40% in the two days after they eat, which is, like that is very unusual. But it actually has to happen because the metabolism that's required to eat this huge thing because I don't know if we said they'll go, like, a week without eating, they'll eat once a week, so the rest of the time their metabolism is going along, doing whatever, then all of a sudden it's presented with this huge piece of food that it needs to digest. So it's a huge increase in metabolic demand, and the heart actually increases 40% in size to accommodate that increase in metabolic demand. It's amazing. It really is. And they figured out that their genes just become super active and start producing way more proteins and just doing all this stuff that under normal circumstances, when they're not digesting food, it's just not how their genes behave. Yes. And if you're wondering how they're breathing with a rabbit stuff down their throat, they have a windpipe that opens at the front of the mouth so they can breathe while they're doing this stuff. Yeah, I saw it described as kind of popping up like a periscope. Yeah. That's amazing. So what about reproduction? I know that you really like how they court. Do you want to talk some more about that? Yeah. When they make kind of depends on which species it is. It's not set in stone, but those males use those spurs that were originally limbs to stroke the female, and once they impregnate them, the ladies, they lay eggs, actually, which is another thing that's different than other boas even, is that they give birth to live young, but pythons give birth to little eggs. Well, I guess big eggs, because some of these things are a couple of feet long when they come out, when they hatch. I saw there about the size of chicken eggs. Well, how could they be 2ft long? I don't know. Crazy. I don't know. I don't know. I guess maybe they eat themselves while they're in the egg. Take it or bora. They do provide. Most of the time. Some parental care. And they make little nests mama does. And keeps them warm and. Like. Protected spaces under logs and stuff like that. And sort of burrowed areas. And they coil around them if they sense temperature changing. Whatever. The mother will sort of flex her muscles and sort of contract in place to heat up her own body to warm up the eggs. That's called shivering thermogenesis. And they're not feeding when this is going on. They're only leaving their nest if they want to really warm up. And they call that basking, just like we do. Yeah. And then the eggs hatch, and the mom says, See you, and that's that. And depending on the species, they will reproduce fairly frequently. I think a female snake produces about 40 eggs every two years. They start breeding at about three to four years old. So they're pretty successful family of snakes. They reproduce pretty frequently. And then, I guess, because the hatchlings are so big when they're born, they don't really need to be raised or nurtured or protected. They're just on their own from the moment they come out of the egg. Yeah. And they can live decades. Yeah, they can live a long, long time, which is why a lot of snake enthusiasts love them as pets. I think the San Diego Zoo says about 35 years, which is a long time. Yeah, that's at the tippy top. So, Chuck, I believe that we should speak at length about the Burmese python, because as far as pythons go, it's a very beautiful snake. It's actually highly prized for its skin, for the Burmese python. But it also has a really interesting story here in the United States. That's right. They have pale tan, sort of gray bodies, sometimes yellow, brown. They have these big sort of reddish splotches and they're sort of almost like they were drawn around. They are outlined in different colors, white or yellow usually, and they are really pretty. And they are in Florida, just like we were talking about the alligators. I guess you would call it a python problem in one sense. It's not as much of a problem in that they're not really like, coming out of the wild and attacking people, really. Right. But they're wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem there. As far as mammals go, it's an ecological disaster. As a matter of fact, if you're in the Everglades and you care about biodiversity, you have a real problem with the Burmese python, which has been really successful in setting up shop in the Everglades specifically. But they are an invasive species because they're not supposed to be there. There haven't been snakes this large, native to the Americas, since long before humans were around. So they came in and they have no predators. They're themselves like an apex predator, and they've been eating everything they can get their hands on, basically. And the crazy thing about this is that they set up shop in the Everglades because people started releasing them as pets. They were pets that got released and abandoned. And now they're a huge problem in Florida. Yeah. And not just like, oh, there's been a 25 30% decline in this road and this species. There was a study, and this was in 2012, even the raccoon population dropped 99.3%. Possums almost extinct, 98.9%, bobcat's, 87.5%. And this is from 1997 to 2012. And essentially foxes and rabbits have all but disappeared in the Everglades. Yeah. So again, it's an ecological catastrophe because not only is it eating all of these important animals, they're also competing with other larger stuff for food, too. So they're having an effect on the local alligators and probably whatever panthers are down there. So it's a huge problem that they're there. And as a result, they're finding that Florida is basically trying to figure out anything it can do to handle this stuff. And I read that there's this thing called the Python Challenge, the annual Python Challenge, where they basically say, hey, anybody and everybody who has a gun or stick or a knife or whatever you want to use to kill a python, we'll give $10,000 to the person who kills the most pythons this year during this Python Challenge. That's the level that Florida is at right now. And it's having almost no effect because there's number one, so many of them, but also because it is so hard to see a python even when you're basically standing on top of it. It's that good. A Burmese python is that good at camouflaging itself in the Everglades? Well, yeah, that in the 20 eggs a year. Right. Well, that was another thing, too, Chuck, is because the hatchlings are so big. Do you remember when we talked about alligators and how their numbers are kept in check because raccoons will eat their hatchlings? Well, these Burmese pythons hatchlings are so big, there's nothing in the Everglades that is going to eat them. So they're incredibly successful at reproducing, too. That's a really good point. I'm trying to imagine something 36 inches long coming out of a chicken head. I know. Even if it was, I guess it would have to be the width of, like, a worm. Yeah. Maybe a little bit bigger. It would have to be thin. But again, pythons are known for their bulkiness, right. So, I don't know, maybe I believe it was a Smithsonian article that was kind of the journalist was embedded with people who hunt and track Burmese pythons in the Everglades. Apparently, there's an all women tracking team called the Everglades Avengers, and somebody who knows what they're talking about describes it as the size of a chicken egg. So that's where I got that from. So actually, looking now, if I'm wrong, they were wrong. They look a little bigger, but not that much bigger. I guess they're just wrapped up. Yeah, they must just be really thin and bulk up really fast. They go spraying when they come out of their egg. So you mentioned the Everglades. They're definitely all over the Everglades, but they're expanding their territory. They're also in Big Cypress National Preserve. They are in Collier. Seminole State Forest. They have been found in Miami. They have been found in the Florida Keys, which means one of two things. Either someone brought them there and released them there, or they can tolerate saltwater. There were python swimming in the ocean. Yeah, apparently that's been documented that they're good swimmers and they apparently tolerate saltwater. So it's entirely possible they swam to the Keys. Could you imagine doing a little ocean swimming and seeing a frigging python? Yeah, because these things get big, like, in their native habitat in Southeast Asia, they get up to about 26ft and \u00a3200. Apparently. The ones in Florida usually are average about eight to 10ft. So that's still a very significant bulky snake that you would see coming swimming at you while you're waiting in the water going, how are you? I think the ones near Miami, those are African pythons, right? Yes. Which apparently are almost indistinguishable from Burmese pythons to the average person. Suburban and urban areas of Miami have pythons. Yeah. They also have boa constrictors. Apparently there's a big iguana problem down there as well, all from just jerks releasing their pets that they don't want any longer. Because there's a really big problem with unscrupulous snake dealers, backyard breeders, people who actually have storefronts, even, like, corporate chain pet store selling snakes and being like, you have to kill a mouse to feed this thing. There's a lot of, like it's not just intuitive how to keep a snake happy and healthy. And so people get overwhelmed by snakes, and they don't know what to do with them. So if you're in Florida, around Miami, you just release it in your backyard and say, see you later. And the snake takes off and becomes a problem in the Everglades with the tear rolling down its cheek that's right through pascoe and don't look back. And it turns around, and you have to punch the snake in the face and go right. I never liked you to begin with. I think we need to take a second break still, right? Yeah, we do. All right, let's do that. And we'll talk a little bit more about what you can do if you do see a python in the wild and all about pet pythons, the sweetest kind, right after this. All right? We've established that you are probably not in danger of being attacked by a python in the wild in the United States. As far as we know, that has not happened. I don't even think once. Right. That's my understanding. All right, good. Let's just keep that going. Let's keep that record intact. All right. If you do see a python in the wild, if you're living in Florida, they have apps now. They have hotlines. I've got one is the name of the program. There is a Hotline 888-483-4681 or smartphone applications. I've got one. You can just get that up if you live in the area and you just report that thing. If you don't have the app, just go to the national park ranger, say, hey, I saw python over there. By that time, it's probably way too late. They're probably out of there. But you should definitely report it because it's a big, big issue. And I guess it sounds a little awful that they're just saying, go kill as many as you can for $10,000. But like you said, it is wrecking the ecosystem down there, and that's not good for anyone. No. And the people like it's still sad for the Burmese pythons. They're just doing their thing. They just happen to be very successful. It's the people who release them that are really at fault and deserve everyone. Scorn. Sure, but we should talk about the ball python. And this is sort of the go to pet. If you want a constrictor and you don't want a boa, you can go with the old ball python. Yeah, they're a lot more docile. They're much smaller. They grow maybe to five or 6ft. They don't move around much. They're not super active. So if you're going to have a snake as a pet, a ball python is a good way to go, for sure. Yes. They've got little dark stripes a lot of times on their face. Yeah. Like through their eyes. It's very pretty. Yeah. Very pretty snake. They have these, again, those dark blotches that are outlined in a lighter color. Very attractive skins. And again, it's very sad that their skins are being used by. Poachers or whatever to sell. There are albino pythons as well, which has become such a favorite snake that they're actually breeding this into them. Yeah, they don't have albinism, they have Amelianism. I think that proves that it doesn't have quite the ring, though. Amalinistism, whatever. But there's actually some types of ball pythons that they'll have like a yellow body and then their stripes are actually lacking in pigment, so it looks like yellow and white. There are ones that have black stripes, but they're lacking pigment in their body. So it's like this black and white. They're really gorgeous snakes, for sure. Yes. And like you said, they are docile. They're good. If you have never even had a snake before, it could be a good place to start if you didn't even know snakes existed. The ball python is a great place to start. It is. They're called ball pythons because if they get threatened, they curl up and roll up in a little ball. It's very cute. It's very sensible, too. So if you are going to buy a snake, you probably do not want a wild caught ball python because when they're caught, they don't really want to leave their home in the wilderness and come to your home, so they're going to be stressed out. Snakes, like all other captive animals who get bored and are not cared for, can display zucosis and other terrible habits. So you would probably want to get one from a breeder or a pet store or something like that. But again, you should consider you're taking something out of the wild, even if it wasn't born in the wild, and keeping it in a little 20 gallon aquarium in your house. So think that part through first. Yeah. And it's not mean to keep them in a smaller enclosure. They like tight spaces. Sure. So you don't need to get this huge thing for your ball python. No, that would be mean, actually. From what I mean, they need a little bit of room, but they're not real active again, and they like tight spaces. It has to be really secure because they are great at getting out of those cages and exploring your apartment. I think one of the reasons we talked about their lifespan, I think one of the reasons people release them sometimes is even though they know this, getting into it, it's hard to make a 30 year commitment to something. So if you're some 40 to 50 year old dude and you're like getting the snakes, all of a sudden you're not thinking about what's going to be going on. When you're 80, you might pass away. Your family may not know what to do with it and release it. So this is a long term commitment that you really need to think through. Right. If you are going to do this, let's say you're under the age of 50 and you're like, I'm into snakes. Now, there are some things you want to do. You want to keep your snake nice and warm. And in fact, you want to have basically dual climate zones in your 20 gallon or 30 gallon aquarium, depending on the size of the snake. You want to keep it somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 to 80 deg in the tank in general. And then you want fahrenheit. Fahrenheit. Thank you. Celsius, I think, would melt the snake. And then you want to keep a little area for Basking even hotter. Remember you talked about how snakes like the Basque? This is going to be more like 88 to 92 deg. So the snake can be like, I'm going to go warm up over here on my nice little rock. And if you do that and you keep track of your temperatures, like, you have to really make sure it stays like this, the snake will be much happier than otherwise. Yeah, but you want to screen those lights off. You don't want it actually touching the bulb because that can burn their little skin. And there was one other thing that they really love is branches. They love to hang on the tree branches. So if you could outfit your aquarium, it's got to be sturdy. Don't just put like some sort of lightweight limb from your yard, right? But if you can affect like a really sturdy limb in your python cage, they're going to be pretty happy with you as an owner. And also probably give them a place to hide, too. They want to have a place to hide so that they can feel safe and secure. And then they also like to soak, too. Apparently. Also when they're molting shedding their skin, they like to soak. So you want a little tub, but they want to feel secure when they're in their little tub of water, too. So you probably want to have like a lidded plastic container that you've cut a hole out in the top and smooth the edges out. Be sure to do that so that the snake can go inside its little tub and soak, but also feel enclosed in there too, right? And finally, part of being the owner of a constructed term is you got to feed these things. And when you have them in your house and they're domesticated, there's not a snake food that you shake out like a fish, right? You have this big can and just a bunch of mice shake out. Yeah. Well, that's what you got to do, man. You got to feed them. They need to be fed every week or maybe every two weeks, kind of depending on their appetite. If they're young, you got to start out with little tiny mice about every five to seven days. And then as they get bigger, their diet is going to grow. So if you end up with a six foot python, you're going to have to feed it something that will fill it up. And judging by this person feeding it this dead rabbit. It's not a fun task. I'm sure they don't mind, they're up for that, but I'm not sure. One of the other things, too, this is all if you have a ball python, which is manageable, and it's not going to be able to harm you even if it tried. But if you say you have a Burmese python, there's entire steps that you have to follow through that you wouldn't with other kinds of smaller pythons. Like for example, when you're feeding it, you never ever want to dangle its food in front of its face with your hands because it might bite your hand and start to get a hold of you. Apparently, when it's feeding time and they've sensed food, all of those genes start going crazy and they get a little bit of like food fever and they're not behaving in a way that you might expect them to. Right. So you never want to dangle it with your bare hands or your hands. You want to use like forceps or something like that. And then also, if you have a burning python, you never feed it by yourself. You always have to have at least one other adult around with you just in case something bad does happen. It does happen from time to time. There was a guy in the Bronx in 1996 who was found dead in his apartment and his 45 pound, eleven foot Burmese python was wrapped around him still. He apparently had gone to feed it outside of its cage, a chicken that he had used his hand to dangle in front of it and it just went bad. But that is extremely rare. But the point is it can happen. So you have to be extra safe and smart when you're feeding a Burmese python. Yeah. It happens quick, like when this rabbit was dangled. They're such a chill sort of species, the way they move around, and we've all been to the nature center and some people have held them and petted them. They look very relaxed. But when that rabbit was dangled, when it popped at it and wrapped around it, it happened very, very fast. Yeah. And they will bite you, too. Even though it's not like a venomous bite, it still hurts. Like their teeth can break off into your hand or your arm or wherever. So it's not a pleasant sensation, from what I understand, even though it's not going to kill you. That's right. And then finally, as far as endangerment goes, there are 13 species on the International Union of Conservation of Nature's Red list of threatened species. And I think the Ramsey's python is endangered. The Burmese and the Myanmar are vulnerable. So is the Indian python, too, apparently. But plentiful in Florida, it sounds like. Yeah. I was surprised that the Burmese python is still on that list for as good as it's been, Florida. But maybe they're just thinking of the natural range of it. That's right. And the biggest threat to Pythons? You guessed it, sharks. Yes, us. Not sharks. You got anything else? I don't have anything else. Thanks for putting this one together. Shout out to definitely Live Science for that one article about the guy who found out how you could sequence the genes of Pythons and just be amazed at what you find. Yeah, thanks to Life Science and there were a bunch of different snake specialty websites that we dug into for this. Sweet. And if you want to know more about Pythons and just start reading about Pythons and think really long and hard before you actually get one as a pet. But if you do, take good care of it and tell it that we said hi. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Salem witch family trial family Connection. Hey, guys. I've been listening to the show for a few years, thoroughly enjoyed them. I recently listened to Salem witchcraft trials and something toward the end struck me. You mentioned that Salem was in Essex County. My mother's family settled in Essex in the mid 17th century. So I did a little research and found out that there was an Elizabeth Morris in Newbury who was convicted of witchcraft. She was originally sentenced to death, but that was changed to home confinement after a second trial. And it turns out she is my 7th great grandmother. Wow. Pretty cool. That was a bit of fun family history to share with the friends and family this Halloween season. And that is from George Oaks. That is a great email. George Oaks. We actually heard from a lot of people who were related to people who were executed at the Salem witchcraft trials. Did you notice? Right. I think we heard it from a Corey and a bunch of other people. So shout out to all you guys carrying the family line on for those old witches. But none of those matters. No, they don't tell people. Well, if you want to get in touch with us who was that they wrote in? George? Georgia, if you want to get in touch with us like George did, you can send us an email like George did 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." | |
2b05cfb4-2da5-11ea-b34b-73537f847783 | Short Stuff: Corduroy | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-corduroy | Learn 12 minutes worth of stuff about corduroy today! | Learn 12 minutes worth of stuff about corduroy today! | Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=8, tm_isdst=0) | 13255612 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's JJ. Brand new guest producer. We've got this revolving door going on. It's just like a beautiful and this is Short Stuff. Yeah. JJ. He's a pro, though. It's not like you can just show up here and take a ticket like you're at the deli. No, nothing like that. This isn't Katz's deli. I'd be pretty happy for one. Nor is it? Doctor Katz's, Therapy office. Anytime I hear of Dr. Katz, I think it was Dom Arreira. He used to be a regular on that and he used to go like, Dr. Cats, cha cha cha. And it's been in my head since like, 1993. Oh, man, dr. Katz was great. I miss it, really was. Let's go watch some after this. Okay? All right, but let's talk about Court of Roy first. Sure, that's fine. We can talk about that because you see, I'm wearing it in honor of today. I know you're wearing some rough colored corduroy pants that I would say are maybe probably about a 1210 to twelve whale. Yeah, maybe eight. They're pretty standard levi's cords, whatever that whale is. And if you're wondering what we're talking about, we'll tell you here in a minute after we get to a little bit of the history here, which is debatable, apparently it is, because it's either French in origin corda, du Roy, the Kings cord, but my money is a little more toward what the Brooks Brothers say, which is no, mate, it was street wear in 18th century England. I don't think the Brooks Brothers sound like that. No? What do they sound like? Oh, really? I can just think of Albert Brooks and Super Dave Osborne as the Brooks Brothers. Oh, that's good. Why Dave Osborne? He's not a Brooks, is he? They're brothers, man, believe it or not. No. Isn't that great? Wow, man, their parents must have been really cool. Probably so. Okay, so either way, what we're really talking about here is where the origin of the name for the fabric came from. It looks, Chuck, like corduroy has its roots way further back than that. That it comes from, possibly, and probably a type of fabric from dating back to about 200 Ce back in ancient Egypt called fustians, named after the city where they were made, alfustat, which is I think Fustian is still actually a term for certain types of corduroy, or certain types of fabric, including corduroy that are real thick and squishy. And originally they were pretty coarse. Yeah, but that Brooks Brothers story has a lot of credibility because the word cord referencing the rows, the ridges, the cords, which makes sense, and Du Roy, which is a wool fabric. Right. That sounds like a pretty open and shut case to me now. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm going with the Brooks Brothers interpretation, too. It was really just the impression you did that I had an issue with fabric itself. You think that is Egyptian or Middle Ages and then later Egyptian. No. So it was Egyptian first, but it wasn't Corded. There weren't whales on it. It was just one thick piece of, like, velvet kind of right. Where you have a certain kind of fabric. And then woven on top of that fabric is the fabric that makes it kind of plushier, thicker, sturdier, and that is what corduroy is at its base. And that's what they were making for many, many centuries. And then finally, at some point during the Middle Ages, somebody said, hey, I've got a really good idea about this. Let's turn this into corduroy by cutting rows into this stuff. Right. What we do know in the United States is that it was first made in WISTA, Mass. In about 1780. And I do need to shout out Corduroy the bear here because not only does it appear in this House Works short article on Corduroy, but I have a pretty great Corduroy the Bear History, which was I loved that book a lot as a kid. Sure. Did you? I was aware of it, but I think it was a little ahead of my time. Okay. I think it was ahead of my time too. I think it predates me, but I love the story. And my mom made she got a teddy bear that looked kind of like Corduroy and made him little Corduroy overalls and shorts and was missing a button. That is so sweet. Yes. I had my very own that was kind of one of the great things about my mom, is she could really sew and so she could make me things when they did not exist on the toy market. Oh, that's neat. Or she could save some money and just make her own knock offs. Well, we did that as well. Right. I had more than one T shirt made from curtain fabric. That's hilarious. My mom used to take my T shirts and, like, stuff them and turn them into pillows when I outgrew them. That's sweet. Yeah, it was pretty sweet. I have no idea where they are anymore. But, yeah, I had a few. Very nice. I had one that said BMX. Oh, yeah. That'd be pretty cool to have today. It really would. So we mentioned the whales, and I think we should get to that before we take our little break. The whales are those rigid little ridges. W-A-L-E-S. I'm so glad you spelled it. Yeah. And the higher the whale count, the smaller the little ridge is. So if you have worn one of those really fine sort of like corduroy oxfords, I'm not a huge fan of them for myself. I don't mind the way they look, but I've never liked them for me personally. But that's about a 16 whale. What don't you like about them? It's just not my bag. I'm not big on collared shirts, period. They ruffle my neck and my chin. Yeah, but that particular one you just described about the 16 whale cord, I think is typically called pincod. Yeah, you have some of those, right? I do not. But I have to say, researching corduroy made me want to go buy some corduroy stuff. So I think it's in the offing. Yeah. My problem with my cords is they really wear out in the knees very fast, and I'm not a guy who spends a lot of time on his knees. I'm not scrubbing floors much or anything, so I don't know what the deal is. Okay, well, that's a mystery. I think we can go to commercial break on all right, we'll figure it out. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. All right, Chuck, we're back in. Let's talk a little more about how corduroy is made. Right. Because this blew my mind when I finally saw some diagrams and I understood it. All right, let's hear it. So with a typical fabric, you take two different sets of yarns and you weave them together perpendicular to one another. And you have fabric when you're making a fustian, like a thicker fluffier fabric, like, say, terry cloth or velvet or corduroy terry cloth. It's very nice, isn't it? Yeah. You use a third set of yarn, and so what you have is that basic flat fabric, and then woven into the top of that is that thicker pile of fabric called the worst. Right? Yes. Okay. And so just leaving it like that, you have something like velvet, Oregon, like terry cloth, which you love so much. But if you want to make corduroy, you take that fustian fabric, and then you take a very sharp set of scissors or something like that, and you cut a line all the way along the length of the fabric. And what you've just done is created a two whale bolt of corduroy. But no one's going to wear that, right? Yeah. And Two Whale Bolt is a great band name, by the way. It is. That's funny, because I was just going to say the only person who wear that is somebody like Flee from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll wear anything as pants as we've seen over the years. So you start making more cuts and more cuts. And like you were saying, depending on how supple or nice you want to make the fabric, the more cuts you're going to make. But however many cuts there are, however many ridges there are per inch, that's the whale count. And that kind of describes how thick the ridges are. But the point is, when you make that cut, what you've done is cut that top layer of fabric, the additional third set of yarn, and you've cut it into two, and you've exposed the other traditional two yarn set of fabric underneath and that's what corduroy is. It's a raised ridge that used to be all one complete set of yarn, and then there's valleys that are the fabric below. Yeah, I've been practicing this for days. That's good. And it still didn't go according to plan. I want to cut my thigh with the razor blade right now. I'm so frustrated. Chuck no, I think that was perfect, actually. What you end up with, and how they actually refer to it in the industry, is a three dimensional fabric, a three dimensional pile weave. And like you've mentioned, velvet and terry cloth are also three dimensional fabrics. And it's pretty great. They say in here that you need to steam or fluff corduroy. I don't think that's the case, or at least I've never done that. No, only a Brooks Brothers would do that. But I do have a pretty rocky corduroy coat from back in the day. This thing is I probably had it for 20 years, and I got it second hand, and it is beautiful, and it's got a really fat whales on it. And I don't pull it out much anymore. It used to be my New York coat, but I've evolved a bit since then. But I still have it and it's really a nice coat. Yeah, I think I know the coat you're talking about. I'm either confusing you or Joe McCormick has one that he likes to rock a lot. It's probably Joe, because I haven't won mine in years. Okay, but you got your second hand 20 something years ago, so that would have coincided roughly with the last corduroy revival. And the first one I remember was in the 90s. Do you remember that? Yeah, they were big in the 50s. Certainly in the think that's when I got this thing and I got two. I got one shorter one that had a narrower whale, and then this longer one that has the big fat whales, and I think I still have both of them. Is it like a trench coat? A corduroy trench coat, yeah, it's like a long corduroy coat with the big brown buttons and like a wool lapel. Is it like a barn coat or something? A what? A barn coat. I'm not sure what that is. It sounds like what you're describing. You're going to have to wear this in someday. I'll bring it in. All right, cool. Just bring it in for show and tell. Sure. But yeah. So it was kind of big in the 50s. Really took off in the late sixty s, and then really huge in the went nowhere until the guess this thing said in the 2010s it came back, or the 2000s it came back in which I was not aware of that at all. Well, I've always rocked the cord pants, but over the years it has ranged from school uniform fabric. In World War One. Low ranking soldiers wore it. Work wear. If you worked in like a factory because the stuff is pretty warm, because it's thicker and it's durable, too. Yeah, very durable. Except in the knees. And then sometimes it's also been looked at. Something a little fancier. Right. Which apparently originally was it was sportswear for the upper class, and then somehow just kind of fell out of favor and became associated with the working class and the lower classes. And then it just kind of stayed that way until I think starting in the little while there, it was pretty common as upholstery for cars. Did you know that? Yeah, I have seen a car upholstered in corduroy, and it's pretty awesome. I'll bet it's pretty awesome. The only way that could be any better is if they were like patchwork corduroy. Now, I know the jacket that you're talking about. That is Joe's for sure. Yes. I think it even has elbow patches. Yeah. His is more like a Blazer. Sure. Not a duster like yours. That's right. What else you got? I got nothing else, man. I support corduroy. I like knowing a little bit more how it's made. Yeah. And I say wear it. It's never out of fashion up with corduroy. Agreed. If you want to know more about corduroy, by the way, check out Heddles. Heddels.com. They have something called Corduroy read between the lines of the Whaled fabric by James Smith. And it has a picture that will finally explain better than I possibly could how corduroy is made. Very simply, yes. Okay, well, see you guys later, because short stuff is out. Bye. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c3707f80-5460-11e8-b38c-639b385bca39 | SYSK Selects: How Human Cannonballs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-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. | Sat, 27 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=208, tm_isdst=0) | 28673345 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everyone. It's Saturday, and it's Chuck with a little Saturday select episode for you. I dug deep in the archives, everyone, to talk about human cannonballs. It's part of our circus suite, circus arts suite, rather. And it's good stuff. How to human cannonball's work from July 2011. An oldie but a goodie welcome to stuff. You should know a production of iheartradios how stuff works. 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 you ever captured that? Yes, we did it once, and then people have asked occasionally, like, do the cheek thing again. And I want to do it, like, once every 150 shows, literally. That'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 was a clown in front and he 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 to most people, so it failed miserably. I wrote this blog post recently. Did you read it? I did, yeah. That's a good one. Do they 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, wow. 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 Bronson 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 Brunson. 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 was quite a cannon, too. Yeah. 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. I thought you saw yourself, like, shooting through no. A rocket toward the storm. No, like flopping, like, 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 Coop. He offered. He was like, hey, I live in Kansas and I can get this done. All right, so we'll see. But I think that 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 the whole circus experience. Okay. They were the original showmen. 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 cannon ball cannon. Right. Yeah. The Farini Projector, 1871. George Farini. Basically, it was like 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, because 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 Ferrini'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 Ford momentum and yanking them another way on the trapeze. Yeah. Well, this 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 trapeze. 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. Dazzle. She's 14, and she, at the behest of one PT. Barnum, climbed into the first canon 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 cannonball. Yes. In this first cannon used the springs and they employed the blast, the fire and the boom to make people thinking. 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 love that our forefathers 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. You're 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 Zazzle. Thanks to George Loyal. He was the one who was shot out of a cannon and would be caught by a woman on a trapezoid. 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. Oh, 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 canyon, we are 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 bullet. A bullet with the top cut off. And that bullet is attached to the cannon. So when the compressed air 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. Sweet. But with the big daddy cannons these days, you can go horizontally about 200ft or vertically, which they say that's where the ooz 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 hauling. You're also under some tremendous force, right? Oh, yes. You got about nine GS during launch and twelve GS at impact. And we'll talk about that later. But Chuck the Dodon. Paul right. It's a roller coaster in Japan. It has the highest acceleration. It's 2.7 GS. Jeez. Yeah. So imagine nine, right? Yeah. 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. 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. Is it already did it. Right? Yeah. And some carney, like, puts out a cigarette, it's like, yeah, it looks good to me. 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. 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, like 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. Zachini Zucchini? Zucchinis have been doing well. They've been performing in circuits 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 Manning's brother that most people go, there's another brother. Right. Like, what does he do? He's the oldest, wouldn't he? And he was like a big man on campus at Old Miss, but that was it. He just partied doesn't play football, though. No. So he's not beloved by his father, Archie. So not true. Probably they worked with the Ringwin 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 peak. And then john Weiss. Human bullet. Yeah, he started out as a clown, apparently 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. Really? Yeah, that was his first one. Did he do it as a clown? Do you know? No, I think that would have been a mockery. That a 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 Weiss? Well, he was one of the most prolific cannonballers. Yes. 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. Yeah. 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. Sure. I mean, that's rough work. Yeah. And we pointed out how it is 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. Broker back. Yeah, we'll get into that gruesomeness soon. Brokerback or Zazzle. Okay. All right, so back to the Smith family. They are the modern Cannonball family that are pretty awesome. David Cannonball Smith Junior has spent much of his life inside of a canon. Yes. Have you been on their website? No. It's pretty funny. He's described as having a dynamic personality. I like that. It's better than saying he has a dynamite personality. That'd be pretty bad. But David The Bullet Smith Jr. Is the son in? I'm sorry. He's the one with the dynamic finale. Okay. His dad was a real snooze. I don't know. He bested his dad's record by flying 193ft. Yeah. But his dad still holds the highest, I think 203, 201, 201ft. 61.2 meters. And that's friends outside of America. Yeah. That's when it was over two Ferris wheels. Yeah. That's crazy. 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. 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 story building in 2 seconds. So basically their 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 there? Well, that's what I'm saying. I have no idea. I don't know if they were like, well, we 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 cannon ballers 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 it's 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 tiptop 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. You need to become a projectile. Right. Because all you're wearing is a helmet. Maybe a little padding. Yes. But a helmet is not going to do much if you miss your net. No, the net is very important. A lot of people use airbags as well. Right? Yes. There is a guy who's named Elvin Bail. He's the human space shuttle. Poor Elvin Bail. 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 was 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 soap 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 moist 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. Exactly. You also said something that brought to mind the idea that the G force that we talked about earlier, it's been shown to produce a loss of consciousness in people. That's another danger, that 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 Elven Bell is not the only person that something horrible has happened to, obviously. Right. Yeah. Matt Tranch 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. That was in Great Britain, too. Very sad. And remember, I mentioned a Zucchini sister. The Zucchinis used to do these double barrels 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 another, 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 net 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 60 miles an hour, I wonder how close to break your back than 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 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 that crap, I'm going to die by hitting my brother sister brother. Very sad. Yes. 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 songs. 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 a human Cannonballer to their top speed, do you want to know? One fifth 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 dare doubles seeing like pop up. I said handysearchpart@housedivores.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 decades 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 worn to be careful when we went near the barn. Reason? Because the earth beneath our feet could give away at any moment. Well, it 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 Adirondacks 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 who 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? You've gone 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@howstepworks.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." | |
How Asexuality Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-asexuality-works | When Alfred Kinsey conducted his sex surveys he turned up, but ignored, a fourth sexual orientation: people who don't experience sexual attraction. It took 60 years for Group X to gain a name and recognition, but with that has come increased scrutiny. | When Alfred Kinsey conducted his sex surveys he turned up, but ignored, a fourth sexual orientation: people who don't experience sexual attraction. It took 60 years for Group X to gain a name and recognition, but with that has come increased scrutiny. | Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:15:27 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=20, tm_min=15, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=255, tm_isdst=0) | 33030968 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforcecom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And he can't really say what he's doing right now, but he's having a fine time. I'm playing with my little what is this? Triceratops. Triceratops? We have dinosaurs and a jar in here. I don't know who brought these in. Yeah. But I thank them because it's kind of fun. It is fun. It looks really uncomfortable for the dino stores. I've seen too many of the Toy Story movies, too, just to leave these things. That's why I secured the Triceratops by my side today. That's nice. He'll be with us through Asexuality. Yes, he will. We're going to go on a little journey through Asexuality today. This is, I guess, new to me. Like, I've heard the term before, asexual, but I never really realized that it's becoming and there's a group of people who claim this as their sexual orientation. Yeah. You hear the word kind of thrown around like they never really had a girlfriend or boyfriend. That scene. They're just sort of asexual. Right. It's a real thing. It's often put alongside androgyny sure. So, like, asexual meaning genderless, but that's not at all what it means. And improperly tied to abstinence celibacy celibacy. Tim Tebow, if you believe the lies. I don't know. I think he's for real. Do you? Yes, sir. Or Morrissey. Yeah, he's legendarily celibate celibate. Right. But not necessarily asexual. There's a big difference. So I looked into this a little more before even proposing this, and I was just fascinated with it. Not in, like a periant sense. I was just interested. Sure. And what kicked it all off was I was in line at the bank, and there was this woman reading a book while she was going through, like, the Teller transaction, and she had this T shirt on, and it said Aven ave. And I looked a little closer, and it said, Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. Right. It's not off the top of my head. Did it have a logo or anything? It did. I didn't recognize it until now, and I still can't conjure it up in my mind's eye. But it was a triangle, and I took it to me like the pink triangle for homosexuality. It is not. It's just a triangle. Had I looked a little closer, had I looked now, I would see that I think it's a slice of cake. Okay, sure. Which is their symbol, supposedly from a quote from someone, an asexual who said, between a slice of cake and sex, I'd take the cake. Right. I think everyone feels that way one time or another, though. Right. Okay. So that's an excellent point. The difference is, if you're Asexual, you feel that way virtually all the time, that is quite literally your orientation. You're oriented toward no sexual attraction. No sexual preferences. Although you may still if you do feel any kind of romantic feelings, it would still possibly go along heterosexual lines, right? Yes. Let's get into this. Okay. I guess Alfred Kenzie is a pretty good place to start whenever you're talking about people doing it or not doing it. Man, I don't know how he got into these people's, how he got people to talk like this back then. Have you seen the movie? No, I haven't. It's good. Ray fine. No, liam Neeson. Liam Neeson. He beat everybody up. He did a bunch of polls and then whipped everyone's butt. Yeah. He's like, I have a very specific data set. So in his famous Kenzie scale, he rates very inclusively a scale from, I think in here, they say from fleeting attraction to longer term compulsions. Like, he tries to include everyone in the scale, but it's still generally not inclusive of asexuals they are group X, it's, like, completely noninclusive. It goes from zero to six, and it's straight up hetero to straight up homosexual. That's right. And then there's stuff in between, and you can fall somewhere on the spectrum. But it was pretty groundbreaking at the time because, first of all, people weren't really talking about homosexuality much. So to make a scale that was inclusive of them, that was pretty revolutionary. Yeah, but he did identify Group X. He just didn't include it on the scale. Group X to him was the 1.5% of men and 15% of women who said, I don't have sexual relations. I'm not interested in it. Right. But he just kind of disregarded that as an anomaly group, or maybe he thought he would come back to it at some later date and never did. Right. But out of this, he said something that's kind of a famous quote. He said, the world is not to be divided into sheep and goats, which means there's more than just straight and there's more than just gay. There's some stuff in between. There's a range. But he still left out. Group X He still left out. Group X What's weird. And Kristen Conger, who wrote this article yeah, good job, too. Yeah, she did a good job tying this all together. There was a study in 2002 of rams that produced another Group X in its sample. Interestingly. Also Ram is in cheap, right? Because apparently there's a guy named Charles Roselli, and he was looking to find if there's a biological basis for homosexuality. So return to the animal kingdom. Right, sure. Apparently, rams can be gay. Yeah. Rams can party down with other rams, and when there's females around, they'll still just say, hey, that guy looks pretty good to me. Right. So he also found that there are some that don't go for either. Yeah. And this Group X among rams started to disform the basis of the idea of asexuality as an orientation as far as, like, academia is concerned. Right. And the flip side of this, which we haven't really mentioned, is as opposed to a physiological problem, an issue or a mental illness, which up until 1973, homosexuality is considered a mental illness. So until 73. And then in 1986, they finally took out the secondary. Basically, being stressed out from being gay was a diagnosis until 1986. And finally there's like, no homosexuality in the DSM any longer. But essentially until 86 and in 73, that was when the straight up, like, if you're gay, you're mentally ill, was taken out. And the DSM is we've talked about it before, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, basically, where they classify everything. And it's important, Chuck, we should say what goes in there because it's basically the book that says, here's what society thinks is normal and here's what society thinks is abnormal. And if you who considers yourself normal is in there, then society has a lot of leverage against you to tell you that there's something wrong with you. Yeah. It's a doctor's opinions. Right. It's not like they took polls from society. Right. No, but I mean, that's based on a lot. It's not all of it's based on empirical evidence. Basically saying, like, you act this way in society thinks there's something wrong with you, that's mental illness. Right. Good point. So we mentioned it's not like celibacy because that is a choice to remain sexually inactive. Morris battles that every day. I'm sure he does. I mean, look at him. He dresses sexy. Oh, Morris. He's a sexy guy. I look at him. So he's a pop star. Right. He'd have anyone he wants on either side. Right. But he chooses not to selle it. That's right. Is he still I think he is, isn't he? Oh, I think he's like lifetime celibate, really? Yeah, but you never know. I mean, I don't know Morris personally. She never told me. Right. But this is just from being a fan. Yeah. And he's come out very hard lining for his celibacy, so it's not like he's been a secret or anything like that. Oh, no, he towns well, and we'll mention this even more, but it's the same with asexuals what is it? 1%, roughly, of the population in the samples. In the samples. It was 1.5 in this big survey. So this is all very new. Like, think about it. That Ram study was from 2002, right? In 2004, that Ram study, I think, piqued somebody's interest enough to start looking into this. So it's real new. Like, this is a 21st century sexual orientation and at least people who study it are just now starting to look into it. Well, I've already figured out how to discriminate against it. Anthony Bogert. I don't know how you say it. Bogart. Bogua. He is the one in 2004, he's a psychologist at Brock University in Canada. I don't think they have any kind of a football team at Brock University. Brock probably wrong, though, Rock, but he is the one who published a journal in Journal of Sex Research in August of 2004. That one of the first people to do a lot of studying on this in recent times. He examined data from a survey in the UK from 1009 four, and basically out of the 19,000 sample size, which isn't too bad. No, it's huge. Yeah. He found 1.5% said, I have never felt sexual attraction to anyone at all. And that wasn't like, part of it was a huge survey, a huge sample of a bunch of questions. And that was just one of the one group was lumped into a little data set based on that response. And this guy went back and found that and really started to look at it well. And he's the first one in 2006 to say, you know what? This is a sexual orientation, and that's how it should be treated. And asexuals they're proud to be who they are. I mean, the ones that come out in the support groups, at least, I'm sure there's a lot more that wrestle with it and are quiet about it, but at least with the what is it? The AV E N? Yes. The Asexuality visibility and education network. They're all about being proud to call it a sexual orientation. Right. We don't need to be treated for any kind of dysfunction. Leave us alone. Right. We're happy with basically how we're born. The thing is leave us alone. It's not just that. It's also take us seriously. Yeah, sure. Because there's a lot of accusations that are leveled against them. Like, you guys are all victims of trauma. That's probably what it is. Or you're being willful to not be taken seriously as a human being. That's a big deal. Yeah. David Jay would agree with that. Not to be confused with David J. From Bau House. No. And there's another David j Too. Yeah. I think he was some other kind of writer. Unless the Bau House guy is a writer now. David J. From Bauhaus. This goes by David capital J, period. Okay. No, not the same guy. This is David J-A-Y-J-A-Y. Founder of the Aven. And there's a site Asexuality.org that he founded in 2001 where you can find out all kinds of information and get support if you find yourself in this 1.5%. And he made a lot of news because he's a young, handsome dude. And everybody's like, why don't you want to do it with anybody? Exactly. And he's just like, Because my orientation is Asexual. And start wrapping your heads around that, people. I think Matt Lauer actually poked him in the stomach like, man, what's going on? During an interview really early. No. Okay. But there is a range of not Asexuals are the same. Kristen points out that some are virgins, some are not. Right. And it's not even just necessarily from a past experience before they kind of figured out where they were some still have sex to satisfy their partner, only to satisfy their partner. And if you want to get a first person, first hand view of what it's like to be asexual in a very hyper sexual world, they have a lot of essays and tips and guides for interacting with asexual people, I'm sure. And one of them that I read was like, having sex with an asexual person. And how you get to that point? Wow. Yeah. That's a gift. As I understand it, that means that person really cares about you because they are not into this at all. Or if they are into it, it's not sexual, it's romantic. Right, well, and that's the other point Conor goes on to make. Like, some are virgins, some are not. Some masturbate, some do not. Some pursue romantic, long term committed relationships and some don't pursue that like anything beyond platonic relationships. Right. So it kind of runs the gamut on how they choose to integrate and live their life, or not integrate and just still live their life. Yeah. Which I guess is still integration. You're thinking of that rough song pretty well. Okay. I think we should also say, Chuck, even while we're trying not to pigeonhole anyone, we're still managing to still, I'm sure, leave some people out. It's a very broad swath of people. And that was a good point to say, like a lot of different ways to live as an asexual person. Yeah. We haven't figured them all out. Just as there are a lot of ways to live as a sexual person. Exactly. The tie that binds asexually oriented people is that they literally don't feel sexual arousal or sexual attraction. That's right. It's just not part of it. And this Indiana University study, you didn't talk about that, right? No. So these researchers sat down at Indiana University with four self identified asexuals and basically said, tell us about it. And most of them, I think basically the consensus was that, yeah, it's kind of tough, especially when you're attracted romantically to people. Like you want to have a relationship. Right. But most people aren't asexual. This is 1.5% of that sample. So there's going to be some sort of conflict or problems. No matter how understanding your partner is, this is going to be tough. Sure. Not just for you, but for them. So they said that's tough. But on the flip side, you have a lot more free time and your chances of getting an STD or an unwanted pregnancy are like virtually nil. Well, I kind of laughed at the free time thing. Like how many hours a day are people spending having sex? But if you totally are devoid of sex, that means as a single person, you're not spending any time going looking for it or you're suing people. So a lot of time theoretically goes into people out there trying to hook up. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. If you step back and think about it, especially if you're like a single person, there's a lot of time and energy that goes into all that goes into getting to the sexual act. Right. It's not just the time that you spend. I remember those days. It was a long time ago. I don't remember what that's like. But the point is, that's a lot of time and energy and what else could you have done with that? I often spent my time doing other things, actually. I was never that guy cruising the bars. I was always just hanging out with my friends, which probably explains a lot. So interestingly, in these polls as well, women make up generally across two different polls, they both made up 71% of the population of asexual individuals. Yeah, that 1994 British survey of the households. And then later an avenue poll just last year. No, that was 2008. That was 71%. And then it went down. The ratio of men to women changed in the last year's poll. It went to, like, 67% women. Yeah, but the other 33% wasn't all men. A lot of them identify themselves as gender neutral. Yeah, 22%. That's a lot. That is a lot. So this suddenly now you have a subset of a subset as far as sexual orientation goes. That's right. And I was reading on aven today about how to use remember when we did our executive order podcast, the flawless one on executive orders? We were trying to figure out what you would call a gender neutral president. All right? It's not out there. No one has any idea. Like, even people who are gender neutral don't really know. There's not a standard way to address somebody like that with a gender neutral pronoun. So we got to figure that one out. Well, somebody smarter than us and more sensitive than us should do that. Okay, so the aven has grown since 2001 from 19,000 to 30,000 members, which is pretty great. These people are getting some pretty good community support. Conger points out that disinterest in sex is usually regarded as a problematic symptom rather than, like, a sexual identity. So that's the battle they're kind of facing now. Again, don't treat us. We don't need we're not dysfunctional. We were born this way. The guy that founded the network said that. I remember being a kid, and once people started talking about, like, hot movie stars, I was just like, what? I don't get it. What does that mean? Right? From a very young age, why are you making humping motions in the air? Little kids are dirty. Kids are so filthy dirty. I don't even know they're innocent. What's going on? What's going on with my hips? Yeah, it's all very sweet. They're just trying to figure it all out. Yeah, poor kids. And then comes the hair spray. So we mentioned the diagnostic manual, mental disorders. There are two disorders that look like they could cover this. As far as sexuality goes, and one of them is Sad, sexual Aversion Disorder. And the other is hypoactive sexual desire disorder. You can throw out Sad because that's an actual phobia of sex. Yeah. It's like you get real anxiety from even the idea of having sex. Right. That's not what asexuality is. No, it's not. So go ahead and toss that out. HSDD is a little closer because it's described as persistently or recurrently, deficient or absent of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity. The difference there, though, is, as Connor calls it, a critical footnote. It must be inciting marked distress or interpersonal difficulty, which I'm sure can happen. But Asexual is also a lot of them are saying, you know what? I'm fine. Well, that's part of what Avenue is all about, is kind of like accepting and celebrating and saying, like, dude, you're okay. You don't have to feel bad about this. This is just who you are. So yes, that last one. What is it? HSDD. Yeah. I feel so bad because it's like, okay, guys are starting to make their way through the civil rights discrimination road, and they're starting to come out on the other end and okay, who else is there to discriminate against? We're almost out of people. Who can we go to next? Oh, good. Here's a group called Asexuals. And here they come. So let's run them through the pike because that's what's about to happen, it looks like. Well, I could see them being more accepted, but the people that don't accept homosexuality, I could see them being more lenient with Asexuality because it doesn't threaten anything in their life. I agree. It's tough to discriminate against somebody based on the lack of sexuality. It's more like taking it seriously and treating it not as a mental illness. Right, exactly. That's got to be big. Sure. Because think about it, like the whole chickfila thing that's going on, right? Yeah. So let's say that still to this day, the field of psychology considered homosexuality a mental illness. Right. Now, consider those donations. What they're going to are they going like to discriminate? Are they going to treat mental illness? Right. That's a big deal to be in there. It's a lot of power that little book wields. Totally. And it's for no other reason than just respect and self respect, like you're talking about. Yeah. I mean, what's our motto? To live and let live. That's one of them. To each his own. That's right. It's kind of the same thing. Yeah. So they have petitioned the board, though, to have that removed, much like they did in 1973 with homosexuality. So we'll see what happens there. I think the DSM Five comes out in 2015, maybe. How often does it publish? Like 73 to 86. Wow. Those were in between. Yeah. So when you're in there, it's a big deal. I wonder if it's a set republish or if it's every time they need to have some changes stacked up they release different editions of different versions. Got you. That makes sense. Revised ones. But they've been working on this for years. There's so much controversy around it because it's saying, here's what's normal. Yeah. Hot off the press. On one hand, it's great to be able to diagnose people with problems. But on the other hand, there's something about just taking a book and seeing, like, let's see what you are. Let me look it up. I'm a person. Well, there's a checklist. It's like, if this person here's the set of symptoms we say are associated with this disease. Right. Based on probably a lot of study. And if they have eight of 20, then they're that they're that thing they have that mental illness. Like, what about the others down the list, some supposed notable Asexuals throughout history? Yeah, I found a few lists that were pretty hinky. Nikola Tesla, and one of them had, like, fictional characters, and they were like, Dexter. Dexter is not as sexual. Not at all. He's weird. He's a serial killer. But he had affairs, like girlfriends, libins. Well, those were mostly to mask his homicides. No, I mean, he goes at it pretty good. Okay. In the first couple of seasons, I could see him being considered Asexual, especially the first season. Plus Mike, to see how it was just coming up 6ft under. Yeah, he's like, I went from homosexual to asexual when I really just want to be a serial killer. But he was straight in real life because he was married to what his cost are. Yeah, I think they're reconciling. Oh, they reconciled. I believe so. Wasn't that nice? Yeah. All right, so back to the supposed list. These are the ones that I kind of weeded out to potentially be correct. Okay. Off of the bunk list, what about Nicola Tesla made you think it was Hanky? I don't know. It didn't come from his cousin, the report. I think it was just from the website where I got it, and I didn't see him on any other websites. Oh, I get you. Okay. Paula POUNDSTONE, the comedian. Perfect. She supposedly is asexual Tim Gunn. He's Fashion Guy. Right. Edward Gory, the illustrator. I did not know that. And JM. Barry, the creator of Peter Pan. Although it's hard to substantiate that one because I've seen some works where he was called a pedophile without a whole lot of backup, aside from rumors has it that he and his wife never consummated the marriage. And he sure did like to hang around kids. But that's kind of unfair too. But see, that's the other thing too. That's really unfair, actually. Think about it. If he is Asexual, then how would you rectify that? I mean, if this were 20 years from now, 30, 40, 50 years from now, and Asexuality were normal, you could look back at that set of behaviors and be like, oh, it was obviously Asexual. Exactly. But we have to drag these poor people's lives out into the spotlight for the rest of us to observe and to examine. So then we can say, okay, all right, we will agree that this is normal and it can come out of the DSM. Agreed. Like, he might have been straight up Asexual, and they just didn't know what that was. He's not having sex with his wife, so that means he's a pedophile. Exactly. Because he writes children's. Exactly. Because we don't understand man. So that was the list of Asexuals. Yes. There were others, but I didn't feel great about there were two in this article I thought were pretty good. So apparently among asexuals like the asexual TV character is Doctor Who. I'm not a Doctor Who guy, but I know that a lot of our army is. Yes. So Doctor Who is supposedly asexual. He exhibits a lot of the behavior, but he's also not very judgmental, and he has satisfying substantial relationships with others. Right. Those are great points. And who else was in there? Sheldon from Big Bang. Yeah. I don't watch that. I don't either, but I know who they're talking about. I could see him being Asexual. Got you that's more rumor. Apparently Doctor Who is like that's. An asexual hero. I saw doctor house listed, too. No way. Yeah, he was, like, all about that. His ex wife. And he was all about, there's another doctor. Like an administrator. Yeah, he's not Asexual. That's right. I think that was the same list that had Tesla and Dexter on it. That's why I was looking at well, it's a poo poo list. You watch House, I mean, from time to time, if it's on and I'm, like, jogging or whatever and there's no Law and Order on, I'll watch how do you watch TV? When you jog? Yeah. Nice. That's great. If I ever go outside and run, I'll be like, what's on? If you want to learn more about Asexuality, we strongly encourage you to go check it out. There's another podcast. Stuff mom never told you did this. Oh, did they? Like, years back. Okay, maybe go get that one to listen to. Yes. Get their take on it. Yeah. And then you can also go check out the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, and it's Avenue. It's Asexuality.org. That's right. You can check them out, or you can type in Asexuality in the search bar@howstofworks.com, and it'll bring this up. I said search bar. So it's time for all right, this is maybe our last installment. This is what we do when folks have sent in little tokens and chocolate keys and gifts and cards and letters. We like to give them their due on the air because a lot of times are small businesses and their Etsy sites and talented people. So did you grab the one from yesterday that I didn't finish? I did finish. It didn't okay, good. All right, so we're all set. All right, so we got a postcard from Claire Henders in New Zealand. Very nice. Yeah. Kiwis, you want to go ahead. Oh, is that it? I thought you were going to say, thanks, Claire, or something. Oh, thanks. Square from Etsy. Comshopbfreemily and yummy. Got some charms. Yeah. Thank you very much for this. That was very sweet. Yes, it was. Coffee. We got coffee. I imagine you got that from Corey, who was living in Haiti at the time. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. Was it good? Oh, yes, it was nice. I drank the heck out of that. Good. And had many sleepless nights because of that. We got some real men way too. Bills, t shirts. That's right. We said that off handedly in a podcast a long time ago, and apparently it was on a T shirt, so we got that from Custominc.com. Thanks for that. We have received several books that I'm going to list here. Seven Deadly Women by Jamie Hale. The official 2012 Doomsday Survival Handbook. This one was really good. Whey. I've been proving that in my brakes here at work. Do you have breaks? I do. The Savvy converts guide to choosing religion. Really good. Book KnockKnock biz is where you can find that. And then this one is really cool. Wine to water. A bartender's quest to bring clean water to the world. I followed up with this guy's name is Doc Henley, and he was a bartender that founded an organization called Winetowater.org. And they're doing awesome work. That's a great name for it. Yeah, very cool. That was a long good last book. So, Glenn and Sonya, who we thank for the champagne. Of course, we also want to thank their Akiva captains. By the way, we want to thank them for these T shirts from the Princeton Library. I think of Einstein, and it says Einstein simplified, and it's three drawings and they just get simpler and simpler. Yeah, it's awesome. I wear it all the time while I'm jogging and watching television. Russian candy. Remember the Russian candy? Yeah, you're all over that. We got some Russian candy from Audrey. It was like it had Pop Rocks in the middle and I couldn't stop eating it's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Go ahead. We got a postcard from Margaret in Chile. Joanne and Steven in Columbia from the Amazon Institute. Oh, yeah, that's right. Those are our friends. That's who nominated us for the Grammy. That's right. Thank you very much. We're Grammy nominated. Podcast. Dan Bertwell from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and some graphic novels, just as they're like here. Dude, I heard your comic book thing. And here's some graphic novels that I've enjoyed in my life. Maybe get it right next time. No, he's very cool. Watchmen. Which I've already read. I want to see that one. Yeah, I think I have it over there. Awesome. Coward, which I have not read yet. Okay. The punisher Max, which I have not gotten to yet. I definitely. Want to see that one. Yeah. And why the Last Man, which I did read. And I want to thank Dan because why the last man was awesome. And I also want to punch Dan because now I have to buy the other nine volumes to see where the story goes. But I'm going to get them. I actually went to Amazon the other day. Oh, you got to go to Oxford Comics and get them, man. What, you got us, like, stand around in the comic book shop and buy them, then you can't just order them? Yeah, you can. It's pretty easy, actually. So let's see the member of our roller derby episode. Oh, yeah. Well, the Deutschland Roller sent us a sticker. Thank you for that. That's right. Kick butt. And my last one is Maureen from the therapysisters@therapysisters.com. They sent us their music CD, and it's like, funny stuff. Yes, it is. Thank you for it. I've got more. Do you want to split these? No, go ahead. All right. So Emily from Idaho, send us a cool fold out postcard from Maui. That's right. I remember that. Thank you, Jennifer. From nature's classroom in New England. And it's a handwritten letter again, very rare. It's nice to see those. Leah from Halifax sent you a birthday card. Yeah, that was very nice. That was nice. And then Kenneth Crowder sent us a $1 bill, which I still have yet to get any of. It's over there on my desk, I have framed, like, a little like our first dollar earned, like businesses do you really? Yeah, that's our first dollar earned. It's actually not brand new, but it's still over there. Okay, I leave it out. Just daring somebody that'd be brave enough to steal. Well, if it's replaced by $0.50 soon, that's me. Okay. And then Aaron Spivey sent us an Atlantic core. Vet drum and bugle. Corps patch. That's right. Thank you very much to all of you for awesome free stuff. Yeah, that's really cool. When you guys think of us and send us things like that, it's very sweet. So that was it. Administrative details is over. Yeah. I'm going to start my new list. We need some emails then, right, for listener mail, which will start up next. That's right. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffynow. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. 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4301d136-53a3-11e8-bdec-430287239813 | Why are Pentecostals growing so rapidly? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-are-pentecostals-growing-so-rapidly | Pentecostals are seemingly taking over the world. Or at least they're making up a larger section of Christianity than every before. Why? We'll dig in on that in today's episode. | Pentecostals are seemingly taking over the world. Or at least they're making up a larger section of Christianity than every before. Why? We'll dig in on that in today's episode. | Thu, 06 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=37, tm_isdst=0) | 39587096 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh, and I'm here to tell you it's official. We're going to be in Vancouver, BC and Portland, Oregon this March. On March 29 will be at the chan center in vancouver. And on March 30, we'll be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland. So come see us. Tickets go on sale this Friday. Go to sysclive.com for ticket links and info and everything you need. We'll see you guys in March. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hallelujah and welcome to Stuff You Should Know. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's josh t over there. And this is like I said, stuff you should know. Hey, we should plug Josh's record. Can you get that anywhere? Josh, migrant Worker. All right. He's got a new album out. He's a very talented musician. What's the name of the album? Self titled. I don't think they wrote out self Titled. Okay. I think it's just called migrant worker. Okay. And it looks great. I haven't heard it yet, but the artwork is amazing, and I know Josh is talented. So go out there and find it, everyone. Jerry's not in a band. No, she's not. I'm not going to weigh their individual talents against one another. But Jerry's not in a band. What if Jerry was, like, secretly in a heart tribute band or something? That would make my life. Yeah, that'd be pretty crazy. Well, I want to hear that album, too, Josh. Okay. Says Josh. So, Chuck, I said hallelujah to start this one off. You did? And the reason I did that, because it was a nod to Pentecostalism, which is what we're going to talk about today. That's right. I could have sworn we did an episode on speaking in tongues. We did not. We did one on faith healing and snake handling. Yes, both of those were excellent. And we must have talked about speaking in tongues some end during both of those. Yes, but we're going to talk about it a little bit more because it's a big part of the Pentecostal movement, which huge, surprisingly. And you may have been the one that dropped that stat on me recently about being the fastest growing sect of Christianity. Is that right? Yeah, I did. It was the other day. I don't know where that can't be true. Maybe it was just I can't remember what you said. Evangelical. No, I think that doesn't sound like me. I probably said, look it up. Of course I'm right. Oh, goodness. That was a great Josh impression. But it is true. I guess it just seemed counterintuitive because I naively thought that pentecostalism was sort of antiquated in something that was going away. Oh, no. That's how they get you. That's what they want you thinking. They spring on you. They snake in your face. Yeah. They say, Here, hold this, sinner. No, but we're going to be respectful here because it's pretty interesting. I think starting now. Okay. We need to get in the wayback machine, though, and go back to where this all began. Not really where it all began, because in truth, that would be biblical times, but where it began as a modern thing is not that long ago in downtown Los Angeles. They had something going on called the Azusa Street Revival, which we talked about that in the faith healing episode, too. Yeah, it was a very big deal. This was at the Apostolic Faith mission in downtown La. There. Right on Azusa Street. Downtown La. Looks very different back then, obviously. Yeah. This is like the industrial area I saw. Yeah. I mean, now it's just downtown La. Sure. Like the toy, not the toy. Zone. What do you call it? The Toy Zone. Not the zone. What do you call it? An area where toy district. There's a toy district. There is. I didn't know that. Yeah, downtown has got a Toy district in a fashion district. It's where you go get raw fabrics off the truck or cheap toys straight off the boat, that kind of thing. Got you. Okay. It's not like just a wonderland or anything. I know. I was like, I want to go see this. It sounds amazing. I want to go to the Toy Zone. Yeah, the Toy Zone. So this was going on back then down there, and that was led by a minister and African American minister from Louisiana named William Seymour. Yeah. And what was interesting about this is that this is at Zuza Street Mission, this was black and white. I'm not sure about Hispanic, but I would not be at all surprised. It was Hispanic as well. Okay. They were like races, worshiping together, and it was a very big deal. Just that alone was a very big deal. But what makes this the start of Pentecostalism is that at some point, I think in April of 19 six, they started holding three services a day, seven days a week, and these were like marathon hours long services, each one. And the reason that they were doing this is because if you're a Pentecostal, you believe that the Holy Spirit had descended upon the Azusa Street Mission and was in baptizing all these people with fire and causing them to speak in tongues, to dance, to clap, to sing, and basically revived religion as we're Christianity as we know it. That's what happened here in Los Angeles starting in April of 1006. That's right. And they get that that goes back to the biblical days, where the eleven remaining disciples after Christ was crucified judas was the 12th. You know what happened to him? Yeah, he didn't pan out so well. He didn't pan out so well. Didn't he kill himself after that? Yeah, he hung himself. Excuse me. I always get that wrong. I always get that wrong, too. But those eleven remaining disciples were baptized in the Holy Spirit and filled with the Holy Ghost. And began to speak in other tongues during the Pentecost feast, which was a Jewish feast named So because it was, I think, 50 days after the crucifixion. After Passover. Yeah, after Passover. And Greek. Pentecost is Greek for 50th. Right. Well put, Chuck. Yeah. What happened at that first Pentecost feast back in the first century Ce was, like you said, they were bathed in the Holy Spirit, they were speaking in tongues, they suddenly had powers to heal. And all this happened at that Pentecost feast. And apparently in the Bible it basically says, hang around and wait for this to happen again, and you will know this will be a sign that the second coming of Christ is at hand. And so again, if you're a Pentecostal, you believe that in April of 19 six, the Holy Spirit showed up on earth again and basically bathed these followers in itself, in the Holy Spirit, and to announce that Christ was coming again for the second time. That's right. If you are a complete agnostic or atheist non believer, this all sounds very weird, probably. But even back then and now, if you are a non Pentecostal Christian, let's say, you might think it's pretty weird too. It got a lot of blowback back in 19 six from Christians and atheists alike, the La Times, it was a reporter who wrote a story entitled Weird Babble of Tongues, where they wrote about attendees breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand. Davotes of the weird doctrine, practice the most fanatical rights, preach the wildest theories, and work themselves into a state of mad excitement. Right. So it wasn't just the Los Angeles Times that thought this is a little odd. There was a guy named Charles Parham who five years earlier is considered possibly the actual founder of Pentecostalism, because this is really important. Speaking in tongues is the basis. It's the thing that differentiates Pentecostalism from everything else. The idea that you can speak in tongues, and when you do speak in tongues is because you are being baptized by the Holy Spirit and your soul is being sanctified, and that if you don't speak in tongues, you're not actually saved yet. That's the big differentiator. Well, back in 19 one in Topeka, Kansas, charles Param was preaching, and one of his church members, Agnes Ozain, I think her name was, started speaking in tongues. And so some people are like, no, this is the first appearance of this Holy Spirit that was announcing the second coming of Christ. Other people are like, yeah, Agnes is great and we'll give her due. But really it was the Zusa Street revival where it wasn't just one person, it was everybody who came. This revival, this thing where people were dancing and clapping and speaking in tongues for essentially the first time ever, or at least since the apostles back in the first century. This went on for years. They held three services a day, seven days a week for years. And people were coming and being ecstatic and having just a heck of a time, almost at a hell of a time at this mission, I think it's nine years total. Yeah. And then spreading out and going out into the world to basically say, hey, everybody, Jesus is coming, look busy. Do you remember that? That was like Stephen King's favorite T shirt for a teenager to be wearing. Jesus is coming, look busy. Yeah. If you read his stuff from the 70s, like in every book, there's a teenager wearing a T shirt. Yeah. That's like George Costanza's when he stumbled upon the thing that if he looked annoyed every time someone passed his office, then they thought he was working hard. Serenity now, serenity later. One thing we should point out, too, that the early Pentecostals were oddly ahead of the curve and allowing women to take leadership roles in the church at a time, and many times women of color. And this is not the norm in any capacity, so we should give them their due for that. Well, in fact, William Seymour, the guy who was heading the Zoosa Street revival, he married a white woman, and he believed that the races worshiping together was a clear sign that God was present, the Holy Spirit was present, and that this was like the real deal, like this was really happening. But what's ironic and kind of, I guess, tragic even about it, is that there was a faction that split off at the mission and a group left the mission and founded basically their own branch of Pentecostalism. There's, like, one really clear through line aside from the religious beliefs of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. And that is the politics of it. Right? Yeah. So there'll be some leader who comes along and says, no, this literal interpretation is being interpreted incorrectly. Actually, you're supposed to say this word, and all of a sudden, this guy has got his own church with his own followers, and they spread their own word. Right. This happened at the Azusa Street Mission, and out of that came the two largest congregations that are in the United States, at least the Church of God in Christ, which is predominantly African American, and the Assemblies of God, which is predominantly white. And so what started out as this really amazing, like, racial mix, multiracial ecstatic worship of God split into two different factions of the same thing that divided along racial lines. Amazing. Yeah. So let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about what's happened since then and what Pentecostals believe and why they're growing so quickly. All right, so before the break, you mentioned the Church of God in Christ, largely African American, 6.5 million members, not too shabby. Assemblies of God, 3.2 million members, also not too shabby. Give me a lot of stats in here as we go to really drive home what has happened here what has happened? Something awful. It's not how I mean it. In 1980, 6% of all global Christians were Pentecostals. By 2015, that had grown to 25%. From 1980 to 2015, that's astounding. Yes, like a 19% jump. But also, Chuck, that means that one in four Christians are Pentecostals now. Yeah. And I think the stat from that Washington Post article says one in twelve human beings on planet Earth are Pentecostal of just all humans. Yes, that's right. And if you're a Pentecostal, you're like, well, that's clear evidence that the Holy Spirit is spreading throughout the world. That's right. This is not just the United States. In fact, it is such a big deal because it's a global movement, what is referred to as the global south, which is Africa or regions of Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia. The global south is booming with I'm sorry, pentecostals. That's right. We'll talk a little more about that, but just kind of put a pin in that I was right that it is the fastest growing religion or religious sect. Yeah. So there's this guy, he's a New Testament professor at Evangel University of Missouri named Martin Middlestadt, and he's quoted a lot in this who wrote this? Was this Dave Ruse? I don't know. I didn't think it might have been Dave, but it seems like he did jam, the author got an interview with Mr. Middleshot. I don't know if he's a doctor or not, okay. But he had a lot of great light to shine on this and kind of what's going on. He was the Lightbringer. He's the Light bringer. He said that? Sorry, doctor Middle stad. Oh, you just called him Doctor. And he might not be, but I also just called him Lucifer too. Well, good point, Dr. Lucifer. So he said that this is kind of like any kind of restoration or renewal movement within Christianity. That happens when and it's happened over time in different ways, but that happens when Christians feel like, hey, we've been ignoring something pretty important here in the Bible directly from Christ's words, and we need to recover that in a big way. And in this case, they're talking about the Book of Acts, which details what we went over earlier of what happened with the disciples after the Passover. Right. So this idea is that it's literally being recovered. This is literally happening. The Holy Spirit, as prophecyd, is returning to Earth and hearkening the second coming of Christ. Right? Yeah. These renewal and reform movements have happened before. And in fact, some people trace Pentecostalism to one in the late 19th century called the Holiness Movement. Yeah, I saw that. And these renewals that follow in the tradition of the Holiness Movement, they are based on, like, a charismatic belief. It's really easier to explain what it's not. And that is that stayed kind of calling response service where everybody sits down, stands up all at the same time, and it's very structured. Charismatic worship is the exact opposite of that. It's not structured. It almost seems like things are coming apart at the seams. People are dancing and clapping. Everybody's almost doing their own thing. And it's like there's a lot of room for you to have your own experience directly with the Holy Spirit, not necessarily just through this preacher or this priest or whoever is acting as the conduit. Like, in a normal service, this is like the Holy Spirit is there in the room and everybody's interacting with it in their own way. Yeah, which sounds kind of fun, to be honest. I grew up in a Baptist church. That was the opposite. It was one of these very sort of dry things. Every Sunday you would get your sermon that had to wrap up by noon because the pot roast was in the slow cooker and the Falcons were going to come on in an hour and you could feel people getting antsy. It was just one of those deals. That's the church I went to, I remember we had a guy that came and visited one week that sat on the front row and started talking back. Oh, yeah. And just with, like, all glory hallelujah. They would just like, what is going on? Everyone did. Everyone was like, what is this guy doing? Yeah, we don't do that here. They didn't say that, but that was the feeling. I think Batman turned out to be St. Paul. I just remember being a kid and hearing him and seeing the reaction of people and getting the feeling that they're all like, don't screw this up for us, buddy. Yeah, right. We're going to be out of doing things. Yeah, we can get out of here in 45 minutes. Just clam up. I went to a funeral recently at a Pentecostal church. Oh, really? And it was something else, but there were people speaking in tongues and a lot of shouting back. And like you were saying, like, that guy in the front row, and you were right there. Oh, I was in the thick of it. Yeah. It wasn't just that one guy. It was everybody there was doing that, and they were doing it on their own terms, on their own speed, and it was something to see. It was really impressive. I would pay cash money to see a hidden camera video of you during that experience. I was playing it super cool. I bet every once in a while as you go. Right on, man. Yeah. I said, Free bird. I'm not into this, but you guys seem cool. No, I was there and being explicitly not judgy, of course, you know, like, I was a guest there, and I felt kind of honored to have been invited to do it, man. Everybody who knew me that was there knew that I'm not into that at all. But I also didn't want to put out any kind of vibe. Like, I was being judgy or anything. Why would you even go if you're just going to sit there and smirk? That's no fun. Well, yeah, exactly. But also, I had a lot of respect and admiration for the deceased. That's what you're going to say. I was also very drunk. I had taken some shrooms a couple of hours before, and it really made everything even more interesting. Well, that's cool. I'm glad you had that experience. Yeah, me too, actually. Me too. I think people should experience all kinds of things in their life like this, but make them possibly uncomfortable. Exactly. I could also see, I was like, yeah, if you're really kind of open to this or even on the fence about it, you can feel how somebody would get swept up and be like, yeah, this is what I believe. Yeah, totally. I mean, the word charismatic is an excellent word for that type of worship. Like, it's perfect, but it's not. And we tend to think of it as, like, Pentecostals who just do that, and it's not. There's actually different charismatic movements that revived other Christian sects, too. Like, Catholicism had one back in 1967. The Methodists had a charismatic revival, and it's typically kind of looked upon favorably by church leaders because they're like, all right, this is a little weird. We might start having to go an hour and a half with our services, but ultimately what it represents is people coming along and saying, this religious sect is not dying. We're going to breathe new life into it. Or if you believe in this kind of stuff, the Holy Spirit has chosen to breathe new life into the sect to keep it from dying off. Or it's good for business. That's another way to look at it, for sure. And we'll talk about some people who view the whole thing kind of transactionally, too. So we should point out to you here about the different kinds of baptism when we're talking about someone being quote, unquote, saved or baptized in the Holy Spirit. This is a spirit baptism. If you've seen people get dunked in the pool or in a river, if you're in a more rural church, that is a water baptism. That is merely a symbolic public gesture to kind of celebrate and tell everyone, hey, I had the spirit baptism. I'm saved now. Hey, get a load of me. Yeah, get a load of me. Watch, I'll get dunked. Yeah, but if you're a Pentecostal, you're basically like, that's great. That's a nice first quarter step, right? And it's not just Pentecostals who believe that. Like, I think if you're Catholic, when you're baptized, you're baptized. It's just done. You have a water baptism and you are officially baptized. Your baby's soul is not going to go to purgatory any longer. You can finally go to heaven. Right. With, like, Baptists. I believe the water baptism is enough, too. But what differentiates evangelicals from other religious sects that believe that by baptism through water you're saved. Right. Then evangelicals are like, no, you've just said that. Okay. I'm dedicating myself to God. Into Christ specifically. But what differentiates evangelicals is that there's still some other thing coming and that's that baptism by the Holy Spirit. Well, it was different in my church. It was you wait until you have that spiritual baptism and then afterwards you have the public water baptism. Oh, is that right? Okay, so I've got that backwards then, I guess. Would Baptists be considered a type of evangelicals? I don't know. I don't know either. But here's what I found that differentiates evangelicals or that defines evangelicals. You ready? Yes. There's a scholar from Baylor, he's an historian, but he's also an evangelical scholar named David Bebington. David W. Bevington. And he defines evangelicals as subscribing to four big points. One is that the Bible is the literal word of God, right? Where like, if you're reading that God wrote that, do not question it, do not try to interpret it any other way. It is literally on its face. What it means is the word of God. The second point is that Jesus suffered on the cross and died in order to cover humanity. Right. And that you can be saved by accepting that as fact that Jesus Christ is your savior. That's right. Man, I feel like we're having a revival here ourselves. We're getting a little worked up. The third one is that you have to be born again by a baptism by the Holy Spirit. So I don't know if you could technically get away with not doing the water baptism because the evangelicals say it's. That baptism by Holy Spirit where you're overcoming, you're clapping and singing and speaking in tongues and all that. Well, not speaking in tongues, but you're clapping and singing and you have, like, been bathed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. That that's how you're actually saved. Okay. Okay. .4 is that you have to be an activist, an evangelist who is actively working on converting the world to Godliness and Christianity to prepare for the second coming of Christ. It's not enough to just be like, oh, they're doing it wrong. You have to go over and explain to them how they're doing it wrong and how to do it right. Yeah, I think all four of those fall under what I grew up with in my church. Okay, then what separates evangelicals from Pentecostal is that Pentecostals believe that baptism by the Holy Spirit involves specifically speaking in tongues. And that if you don't speak in tongues when you're baptized by the Holy Spirit, you haven't actually been sanctified and made pure so that you can get into heaven and you're a true Christian, I guess. Right. Alright, it clears up a lot. Thank you. You can subscribe to my newsletter. So let's talk about speaking in tongues. There are a couple of ways that this can happen. It's also called spontaneous speech. It could come through as a foreign language that you don't know. They call that XENOGLOSSIA, or basically no documented case of that ever. Right. Okay. So when I say this can happen, these are the ways that it's broken down in theory. Okay. Or nonsensical utterances, which is called glossylalia. And that's when you have seen people speak in tongues. Or if you ever seen the movie Cape Fear with Robert De Niro at the end when he's going into the water, that's what he's doing. It's a nonsensical divine utterance, is what it's defined as. Yes. Supposedly, God is the only one who can understand what you're saying, but you're actually speaking in a language that God understands. Right. And the other thing is, somewhere in the Bible, it says that if you're going to speak in tongues, you should only do it in public. Like, if you're in church, you should only do that if there's someone there to interpret that message. And Pentecostal say nuts to that. They do, because the cynical person would say they don't have anyone there that could interpret that accurately. Right. The believer would just say that. They just say that's? Bunk. So back at a Zoosa Street mission during the revival of Starting Six, they reported so there was a newspaper called the Apostolic Faith Newspaper that was published out of Azuza Street, and they said that during the revival, people were speaking in Greek, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Zulu. Chippewa wow. Yeah. And again, there's no documented evidence that anyone has ever been given the gift of xenoglasia, which is where you are just fluently speaking another language right. That you don't know, that you have acquired the ability to speak another language without studying it in any way, shape, or form. No one's ever documented that. But that was one of the early interpretations of what was going on at the Zoosa Street, that the Holy Spirit had come down giving these people the gift of Zen and glossy. And now they were to spread out and become missionaries around the world so that they could go spread the faith in these other native tongues. And a lot of people did do that. I don't know that they were able to immediately go and speak in these other native tongues, but they probably picked it up pretty quickly because immersion is the best way to do it. But people did spread out from Azuza Street and become Pentecostal missionaries and founded Pentecostal churches. That really is kind of like the origin point for the entire faith. Well, and wouldn't you say that it's clearly like that Pentecostal missionaries have done a great job considering the fact that it's growing in the Global South? Sure. Yeah. How else would they have heard about this stuff? Right. Yeah, absolutely. I think the proof is in the numbers that there's a lot of people who are out there spreading the word, and that there's a lot of people who are feeling pretty receptive to that. Should we talk a little bit about some more numbers? Yeah. The Pulitzer Center is atlas of pentecostalism. I love that book. Estimates that 35,000 people convert to Pentecostalism every day. We were talking about the Global South. The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria claims to have 5 million members in Nigeria alone. There's an article that I read called Think Christianity is dying. No. Christianity is shifting dramatically from West Granberg Michelson from 2015 in The Washington Post. So should we talk about more numbers or should we take a break and talk about more numbers? Let's take a break and then we'll talk more numbers. Okay. All right, Chuck, lay some numbers on us, man. Let me see here. In 1980, more Christians were found in the Global South than the north for the first time in 1000 years. In the Christian community in Latin America and Africa alone account for 1 billion people. Yeah, that's pretty significant. How much? I don't know how to say this. How much or how many inroads? How much? Inroads neither ones. How many? It sounds like I'm speaking in tongues. The inroads that Pentecostals have made over time because there's like, I think, half a billion Evangelicals, and two thirds of those are Pentecostals. Right around the world, there's like 1.2 billion Catholics. And forever, the Catholics have just been virtually untouchable, at least as far as Christianity goes. But the Evangelicals are really kind of starting to nip at their heels. And the other thing that's remarkable about it is just how fast this is happening. Like you're saying, it seems like 1980 onward was like a watershed change and shift in the growth of Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism around the world. But it is kind of concentrated in that Global South. A lot of people are trying to figure out exactly why. One of the reasons why is because in the global south, parts of Africa, Latin America, parts of Southeast Asia, there are traditional religions still that are charismatic in structure right to where you're interacting with spirits, and they have an influence on your daily life. And when you engage in worship that may include dancing and singing and individual expressions of being touched by the spirits of the spirit, and it bears a really striking resemblance to Pentecostalism. So much so that if you kind of trace Pentecostalism back, you can't help but wonder, like, did the exported religions from Africa to, say, like, the Caribbean help shape Pentecostalism? And that Pentecostalism is kind of like a Reformed version of Reformed Christian version of this kind of worship that's now being re exported back to the global south. And that is what this part of the explanation for this really eager reception is among people in Latin America and Africa and Southeast Asia. So the idea is that it wasn't that big of a mental leap. At the very least, it's probably harder to introduce Pentecostalism to Catholics in Cleveland than it. Is to people who follow Mashimo and Guatemala. Yeah, I got it. Because the type of worship bears a lot more of a resemblance to one another than it does to say, like Catholics in Cleveland and the way that they're used to worshiping. That makes sense. So that they're already kind of like, okay, yeah, I get this. I can identify with this. It makes sense to me. Well, the other thing, too, that I think of this WaPo article, it gives a lot of food for thought that Grandberg Michael and Tackles is immigration and migration. 214,000,000 people, and this was four years ago, have moved from their country to another country as migrants and refugees. Right. That's a lot of people. And about half of those 105,000,000 of those people are Christians. Right. Which is a way higher percentage than the comparable percentage of Christians in the world. Yeah. So Christians are moving around the world in big numbers everywhere from the Middle East, in Africa, the Mediterranean. And he makes a really good point that the same people in this country who are advocating against immigration in the United States, a lot of them would consider themselves Christian peoples. Sure. And so he's like, there's a disconnect between these people coming up from Guatemala, Mexico, a lot of which are Christian, saying we don't want you here, even though that would help them further a Christian and religious agenda. Right, exactly. And it's a weird disconnect there it is. Because you're saying, like, well, we are all pentecostals here, but you're also from a different country further south than us. So that's the dividing line. The other thing that he points out is that migration typically tends to strengthen religious faith and increase it so that the people who show up are typically super religious. It's a process of migration. Right, exactly. And to make it makes you be like, wow, there must be a God or else I wouldn't have made it here. Right. So that the people who show up on your doorstep as migrants are typically extremely religious. And he points out that both sides of the political equation should be happy about that. Like, these spiritual renewals and religious movements, you know, they can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, they can call for very strict behavioral codes. Women's reproductive rights can fall by the wayside or just be suppressed outright. But on the other hand, they can also be good for society's morals. Those same strict behavioral codes also keep people in line and keep them from doing crime. And it can be good and bad. Like with the Second Great Awakening in the middle of the 19th century in America. It was a huge religious movement, and it's credited with helping start the movement to abolish slavery in the United States and to introduce the idea of women's suffrage. On the other hand, it also introduced the temperance movement, which just was one of the worst things we've ever done. But there are like good and bad, pluses and minuses two general major religious movements and reawakenings. And I think what this guy is saying is there's a lot of pluses and positives that can come with migrants, even though they're being portrayed in the exact opposite light that they're rapists and murderers and criminals. Actually, the people who are showing up as migrants are probably more religious than the average American is, right? Especially in America, because religiousness in America is showing to be declining. Right. So again, you would think that people who were religious would want their numbers to swell, even if it is through these migrants that they don't feel very highly about. It's. A very interesting juxtaposition. Yes. Very Chuck, very Josh. So that's Pentecostals. You got anything else? I got nothing else, man. They are interesting. I was reading about them. They will break off into a new church at the drop of a hat over like a couple of words, man. And it's happened very frequently. It's really interesting stuff to read their history because it's also so modern and recent, too. It's a little over a century old, so you can kind of recognize a lot of it and identify with it. Okay, well, that's it for Pentecostals. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is a very sweet email. Is this the one janitors? Yeah. So if you remember, we talked about with great fondness about our high school janitors in the Transdermal Implant podcast. Of course, as you do. Not sure how we got on that tangent. I don't either. But this is from Emily. She says, Josh talked about how his janitor was a grizzled older woman. Chuck mentioned that his was a tall, lanky gentleman, but despite the differences, you both remembered them with such affection and respect. He gave me the warm fuzzies. And he talked so fondly of these people for the simple fact that my grandma was a high school janitor. She is one of the sweetest, classiest people I've ever known, but one of the hardest workers as well. She worked at the high school in her little town of Gettysburg, South Dakota with my grandpa, who was a science, art and health teacher for at least 25 years. My mom was born and raised in this town and talks about whenever she was having a bad day or didn't feel like going to class, she would just find out where her mom was cleaning and go hang out with her for a bit. That's so cute. Like me when my father the principal. Yeah, I think that's very sweet to get out of here. Go back to class. Here, take some dumb dumbs and get out of here. As for how my grandma enjoyed her work as a janitor, she says she didn't mind most of the cleaning, except whenever someone threw up. I can imagine you could go your whole life without ever getting used to that. And Emily closes with this. I just want to remind everyone out there that your janitor is someone's grandma or mom or dad or uncle or whatever. They are special to someone, so please treat them and their job with respect. Love the show, guys. Keep up the good work. And thanks for always being kind and respectful of everyone. And that is from Emily. I hope we were kind of respectful with Christians today. I'm pretty sure we were. I think we did an okay job. Thanks a lot for that one, Emily. She also sent a picture of a photo from the newspaper of her grandma and grandpa together at school. And they are a cute, cute couple. Yes. I love it. Well, if you want to tell us something adorable, we love that kind of stuff. You can get in touch with us by sending us an email, wrap it up, speck it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid week early, only on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How much money is in the world? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-much-money-is-in-the-world | There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money e | There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have issued. But that won't stop Chuck and Josh from trying and explaining why we can't be sure how much money e | Thu, 05 Sep 2013 20:32:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=20, tm_min=32, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=248, tm_isdst=0) | 33561787 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a major transit system facing cyber attacks so you partner with IBM to keep your data network and apps protected. Now you can tackle threats without coming to a halt. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com what if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the awardwinning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org about tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, and global health. Listen in. As host baritonedate, Thurston connects with impactful organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors without Borders, and the University of Kentucky. Plus inspiring individuals like Amy Allison and Juan Acosta to discuss ways to maximize our impact. Listen to Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and I'm with Charles W. Chuck. Brian. He's right here with me. So it's stuff you should know. It's also really stuff you should know because Jerry's here too. Jerry's not here. It's fake stuff you should Know. It's less than vintage stuff and shit now. Got you. It's not bad. Yeah, it's not great. I'm sure Matt and everyone appreciate that. They don't listen to this crap. Yeah, true. Chuck? Yes. How much money do you have on you right now? Cash. $0.00. Well, that's stupid, because you should have $3,800 in cash on you. I never have cash. Well, you should almost never have cash. You should have three $800 in cash on you right now. So should I, jerry. I agree, but we don't. Sad. I'd love $3800 in my pocket. Okay, well, let's explain why I just said that. Was I supposed to? Sorry. Don't do it. I can do it. That's how much if you divide up all the money between all the Americans, that's how much we should all have. Bam. So we're trying to answer a question here. How much money is there in the world? Yeah, and we'll get to that. There's actually a rough estimate out there that may be right. But instead, first, let's talk about how much American money there is in the world. And not just because we're American, but because it is the standard currency worldwide. It's the closest thing to the universal currency that we have. True. The dollar. The green back. Yeah, but that's not as, I guess, widespread as it once was. A lot of people have abandoned the dollar and now use a basket of currencies to value their currency against. Very rebellious, sure, but still, the dollar is generally what's used, save for oil speculation. And imagine the dollar is in that basket, too, though, right? Maybe not. It depends on how much they hate America. Got you. So what you're talking about, though, is all the money divided up by all the Americans, coming up to $3,800. That's called the m zero. Money Supply. Of course. You know how I read that? Mo. The Mo money Supply. I was like, what? And then I read it again and said, it can't be called the Mo money supply. And then I realized that was a zero and not an O. It looks very much like the Mo money supply. I wrote this article, I realized it, and I never saw it like that until you just said that. Really? Yeah. Well, I like the Mo money supply better than the Mo. Yeah, it's good. But it is Mo for a reason. There's also the M one, M two, and there was an M three, which we'll get to. Right. And the people who came up with this was the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States central bank. The Fed. Right. And they like to track money. That's one of the things they do to amuse themselves. Yeah. Count money and go to sleep on piles of gold ingots. But the Fed came up with this Mo money supply, also known as the Mzero supply. And that is all of the bills and coins, all of the actual hard currency that exists in the world, anywhere in US. Dollars. And as of July 2013 hey, that's recent. Yeah. That came to, we should say, Catherine Whitborn from Coolest Stuff on the planet. She updated this. So the fact that this is as up to date as it is, is thanks to her. Okay. But the Mo money supply as of July 2013 is $1.2 trillion. That's all the cash and all the coins all over the world of American dollars, the real dollars that you can collect and put together, that you can light your cigars with or you can throw into a fountain. Yeah. $1.2 trillion. So that's how much money was in the world. And we said also that's 3800 for every American man, woman and child, all 316,668,567 Americans that were alive in July of 2013. Each one should have had $3,800 in their pocket. Because we're not talking checking accounts, we're talking the actual currency that people are walking around with. Since I don't have three $800 in my pocket, and I didn't in July. Yeah, you don't, Jerry? No. Jerry's got more. Where is this stuff? It's a good question. I wonder how that clock ticks, by the way. The population clock. I'd like to see a real time. Like, three people died, four people born, two people died, eight people born. Set of twins. I wonder if it ever does go backwards for a second. Well, it's got to, because people are dying, but more people are being born than people are dying. Yeah, it depends on the country you're talking about. Yeah, that's true. I always drive by the one in Atlanta on the population clock. That's been there forever. When I was a kid, I remember when it topped a million, it was like, Whoa, wow. And now it's whatever. Three point something. Is it? Yeah, I mean, that's metro Atlanta, right? It's not city of Atlanta. All right, so back to it. Where were we? Hard to track. The mooney? No, we were talking about where the $3,800 that should be in our pockets is. Oh, well, about half to two thirds of that is overseas. It's in overseas pockets. That's right. Or overseas bank accounts. No, we're not talking bank accounts. Oh, wait, that's just the Mow money. That's right. Yeah. So that means that there are people walking around overseas with cash on them, american dollars, which makes a lot of sense. And so when you start to divide the amount of money that 1.2 trillion by a lot more than 316,000,000 people, that explains why I have a single dollar bill on my person right now and why I have nothing. Right. And Jerry? Nothing. Nothing. Man, we're sad sex. Okay, so that's just the Mo money supply. Yeah. The M zero. The M One is all of the Mo money plus checking account money and other kinds of just accounts that you can track. And travelers checks. Yeah. Very liquid types of accounts. Yes, that's the M one supply. It's funny that you were having trouble wrapping your head around the fact that we were talking about cash outside of banks for the Mzero supply. I had the same problem, too. It's hard to think of money outside of banks in this day and age. Yeah, you rarely have cash right on hand. You use, like, debit cards and credit cards and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I use American Express for everything. That's funny that on this audio podcast. You just held it up to your face when you said that. So that's the m one. In June of this year of 2013, the M One supply was about 2.5 trillion. So the mooney supply was 1.2. The m one was 25. That's all the accounts and checking accounts, travelers checks. Then there's the M Two, which is the M One supply, plus money market fund money, savings accounts, and CDs under 100 grand, which they call small CDs. Right. Where I come from, that's a pretty good CD. Well, CD over 100 grand is called a jumbo. Yeah, I was looking up jumbo rates. They used to be something like four and a quarter. Some of them would be like 22% for a ten year. Really? Yeah. So you get like 22 grand back over no, I'm sorry, five years. So you go give a bank 100 grand, say, keep this for five years, pay me back, and they would give you 22% interest. So you get 122 grand. When was this? Not very long ago. A couple years ago, before the crash. You want to know what it's at right now? For $100,000.03 year, I believe CD jumbo CD, you get like, 1.4%. It's not worth your time to give a bank $100,000 to keep for three years. They'll give you $1,400 asinine go to the dog track with $100,000, and you leave a heroin addict crying. All right, so the M Two supply, which, as I said, was the M One supply plus money market, fund saving counts, and those smaller CDs, 10.5 trillion, that's virtually all of the American money in the world. Pretty much, because they got rid of M Three, basically in 2006, because they said, it really doesn't tell us much to know what the larger jumbo CDs are adding to this pile. It doesn't change things that much, I guess. I imagine there's just not that many. Yeah, exactly. So about $10.5 trillion in accounts and in cash in holdings in the world in about July, June, July of 2013. That's a lot of dough. That's a lot of moolah. Right? And if you want to it even says in here, that's a lot of moolah. It did. And that's when I looked up. I was like, who wrote this? I was like, Oops. I thought, this is well done. Well and I learned how to spell mula. I didn't know. Don't patronize. No, I'm serious. I literally thought, oh, that's how you spell mula. How did you think you spelled it? I don't know. M-U-L-A. No, I just never thought it I'd never seen it spelled out. M-O-O-L-A-H. Is that right? That's AP standard. Yeah, exactly. 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 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 Day. Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I think we've kind of pointed out it's tough to track money like this. Yeah, they're not the easiest thing. They do a pretty good job of it. Well, the Fed does, specifically, because it's just what they do, and they love doing that. Yeah, but it's an estimate still, like, no one knows how much cash I have to my house. No one asked me. No. But they know how much was printed. They keep track of that kind of stuff. How much is destroyed, how much circulation in circulation. Sure. And there's bank reporting, so they know how much a bank has at the Fed. So it's pretty close estimate, from what I understand. The thing is, not every country has a Fed like the Fed in the US. True. And that makes it way harder to say how much money is in the entire world. Not just US. Dollars, but all the money in the entire world. And more difficult to control your economy. It is. If you don't know how much money you have, it's very difficult to sway your economy one way or the other. Right, exactly. So Zimbabwe is a really good example of why it's so hard to track a lot of money. And also what happens when you don't track your money. Yes. Or what happens when you decide, in order to fix economic woes, let's just start printing more money. Right. Because if you know nothing about finance and economics, a common thing you might think is, well, they could probably just infuse some cash flow by printing money occasionally. And they do, occasionally. But in Zimbabwe, they did it to such an extent with the zim dollars, or which I didn't even believe that was right. It's actually called a zim dollar. Something from a movie. Not a good one either. Yeah, exactly. They printed so much money that they encountered hyperinflation like the world has never seen before. Yeah. So it's ridiculous numbers. Yeah. This hyperinflation in 2006, it was really bad. In 2000, Zimbabwe started to enter an inflationary spiral. In 2006, it was so bad that not a roll. A sheet of toilet paper cost $417. Okay. One square yeah. A roll of toilet paper cost $145,750. I would go broke so quick in Zimbabwe. Well, that's the thing. Everybody would have gone broke. But it wasn't that the toilet paper was very expensive. It was that the zim dollars had very little purchasing power. And that was because dollars, just like any other commodity, are subject to the influences of supply and demand. There's a lot of them on the market. Their value decreases. That's how the US. Government has managed to stay afloat so many times. They release a bunch of money, they cause inflation so that the debts that they owe are worth less. So when they pay them off, it hurts the government less. It's a really horrible thing to do to your investors, but it's done. But that's the point. When you have a lot of dollars out there, you have less purchasing power per dollar. And that's what was going on in Zimbabwe. And things got really out of hand because they decided to fight this by printing more dollars. Yeah, they really got out of hand. Some of these stats in here are just staggering. You said that every you didn't say you report that it was estimated that it was equivalent to prices doubling in stores every 1.3 days. Yeah, the most I saw was every 24.7 hours, prices essentially were being doubled yes. By way of the dollar losing value. Right. The kind of inflation that we're looking at right here in America right now is like in the single digit percentiles, and it's being kept low by the Fed on purpose. But we're talking like, doubling 100% increase, like the toilet papers as much the next day, it's twice as much the next day. It's three times. Right. And that's just not going to affect the economy. I mean, think about it. If toilet paper costs that much money, people are going to stop using toilet paper. That leads to poor sanitation, that leads to it's just a domino effect. Well, there was a joke that the toilet paper was so expensive, the dollar, the zim dollar, bought such little toilet paper that it was actually more useful as toilet paper than to buy toilet paper with. Yeah. That's not funny. Well, yeah, if you're in Zimbabwe, but the annual inflation was estimated like this was watching Zimbabwe. If you were a currency or monetary policy economist, it was like a dream come true. Last time something happened this bad, it was Hungary in 1946. Yeah, I think we talked about that once. Yeah, I think it was in Super Stuff guide to Economics or spoken word album. But the inflation in Zimbabwe was estimated at 516,000,000,000,000,000,000%. That's by the end of 2008. Okay. That's not even the highest that I've seen. Now, the highest I saw is 89.7, 689.7 billion trillion percent or 89.710 to the 21st power percent. That was their annual rate of inflation. And that was probably early 2009. Yeah, yeah. Because in January 2009, they basically said, you can start using foreign currency again, which helps stabilize things at the tiniest bit. But it didn't obviously work. Well, it ended inflation abruptly because they abandoned these dollars, the currency lost value so much that everybody stopped using it. And they went to the South African rand and the US dollar. Yeah. It took four months from January to April for basically to completely abandon their money. Right. So four months in a country's, money is literally useless. Right. And when they did abandon, it was actually a pretty good move. Like, you couldn't carry the economy with this money any longer because it was so valuable. They're in bad shape no matter what. But at least that was a good move. Right. And the reason it was a good move, because it stopped inflation because there weren't that many dollars and there weren't that many rams around, which means that they were scarce, which means, again, according to supply and demand, they were valuable and hence they had purchasing power. Yeah. And it's really unbelievable, but it got so bad they were printing money in larger and larger denominations because they had to because people couldn't carry around. You'd have to have a suitcase full of money to buy your toilet paper. Right. So they ended up producing a 100 trillion Zimbabwe in dollar note that you can now buy on ebay for about $5. Yeah. When it was released, it was worth about 30. Yeah. And that's actual conversion rate, like now it's only worth something on ebay. Whatever you'll pay for it. Yeah. There is no conversion rate. Right. I think I'm going to get one, though, just to have it do it. Yeah. Okay, so you want to thanks, man. What is it, 300 no, 100 trillion dollar notes. Okay. Yeah. But that's the fact that the Zimbabwean government wasn't tracking their money in the first place and they didn't track it after they kept releasing it again and again and there was no buyback program. They just said, you guys keep that. Yeah. They have no idea how many Zimbabwean dollars were released just in the 21st century, let alone how many are out there on the market. So that's why it's virtually impossible to track how much money is out there in the world. Yeah, but that hasn't stopped at least one guy. Well, actually, that's not true. I talked to Catherine Whitborne today, and she was saying that the guy gave up. The most recent figures she could find was 2010, because he's like, forget this. Yeah. Mike of dollar days with az.com. Yeah, I guess he gave up on it. That was his blog, his econ blog, and he was tracking 135 currencies in 167 countries. And I guess December 2010 is probably one of the last stats he has then, if that's when he quit and his Mow money equaled five point trillion in US dollars in circulation, m two was $55 trillion. So $55 trillion? Yeah. That's the value of all the money in the world, according to Mike here in US dollars. The US dollar value. Yeah, us dollar value, but not just US dollars. Yeah. That's everything, right? 55 trillion. Yeah. So there you have it. Okay. So this would be a lot easier to track and things like what happened in Zimbabwe wouldn't happen. You would never have hyperinflation if we all used a universal worldwide currency. Yeah, let's talk about that. No less than John Maynard Keynes has suggested that and it's been bandied about for a long time. Since World War II. Well, even before then. Yeah. I think it was maybe closest to happening. Maybe after World War II wasn't very close. No. There were instances of what were to the people who were using the currency was effectively a universal currency. Like the early imperial powers of China and Rome used a single currency and all the lands they conquered, which is why hordes of Roman silver coins are found in fields in the UK still today. Right. But it's still not technically a worldwide currency. But World War Two, we came very close, right? Yeah. Let's talk about some of the pros, I guess, because if you look it up on the Internet, there's a lot of debate still going on. Some of the pros speculators can't short a currency. That scenario you were talking about, like devaluing currency to pay back debts. Right. That'd be gone. Because it wouldn't be a commodity. There wouldn't be any other currency to exchange it against. So therefore it's just a dollar. It just can be used to buy something. You can't buy and sell it itself. It would be valueless like that. Exporters wouldn't have to worry about price gaps. There would be no conversion fees, which would free up money for health care or whatever. Something good to spend it on. Right. Of course, this is a utopian outlook, like, oh, yeah. Then they could spend it on health care. Right? Ideally. But it would free up money. It would end disputes about currency manipulation, like China. So there are some pros for sure. Right. You wouldn't have to stand in line at the combio centers and exchange your money when you traveled? No. For convenience. You and I went to Europe this summer and it was nice to not we just exchanged once. Yeah. That hasn't been since the Euro. It's like, everywhere. And even in places in Croatia, they still use their currency, but everybody accepts euros. Yeah. I bet they accept American dollars there too. Probably. I kind of enjoyed the different currencies. Oh, yeah. It's pretty and it's just neat. I didn't see it as a hassle. Maybe I was young, but I always thought it was kind of neat. Like, Let me go turn in my francs for my German dollar. Well, it just sucks to lose money buying another currency. Yes. Or to come out ahead, though. That's when you're rocking, right? Sometimes. But it's been a while since that happened. This was in the mid 19. Nine s. So the American dollar, we were doing pretty well in Eastern Europe. The dollar was sound as the pound. But we got killed in England, of course, as always. Yeah. Because your pound is so awesome. Well, that was the big discrepancy after World War II. Like, when we came close to adopting universal currency. The Americans and the Brits couldn't decide on what to value it against the pound or the dollar. And so it just fell apart. Well, the Pew Research Center did a poll and apparently 41% of Americans believe that we will have a universal currency by 2050. But the article I got that from the guy speculates, that could be because we're sort of programmed to think that the future will be like that. Because every size entirely yeah. Like every scifi movie ever, it's like universal credit. It's not even like cash. Right. So people just kind of have that in the back of their minds. So there's a lot of drawbacks to a universal currency as well. There's some clever things you can do if you are in charge of your own currency. Sure. And it's valued against other currencies. One of them is, if your economy is sluggish, you can release a lot of your currency, create inflation, drive prices down in your country compared to the buying power of a foreign currency, and attract that foreign currency and get your economy kick started again. If you're using the same currency as all these other countries that you're trading with sure. There's not that gap. Right. That currency gap. But you also can't do that nice little trick that probably would have bailed out Spain and Greece on their own had they not been trading the euro or using the Euro the last couple of years. Yeah, it's a good point. Some pundits think that the gold standard, if they were to go to a universal currency, it would should be based on something like the gold standard again, or the gold standard, period. But a lot of other people say, no, that's antiquated and just a bad idea. Potentially dangerous. I wonder how how it'd be dangerous? I don't know. We should do one on the gold standard. I mean, they got rid of it for a reason. Yes. So I don't know. Something about going back to something, but it was Nixon and got rid of it, so it makes you think it's inherently evil, getting rid of the gold standard. Yeah. The other thing, too, is who's going to run the show is really the big I think that's probably the biggest stumbling block. That's a huge one. There's got to be a universal body, an International Reserve Bank, central bank that has the authority on issuing these things, buying them back and yeah. I mean, like, ever since the Clinton there, everybody's been nervous about that kind of thing. But even if you're not a paranoid type, you may just think that this body, by definition, would be incompetent just from looking at like the UN has successes. Sure. Peacekeeping missions are frequently very helpful and can add stability to a region. And then you have things like the International Panel on Climate Change, which releases its opinions on climate change based on politics and diplomacy rather than science. Yeah. And if it's a World Bank, there's too much at stake to make mistakes. And we already have a World bank. It's just not in charge of every currency. Yeah. And if it were, I mean, it could be problematic. It could be helpful, it could be problematic. I don't really fall down on either side of this. Yeah. I don't know. You know how I feel about economics. As long as I can go buy my stuff and pay my mortgage, I don't care if it's the yen or the dollar or the communityte financier defrec. Frank, do you care if it's that? No, I never heard of that. I thought the Euro was sort of the only consolidator. But apparently in Africa. Eight West African nations do share that. West African CFA. Frank african financial community. Another six Central African nations share a Central African CFA. Frank which is weird because they're interchangeable. Yeah. Two currencies that they can either one is fine. Yeah, I guess it's like when you go to Costa Rica, right, or Mexico, you can use your dollars, you can use your paces. Yeah, I guess so. But apparently from interchangeable. I read that to mean, like, they're valued the exact same, which is like, why I have two different currencies that are so similar, that are the same value. Just make one CFA. Frank yeah, that's a good point. And then there was a lot of talk about hemispheric and regional unified currencies in Central America and South America, and they came very close. But the recent troubles from the Eurozone have made a lot of people back off about it. And in North America, there was going to be the North American Union, which is Canada. Mexico and the United States supposedly were going to be fused together into one Mexico. Yes. And Canada was like, Right. America is like, well, we're going to come up with the Amerro. A-M-E-R-O was the name of the unified currency that would have been really yeah. Interesting. Well, it's a conspiracy theory, at least. Okay. There you go. That's how much money is in the world. Isn't it kind of weird that not weird, but that America is sandwiched between such two different countries? It is like Canada, Mexico, you can't get any more opposite climate, people, food. Sure. Economy. And then America is right in the middle. It's kind of fitting. Where the melting pot of Canada and Mexico? I guess we are where it all comes together. America's Hat and America's pants. Can't remember what you've called Mexico before? Shoes? I don't think so. Let's just call it Mexico. Okay. So that's how much money there is in the world. If you want to read this article, you can type that into the search bar@housetopworks.com. And since it's a search bar, it's time for Message Break. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. 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 Veritude 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. And Chuck, what time is it now? It's time for administrative detail again, folks. This is when we thank people for sweet gifts that they send us in the mail. And I have a list of books starting with why. How we do anything means everything. How colin, there you go. Why, how we do anything means everything by dove, seedman or dove. D-O-V. Yeah, dove. Dove. Yeah, I appreciate that. Dove. They're very nicer. Do you want to say it one more time? No. Okay, let's see. We got a postcard from Madagascar from Kara Levitt. Thank you very much for that. Nice. Another book by Alan Gerstell. Swing Colon the Search for My Father. Louis Prima. Nobody read this one, but it deserves a double. Okay. We got a letter with further insight into the hip hop episode from Bboy Antivirus. Nice. Yeah. How's he doing these days? Doing great. Science nearly explained by Dick Maxwell. And that is available on Amazon or Kindle. Nice. We have a postcard with a picture of the pair, which you'll remember from the torture episode from the Museo de Torture from Anna. Oh, nice. Thank you very much. Our buddy Roger Ma sent us the vampire combat manual. Yeah. And he's previously sent us the zombie combat manual. And Roger is good too. We actually finally met him, didn't we? I don't know. Did we meet them? I think we met Roger at one of the comiccons. Oh, good. Yeah. Okay. I think you're right. Hey, Rogers. We got a postcard from China. From Kerry. Nice. We got another book called trunkless. It's a children's book, and I don't have the author here, but it's called trunkless. I think we did that one before. Did we? All right, double plug. We got another postcard from Bob Rome airfield from Amy Lynn. Thanks for that. We got a book called Verbivores Feast by Christy. The wordsmith and that was sent in by Hillary. Nice. We got a postcard of a bear pooping in the woods from Van Nostrin. Thanks, Van Nostrin. Yeah, we should mention, too, van Nostrin also sent us his CD from his awesome band, the Bangalore's Sasquatch with a mullet. Yes. Thank you, buddy. We got a comic zine called Happy Trails, Cowboy poetry by Horace T. Rushy. Beard Stash We got a really cool cityscape watercolor card that was designed and sent by Alex. Thanks, Alex. John Lenamer wrote a book called how an Average Man Lived an Adventurous Life and I haven't read that yet, but I'm going to. Chuck yeah, we got some CDs from Rich Bosek that may or may not have been all of them, but thank you very much for those. Yeah, and I believe he also sent us a DVD called Forgotten Detroit and a nice handwritten ink rendering of ourselves. Right. Did you see that? Yes. Is it the same guy? I think it's the same guy. Well, thank you very much, big time. Rich, a book called Roman Disasters by Jerry Toner and a book called The Life and Times of Swirly. Vancouver Stuff You Should Know edition. It's a comic, actually, from Aaron Dunbar. Yes, I remember. What else do we have? Chuck and then we have a bunch of music. You want to go through these? Column. Blow devil in disguise. That's right. Ben from self evidence in his CDs and vinyl. The record. We built a fortress on short notice. We definitely plugged that one before. Yeah. The Lala Band sent us their CD moonshine still. Yes. The group called forging reverie sent us a CD called Motion Canvas. That was from Derek. Yeah. Eric Davis and Sam Gray sent us a CD. Table people and some authentic korean junk food. All right. Burkea sent us download codes for his CD. Jazz Animals. Right. Katie Sinner sent us a nice handwritten letter. She's doing something called The Letter Project where she sends a letter to somebody who inspires her to ask, what are you pursuing in your life and how do you know when you've gotten there? Yeah. And we answered. Did we? Yeah, I did. Oh, nice. For both of us. Oh, nice. Thanks, man. I know what you're pursuing. I don't even have to do any thinking. And then we have one more vinyl an CD the shape of beats to come from Bendick Boxes band yes. That is B-E-N-D-I-K-D-A-K-S-A-A-S. Vinyls. There's a couple over there on my desk. Thanks, man. You got a record player? I do. And mine is busted. What happened to your record player? It's up in the attic, and we're for years. So until I get it going, you should just take the vinyl. I will. Yes. And we appreciate the vinyl, by the way. It's very cool. I believe Benedict backs us. Do we read his name for volunteering? No. Donating to co ed. Oh, maybe Bendick. I believe so. Bentick yeah. Well, if that's the same person, then thanks for that doubly. So that is administrative details for now. Thanks for the stuff. Yeah, we're all caught up. Very nice. I know it feels good. It didn't take, like, eight episodes to cover it. All right. If you want to send us something, you can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuduffynow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the web, the awesome website stuffyousteno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You 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, Pepsi Plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
How LARP Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-larp-works | Dressing up in duct tape-covered cardboard suit of armor and pretending you're an elf warrior for a weekend at a state park might sound like a pretty embarrassing thing to do, but that probably just means you've never done it. Join Josh and Chuck as they | Dressing up in duct tape-covered cardboard suit of armor and pretending you're an elf warrior for a weekend at a state park might sound like a pretty embarrassing thing to do, but that probably just means you've never done it. Join Josh and Chuck as they | Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:30:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=14, tm_min=30, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=211, tm_isdst=0) | 32541950 | 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 he's got duct tape over some cardboard word that he's wearing on his chest, which means that this is the LARP. Podcast. Right. I'm just going to say that, like, every five minutes. Well, this will be a fun one, LARP. All right. I'm not going to do that ever again. Thanks. Yeah. I think we should just call this Dungeons and Dragons follow up. DND too nerdier than you thought it could be? Some people, as is written in the end of this article, believe that the introduction of Dungeons and Dragons was the citation for the beginning of Warp. Yes, that makes sense. It's just, like, kind of one step further. The people that really get into DND and sort of role play at the table, that makes sense to me. That grew into let's just take this out to the park across the street, right. Or hang out in front of a movie theater when the new Star Wars is going to premiere. Yeah, I guess that's LARPing. In a way, isn't it? Well, do you remember the wizard that came by for that Triumph segment when Triumph went to the Star Wars premiere? Yeah, I've seen that guy in New York a couple of times. The wizard dude. If he's not a Harper, I don't know what is. I think that's just a wizard. So we should probably tell people who don't don't know what LARP. Is. LARP stands for live action role Playing. And as you probably guess from context, is usually fantasy based, sometimes Sci-Fi, sometimes goth. But basically it is everything that a D and D game is or a role playing game is, but actually physically acted out by people who are dressed up as their characters, who are going through physical motions. It's real battles. Right. And because of that, because you're actually doing these things, it's considered much more immersive than just an average role playing game. Sure. And we should mention that throughout this, there was an interview conducted for this article. This is written by Tracy Wilson, stuff you missed in history class. Right. And she interviewed someone named Zolkowski, I'd say that's how you say that. And Larry, I guess, is local, and I think she has even invented her own LARP. Game. Well, she did. It's called Kings Gate. Yeah. So Tracy interviewed her. So we're going to be using bits and pieces from Laurie. So we thank her in absentia. Yeah. This close. Yes. Okay. So, yeah, I looked up kingsgate. It was purchased by Red Button Production. She actually sold it. Yeah. And they brought her on as the creative director. Wow. But I don't see like, that was in 2006, I believe. I don't see her name anywhere in regards to that, and I don't see Kingsgate. It's much more like archived now. So I think it's it's like kind of had its day or whatever, but hey, she still cashed that check for $275. Sure. I mean, I imagine, like, making money from creating a lap game is awesome. Pretty unusual and rare. I might look into that, actually, because when I was reading this, I was thinking I could create a Lop game. I might not want to play it, but I could totally create one. Have you seen some of the rules and all that and, like, how granular it gets? Yes. I mean, it's not something you rush into. In fact, I think Larry said she spent about a year or a year and a half creating Kings Gate, and she even used existing rules. Yeah, sure. Which you can do if you're creating a game. You can lease rules from other game creators. We've gotten way to back this LARP truck up. So you mentioned that she creates this game. Like a LARP is an actual game. It's basically like creating a new universe and saying, the new universe is going to be at this state park on these three days. And if you come, you either have to be a character that you've designed or that have been approved by me, the game designer, and you're going to follow the rules of this universe, and things are going to happen within this universe, and that will be our LARP. Yeah. And like you said, the universe isn't something that you think, well, how hard could it be to sketch that out over the course of, like, a week? Right. But it gets really grainy, like you said. And you got to think of everything. Like, what does race mean in this world? Is their electricity can people read? What are the classes like? And the difference between the classes, what kinds of weapons do they have? Is their magic answer yes? Yes. Always magic. That's the answer. And like you said, I guess they have existing rule systems out there that you can nick from or you can make a combination of that in your own or you can just make up all your own rules. Right. Which that has to be so involved. Yeah. Because I think one thing you don't want to do is invite 50 nerds with foam rubber swords out to the park and have unanswered questions. Right. Or a Dissatisfying game. How could you not think of this? Like, can they read or can't they read? Right. And a lot of it follows the same rules that you'll find in a traditional role playing game, like Dunesons and Dragons. Like, there's armor classes, there's hit points, there's things that determine since the people who are, like you said, engaging in combat don't actually die, you have to keep up with a way of simulating their death. Sure, right. And so there's rules, the intuitive rules that you can just kind of come up with just from playing Dungeons and Dragons and being aware of that kind of thing. Yeah. They apply to this too. But I think it is a little more, even more granular because you have not just the rules, but you have the game itself. Right. So there are three different types of not types of people, but different categories of character. I guess that you can participate just like D and D. You can be the game master or because larpa is a bigger, more immersive time and sense of thing, it's probably just not run by one person. You might have a plot committee and be on a group with a group of folks trying to suss this out basically. Right? Yeah, exactly. Especially if players break off into smaller groups and you kind of know what's going on, like Mutiny, maybe there are non player characters in PCs. I wonder what the draw is for that. Those are people that actually aren't advancing in the game or playing to win. Tracy gave the example of like you might be the innkeeper or the bartender in the pub that tells you don't go that way. The dragon is that way. Right. That's like a Harper who has a drinking problem and doesn't like to move around too much. They just sit in the tavern and wait for people to come by and make up stories about bandits or whatever. I guess the answer is it's the same person who would want to or not the same person, but the same idea behind someone who doesn't mind playing the tree and the play as opposed to trying out for the lead role. Like we need our big players and we need our stars. I think also, probably if you have a LARP game, an actual three day weekend at the park will be a game and then those games might take place over some sort of consecutive order in the time that's in this LARP world sure. And that will form a campaign. But if you have like a game like Kings Gate that the lady who was interviewed for this created. Right? Yeah. You're going to have kind of an organization of people who help you carry out this game in real life. And I imagine they probably play non player characters. You think that's who I would think does it. Okay, that makes sense. They're almost like administrators of this. Right. They're not game masters per se, but they're like the game master's right hand people. They still like sit and break bread with the game master, which I think some people like being the inner circle, maybe. Sure. Right. Inner circle, yes. All right, so then you have the player characters and those are they can develop new skills, they can learn things. They're trying to win. They're actually a part of the story. I'm sorry, the NPCs are part of the story. The PCs are experiencing that story. Right. So like, if you are the game designer or the game master and you created this particular game or campaign, that you're sending people out on. It's not just a free for all. If you need to keep the narrative moving along, you will create, like, that bartender character. Sure. Right. So that person is there and they're going to be there when these player characters come for the weekend. Or the bandits that the bartender warns everybody about, they're going to be out there in the woods. They're nonplayer characters, but they're part of the game. So anybody who's not part of the designed game that is playing and has a foam sword, that's a player character. I think I would like to be like a wild card NPC, like the right hand man to the game master. And if the game master is like, oh, crap, I forgot no one knows how to get to the Erie Cave. I need an inn keeper. And I could just get in the car and then go, I'm an inkeeper. What do you need? What do you need from me? Nice innkeeper. Boom. What do they call that? Character acting? Yeah, I'd be a character actor. What if the game master is like, crap, we didn't get enough baloney for all these people and they're going to be upset a month's time. Can you go get some more? I can do that. I can be a baloney guy. And you mentioned the game, the game itself. The game session can last few hours, a few days, and that can or may or may not be part of a larger campaign. From what I saw, games typically last, like, three days over a weekend. I think the campaign thing is kind of cool, though. Yeah. You have your battles over a weekend, and then you take that back and apply that to your risk board or whatever maps you've drawn up in the world. Yeah. And like, all right, now we know that this territory is now owned by whoever the victor was. And what does that mean? Because now they're advancing toward this group or something. Right? Yeah. From the interaction of the players and the game, both change. Like, a player might die. A player is going to probably gain some experience points or maybe some hit points or whatever, or a new weapon. The game itself. Like, if you created, like, a central monster or something that needs to be killed, that monster may be killed. So in this world that you created, that monster no longer lives. So this thing is dynamic. It's not static. They evolve. It's really cool. Have you seen Step Brothers? That movie? No, I haven't. The large features heavily in that. It's pretty funny. It doesn't know role models, too. Oh, no, wait, that's what I meant. Role models. Yeah, step brothers. John C. O riley and Will Ferrell. Right, but I hadn't seen it, so I didn't know. No. Yes, role models. That's what I meant. Yes. He gets his confidence at the end. Yeah. And apparently people get their confidence from Mark in some cases. Yeah. I thought that movie was better than I thought it was going to be. Yes. And apparently David Wayne, the director, said that that's his highest compliment for that movie. He said, people come up to me often and say it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. The way it was marketed was really, like, dumb and low brow, and it was just going to be just a dunce of a movie. But it has a lot of heart and thought to it and a lot of conflict. It was funny, too. If you get a LARP game going with Matt Walsh and Kim Jong, you're on the right track comedy wise, I think. Yeah. All right. Step brothers. What a dope. I'm sure people are like, not Step Brothers. Right. The great thing is that they started their emails and then hopefully stopped mid sentence. Yes. Step brothers is funny too. The Catalina Wine Mixer. All right, so there are three, like, Catalina dressing? No. The island of Catalina, off the coast of La. Okay. So there are three different types of games, three ways you can play the game. There's a battle game, and that's actually when dudes and ladies get out there. They're fully armored up in their cardboard and plastic, and someone gives a signal, and they charge each other like it's what was the Mel Gibson? Braveheart. Braveheart. And they beat each other about the head with foam swords. Yeah. And there's restrictions on how to make what's called a buffer. It's a LARP weapon, and typically it's anything from, like, a sword to a mace shield. Yeah. Battle axe, bow and arrow. Yeah. But there's standards for it. They usually start with a piece of PVC or a piece of bamboo. Heavily padded and wrapped in duct tape. And then it's tricked out to look like a sword or look like a bone arrow or whatever. And it doesn't do any damage. But it looks cool. Especially when you're like. This is a pretense for it. And it's mine. And I built it. And I'm going to kill you with it. Yeah. What was that website Tracy recommended? It was I went and checked it out. It was actually pretty good. So did I. It was called Lukraine's Guide to Buffers. L-U-K-R-A-I-N apostrophe s. Yeah. And you go and it's got all the weapons there that you could ever imagine and how to make them and advice and all that good stuff. All right, so that's the battle game. And Dark On is one of the most popular ones, and that is an award winning documentary as well. And I checked out the trailer for that just to see it. Yeah. Did you see that? No. They kind of echoed Braveheart and the way they shot it, but it is what it is. It's kind of funny, but they interviewed some people in there that you could tell like, this one lady was like, I don't have control at work. I don't have control in here. I don't have control there. Like, when I lap, I'm in control, and that's what it gives me. Right. And this other guy was like, I ended up becoming the man I wanted to be through the fantasy of the character that I wanted to be. Yeah, I'm sure if you kill a few elves over the course of the weekend and come out of, like, a LARP game, like, really on top, that has to translate to the rest of your life. Well, it's just like winning anything. I don't care what sport or competition, any kind of competition that you participate in and come out on top or just get something out of, it's going to benefit you in real life. Yeah, it's just because society deems the support as being worthy of paying somebody tens of millions of dollars to be able to play it, it doesn't mean it's any more valuable or victory there is any more valuable than one elsewhere. Great. Yeah. Very open minded. Josh so then you have theatrical games. This is mainly like sitting around in your house with no storytelling, with cards and dice and things. That's what I thought, too. Now there's this whole world out there. Well, it can be that, though. That's what it is. If you sit around and do this in your house, people are going to be like, this is what you invited us over for. No, that's not true. There's all sorts of theatrical games that people just play, like, on a Friday night. Okay. The ones I found were all, like, really involved, really widespread and kind of cool looking. Well, it's all over the map. There's one called Fiasco that I actually want to buy and play. It's a movie theatrical art, and it's like very Coen Brothers esque, like the movie plots and you act out these characters. That's cool, but that's the one where you can sit around and play with your friends. All right, it sounds kind of cool. So what's the other half? Well, the one I ran across, the legendary one is called Vampire the Masquerade. And there's, like classes and tribes and races of different vampires. And then there's other ones. There's like one is based on mummies. There's one based on sin eaters. There's, like demon ones, like whole worlds, and they've created entire worlds that have whole histories, and they're acting these things out. And it's very much like alarm, except it's far more subtle. Do they do it literally in a theater, or is it maybe in a theater? It'll be in a much larger place than somebody's living room, right? Maybe like a conference hall or something like that with the lights turned down or something. And everybody's decked out as, like, vampires from the Victorian era. And it looks really cool if you go read up on these things, like just going from link to link, it just becomes more involved. It's incredibly thought out. The rules are incredibly complex. The big difference between that and, like, combat LARPing is that if, say, a vampire goes to attack another vampire yeah. They'll usually roll for the outcome. They'll play, like, some sort of some variation of paper, rock, scissors or something like that. It's more about the story and intrigue and that kind of thing, rather than running into battle against one another in the woods. I think if I would sneak in my big buffer when they were like, all right, Chuck, do your rock, paper, or scissors, and that would pull out the big buffer, and just like, a hush would fall over the room. They're like, you can't bring a buffer, right? Especially because you'd have fixed, like, a squeaky toy in the end. So when you hit them in the head and make a really goofy noise, they're like, you're not playing. Right. And I would just buff. Everybody be like, you're all dead. All right. And the final is the role playing game. And I didn't really understand the difference, to be honest. I was going to ask Tracy, so maybe you can explain it. Do you know the difference between this and, like, a battle game, or is it sort of like, theatrical combined with battle? Yes, that's exactly what it is. Oh, okay. Battle game is just running against one another and beating the tar out of each other. So there's no larger story going on? No, not necessarily. I think if there's a larger story, then you've just created a role playing game. Okay, all right, I get it. I wouldn't want to play a role playing game then. Yeah, it's got everything. It's got the best of both worlds. Yeah. Plus bologna. Right? Bologna sandwiches. And like we said, the rules are really the most important thing. I get a feeling that in all these games, the rules are just sacrosanct. If you don't follow the rules, then people get upset, and then the whole thing just goes into chaos. Yeah. So let's talk about some of them, like combat rules. Well, like we said, you're stimulating death or injury. You're not actually inflicting this, so you have to be able to tell, I guess, how many hit points, how much health a character has. When you're being hit with a sword, like, in a certain area, typically you're forced to call out how many points you've just lost. So Tracy says the combatants call out how much damage they inflict. That seems a little I would rather play a game where it's up to you, as the one that's hit with the foam arrow, to say, all right, that's three points. I got hit in the chest with the foam arrow. Rather than some jerk saying, take all three points, I just hit you with my arrow. Right. I think it should be up to the person who gets inflicted. That's just me. Yeah. Ultimately, it would be up to the game designer to decide who calls that out. That would be a rule. I guess so. But if some guy came up and bought me in the chest and then stood over me, there'd be a problem. I would say probably you should stay away from LARP games because I guarantee that's what it's like. Okay. We mentioned magic. I imagine magic plays a big part in most games because why not? If you're going to do a fantasy game, you might as well throw magic in there. Yes. Throwing is pretty important. Well, yeah. I would like to see some of this, actually, because there are two components. One where you cast a spell and do an incantation, and then when you cast your spell at the end, like you said, you might throw a beanbag or a little pouch of bird seed, and you have to hit the other person with it for your spell to have had. So there's physical skill involved. Right. So physical skill, if you get the incantation wrong or if you miss the spell doesn't work. Yes. And also if you're a new character, you're only going to have access to certain number or types of spells. Yeah. You can't just say, like, I can do the spell as much as I want. Exactly. That's part of the rules as well. But you mentioned the skill, like throwing is an actual part of skill. That's considered a hard skill in real life. You are good at throwing. You have the skill with pigging people with little balls of birdseed. Right. Your soft skill would be magic, like the made up skill that you're carrying out. And those two combined would make you good at casting spells. Right. Or like Tracy says, if you're a good cook, you may really cook or make the baloney sandwiches. If you're not and that is your character, you may have something that like, you may have a roll of the dice to find out how good your below these sandwiches are. I thought that was a little granular, but I'm sure that's important in keeping the immersion going. Sure. You got to stay in character. Death. Yeah. You can die. That's sort of the point. But because no one wants to spend two weeks making your outfit and your buffer only to get stabbed in the chest within the first 8 seconds of the battle, and then all you have left is your bologna sandwich. Yeah. So most games will allow you back in the game again depending on certain rules. Resurrecting your character is generally part of the fun of it. Yeah. And so either like a player character or non player character can resurrect you using a spell, oftentimes there are limits to how many times a character can be resurrected. Yeah. So I imagine if you're a character who's like on your last life in a campaign and you're headed towards the state park this weekend, I bet you're a little nervous. Yeah. That desperation. That's palpable. Sure. That adds to the whole thing, the enjoyment and the drama. Because people are going to be gunning for you. Or conversely, people might be out to protect you, too. That's true. You might learn who your friends are that weekend. A lot of folks sometimes there's a scorekeeper that just keeps track of all the stuff. Sometimes it's up to you. Yeah. That's different from the game master. Yeah. Just numbers, the spreadsheet. I imagine that's a very specific person as well. A lot of times you have what's called a life ring, and it's a key ring that has these little tags on it that say whether I'm dead or whether or not I've got four spells I can use. And as I use them, I'll take them off my little ring. Right. Just to, I guess, help you remember, keep track of everything that's going on. Because complicated or if it has hit points, you're pulling them off, going like, oh, that won't hurt. I'm bleeding. I'm about to die. Meaning baloney sandwich. Yeah. The other thing, too, that we'll have many times is a non participation area. That's where you eat the baloney, I guess. So let's say you do get knocked out of the game. Like you don't want to discuss it in your shavette and play your music. Yeah, it probably is loads up on that. Sure. Oh, man. Nothing will get you more charged up for large combat than, like, immigrant song. Immigrant Song. So there will be like a little cordoned off area where you can go have a cigarette if you're into that. Although, kids, you shouldn't be smoking and just socialize. It's just a big part of it. You're making friends out there. Right. And who are your friends? Who are the people that play these games? Well, Laurie Zokowski says, quote, most of them are very imaginative people, have a taste for genre fiction, are highly intelligent, and are, in some sense, usually a little bit different socially, she says. Right. That's a big part of it. Maybe you don't have a lot of friends and this is a good outlet for you to make friends and create this cool fantasy world. And like we said, build up your self esteem. Yeah, man. That's just so neat. I like that there's a place out there for people who lack confidence. Yeah. It can go, like, get it. Absolutely, man. Because the dumb jock might get that on the football field. Right. But Lucas may not be able to play football. No, he's too tiny. He's a little Corey Hame, so he might you know, they had LARP. When Lucas is around, he might have been able to get the chick from the Goonies. Right. I can't remember her name. But he didn't. And he dies young because there's no lark. Is that the right movie? Did Lucas die? I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. Jerry. She says. I think so. Does he really spoiler? No, I don't think Lucas died. She's thinking of Brian's song. Jerry yeah. Or Rudy. Yeah. Yeah. Rudy died now. Rudy is still alive, actually. Oh, really? Who dies? She said, Lucas, have you seen John Dies at the end? No. Is that good? It is surprisingly good. Yeah. All right, so spoilers all over the place. Well, it's in the title. Well, no, I'm just talking about Lucas. What we're saying is you can't pigeonhole, right. LARPers. You have to have three pigeonholes for LARPers. Yeah. It turns out there's a guy named Peter Brockman. He wrote an essay called The Three Way Model and it was included in the book as LARP Grows Up theory and Methods in LARP. Yeah. There's another essay called The Three Way Model, but it has nothing to do with LARP. At least one other. Yeah. And Brockman says, okay, there's basically three kinds of mindsets among LARPers. You've got the dramatist, the game is, and the immersionist. And really, honestly, probably most LARPers. Are a combination of these three. But there are three pure mindsets among LARPers. Yeah. The dramatist, obviously, is going to be way into the story, and the plot maybe helps write the story. Well. You can also take all three of these and transpose them onto the game designer as well. It applies to the characters, the player characters and the designers. Yeah. The game is they're really into the mystery and maybe creating these puzzles for players to discover. And then the immersionists, obviously are way into becoming these characters. Yeah. I mean, if you're the character and you're really into the character, everything else is kind of secondary to that for the immersionist. And then there's the administrationist. Yeah. The person who keeps score. Yeah. It is a big deal, though. Like, you can't just show up at a park with 75 people and overrun picnickers. You probably have to reserve your spot, look into insurance. You have to get licenses, usually. Yeah. Like there's a little more red tape probably than you might imagine. And thank God there's people out there that are willing to pitch in and help out like that. Exactly. Again, the game designers inner circle that is helping out. And Laurie Zolkowski says, in this case, usually you're more looking for reliability than even talent and creativity. Just having people you can depend on is worth its weight in gold. Jerry just texted me from 3ft away and said, Lucas doesn't die. That's great. I didn't think he died because he's not sick, he's just small. Yes, he died in real life. Maybe that's what she was thinking. Yeah. Cory Hayne. But he was growing up then. Yeah. No, there's like a kid dies young powder. Maybe we'll figure it out one day. If you know the answer to that, let us know. That's the end of our buddy. You got anything else? No. We'd like to hear from LARPers for sure. That red button productions that Zollkowski sold kingsgate to? They do it, like, every month. Really? Every month? They have a lot. Maybe I'll get my feet wet and go watch. Oh, you will be sucked in immediately. Somebody will hand you a sword in a baloney sandwich, and you'll be like, I'm in. Well, I'll bring my buffer just in case, but I'll just go watch. Do you have one handy? No, potato guns don't count. You can't shoot people with those. Or retrofitted steampunk nerf guns. Yeah, which are pretty cool, actually. Yeah. If I had more time in the inclination, I would make one. You can just buy one, put duct tape on it, and be like, look what I mean, if you want to know more about LARP. You can type in LARP. On the search bar housetoforce.com. It'll bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it means it's time for message break now. Chuck, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. This is called Cat Brass murder. Oh, yeah, I heard. This is the people's court theme. No, I did cat scratch fever. All right, that's what I thought you were saying. It like cap grass murder. Okay. I thought you were getting people for it. Even still, this is pretty serious stuff. Hey, guys. Love the show. I have a story about capturing syndrome. Do you remember this one? Yeah. Okay. In the early 90s, my family moved from Detroit, Michigan, to a small farming community in northern Michigan hillman. We got a great deal on the house that we moved into and soon found out it was because there was a double murder in that house. Unfortunately, his son murdered both of his parents. We were able to determine where when we changed the carpet. That's gross. It is super gross. And you'll remember in crime scene remediation episode, someone did a bad job. He did a terrible job. You're supposed to tear up that sub floor. One question as to why he did it. He kept saying he did not kill his parents because they were still living downstate. He was convinced that they were not his parents, but instead imposters. I remember that one of his defenses was that he suffered from Capgra syndrome. We got lots of stairs in the neighborhood, and we weren't really sure why until we found out the names. The people who were shot were named David and Norma Douglas. My parents were David and Elizabeth Douglas. Creepy. The town, being small and not very accepting of strangers, referred to my mother as Norma, even though her name was Elizabeth. It's not very nice now. And that's creepy, too. We were never really sure if it was out of Jeff's malice or other reasoning. It was a little concerning, though, because we were always worried that if he ever got out of jail, he may go back home, only to find that David Norman Douglas still lived in the house. That's a valid concern yeah. Thankfully, that has never happened. But it was definitely worrisome at the time. And we occasionally still check from time to time to make sure he's still locked up. And I hope by occasionally you mean like every three to six months, right. Take care. Keep up the great shows. That is from John Petersac. That poor guy, man. That was one of those things where it's like, oh, my God, this is so what a bizarre condition. And then the more you learn about it, you're like, oh, what a horribly debilitating condition. Yeah, that was a sad one. It was also maybe, in my opinion, our most interesting episode subject. There was a guy in the neighborhood in New Jersey, in a small town in New Jersey that looked in, that murdered his parents. He apparently wrote their names on the shotgun shells, which is like, there's a bullet with their name on it, kind of thing. I would say that was premeditated. Yeah, there was no accident. Well, thanks for that, Chuck. Sure. Sounds like a listener mouth supplement, right? If you have something to say about one of our episodes or what are we asking about from the LARP. Community, just what's your experience been like? Has it built up your confidence, maybe? Oh, if you know the movie we're thinking of, about the kid who dies young, that do. And we're not talking about dying young. The movie with Campbell Scott. Willie Robert. There's another one, right? Any of those things. Or if you want to just get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, stuff you shouldn't. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can join us at our home on the web. That's stuffysheanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www dot netflix. Comstand up now. 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 Smith Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-05-09-sysk-itching-final.mp3 | How Itching Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-itching-works | It was only in the last few decades that science became aware that itches aren't just low-level pain. And in that time, the mystery of how we itch and why we scratch has gotten even more baffling. | It was only in the last few decades that science became aware that itches aren't just low-level pain. And in that time, the mystery of how we itch and why we scratch has gotten even more baffling. | Tue, 09 May 2017 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=129, tm_isdst=0) | 43031474 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry Roland. So this is stuff you should know. Scratching Edition. Yeah, this is one of many. You remember when we did Yawning? Yeah. Well, that's the only one I can think of where just researching something makes you do the thing you're researching. This definitely happened with this one. Yeah, well, we ran across that and poison ivy and scabies, for sure. Oh, yeah. And talked about some of this stuff, but I think we had an itch we needed to scratch with this particular topic. Well, I'm glad. I've been wanting to do this one for a while. Yeah. You did a video about this, right? Yes. A short video? No, it was three 4 hours long. Okay. If I remember correctly, does that mean we have to do this? Do I have to be here for the next 4 hours? Yeah, we have to just play the whole thing and then we'll talk about it for an hour after. That was good. Okay. I think it was a brain stuff video, wasn't it? Yeah, I watched it. Did it scratch your itch? Yeah, I watched it yesterday. Okay. Nice work. Thank you very much. Now we finally arrive at what I was after. Compliment. Yeah. No, it was great. Thanks, man. So I guess the point of all that is to say you guys are going my videos are the best that you're going to scratch. You're going to feel an itch, which is one of the great mysteries of itches. It turns out we only very recently have started to get a handle on what itches are, and there's still plenty of mysteries left to it. Like, for example, it's bizarre. And there's really no evolutionary reason, as far as anyone can tell, why just hearing about itches or seeing someone else scratch can make you itch. Right. That's odd. That's weird. Or seeing a video of an ant crawling up an arm will make you itch. It will. But I mean, think about it. If somebody is sitting there, you see a video of some schmo who's got his hand, like, near an oven, and he pulls it away really quick. It doesn't hurt your hand. It doesn't make you feel like, burn. Your hand is burned? No, this doesn't happen. I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like a leg break would. No, you're just like, what a stupid idiot. That's what it excites. Yeah. I hope that guy's hand just burns clean off. That's what I think. Right. Right. Yeah. You sourced a couple of well, we had our own article on howstep works.com, but you also sent this great New Yorker article written by Dr. Atul Gawande, one of the best names in writing today. Yeah, that may be my new hotel name. Well, you may be thronged by science fans, because that guy is pretty well known. Actually, I've never used it. Alias at a hotel. That's dumb. I don't even know if you can, can you? I guess if you're a big shot, you can. Yeah, but you have to be like, I'm not Brad Pitt. I'm a tool. Guande. Right. But we'll get to some of the more interesting aspects of that article later. Specifically, a very specific patient that's quite distressing. So calm down for now. A tool's. Mom, we'll get to it eventually. He did include a couple of neat historical tidbits, like in 1660. And Germans are all over this thing for some reason. Yeah. Researchers. They're all German. They had the itch to explain the itch. I guess so. Yeah, the itch. Right. But there was a physician in 1660 named Samuel Hoffman Ruffer. Actually, that's my new hotel name. Yeah, that's a good one. He defined it by saying, it is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch. Pretty simple. Yeah, but right on the money it is. And actually it's so on the money that anywhere you look in the medical literature, whenever they define it word for word, that's the definition they use. The Hoffman refer. Yeah. Although poor Hoffman refer doesn't get credit for it all the time. But that's the one. The only expansion of that that I've seen is that can occur anywhere on the body. Which apparently is true. I think Hoffman referred he felt that was implied. Right. It goes without saying. Yeah. I'm scratching right now, by the way. It started. I don't know if I just noticed more, because as I was doing it, I was thinking, well, now I'm scratching. Then I thought, do I always scratch this much or it's this much? Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I'm pretty sure that I was. I don't think I scratched as much as I don't know. You raise a really good question. Maybe we can get an intern to follow us around and just record our scratching. Right. I'm surprised that that's not already a TV show. Frankly, Josh and Chuck scratch just being followed around. Yeah, no one wants to see that. Well, that's probably why it's not you're scratching. See, that's what I'm saying. I don't think I scratched this much. I don't notice it. All right, moving on to Dante's Inferno. It was in Dante's Inferno the burning rage of fierce itching that nothing could relieve is how falsifiers were punished. Yes. Do you know what a falsifier is? US? Not really. Is that somebody who bears false witness or somebody who falsifies the document? Is it just a fancy name for liar? Maybe. Oh. I thought you were going to tell me. You were just wondering. Yeah, I don't know. All right. I don't know what Dante meant, but they're bad people. Sure. Apparently, there's a special place in health for them. Literally? Well, I guess actually, not literally. Figuratively. Sure, literally. Oh, very nice. So itching scientifically, is known as Puritas. P-R-U-R-I-T-I-S. It's one of those tough to pronounce things for me at least for well, actually, they still believe that the evolution of the itch was to help humans survive, basically. Because so many things that can kill you in nature are things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or fleas that can have like malaria or the plague or any number of diseases attached to their tiny little insect bodies. Right. So, hey, human, you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill you. You might want to slap it or scratch. Yeah. And that's still, as far as I know, the evolutionary hypothesis for why we experience itching. Yeah, and it's not just us either. Well, you're scratching like crazy down. Yeah. It's found throughout the animal kingdom, from us to apparently fish have shown scratching behavior. Yes. That's crazy. Fruit flies. How does the fish scratch, you might ask? It rubs up against rocks. Yeah, it's kind of cute. It is a little cute. It's like, I remember my dad did like the who was the Baron Jungle Book. Was that balloon? Yes. He would do the balloon where he would get up against a tree or a wall and then I did it probably because of that. I'm sure that's where I got it and realize that it works and I still do it every now and then. Oh, yeah. It looks kind of silly, but do you sing while you do it? Yeah. Fair Necessities, that's still my favorite. What else are you going to sing? Like Mambo number five. I'm going to start doing that, actually. Like think something's wrong with Chuck. Yeah. So like you said, though, it was up until almost 1987, the mid to late 80s, that another German ho Hendwicker and his gang sure have toughs. They started to do actual research about it. They were puzzled and wanted to solve it. Right. Because up to this point, up to actually 1987, everyone thought that an itch was just a low grade pain stimulus. Yeah, I guess I'm happy with that. That's just what they thought it was. And Hanburger said, you know what, let's find out if this is actually true. I'm tired of sitting around just assuming this is fine. I'm a hand worker, and he got to work with his hands testing this. Right. So like Jonathan Strickland level funds. What he did was this is just awful. Yeah. He introduced using like, electrical stimulation, I guess. He introduced histamine to skin cells. Right. And histamine is a natural I don't know if it's a protein, but it's a natural pound. Natural chemical. Right. Yeah. That the body releases in response to certain stimuli, say, for example, like a mosquito bite or something, and it triggers the inflammation and immune response in that area. Right. So histamine is associated with itch, and it had been for a very long time. So this guy was using electrical stimulation to introduce histamine in increasing amounts in these poor study participants, and it went from barely noticeable to this is a quote the maximum imaginable itch. And they never felt pain. Yeah. Even though they ramped it up to eleven. No one ever said, like, holy crap, that hurts. They said please for love. God, stop. Let me out of this. And Han Burke are just cackled and cackled. Right. These men with, like, black leather gloves were holding the participants down. Yeah. They said, this is not worth the five deutsche marks that I'm getting for the Slouchy study. Yeah. That's nice, man. This would have been pre Euro, I think. Oh, yeah. Even though the EU was around I don't think the Euro was around in 87 right now. No. Because ninety s I traveled to Europe in seven, and I was still on all that weird money. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it was a while after that. So now scientists, I think this sort of introduced an itch to the scientific community, because after hundreds and hundreds of years, hanvucker sort of disrupted the thought process of the itch and the scratch. Right. And all of a sudden, scientists were like, oh, well, maybe we should start looking into this. Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this thing out. Yeah. Because if it's not just low level pain sensation, then that means it's its own thing. And if it's its own thing, it probably has its own system, and we need to know more about it. So they got to study in it. Yeah. I wonder if all of this was under the notion that they were trying to cure itching. I don't know, because from what I was reading and all this was pretty recent stuff, there's a real unmet medical need in dealing and addressing, like, chronic itch. Sure. Because most people who go through life just experiencing itch under normal circumstances right. Like, say you or me were like, an itch. Yeah. They suck for a second, and then it goes away. Imagine it not going away, ever. Whether you're asleep or awake or swimming or in outer space or doing whatever, you're itching constantly. Supposedly, it has as much of a pronounced effect on a patient's life as chronic pain does. It's constant, persistent, and agonizing, and it's not being met or treated because it's not understood. So they're just now starting to get into itch. Research. I saw that somebody put it where pain research was about 20 years ago. So it's starting to really heat up, but we're still just starting to understand it. So I would think that they weren't looking to cure it. I think it was just pointed out that there was this whole branch of neuroscience that was totally not understood. So get to work, neurologist. I never really thought about it until just now, but I wonder what happens when a performer or somebody that is in the public eye or on TV or on stage or like the President giving an address. What do they do if they have poison ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis? Have you ever thought about that? Like, what if Manuel Miranda has a really bad case of I guess they can get an understudy in that case? Sure. But you can't have an understudy as president. No, which is too bad. You just go out there with your hands bandaged up, just holding them up. Like, how do you fight that poison ivy on camera? Or like a news anchor when they're just like, oh, my God, I'm dying. I don't know. I guess a news anchor can tape things, but I'm talking about live. What's Tom Petty do, for God's sakes? Tom Petty grins and bears it. He had a hard, scrabble childhood. He sure did. Prepared him for that. I'm going to see him tomorrow night. Oh, yeah? Nice. We're waiting for coffee. He's not performing anyway. I was just curious about that. Well, it's a good question. Thanks. Do you remember when Costas had red eye at the Olympics and he was so dedicated to being the commentator, the anchor for the Olympics. They finally were like, you have to stop, and no one can look at you. People are writing in. You're disgusting them. It was gross. One thing that made me think of that is I had recently you can still kind of see it on my forearm, the scars. But I did a cement job building this fence, putting in a gate at my house. And Scotty. You know Scotty. Sure, scott Pippin. He and I built this thing together and we sank these huge posts for this gate. And I didn't know that cement could cause contact dermatitis or even burns. Never knew this. It was kind of a tight spot, and we couldn't get shovels in there in the hole. So we were literally mixing the stuff, like up to our elbows with our arms. And I was like, this kind of feels good. I even said, like, oatmeal or something. And then two days later, my right arm was just covered in the nastiest dermatitis I've ever seen. Wow. And then he got it. Yeah, it's still, like, kind of hanging around. So I went and got a prescription for steroids, which made me a little crazy for a week and a half. Okay, you trashed the gate and have to start over. I think I was probably not the best husband, though, over that time period. Yeah. Judging from Emily saying, hey, you're real ahole. Get off the steroids. Got you. Get off the juice. I was like, shut up. Watch me hit this homer. So, long story short, I experienced this recently, and it was awful. And I can't imagine, like, shooting a TV show or something or like, doing anything or performing live. I would have to address it because I would scratch and smack. It was what I usually do. That's what you're supposed to do? Not scratch. I guess we'll just cut to the chicks here. This is why everyone's listening. How do you scratch a niche correctly? You rub it. Yeah, I really did. It was we have a handheld implement in the shower along with the regular shower head. Okay. Yeah. And put that sucker on the tightest, hardest, most penetrating flow and just put that hot water on it, man. And that was like I think I spent half my days in the shower over that week and a half. Were you biting down like a broomstick while you're doing that? It felt so good, man. I was just like I couldn't get enough of it. And then the cortisone and all that junk, too. We'll talk about this because you're raising some great points here. Well, I just kind of ruined the spoiler. No, this is good stuff. We're going to analyze what was going on with your arm after this break. How about that? Sounds good. So, Chuck, you had contact dermatitis. Right. I thought it was poison ivy, because that area has some poison ivy, but each of us, Scotty and I had it just on the arm that we sunk and cement. Right. And then we researched and found out that could happen. Yeah. So lesson learned on that. Yeah. So what happened was something in the cement, and I'm not sure what it was, reacted chemically with the mast cells in your skin. And histamine was released, right. Apparently. And so the histamine sent a signal through specialized nerve cells called C fibers. Yeah. Which C fibers aren't just limited to itching. I think only about 5% handle that. And most of the rest are for pain. Right. So they use the same type of neural pathway as pain, but for it, basically, it's just like no, these are just for itches only. Yeah. And it sent a signal through your spinal column, and in your spinal column, it released a neurotransmitter called gastrin releasing peptide receptor. And so at the skin, the histamine would have released a neurotransmitter called what? Naturaluretic polypeptide B. Okay. So that says each signal coming your way along those C fibers. Yes. Okay. It makes it to the spinal column. And I guess in about 2007, they found that there's another neurotransmitter in the spine that I guess accepts the NPB, the invitation, and says, I'm going to transfer this along up to the brain. That's gastrin releasing peptide receptor that shoots up to the brain and it starts this cascade of activity. Right. Yeah. Because after Hanburger said, hey, itching is its own thing, these other researchers went to town and traced and figured out that there were specific types of itch receptors that were dedicated just to itches. Right. More Germans. More Germans. And swedes. A couple of swedes, but mostly Germans just for good measure. Yeah. And what they found eventually, from tracing this pathway, they were able to follow it into the wonder machine and apparently they made some people itch and would not let them scratch it. And then they had them lay down in an MRI and they took a brain scan and they found that there's this whole galaxy of stuff going on in your brain that combined is the itch sensation. Yeah, it was pretty interesting too. There's a signature pattern in the brain when you get an itch, and a few specific areas light up. One is the cortex, and it all makes sense when you put it together. Right. The cortex in this case, just sort of geolocates where on your body you're getting that sensation. Right. So that helps. It's like left elbow. Yeah. Or in my case, from right elbow to wrist. And then a little bit in other places, but not too bad. That was the main area. Is this your cortex still saying this? Yeah. Very complex conversation going on. And then the region I thought this is interesting. The region that governments that governs emotional response. So basically, this is your brain saying, I don't like this. It makes me feel bad. Yeah. The worst thing ever. Do something. And then finally, the limbic and motor areas. And I thought this was the most interesting. Those areas process irresistible urges. The same ones that say, I want to smoke crack or I want to eat too much cake says, you have an itch that is unbearable and you need to scratch it. Right. And maybe go smoke some crack and eat some cake while you're at it, because that'll help. So I thought that was all very super interesting. When you combine that pattern yeah, that's an itch. And then followed by the irresistible urge to scratch it, which apparently research is shown those two do not happen independently. They're part of a cycle. Yes. There's something called the Itch Scratch cycle. Right. And so you have an irresistible urge to scratch the itch. It's weird, if you think about it. On the one hand, it makes sense, where you sense that there's a really hot heat source that your hand is really close to, so you have an irresistible urge to pull it back. But it doesn't feel like an urge. It almost feels like an involuntary reflex. Yeah. I'm going to kill this itch. I can't wait to scratch it. Like you're almost exacting revenge on the itch for itching. You right. So it scratches. It's an irresistible urge where it's like pulling your hand back from a hot source or something is like an involuntary reflex. It just feels different. Like a scratch is its own thing. Well, it is. They kind of found that out. And Dr. Goande pointed out something interesting, too, that I never thought about, is that you can have, like, that short collar rubs against your neck all day and you might never notice it. But if there's like, one little string that's just poking one little area, that might trigger an itch. Right. And so you would think that itch receptors are super finely tuned and they cover just this one tiny that's what it would seem like. Micron of skin? As a matter of fact, no. Apparently, an itch receptor can sense it stimuli, like, three inches away from it on the screen. Yeah. So they're really sensitive. Yeah. Whereas pain receptors are that specific, down to, like, millimeters. And the other thing I found out, too, is that not only can they sense it from a few inches away, but it's a very slow acting thing. Right. Which, as opposed to, like, heat on the handle on your hand, almost a candle in the wind. That's super fast. But that explains why an itch is kind of slow to come and then slow to resolve by scratching. Yeah, it's not like you scratching. You're like, oh, it's all better now. Yeah, it helps a little bit. The itching is a good strategy if you think about, say, there's a mosquito on you and that's what's making you itch. When you go to scratch it, you're getting rid of the mosquito, maybe even smushed it or something like that. The problem is taken care of. The issue is that it's scratched cycle eventually becomes a vicious cycle. Because when you scratch, this is what they think is going on. This is another mystery with itches. We don't understand how scratching alleviates an itch or why we scratch, really. Right. What they think. The current hypothesis is that when you scratch an itch, you're stimulating other receptors in the area that aren't itch receptors. Yeah, so I got that, but what does that do? Just sort of like say, hey, buddy, don't worry about that for a minute? I think. So a pain receptor is now active, right? Exactly. It's sending feedback to the brain saying it's being taken care of. You can settle down with the itch. Got you. Right. I think the problem is that neurologically or neurochemically, when you scratch an itch, you're activating those pain receptors in the area pain, pressure, that kind of thing. You're causing serotonin to be released. Natural pain reliever. Right, yeah. Or at least mood enhancer. And what they found is that serotonin, among other neurochemicals, actually exacerbates the itch sensation. So your itch not only comes back, it gets worse. So you go to scratch it again, and then same thing happens over and over again. That's the Itch Scratch cycle, which is not the best cycle around. No, they get better cycles. Not a bad band name. Yeah, it's okay. Little too cute. Maybe prague Folk. Prague? Well, they'd have to be German, probably german Folk prog. Okay. Another interesting thing they learned, too, is that I guess we're kind of jumping around, but who cares, right? If you scratch, you don't have to scratch the point of the itch to relieve it, apparently. Right. Like, if you have that itch on my right forearm and I could scratch, maybe it doesn't have to be the left forearm, so it's not like you have to mirror it. But I could scratch my neck, and apparently that might help relieve it. Yeah, I tried it. It didn't work for me. No, but I think the reason why it's possible that it could have that effect is supposedly scratching also activates, like, your pleasure center. Yeah, you bet it does. But there's different places where you're scratching on your body have different amounts of pleasure associated with them. Did you know that? I guess so, but interesting. Yeah, but, I mean, think about it. It's like if you scratch your scratch, like, your clavicle, who cares? It's nothing, right? But then you scratch, like, your head right above and behind your ear. It's great. Well, and I think they did find that your back and your ankles supposedly, are some of the most rewarding places to scratch. Exactly. I don't know. I never really thought about the ankles, but my mom would give me back scratches when I was a kid. That's nice. And it was always, like, one of my favorite things ever. Sure. And so I don't get those anymore now that I'm a grownup, because that's gross. Mom, scratch my back. All right. I'm 46 years old. Lay down. But yeah, I think I prefer to back scratch to a back rub, even when I was younger. But now massage is probably way better. Sure. But if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there yeah. Get ready for a huge tip for me. Yeah, I guess so. Or is that sexual? I think it crosses a line. Once they're potentially clawing away skin cells. I think that's no longer in the masseuse range or masseur range. Yeah, I get that. Once again, cells are involved under the nails. Sure. Then you're a murder suspect. Right, exactly. All right, well, should we take another break yeah. And talk a little bit about one of the most distressing articles I've ever read. All right. So we've referenced this article from The New Yorker from Dr. Atul Gawande, and he talked a lot about itching and just had good information on the science of it all. Well, that's what he does. But most of the article was focused on a patient, a woman in Massachusetts that they named M for the article. Just M. The letter M. Right. In other words, she's anonymous. And I think she's anonymous because she kind of had a rough go after her divorce. She ended up getting HIV from getting on heroin. Kind of spun out, it seems like, but then got her life back, by all accounts, but ended up getting shingles as a result of HIV complications. And the shingles went away, but the itching did. Not to say the least. Yeah, I think the itching came after the shingles, even. And at first, her physicians were like, well, I mean, you must have damaged some nerves in there. So TS for you. I guess. Yeah. And then eventually, after treating it, like, all these different ways and it's still being scratching, they said, okay, you're crazy. How about that, right? And she said, well, whatever. I still have this itch do whatever you need to to treat it, because I'm literally scratching this. Itch in my sleep. It was on her scalp, wasn't it? Yeah, it was on her head. And she kind of managed to control it during the day, but like you said, at night, she couldn't control it to the point where I think she was, like, restrained in her sleep. That came after okay. After they realized it's a problem because your brain is using out of your head. Yeah. Can you believe that? She scratched her scalp so much that she scratched through her skull, and she went into her doctor one day and said, they've got, like, this green fluid coming down, and apparently the doctor didn't even say anything, or she was like, Excuse me, went and called an ambulance and came back and said, please lay down and don't talk or move or do anything else. And they finally told her after she was at the Er. You scratched through to your brain like, that's your brain you're touching right now. The doctor's like, very interesting. Just give me a second here. Oh, my God. While they gathered up all the other doctors and nurses. Sure. Yeah. You got to come see this. She said also in this article, she said that she had a what do they call it? A roommate. Okay. A roommate. Yeah. So she had a roommate while she was like they treated it, gave her a skin graft, and then she scratched away the skin graft. Oh, man. And then they finally were like, okay, you're going to an asylum. And she's like, do they even call it that anymore? And they're like, Just shut up. And they put her in this asylum and restrained her, like you said, while she was sleeping. She had a roommate in there. She said in the article she didn't survive. He had scratched through his carotid artery and died. Blood. Death. Yeah. So they never really got to the bottom of this. She finally got a doctor. Like, the doctors are like it's something that had to do with the shingles. This is what we think happens at our doctors that the nerve endings around the area where she had shingles were so devastated by the shingles that there were just a couple of nerve endings left, and it just so happened that they were itch receptors. Yeah, itch receptors. Bad luck. And that those were, like, really exacerbated by the fact that there was no other competing sensations. If so, facto, there's your problem. Right. So they said, we'll just cut the main nerve to your face, and that should solve the problem. They cut the main nerve to her face. She said, thanks a lot. Yeah. And then the itch came. Back, and she's like, you have to be kidding me. So finally she met a doctor who said, I don't think it's your receptors or the nerve transmission. I think it's your brain, not psychologically. I don't think it's a psychosis. I think there's that the actual itch signal in your brain is being set off without any stimulation or transmission going on. And apparently she was right. But then they were like, Good luck treating that, right? I didn't see much follow up on this. I did read one article, a follow up with Dr. Gawande, because there were a lot of skeptics after that article came out that said it's impossible with your fingernail because she said she didn't use an implement. It's not like she got out of metal file, right, to scratch through your skull. And he said that his theory was that bacteria, it became infected, had eaten it away such that the skull became soft, turn it to mush. Yeah. And then people also said, you don't have men and women in the same room in hospitals or asylums. That's false. And he said that it was like the room next door and quit being petantic. Yeah. Really, man, I think people just didn't believe it. So all these folks wrote in The New Yorker, so coastal Elites, right, said, no way. They said a tool. Come on. So the idea, though, that even if this woman was hypothetical, I think tool Gwande is pretty upstanding cash. I didn't make this up. But even if she was hypothetical, her problem, what the doctors initially thought it was, was that she had a neuropathic itch type of chronic itch. But then the doctor who apparently figured it all out said, no, it's a neurogenic itch, another type of chronic itch, and it has to do with whether it's the brain going off or the nerve transmissions going off. Either way, you don't actually have an itch, although you're experiencing the itch sensation. Well, and they also then said at some point she had a psychogenic itch. Right. So they basically covered three out of the four kinds of itches, the last one being, man, I had such a hard time pre receptive. And that's what you get from, like, a mosquito bite or if you have a skin disorder, like eczema or something. Sure. So they basically roll out the most common one and at various stages said, you've got this other one for the other three. Right? Finally. And then again, they said, there's really nothing we can do to treat it. The one that they've got down pretty well is per receptive. We've got all sorts of stuff to treat that. Because basically histamine is being released and your skin is itching. So you can treat histamines with antihistamines. You can reduce that response, and then your itch will go away. Well, I took Benadryl at night, and they also make this Benadryl spray, a topical spray that just really helps. Right? So between that and Cortisone and then the Benadryl at night. I did okay. And those awesome showers. So the proreceptive Vic we've got treatment for, basically. Yeah. The other three, you're in trouble, it turns out, as far as it stands right now, maybe five or ten years from now, there'll be something. Apparently there's a lot of movement right now on treating this stuff, but it's like they're having to figure out how to block some really otherwise important chemicals in the body. Like that NPPB, right? Yeah. That one what is it? Can help regulate your blood pressure as well. Right. So they can switch that off. Right. Just turn off the gene that produces that. You won't itch, but you might die early. Right. Not worth it. Right. The one that really I mean, they're all sad, but the psychogenic, when you have a mental illness where you feel like you have parasites and bugs on your skin, they remember our morgulon's disease. Yes. How did you set it? Morgalen. Right. And I said morglon. I can't remember. I know that I said it the way everyone else says it, though. That's all I remember. Morgan that's right. That's how I said it. Man, but all this stuff just had so much empathy for him and wanted to follow up so bad to see how she was doing. Yeah, she kept scratching holes in her skull. I don't know. Jeez. So I read another article called Accidental Therapists. It's by a guy named Eric Broodman, and it was published on a website called Stat, and it's all about delusional parasitosis, but how it's treated sometimes by entomologists. You know, like those extension services at universities here in the US. Like state universities have what I call extension services, where the scientists will basically be there for the public to come talk to about whatever. Usually it's like household stuff or farm stuff, something like that. And apparently entomologists frequently are approached with people who are like, I've got these bugs crawling all over me. Here's a sample of them, and it turns out it's like carpet fiber or something like that, and these people just can't stop itching or whatever, but it turns out they have a delusion. They don't actually have parasites. My question is, is that our understanding of it now, and in five or ten years, we're going to know that they had neurogenic itches, and we just treated them like they were crazy, even though they weren't. And it's going to be like a real blemish on the history of neuroscience, maybe? Or will this idea of psychogenic itches hold up? Yeah. I wonder, did you ever see the Todd Haynes movie Safe with Julianne Moore? No. It was one of his first movies after the Karen Carpenter thing he did that wasn't like I mean, it was a real movie, but it wasn't released. But safe was very disturbing. It was about a woman who kind of slowly drifted into madness from believing that the world was poisoning her well and, like, household chemicals and everything. And it kind of started slow, and eventually she ended up at this safe camp for people like her. Right. Very distressing movie. And one of her first movies, too, to check it out. Yeah, it's really good. Oh, it's old. Yeah, it was early ninety s. I think I know what you're talking about. It's called the Road Dewellville. Is that what you mean? No, it's called safe. Okay, I'll check it out. Yeah, it's good. Very distressing. I'm trying to think of anything and that wasn't necessarily itching, but it was just like that psychogenic thing of, like, I think everything in my house is killing me. Yeah. I mean, have you ever stopped and thought about something and thought, there's the path to madness right there I'm staring down at right now. I should probably not keep thinking about this. I don't really get like that. Oh, no. I'm very easily kind of led on to the next shiny thing I got you. Yeah. Basically. That's probably for the best. It is. It has its drawbacks, though. What else you got? Well, one thing it says in here is that having someone else scratch your itch apparently does not do the trick. So you have to scratch your own itch. Yeah. I mean, somebody can obviously feel, like, a little left up. Yes, I agree with that. Oh, man. Not you. Them saying it definitely helps. I think what they're saying is it doesn't have quite the same relieving properties as if you do it yourself. Oh, yeah. And if you could reach that area of your back, it would be better than that. Yes, I guess so. I got a pretty good back scratcher now, though. Oh, yeah. It's made of bamboo. No, it's metal. But it's telescoping, so it's not 2ft long. Got you. But it can be. But it's metal. Yeah. It looks like what are the bear claw? Not the pastry, but a real bear claw, which actually looks like the pastry. Man. I guess that's why they call it that. I never thought about that. Why do you think that was called? That actually should call it a bear paw. It looks more like a bear paw than a bear paw. I'm going to try and bring that around. Unless you get somebody who really goes the extra mile and puts almonds on the tips to make it look like the claw. Yes. And not just haphazardly scattered about the bear paw. Exactly. That's the difference between a baker who loves their job and one who's just in it for the money. Yeah. A couple more things. Charles like we said, there's still plenty of mysteries around itches. Why, say, does a feather tickle sometimes, but itch other times? Big question. They don't know. Right. But I'd like to know. Maybe the Germans will get active on this again. Yeah. They're the only ones who can solve it. Only the Germans can save us. You got anything else? No, I don't. I don't either. Itching nice work. Thanks, man. Same to you. Thank you. And you haven't scratched in a while, so no, I've been scratching the same spot and it's starting to get a little tender, so I'm stopping. Man, there's nothing worse than a movie, and I feel like I've seen this a few times in movies where someone is compulsively, like, scratching until it becomes a sore, then they're scratching it. It's just like through their brain. Oh, yeah. So I guess the moral of this one is, what would Tom Petty do? I'll ask him tomorrow if you want to know more about itching or what Tom Petty would do. You can type those words in the search bar housetoporks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listening or mail. I'm going to call this one of the many emails we got on the swearing episode. Did you notice that people really seem to like that one? Yeah, they did a lot of response, mostly from fellow potty mouse, which were very filthy emails, too, which were great. And I responded in turn by cursing at them and my reply, which I hope they enjoyed in all caps. No, I didn't want to be too aggressive. So this is from Emily Allen. Hey, guys. Longtime listener, first time writing in writing about swearing. I should start by saying that it's funny I'm writing about this episode because I almost never cursed, and when I do, it's normally not a very offensive swear. However, your intro made me think of something interesting I wanted to share. You talked about how you really censor yourself during recording in order to keep your show family friendly. It got me thinking about how our jobs really shape our vocabulary, how we express ourselves. I noticed a major change in the way I speak since becoming a teacher. Primarily teach kindergarten to second grade students, and I found this really changed the way I express myself. For example, I try to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids. We'll often say, well, isn't that silly? Instead, this works in the classroom. But I often get laughs from friends and family when I refer to a situation as silly, like a disagreement with a colleague or something a politician does. There are other expressions I use with kids that often slip into regular conversation as well. The most embarrassing when I'm out and excuse myself to go potty. That always gets a laugh. Anyway, I just wanted to share and thank you for all the great work. You do learn so much from listening each week, and I'm always excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday. That is from Emily Allen. Thank you, Ms. Allen. Very silly. That was a very nice email. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us like Ms. Allen did, you can tweet to us at fyskpodcast or Josh Clark, you can hang out with us on Facebook.com stuffyshonow. Charlesw Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email stefpodcast@houseofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshaw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. 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How Circumcision Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-circumcision-works | Circumcision is a common practice in which the foreskin of a male's penis is removed, typically as a baby. Josh and Chuck take a look at the origins, practices, and arguments for and against circumcision in this episode. | Circumcision is a common practice in which the foreskin of a male's penis is removed, typically as a baby. Josh and Chuck take a look at the origins, practices, and arguments for and against circumcision in this episode. | Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:09:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=20, tm_min=9, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=334, tm_isdst=0) | 39415881 | 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 Joshua mclark. With me is Charles W. Bryant that makes this stuff you shouldnizo, and that's that. Hi. Hi. Josh mclark. Joshua. Joshua McLaren Clark. Yes. You don't have a fancy set up today? I have an info. Okay, let's hear it. Okay. Wow, Chuck, you're really kind of getting up against the wall, aren't you, today? You waiting on me? A little bit. Okay. Are you ready? I'm ready, Chuck. Josh, have you ever heard of Lloyd Schofield? I have not. Yes, you have. You always do this. Who is he? He is a guy out in San Francisco who has proposed for next November's, I guess. Referendum elections. It wouldn't even be midterm. What do you call the elections between midterm and the big one quarter term? I don't know. Okay. We'll call it that for next November's ballot in San Francisco. There may be a referendum if Floyd Scofield has anything to do with it. The outright ban's male circumcision in San Francisco. Well, yeah, obviously, you got to start somewhere. Yeah. Scottfield needs 7100 signatures and basically read the provision. Check the wording of the proposed referendum. It would make it a misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut, or mutilate the genitals of a person under 18. Right. And he says it's genital mutilation. That's how he feels. And other people feel that way too. Yeah. He's definitely not on his own in that one. There are some people in the CBS AP article they're like, it's a little too far. It should be the choice of the parents. Right. Scofield idea. And it kind of appears in the wording of the ballot measure that it's a parent's choice, but it's not the choice of most people who are circumcised because they're generally circumcised as newborn infants. Yeah. Little boys are. And he likes tattooing because you're not allowed to tattoo a child. When did you start seeing tattoo like that? What do you mean, tattoo? Is that weird? Yeah, it's a little weird. It's like a human well, that's what he says. He said that it's a felony to tattoo a kid jerry's really laughing in there. To tattoo a child. And so he says it's the same thing. He's actually saying it's way, way worse than exactly. But he is saying it's along the same lines as a choice by the parents that is possibly against the child's will later on. Sure. And that's that. So let's talk about circumcision, because that's an odd approach to me. The way I've always understood it is there's circumcision out there. It's not weird, it's not odd. But as you get older, you realize that there are two sides to this whole story. Yes. And it kind of is, actually. And you kind of come to realize that there are people out there who think that people who aren't circumcised are weird. And people out there who think that people who are circumcised are weird. Right, exactly. Let's do some stats, man. Well, I think the first stat we should open with, perhaps, is that if you are an American boy or a man in the last 30 years, then there's about a three and five chance that you are circumcised here in this country over the past three decades. Although that is falling big time. Yeah. What was it three and five chance now? In 2005, between 1980 and I think 2000, it was about three and five. Right. Yeah. And then by 2005, it had dropped to about 53%. Yeah. And Schofield says that in 2009, it fell to 33%. That's a huge drop. So in a decade, it fell 30%. And I actually think one of the reasons why is because there's been an increasing presence of Hispanics in the US. And Hispanics are much less likely than any other group to circumcise their male infants. And it's also lower out west, where there's a larger Hispanic population. Yeah. In the Midwest, there's about a 75% chance that you are going to circumcise your boy. In the south, there's half 50 50. Right. It's like Russian roulette with a two barrel, two chamber gun. Yeah, sure. And then out west. Yeah. It's less than a quarter of the male infants are circumcised out there every year. But ultimately there's about 1.2 million circumcision. Well, there were in 2005. Yes. So now we're down to less than that. But in 2005, there are about 1.2 million male boys born in the United States who were circumcised. Right. Yeah. And since you mentioned that at about $200 a pop, even though it's included in your birthing bill, it's about $240,000,000 that insurance companies would love to not have to pay. Exactly. So there's actually I don't know if it's overt support or maybe quiet financial support or whatever, but the insurance companies are very happy to side with the anti circumcision movement and Medicaid. Yes, of course. So, Chuck, let's talk about the penis. Let's talk about the foreskin. That's part of it. We're going to say the word penis a whole lot because you can't avoid it when you're talking about circumcision. That's right. Because let's just go ahead and set up for our foreign friends who may not know what circumcision is, like roller derby. Circumcision is when the foreskin of the penis, it's also called the prep use, is removed. As simple as that. So you got the prep use, which is the fourskin. Yes. It covers the tip of the penis, which is also called the glands. G-L-A-N-S. Right. And then there's a piece of connective tissue that works much like the connective tissue that anchors the bottom of your tongue to the floor of your mouth. Call a friendulum. And that keeps the prepuse connected to the glands. And then they also said the inner portion of the foreskin is also much like the inside of your mouth in that it has a natural moisture to lubricate the glands. It's hot and moist in there. That's what it says, yeah. It provides lubrication, which kind of keeps it safe and sheathed, I guess, right, yeah. From abrasion and like they mention cold and the dry winter air can be rough on a glands. Yeah. And this is a Tom Shee article and my hat is off to him for this one. Yes. Tom did a great job with this. I liked your first response. Thank you, Chuck. Also contains the prep use, also contains some nerve cells, ditch bundles, special blood cells. I had no idea. It makes the penis that much more sensitive. And the fact that it produces movement AIDS and stimulation and lubrication. So there's a lot of people who are happy with their prep use or foreskin and are very glad that they are uncut, as the anti circumcision groups would call it. Right. Or natural is another one. That's right. And since we're talking about the foreskin, it's not the same on all dudes. It's like every human body part, it varies from person to person. And some men actually are sort of naturally circumcised because they're either born with very little foreskin or they have foreskins that actually retract during puberty. They go or maybe sad trombone and they do serve a protective purpose, but they can also and for people that are on both sides, we're going to present both sides of the argument. So don't say you guys are just talking about this one side. We're going to talk about both sides. Sure, of course. But one camp believes that it can cause some problems. Well, it can. I think everybody agrees on these. Like these are the very rare problems that can come about from having force. We should say that it's rare though, because one of the big problems that the anti circumcision folks have is that these are overstated. Like when you say it's easier to get dirty and bacteria can build up and all these things can happen. That is true, but it's not like if you skip a shower, this is going to happen. Well, let's talk about this because there are some problems that can arise just from having a normal foreskin. One of those problems, because it is like the inside of your mouth in there. Warm, moist, got to keep it clean. You do have to keep it clean and if you don't a white build up, a white soapy build up cheesy in the article. Cheesy, that's right. A white cheesy buildup called Smegmob can develop and once you start developing a white cheesy build up called SMG mom within your foreskin, you want to take a really hard, long look at your grooming habits. Yes. Did you say smeg mum? Smigma. Okay. Smeg mum is maybe the plural. No dealer. I want to make sure you were saying it right, smigma. Because the last thing I want is listener mail on the pronunciation of Smegma. We get all these voice files, although I've always said schmegma, but I think smigma? Yeah, maybe. I've just said Schmegma for humor sake. Maybe. All right. That was around the time Waynes World was out, wasn't it? Properly so. That's probably a pretty minor thing. I'm sure that's easily corrected. Your fourth game, though, can also be well, it can develop in two ways. Too tight or too loose. Right. And each other problems take it too tight, it can cause a condition known as fibrosis. It's like trying to put on a sweater that's way too small for you. It's a good way to look at it. And that's the main medical determinant for whether or not you should get a circumcision. Like the main medical reason would be fibrosis. I think that's probably because it's the most frequent it's probably the most frequent problem. You think? I think. Okay. If it's too loose, then it's going to be called paraphimosis. And that's like wearing your dad's sweater. Yes. And it can cause swelling of the glands in the foreskin. And there's also something called ballen postthesis, which is swelling of the mucous surfaces of the foreskin. Right. And that can lead to skin disease, problems with the urethra pain, all sorts of things that you don't want to have going on in general. Like why, God? Why? I would imagine so you can have your frenulum attached too tightly. That's the frenulum brevy, where it's just like that's, like trying to poke your head through that very tight sweater. That's a good way to look at it as well. Thank you, Chuck. Very evocative. Josh. And circumcision can help correct all of these problems, but it is rarely medically necessary to get circumstances. Right. And like we said, these problems do exist. They are serious problems. At the very least, uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous. Sure. And I think both sides agree that there are circumstances such as these that do warrant circumcision. Problem is most circumcision. I'm sure the vast majority of circumcisions are customary cultural preventative. Right? Yeah. Sociological in nature. Sure. Let's talk about the origins of circumcision. When did humans get the idea to cut the foreskin off of boys penises? Well, did it start with the Bible? This is where Tom started. But no, it didn't start with the Bible. As far back as we can find the Egyptians, we're doing okay. That's what we understand. Okay. Do you want to talk about that? Well, let's talk about the Bible first, because in the Book of Genesis, god made a covenant with Abraham. And as we all know, Abraham was a Jewish patriarch and his descendants abraham was the patriarch of the houses of the Jews and the Muslims, dude. Oh, really? Yes. Isaac, his son, went on to found Judaism. He's the father of Judaism Ishmael's son. He's a legitimate son. Right. But he went on to found Islam yes. And Isaac, they said, basically, God's going to bless Jews with riches and success. The land will be fruitful if you get circumcised by your 8th day yes. Of life. And not just you, but your sons, any servants that you capture, any sons that those captured servants have, all boys have to be circumcised. And this has led to the fact that today 98% of Jewish men are in fact circumcised. Right. And according to biblical tradition, ishmael was circumcised before he was basically run off from Abraham's family. Right. So that kind of formed the basis of the Muslim tradition of circumcision, which continues today. If you look at Muslim texts, the Quran, apparently it doesn't have any endorsement or mention of circumcision, but most Muslims today still do circumcise because Muhammad apparently was circumcised. So I guess it's a reverence for their profit. Yes. And today, about two thirds of every circumcised man on the planet are Muslim today. So 98% of Jewish men and two thirds of Muslim men circumcised? No, two thirds of all men on the planet are Muslim who are set aside. Exactly. That's a tough one. It's kind of an odd qualifier. Christian sects don't really endorse one way or the other. They say, like, decide amongst yourselves. And Buddhism and Hinduism, they don't really have a stance one way or the other. Is that right? That's right. And we talked about the Egyptians probably being the earliest group as far as Western culture is concerned. Like with most things, the Egyptians came up with this idea not necessarily independently, or if they did independently, they weren't the only ones. But they apparently were the ones who exposed the early Israelites, the early Jews to this concept. Right. Yeah. And then at about the same time, possibly even before other groups, the Mayans and the Aztecs were both circumcising, their boys indigenous Australian, African, Asian and other American tribes. Right, yeah. And Georgians. Yeah. What is that? I've never heard of them. The Colchians. Yeah, I hadn't heard of them either, but eridata described them. So they were ancient people that is now modern day Georgia. And they were into it, they practiced it. And then so here in the West, I guess it was strictly religious until about the 19th century. Right. And then all of a sudden, medicine is like, we can do that. Well. Yeah. But that's also around the same time that they were doing all sorts of things, saying that this could solve this and this, like, we can treat VD and we can cure homosexuality with circumcision, and impotence is another one. Yeah. So they're a little bit off base, I would say. There, as in way off base. I would think so, yeah. But it did have a lasting impression. The circumcision did become associated with the medical establishment here in the west, and I think that's translated elsewhere in the Jewish faith. A mohel. Mohal. Mole. Mole, yeah, mole. Okay. They still perform brisbane. Brisbane. The only thing I know about that is from Seinfeld. Yeah. When Jerry was supposed to perform the snap. Yeah. They may still perform these procedures in the Arab world and the Muslim world, that it's generally done in the medical realm. Right. And then that was taken away from barbers in ancient Turkey. Yeah, in Turkey. In the Middle East of the Middle Ages, barbers used to do amputations bloodletting and circumcisions blood letting, you know, bleeding, and you'll be feeling better, get all the toxins out of your blood. Let's talk about it around the globe, how it actually goes down. Like today. Yeah. Jews still do it traditionally before the 8th day. They kind of stick to that. In Egypt, it's anywhere from birth to about eight years old. And in Malaysia and other places, it's like a rite of passage, like early adolescence. Yeah. In some Muslim cultures, once a boy can recite the Quran once, like, all the way through. Think about that and think about if you don't want to get circumcised. Once a boy can do that, that's associated with the time when he'll be circumcised after that. And you didn't see there's some really sad, cute pictures in this article. Yeah. There's a little boy who's clutching his genitalia under his hospital gown and crying because he's, like, second in line to be circumcised. There's a kid who's being circumcised on page zero. It's sad stuff. I'm glad I don't print the pictures out. I don't want to see that. In Africa, josh it is also in a lot of tribes coming of age type of thing. And here's the deal. In Africa, though, sometimes there's not in these remote areas, a trained professional with all the right equipment, and they do it anyway. And because of this, there's, like a 35% increased risk of complications. 6%, like, severe complications that possibly result in partial or full amputation of the penis. Yeah. But sometimes a traveling circumciser will roll through town in his ice cream truck, and everybody comes out with boys of all ages because they know the safe, real doctor with the real clean equipment is there. So they'll bring out boys of all ages to get circumcised when he rolls through. Yes. Which is a good thing that happens. Asia is extremely rare unless they have thriving Muslim populations. Right. But in Asia, among Asian cultures, it's pretty uncommon. Except Chuck in South Korea and the Philippines, circumcision is pretty common. Who knew? The American servicemen knew. Yeah. Is that the reason why Korea? Yes. And the Philippines, american servicemen stationed there in the latter half, beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, apparently got the word leaked out that they were missing their prepus, and South Koreans and Filipinos started following suit. All right, well, that's circumcision around the globe today. If we forgot your country, then we apologize. Please write in. Should we talk about the procedure itself? Yeah. As Tom put it, next up, the big show. Is that what he said? So you didn't see the pictures? I didn't see the illustrations. Like step by step illustrations. Yeah. I didn't need it. Lines like where you clip out a coupon. They have these I have a pretty good idea what's going on down there, so I was just fine with the words. So what happens, Josh, is if it's a baby in infant circumcision, then they strap the baby down, of course, arms and legs, which seems like an awful thing. It's a bad start when you read it. They give either a topical anesthetic rubbed around the area or injected around the base of the penis to numb the area. There are a few different devices that the person performing the procedure can choose from. And I know you know a little bit about these. I do. Let's hear it. There's, like, three things. Well, there's the Gomco clamp, the Mogan clamp, and the plaster bell device. Right? Yeah. So I didn't really look into the mogan clamp because it just but the Gomco clamp has been around for a while, and that sounds like something you would see on a late night TV ad. You can actually buy them on the Internet for $230. Yeah. Search Gonco clamp. It comes up and do not buy one and do this at home. That is in no way an endorsement. No, just stop right now. The clamp involves a bell with an arm and appendage that comes off the tip of the bell. Put that in, pull the foreskin up around the bell. So what you're doing is you're inserting this metal layer between the glands and the foreskin. Yeah. Like all these things, you're separating the foreskin from the glands. Exactly. Right. That's pretty much the key to circumcision. Sure. You pull it up around, you slide it through this hole. It has an arm attached to the top of the bell holding everything taut, and then you cut around it and remove the foreskin. The plastic bell device is similar. It doesn't have the arm and the clamp holding everything. But basically, you're putting a bell in between the glands and the foreskin, and then you basically tie off suture around the foreskin that's been pulled up. Right. And then you cut that, and then eventually, after, like, a few days, the bell falls off and you're fine, supposedly. Well, and that's about the recovery period. If you're an infant is about three to four days, plan on having a grumpy little baby boy for those next few days and plan on keeping the area really clean. And maybe you might even have to bandage it. And just you got to make sure that you keep it separate from diaper poopoo because you don't want a fresh surgery. Being around fecal matter not a good thing. No. You're looking at a pretty hefty little horrible infection there, too. And it takes about 30 minutes. Yeah. If you're an adult, you don't necessarily need to use any of these other bells or whistles, literally bells, but you can just pull the foreskin forward, make a couple of incisions, cut off the frenulum, stitch back. Basically, you're stitching this hanging loose skin to the corona, which is the strip just below the gland and parabolumbadabing no sex for a couple of weeks, which no one should have to tell you that, but we're telling you that that would be common sense, if you ask me. Then it's done. So why are people doing this, Chuck? Think about that, especially as an adult. Why are people circumcising both themselves and their infant sons? Why is it, like, all the rage? So this is the argument for and we will cover the argument against before you get upset by Brian. Mr. Schofield, the reason some of the reasons, Josh, are obviously, like we said, you're raised in a religion or culture where that's the thing you do, then you would probably do that. Right? Some fathers think that their son's penis should kind of be like theirs, and they're maxed 910 of circumcised men opt to have their sons circumcised and about three quarters of uncircumcised men opt to have their sons not circumcised. Yeah. So about 15% remain natural. Interesting, some parents want their sons to just be like the rest of the little boys. If you live in the United States and most boys are like that, they don't want you to stand out in the locker room and potentially be teased, that kind of thing. This one, uncircumcised men are twice as likely to contract HPV and pass that along. It's what I hear. And apparently circumcision also helps prevent or protect against chlamydia encyphalus, they say. And this is from the Journal of American Medical Association. We should say. We should. Same goes with a study that found recently that areas that don't circumcise or where circumcision is uncommon tend to have higher prevalences of HIV. I don't know if those two are causal. Like HIV is more easily contracted because there's this maybe the blood vessels are closer to the surface when the foreskin is attached, or if it's just correlated. Like maybe these areas have lesser health care right. Or less adequate healthcare. Well, at any rate, they put that number at 60% less likely. But it's not for male to male sex. It's only female to male transmission. Is that right? Of HIV is what it says. Some people think it's cleaner, but that's completely unsupported from what I can tell medically. Right. That's just a perception, if I'm not mistaken. And then there are some who just think it's prettier. Yeah. Better looking, sleeker. All right, Josh, that's the case for generally. Let's talk about people who are against us, like Mr. Scofield. What are their arguments? Well, I get the impression that there's a lot of people who well, the people who are against it are vehementlyly against it. One of the biggest arguments is that it's mutilation? Yeah. General mutilation. It is. Genital mutilation. Female circumcision, which we'll talk a little bit more about in a minute, is basically considered now in the Western world, the developed world, female genital mutilation, not female circumcision any longer. Right. And one of the big points among anti circumcision people is that this is the same thing with men. It's just for some reason more accepted in the west than female circumcision is. Yeah. But if you're against it, you probably think it's old fashioned and unnecessary. Unnecessary is a big one. Yeah. The American Academy of Pediatrics considered this in 1999 and said, you know what? We're not going to endorse this. We're not going to come out against it. But we've looked at all of the information. We see no medical reason to do this, and we're not going to endorse it. So that's a big one that the anti circumcision lobby sites are. Yes. When I read that, that they didn't endorse it, or they said that you shouldn't do it, this is such a tender subject that I kind of got the impression they were a little bit like, I ain't going there. Why don't you just decide? Right. We don't have a lot of data either way, so we're not going to say. I get the impression that it's a lot like the natural birth movement. There's a lot of probably similar sentiment, maybe a lot of crossover, actually, between the two. Josh there are risks of scarring their risks of infection. Yeah. This is a big one right here. It can go wrong. Yeah. And it does. Like, you can have your penis lopped off because of a bad circumcision. Yeah. That's a pretty good reason not to do it. I don't think it's super common. It's very uncommon. Yeah. But when you're talking about maybe your only male son can only be a male son, but your only son, do you want to take that kind of risk? I don't know yet. Well, yeah, sure. I don't know. Stop pressuring me. No, I'm not pressuring you. I'm not asking you. I'm just asking theoretically. But I think that's probably the sentiment among a lot of first time parents. Should we do this? I haven't really thought about it before, and like, Holy cow, now we have to decide. Or do we? Another argument against is that you take away the child's right to choose. Yeah. There is a procedure called an epipasm, which there's actually a surgical procedure, which is kind of a skin graft. Yeah. Is not always desirable. Sometimes you get a different color, different texture, because someone else is foreskin, or else it's skin from elsewhere on your body. It's probably from your body, I would say. And then there's nonsurgical things you can do, too. Right. Chuck to create a new foreskin, to recreate it. Yes. Josh there are nonsurgical ways, and I have never heard of this at all. I haven't either, until I read this article over time and we're not recommending that you try this at home, by the way. This is something you really need to know a lot about. Over time, though, you can apparently stretch your foreskin using weights and straps, and it will eventually stretch to where it could cover your glands. That's what they say. There's another method that involves inviting little balloons under your skin, under your penile skin, to prompt new skin cell growth, I guess, to fill in the void, I guess. And then when you deflate the balloons, you've got all that extra skin, right? And you go, TADA. So that's an epiphany. The point is, one of the arguments against circumcision is that you take away a kid's right to choose and if that kid turns like 1821, 35, 50 and goes, I really want a foreskin, basically, he doesn't have a lot of options available to him. Balloons and weights and straps and skin grafts. And skin grafts, yeah. So that's another reason. What are some more reasons, Chuckers? Well, like we said in the foreskin, there's a lot of sensitive areas for sexual stimulation and once you lose that, it's gone. Yeah. So theoretically, you're cutting down on the man's pleasure centers somewhat. Sure. And he wants to do that to your kid puritan. I don't know. They say, like psychologists might say that a child might remember this somehow resulting in lingering psychological repercussions. It's very Freudian sentence. Some people think it's better looking to have the foreskin and prettier that way. Yes. I would like to conduct a poll. I don't know how we could do this conceivably, but I would like to I know. And not get in trouble. Right. But I am curious, like, which one is considered more attractive? I have no idea. So I'm very curious. Do people think people who like a foreskin think those people are weird or vice versa? I'm very curious. I'm curious. You've been fascinated by this whole thing. I have. From page zero. And there are a couple more reasons. Some men subconsciously might not feel complete and then the big reason, you're born with it. So that might mean that you should keep it on your body. Yeah. Like if we didn't need it, why would we have it? Whether you believe in creationism or evolution, both of those kind of touch upon that. Yeah. We wouldn't have it if we didn't need it. It didn't serve some purpose. Did you already cover the language part? I think you'd mentioned that. Right? A little bit. If you are talking to somebody who is in the anti circumcision camp, you don't want to use the term uncircumcised because it implies that there is something wrong, that there's something missing. Right. Something hasn't been done yet. That's not the norm. Right. And so the people in the anti circumcision camp tend to prefer terms like natural, uncut, full length, intact. Yeah, we'd be remiss. Josh, you did mention female. Genital mutilation. This is a big problem. Around the world, between 100 and 140,000,000 women have been victims of this a lot of times. All the time. There's no medical reason for doing this. Right. Like, they will remove the clitoris sometimes. Yeah. This actually was kind of it came about in the west, too. It's still a huge problem in Africa. Apparently, 92 million girls under the age of ten have undergone female genital mutilation. Awful. And that's just Africa alone. But in the west, it was popular. I had no idea. But here in the west, in the United States, really, until 1977, blue Cross covered it. That's nice. They covered clitoridectomy. That's awful. Clitoridectomy, which is the partial total removal of the clitoris. Right. And this fad of circumcision came about at about the same time in the 19th century, and for the same reasons as male circumcision, which is yet another argument against male circumcision, because we've come to see female circumcision as barbaric. Right. Even though they were both brought up for the same reasons, which was it's cleaner, it's more hygienic, it's healthier. Sure. And also with girls, they have the added bonus of it reduces their sexual pleasure from masturbation. Therefore, it's much more morally hygienic as well. Right. This is one of the reasons why it's become to be seen as barbaric, because it actually does reduce tremendously the sensitivity a woman can experience in sex. Sure. Right. There's a lot of other problems with it, too. There's a little procedure called infabulation that basically is you cut the inner outer labia so that it grows back to narrow or close the vagina. And what's the idea here? Is it a moral thing where they're trying to prevent their daughters from being tempted to have sex or having sex? Yes. Because to get this reversed, to have children, to have sex, to conceive, to do all these things, you basically have to have the procedure reversed. And then in some cultures that promote this, after childbirth, after the reproductive years, it's closed up again. So not only are you undergoing it this first time, you're having a reverse, and then you're having it done again. So it is a huge problem, and it is viewed as barbaric in the west. And the World Health Organization has come out starting in 1997 against this, and then, I guess, over the ensuing decades, really lobbied the rest of the UN and got much wider support. In February 2008, pretty much the entire UN issued this statement saying, like, this has to stop. This is really bad. But it still continues. It happens in the US. It happens in Great Britain and a lot of the minority African populations that immigrate here. It's a problem. Yeah. Well, thank God for the who and groups like UNICEF and other human rights groups for a trying to get the word out on that, too. Right. But, Chuck, we just arrived at a really kind of a hinky place. Everybody agrees this is barbaric. One of the reasons why is because it serves absolutely no medical reason whatsoever. There's no medical purpose to it. Right. It's all just basically chastity. Right. So we all agree that that's barbaric. If there's really no medical reason for male circumcision, is it the same thing? Is it barbaric? Yeah. Well, people against it sure say it is. People like Schofield. Yeah. And I'm not here to make a judgment either way because I don't have a son at this point, but maybe that day will come when I'm going to have to make that decision, and hopefully we put out at least some facts and figures on both sides of the same stats. Yeah, it's tricky. Well, if you want to know more about circumcision and you want to see probably more illustrations of the male reproductive organ than any other article on the site, including cut, hear dots, cut along the dotted line dots. You can type circumcision into the search bar@howstuffworks.com, and that will bring all that stuff up. It's an interesting article, right? Yes, sir. Since I said handy search bar while I said search bar at least, right? Yes. It's time for listing or mail. Yes. Josh, I thought this might be appropriate. You asked for stories about people who had their fingers cut off, and what podcast was that? Yes, one of the things we did. And so we got a bunch of stories of people who have lost fingers, and I picked out three fairly short ones to read. The first one comes from Melanie from Minnesota. She did not lose a finger, but her husband's uncle did. He's doing some woodworking in his garage, sold his thumb, index finger, and part of his middle finger clean off. His wife rushed into the hospital. They were able to reattach the thumb, but not his index finger. They were never able to find the rest of his ring finger, and they suspect that the dog ate it. He now has a prosthetic index finger, which he likes to remove and toss to people just to freak them out. He was a musician before the accident, and he's still able to play the piano with his faux finger. Well, that's pretty cool. And he has a winter and summer version. One is tan and one isn't. No way. Wow. This next one is from Abbey from Hamden, Connecticut. Guys, I thought you might find this interesting. I am, in fact, missing two fingers, but I still have five fingers on each hand. Awesome. This 1 may win the prize. The same is true for my mother and her grandmother. We all have a slight genetic disorder called polydactylism, which is when you're born with extra pinkies. The extra fingers were all cut off at birth because the bones in them were not fully formed. So now we all have little bumps on the sides of our hands that were once pinkies. That circumcision of fingers I kind of wish I had kept the little extra fingers and that they were fully functional because I would use them to play impossible pieces of music. I told my bio teacher about polydactylism in high school. She got very excited and gave me extra credit. She gave her extra credit for missing those fingers. It's pretty cool. Or she gave her extra credit for being born with two extra fingers. We're being brave enough to admit it in a classroom setting. All right, and this last one is from James from Ohio. Guys, I have a missing finger story you might find disturbing or fascinating. In high school, my shop class teacher always had these crazy stories about his work in the industry field. In the industry field. It's a pretty wide field. It is. And one day, he had a story to tell us about a man who was unfortunate enough to lose some fingers. The story starts when my shop teacher worked at a metal sheet shaping factory. I bet you there's a lot of fingers in one of those places. Sure. They make impossible curves on metal that could not normally exist. Fellow worker decided to pull an allnighter and attempt to work machinery with coherency. Unfortunately, the fingers of the worker were caught in the metal working machine. Pinched clean off. Not cut, pinched off. My teacher explained that it took about a half an hour to find all the missing fingers, keep them cool in the fridge until they were able to reattach them. It's like the machinist Christians Bailman. That movie was messed up. Yes, it was. So we got a lot more stories, and a lot were very detailed and more gruesome. So we went with these because they were short and a little lighter. Thank you for that. That's very good. That's all I got. Do you have an email that has absolutely nothing to do with that. We want to hear about it. You should wrap it up, send it to us, spank it on the bottom and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstepworks.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. A summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
760e08e6-73e6-4599-9c61-aec50100a13d | How Ultraprocessed Foods Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ultraprocessed-foods-work | Ultraprocessed is a new term for junk food, but it means much more than that – it’s also a cautionary tale for the way we’re supposed to cook and eat, using real food and sitting down with friends and family. But who has the time and money to do that?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Ultraprocessed is a new term for junk food, but it means much more than that – it’s also a cautionary tale for the way we’re supposed to cook and eat, using real food and sitting down with friends and family. But who has the time and money to do that?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 05 Jul 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=186, tm_isdst=0) | 55074562 | 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 even here. And this is stuff you should know. Welcome, everybody. Welcome.com. Yet another food. Well, I was going to classify this. I don't think this belongs with our food. Like coffee beans. No, stuff like that. But food industry, sure. Sweet. Can't stop. Can't stop. Can't stop talking about food. That's what I say. I love it. This is more yeah. Food industry, like, massive problem the world faces now. That kind of thing. It's in that suite, like the Huge problem suite. That's where I work. We get a lot of those. Yeah, we do. And it's growing every day, unfortunately, because we haven't solved a single one. Chuck, even though we've tried. I know we're trying, but what we're talking about today are called ultra processed foods, and a lot of people say, you mean junk food. And, yeah, it is junk food, but it's applying science and public health to the idea of what to do about junk food, because as people look into it more and more, they find more and more evidence that it's as bad for you as you think it is, maybe even worse. But it's also painfully obvious that it's so fully entrenched in cultures around the world that it's not going anywhere. We're not going to get rid of you can't just get rid of junk food. People survive on junk food, as we'll see. So we have to figure out then how to balance those two things, the presence of junk food and the harm that junk food can do to your health. Yeah. And I would even say, and I'm sure you would agree that calling it junk food, I think a lot of people might think, like, well, I don't eat Cheetos, and I hate that we're going to have to just rattle off brands like that. I love a Cheeto every now and then. Sure. Cheese pops are the crunchy kind. Oh, no. The ones that look like little caveman club, they do look like that, too. When I was a kid, I didn't eat many Cheetos then either, just because we didn't have no money to buy Cheetos. We had whatever the off brand was that came in, like, gigantic bags. Choco. Yes, probably. But I hate that we're going to have to name brands here and there like that as reference, but let's just say Cheetos. But people might think, oh, I don't eat Cheetos, so I'm good. That's not true, though. There are a lot of foods that you probably eat that you don't realize. You may not call junk food, but if you look at the back of the package, you're like, oh, wait a minute. There's, like, 14 ingredients, and two of them sound like food. Yeah, and that's a really good indicator that what you're eating is ultra processed food. And that term ultra processed food, you may have heard before, but it's a relatively recent development. I think it was 2010 when a Brazilian epidemiologist named Carlos Montero came up with it as part of a four point food group. It was pretty obvious, but sure it was. But what he did was not obvious. It was actually pretty revolutionary, because at the time in Brazil in 2010, and still today in the United States and plenty of other countries, there was a focus on the food groups as we know them, like grains and cereals, fruits and vegetables, short classes, meat, dairy, that kind of stuff. Right. We still talk about that here today in the United States. So what this guy said was, like, that is so ridiculously confusing, and it's such a problem to keep up with that, I'm going to basically take it upon myself to reclassify food into easier to understand stuff. And that's where he came up with ultraprocessed food, but he actually came up with it from an observation truck that was kind of like a mystery at first. It sounds like a set up to me. Take it, Chuck. Just so people know, we don't write down set chuck up for the next bit. No, it's just very organic. It is. And it's getting clunkier as we're entering here. Organic and clunky. Rather than taking it as a set up, you're like, sounds like a set up. Yes, he did notice something. He realized that the purchase of actual sugar by Brazilians had gone down a lot between the 1980s and 2000s, but obesity and type two diabetes were still on the rise. And I guess he thought it's almost as if they're getting all that sugar from other things that aren't just bags of sugar. Right. And so he looked to the packaged food industry and came up with a system to classify it. And never has there been a system that should be an acronym. That's not so frustrating. It's even capitalized Nova. Nova. And, like, what does it stand for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Right. Not your ordinary variant analysis. Yeah, I worked on it even. That's what I could come up with. Oh, really? Yeah. I think the reason he chose Nova is because Nova means new star. So I think he was saying, like, this is providing, like, a new North Star to guide people toward nutrition, I guess. Or that he is the new star of talking about food. Right. That's what he talks about himself as for sure. So I guess we should talk about the four groups. Group one is what you might call, like, whole foods, which are it's just food. It's unprocessed, it's fruit, and it's meat and the eggs and stuff like that. It comes out of a chicken's butt and into your mouth. Hopefully there's something in between that happens, though that's a good point, too, because people be like, well, meat's processed. Yes. Group one also includes minimally processed foods. So the distinction isn't that it's totally unprocessed. Right. The distinction is that it's substantially intact, hasn't been pulled apart and put back together again. And it's nutrient composition as it exists in the cow that's walking around or the chicken that's walking around, or the plant that's growing remains basically the same in this form, this minimally processed form. That's right. That's group one. That's what you should shoot for. Group two are processed foods a little more processed. And we're talking about oils, packaged herbs. These are things that are used as ingredients or things to cook other things, right? Yeah. So if you put group one and Group two together, what you're doing is cooking. And you're coming up with basically group three foods and basically anything that you cook in your kitchen using normal ingredients, even things like cakes and cookies and things like that. If you're using sugar and butter and basically whole foods from groups one or two, you're coming up with group Three, which are processed foods, but they're recommended processed foods is the kind of foods that you're making yourself. Or if you're buying it at the store, it's being processed in a way that is still retaining as much of the nutrients as possible with as few additional ingredients as possible. And the ingredients like you were saying before, you can understand what they're saying in the ingredient list. Yeah, like if you see some strawberry preserves on the shelf of a grocery store and it says and this is actually in our research and something we'll point out later again, probably, but food brands are starting to tout stuff like this. We don't eat a lot of like frozen treats like ice cream and stuff, but I got some because it's summertime. I wanted to get my daughter some little treat, a little frozen treat like some fruit Pops. Okay. And when you go down the fruit pop aisle, that aisle especially is made up of things where they'll say like three ingredients and big letters on the front like cane sugar and water and real fruit and partially extruded. Weirdness. Yeah, that's the third ingredient. But that would be a group three. And I think the bell has been ringing. So food companies are beginning to tout things like fewer ingredients here and there so they don't fall into group four, which is the ultra processed foods that we're going to talk about today. And these contain a lot of engineered ingredients. When you look at the back, that's when you're going to see things like soy protein and hydrogenated fats and things like that, and things you can't even pronounce. Right. And the longer the list of ingredients is the likelier it is to be in group four, the more difficult to understand ingredients are probably in group four. And then also, even without looking at the ingredient list, you can usually catch a group four type ultraprocessed food because it's heavily marketed. There's lots of colors and neat logos and stuff like that. And you've seen ads for it on TV character, that is definitely a hallmark, right? That's a definite hallmark of ultra processed foods. So you can usually tell from the packaging and then to kind of meet the industry. Where it's going to some people who are into the Nova system of food groups say. Actually. If you see a packaged food or a preprepared food that is making health claims. You should actually take that as a signal that it's not actually healthy. That healthy foods don't have to tout that kind of stuff. Unhealthy foods are the ones that you have to watch out for when they say healthy, low fat, all that stuff, it actually means it's ultra processed. Right? Like, you won't see a bunch of bananas with a sticker that says now with more potassium. No. And if you want to kind of imagine what the differences between where we are between ultra processed foods and actual whole foods, like, imagine Mountain Dew, the Mountain Dew logo, all of the Mountain Dew advertising you've ever heard. You remember they used to say it was extreme with just an X. That is like classic ultra processed food marketing. Yes, for sure. Now imagine that same ad campaign was for pears. Like it'll make your brain do a somersault just trying to come up with it. Look at that shape. It really kind of brings into stark contrast the difference between ultra processed foods and whole foods from groups one, two, or three. Yeah, it's pretty sad. And there's some staggering facts in here. The first one that I came across was right here on our first page where it says that in the US. And the UK. Ultra processed foods make up more than half of the calories that we eat, period. And they are on the rise. They've shown that the percentage of US. Adults diets that consist of upfront ultra processed foods went from 53.5 to 57, and that's from, let's say, 2002 to 2017, which is a long time, but a four percentage point rise in a total caloric intake is substantial. Yeah. And that means that since it was at 53.5% already, american adults have gotten at least half of their calories for more than 20 years, at least half of their calories from junk food for more than two decades. And that's just the adults. Like, if you look into studies of ultra processed foods, by far the largest consumers of them are younger kids, in particular, younger boys. So if adults are getting that much, I mean, it just makes you wonder how much kids are getting. And it just so happens that that's our next stat. Yeah, kids. Over an 18 year period, from 99 to 2018, they went from 61% to 67%. And they found that it's generally across all races save one, which is pretty amazing and awesome. Hispanic adults don't eat nearly as much ultra processed foods as other people. And they've also found that it's basically across income demographics, although lower income people with lower incomes do eat more upfront, but it has been rising across almost all demographics. Yeah, and globally, too. Like, the US has long been feeding our kids and eating ourselves the ultra processed foods, but it's long been kind of a hallmark of a wealthier country, ironically, because ultraprocessed foods are so cheap compared to Whole Foods. But in other countries, as they started to develop more and more economically, their intake of ultra processed foods has increased in step two, so you see ultra processed foods making up a larger and larger share of the caloric intake of all people around the world. It's becoming a new kind of diet that wherever you go in the world, you're going to be able to find basically the same food, and it's wrapped in extreme packaging and contain something that was extruded and dusted with something that used to be cheese. All right, that's a great set up. Let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about where or at least what some people consider the Big Bang of UPF. Started right after this, by the way, Chuck Extrusion, I was like, I think I know what that is. I just want to make sure you remember the Playdoh Fun Factory, that you put the Plato in one end and then you pulled the lever and it squeezed out like a star shape or a moon shape. That's extrusion. Yes, but they never called it the extruder in my day, they call it the Fun Factory. Right. The Star Maker. Sure. All right. So if you want to look to where some people consider the Big Bang, or at least as Anastasia Marks de salsado. Yeah, salsado, yes. Anastasia is a journalist who wrote a book called Combat Ready Kitchen how the US. Military Shapes the Way You Eat and lays claim to the fact that World War II is known, at least to this journalist, as the Big Bang of ultraprocessed Foods. And that revolution, we should point out, this is nothing new. Canning, I realize, comes from a competition that was used or held to help feed Napoleon's army. So there's been a long history of food R and D when it comes to feeding lots and lots of soldiers on the battlefield in a way that makes sense because you obviously have to have food that's not going to spoil stuff that light and travels. And what it kind of comes down to is getting rid of as much water as you can from food. Right. Because that prevents spoilage, like you said, makes it lighter, so it's easier to ship and move around, but it still should retain mostly the same nutrient density, which is what you're really after. And that's a huge thing that kind of came out of World War Two, I believe, which was drawing food, learning to dry not just food, but also coffee and apparently all of that drying process came out of a way to dry and store plasma for later use. And they said, you know what would also go through this process really well? Coffee. That was it pretty amazing. Yeah. That is just one tiny little fact. I think the one that really got me was something like the McRib was actually born out of the same military research into something called and this is an album title if I've ever heard one. Fabricated Modules of Meat. That's a Diarrhea Planet album. Oh, man, they're not together anymore. We heard from people, I think. I knew they weren't together, but they'll always be together in my heart. And this is very interesting, too. What they've started doing was found out a way to remove or what to end up with something called intermediate moisture foods. Yeah, that's huge. So if you think of, like, a chewy granola bar, that thing is chewy. It's not super dry, but it's not super wet. And the power bar is something that was born directly from World War II. There was something called a Logan bar that was packed in the soldiers kits as a meal replacement, but it was designed purposely to not taste very good so the soldiers wouldn't just dive in after it's sort of like a last resort thing. And therein lies the power bar. So if you're ever like, these things taste terrible. You can thank the US. Army for deliberately making them taste terrible so that you don't want to eat them. Like, they're kudos. Remember kudos? Yeah, I love the kudos. They were great. They were like a cross between a candy bar and a granola bar, and they somehow are greater than the sum of all its parts. And those are the kind of things that you're like, oh, I like this. I think I'll have the rest of the box. And that's another hallmark of ultra processed foods, as we'll see. I think, though, we can now not avoid it any longer. We need to talk about processed cheese and cheese dust. Yeah, what the army ended up calling jungle cheese, because they developed a new way to make cheese. People had been making cheese for millennia, and it was great, but it didn't travel well. And so the army, or, I guess the military industrial complex, said, let's find a way to make better cheese that can travel. And they did it. They did. So one of the huge challenges was as you dry out cheese, if you don't do it right, the oil separates out of the cheese. It becomes sweaty, and the cheese you have left with is oil lift and dry and not good at all. So somebody figured out there was an actual guy, George Sanders, who was a USDA dairy scientist in 1943. He figured out that if you dry the cheese at really low temperatures, the protein actually encapsulates the lipids, the fats, and locks them in place. So then after that, you can pulverize it and dry it even further, and the fat will stay locked into it. And then you can take that and you can either turn it into powder or you can reconstitute it into whatever shape you want, specifically sliced cheese, which is those yellow squares of cheese. That's what happens to them. Yeah. But when it came to the powder, like, if you've ever made that delicious, still delicious craft mac and cheese, and not the kind with the package real squeezy cheese. Yeah. I'm talking that yellow orange powder, and you dump it in there with a little butter, maybe a little heavy cream if you really want to treat yourself. Sure. And you wonder, what the heck is this? It is cheese. It's just cheese that has been ultra processed, thanks to George Sanders. And he would shred it up and then dry it out, and then it would harden up, and then he would grind it and then dehydrate it even more. And eventually you do that over and over, and you get down to that beautiful orange powder. Yeah. What's confusing is there seems to be a discrepancy between who first invented cheese powder. Was it george Saunders in 1943. If so, then how did craft come out with their macaroni and cheese or craft dinner, if you're in Canada back in 1937 with powdered cheese? So it's weird. There's a weird misunderstanding around who created cheese powder, but it does seem to have come about in the either the late 1930s, early 1940s, possibly through military research, but it was 1948 that we got our first cheese dust snack. Yeah. When the Frito Company. Was it a Cheetah or was it like a Cheesy frito, my friend, it was a Cheeto. Or choco is what you grew up with. I worked with a director years ago, Tom Schiller, who was the do you remember the black and white SNL shorts from the blue sheet? Yeah. He was like Al Frankens writing partner, I think. Yeah. I was like Shiller's kind of head PA. When he came to town, he would request me because we were buddies, and he was great with one of the best foods I ever worked for. But as a gag, he didn't even like Cheetos. But he would eat Cheetos on set with a white surgical glove just to make people laugh. That's funny. There's these little finger protectors that look like tiny condoms that you put on your fingertips, and I used to use those to eat buffalo wings just for effect. Well, but that also has a practical effect because that stink can go to other places. If you rub your eyes or oh, sure, but I still rub my eyes with little finger condoms on and just that dump. No, you've had to take those things off. I forget every time. Or I accidentally swallow one when I'm licking my fingers. I don't get the hot wings. I haven't eaten a buffalo wing in years. Oh, chuck, you're missing out. I get the lemon pepper now if I get anything. Okay, that's good, too, but I think you can mix it up a little bit. All right. It's no good for my digestive system. So you said something that I think is I hope your digestive system comes back around so you can eat some buffalo wings. I appreciate that, but you said something a little while back that I think is worth kind of fleshing out, and that is that this stuff, that's cheese dust used to be cheese. It's actually made from real cheese. Yeah. And that is an argument that a lot of people make when people poopoo junk food, ultra processed food, that kind of stuff. It basically amounts to you're afraid of science is what you're responding to. This is still food. In some cases, it's more nutritional than the whole food it was made from. So what's the problem? And we'll get into that whole thing, but I just wanted to kind of point that out because you did hit on something that's worth saying. Yeah, we're just luddites. Sure. I'm a convert, though, through this one particular study that we'll talk about that I think is very mind changing. All right, that's a nice tease. But first, Chuck, I think we have to talk about corn, because you can't really do all this. You can't make very cheap ultraprocessed foods without very cheap base ingredients, and corn is about as cheap as they come in the United States. It is now, because they, over the years, figured out how to grow corn much more efficiently and much more densely. The 1920s and 30s is when they started to develop these new strains of corn. The corn ears themselves are actually bigger, and they could pack them in a lot more. And I believe between the an, acre of corn yield jumped from 30 bushels to about 140, which is a big I mean, what is that, a four fold increase? A little more, actually. Yeah, it's like four, almost five. Yeah, we did it. We got there. They got there. Or we got there math wise, but they got there. Cornwise. And now corn is the largest crop in the United States. It accounts for about 25% of all crop sales in the US. With only about a third of that being used for actual food and some other industrial uses that don't include ethanol or livestock feed. Right, but because we're feeding most of that corn to our livestock and then we eat the livestock, well, we're in turn still consuming the Cornwall's way, right? Sure, but I didn't get that. But I love the young ones. The reason corn is so profitable and so well grown and so tinkered with is because it's so heavily subsidized in the United States. Like, the government will pay you to grow corn. Sometimes they'll pay you to stop growing other crops to grow corn. If your crop goes bad, they'll give you money for it because you tried to grow corn. It's just extremely subsidized, which means that there's always a market for it. You're always going to be able to sell it. So lots and lots of people grow corn. So that's what we use as our staple crop to make almost all of our other food from. And that was discussed at length in the really great book Dorito Effect by Mark Shatzker, which we talked about in our junk food episode, because remember we did one just on junk food. This is different, right? This is slightly different. We were a little corn growing up a couple of times. I think it was kind of a pain, so we didn't end up doing it more than, like, once or twice. But we had a very robust garden over about an acre. I lived out in the woods like a Yoko. I've talked about canning around food and stuff, but corn was something we grew a little bit every now and then. How much do you want to talk about high fructose corn syrup? I mean, we did a whole episode on it, right? So how much do you want to get into this? Should we tell people how it's done again? Yeah, I don't know that we ever talked about how it's made, did we? It seemed all new to me. No, we talked about it. Yeah. Joe well, I mean, it's a good, great example of you really just shifted from this corn story of you growing it to whether or not we're going to talk about high fructose corn syrup. It was like a whiplash, and now we were talking about it. Yeah. Clunky clunky, year 14. Well, why don't you go over it then? Because I'm done with it. No, I'm just kidding. You should talk about it, though, because it is pretty interesting. Yeah, and the reason why it's so interesting is because high fructose corn syrup is just one of the many things that are made out of a single batch of corn kernels. That's what makes it such a great poster child for ultra processed foods, because out of a single kernel of corn, you get everything from corn oil, from the germ, from the fiber, from the shell, gets sent off to be used in breakfast cereal. So if you see, like, corn brain or corn fiber or something like that, it was separated out from what eventually became high fructose corn syrup. The stuff that's left over is corn starch and corn gluten, and gluten gets fed to the livestock. And the corn starch you could just use around your kitchen. They use it in building materials, and you can also use it to create high fructose corn syrup. So just that one process of taking some of that corn converts it into all these different things, from building products to high fructose corn syrup to cattle feed, just with just one type of corn dent. Corn is what it's called? Yeah. It is one of those things where you wish HFCs wasn't so bad for you and everything. Because when you look at that process that you just described. It's hard not to sit back as food science and pat themselves on the back and just say. What an amazing process we developed. That all of this stuff is being used in all these different areas. And in the end. We get our evil ingredient. Right? Yeah, for sure. But, I mean, not all of it is evil. Like, if you've ever had a cardboard box that you had trouble pulling apart to recycle because the adhesive was so strong, you can bet that was made with corn starch or adhesive. Yeah, the adhesive. Industrial adhesives. Some of them power some of our machinery. Ethanol is made from a lot of corn, so it'll pat on the back for science, like you were saying. It's just that nutrition science, as we'll see, has not figured out how to take that stuff and make it work for humans the way that we can make a machine work with ethanol derived from corn. Yeah, and I think I was about to say where they aired, but they would say this was the genius part of it, was the corn syrup that they end up with after all those processes is dextrose, basically. And if they would have stopped there, it might not have been so bad, but they went, dextrose just isn't as sweet as we need it to be. It doesn't taste like that. Sweet, sweet sucrose. So let's make it sweeter. Let's process it more and add an enzyme to it and some pressure and some temperature, and bada bing badaboom will turn it into fructose. And that final step of the process is really where it nutritionally went wrong, I think. Well, yeah, because don't forget to add the hydrochloric acid to turn it into fructose, too. Yes. Well, I mean, that's kind of one of the first steps, right? Or is that towards the end when you add pressure and heat and everything? I believe that's where it converts. It it's the epitome of what people call, like, Franken food. And it's really easy to tee off on if you're a whole food proponent, and there are a lot of whole food proponents. They got a ton of traction, especially in, like, the early 2011, 2010s, thanks in large part to Michael Poland's Omnivore's Dilemma, which came out in 2007 and basically introduced everybody to the concept that we're eating all wrong. Essentially. I want to point out that was your second Al Franken reference, tom Chiller's writing partner, and then Franken food. That was not Al Franken reference. Oh, was it? No. Although not Al Franken. I'm picturing him eating Lucky Charms, and a couple are just, like, falling out of his mouth onto his shirt. I have a joke there, but I can't tell it. Yeah, the Omnivores Dilemma. There were a few other. Books that followed for Michael Pollan in Defensive Food, very Big Book, and then Food Rules, and one called Cooked about eight or nine years ago. And if you've ever been anywhere and seen this slogan on a wall on a poster, eat food. Not too much, mostly plants that come from Michael Poland. And that has become a bit of a rallying cry for the Eat Better Whole Foods movement. Eat food like food and don't eat too much of it, and try to mostly eat plants. And if you literally do that, then you're probably going to have a pretty good diet. Yeah. And they have some other rules of thumb, too, like don't eat food that your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, which means you could still eat oreos because they've been around since the 19th century. Great. Also, I think we've talked about how grocery stores are laid out before, at least in a video, if not an episode, and how if you hug the outside perimeter, you're going to get the Whole Foods. It's the middle aisles that the processed foods take up. That's another good we can talk about that and then avoid foods with like, more than five ingredients. It's a little restrictive, but you get the point. The fewer the ingredients, the likelier it is to just be whole Foods without a whole bunch of added stuff and tinkering and engineering to make it taste the way it's supposed to taste. Yeah. And there's also we should talk just for a second about the other thing wrapped up in this, which is food culture, Poland. And is it Montero? Is that what we're saying? Yeah, montero. Montero. They both talk a lot about food culture. Which is not just the things you're putting in your mouth. But how you look at food and dining in general. Which is to say that they believe. And I would tend to agree probably. That too many people these days are just grabbing food as they quickly move about life from appointment to appointment or commitment to commitment. Rather than the days where you could cook a meal and sit down as a family and eat it together. And he's not just saying, like, this is good for the family, even though it is. They're just talking about just societal and cultural, I guess, norms and how they've changed over the years and how we should strive to sort of get back to that. Because chances are, if you're sitting down at a table with your family and you're eating together, you're probably not dumping a bunch of chicken nuggets on a plate. Probably not. You may that's what we did at the 70s, sort of. Even if you are, though, it's still probably preferable to eating them in the car while you're hurrying to piano practice or something like that. At least you're sitting down together. So there's that aspect of culture to it. One of the problems, though, Chuck, is if you've ever taken steps to replace some of your ultra processed foods with some whole foods that you cook yourself. The difference in time that it takes to prepare those foods is really significant, and it can be really tough. That just kind of goes to underscore why ultra processed foods have become so ubiquitous. They fit really well into our current culture of like, go get another thing done. Sign up for another extracurricular activity. You can eat these foods, like, anywhere. They're available anywhere. And you can basically just snack throughout the whole day. You'll never even need to eat a meal, and you can do it in your car the whole time while you're going from place to place. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the big criticisms of people like Poland and Montierra, which is like, who was cooking this stuff back in the day? It was probably a housewife in the kitchen, or a domestic servant, or previous years enslaved people. And it's really easy to sort of sit back and say, if you're in a certain income bracket and say, hey, slow down, cook your meal, you're going to get criticized. Probably it comes across as a little tone deaf, especially when Poland says something that he said in 2009 in an article that 70s feminists thoughtlessly trampled the pleasures of cooking in their rush to get women out of the kitchen. He did say that men should also cook, but you can't lob out a statement like that and not expect blowback. Like someone has to cook these meals and two income families. It's like, it's tough. There's not a lot of time to do that and to shop for these foods. So we see why it's a problem, basically. Definitely there's more problems too, that you could use to critique the whole idea of eating whole foods and all of the extra time and effort it takes. But I say we take a break and then we come back and we talk about the health benefits or problems of ups. Let's do it. Okay, Chuck, there's one thing that a lot of people say is like, there's some foods out there that are more nutritious for you in their ultra process form than they would be if you made it yourself. The problem seems to be this, that there's become a focus on nutrients. Like the whole fat free thing back in the early ninety s, the low carb thing, like, we focus on nutrients and food has become not food anymore. In its ultra process form, it's become I saw it described as a delivery system for nutrients. We're just obsessed with nutrients. That's what you see touted on the packages of ultra, ultra processed food that you're supposed to kind of take as a warning signal to stay away from. The problem is that it's becoming more and more apparent that we can engineer food all we want, but we don't understand the dynamic of how nutrients within a food interact with one another to faithfully recreate them. And so the food that we're creating is substantially less healthy than the whole food versions of it. The way that Montero puts it is that ultra processed foods are intrinsically unhealthy, even if you don't compare them to anything else. If you eat ultraprocessed foods, you're going to suffer greater health problems than you would if you didn't eat or eat less amounts of ultraprocessed foods. And that is the entire problem with ultraprocessed foods right now. Well, and that goes lockstep with the fact that they are engineered to be, I guess he calls it, hyper palatable formations. They're sold in large servings, and they're easy to eat a lot of, and they're made to be easy to eat a lot of. They've actually looked at the structure of some of these processed foods. They make it harder to feel satisfied, like you literally, chemically aren't achieving satiation as quickly with these foods, so you're going to eat more of them. That's why somebody can sit down and eat a sleeve of Pringles with the TV on without really thinking about it. Or those intermediate moisture foods that are chew, chewy and stay chewy for five years on the shelf. They found that with ultra processed foods, you typically chew less. And one of the ways that we become satiated, one of the ways that our body knows that it's full is, I guess it counts the number of times that we chew. And just because we're chewing less and we're eating more, that in and of itself makes ultraprocessed foods less healthy than whole foods. But critics of the anti ultraprocessed food camp, even proponents of ultraprocessed food, say, okay, that's a problem. And that's something that can be designed out. If you put nutrient against nutrient, if you put fiber against fiber, calorie against calorie, vitamin D against vitamin D in whole foods and ultra processed foods, they're basically the same thing. People might eat too many ultra processed foods. Maybe you don't chew as much, but still, if we change that, they would be the same. And that was the big critique on Montero and Ulcerated foods in general for almost ten years until a really important study came out in 2019 out of what was the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Maryland. So this guy it was a study led by Kevin Hall, Chuck, and it's considered the gold standard of nutritional studies. It was a randomized control trial with just 20 participants, but it was so well designed that there's basically no critics of its methodology or findings. It's just roundly touted as finally evidence that ultra processed foods are, like Montero said, intrinsically unhealthy. Yeah, and we should point out they did this study with just the 20 people, because before this, everything you would ever read about ups were correlative studies and meta analyses among huge populations. So Kevin Hall actually dug in on a smaller level, and like you said 20 people spent two weeks and they were eating either almost all ultra processed foods or almost all unprocessed foods. But the key here, like you were talking about, is they matched these diets calorically. They matched it their protein, their fiber, their fats and sugars. They tried to match them, so they were basically equal. And then they said, all right, 20 people, you ten, go and eat however much you want, and you tend to eat however much you want. And then they rated those diets in the end. This is, of course, subjective, but they rated them as equally as good tasting. But the ultra processed food people ate 500 extra calories per day. Yes. So that's like eating an extra Big Mac a day. Imagine if every day you just also ate an extra Big Mac on top of everything else you ate. Sounds so good. Or an extra Taco Bell beefy, five layer burrito, if you're into that. Even better. So, yeah, it's good in moderation on occasion, but eating one every single day on top of the food that you ate, that's problematic. And so they also found, Chuck, that the people who were in the ultra processed food group, they gained about \u00a32 over the two weeks, while the control group lost about \u00a32. Yeah. So they found, like no, this stuff is actually when you compare apples to apples, the ultra processed food is actually unhealthier. Like, it was finally proven what basically everyone suspected. But because it hadn't been proven, there was room to argue against it. And since then, it's become harder and harder to argue in favor of ultra processed foods, at least as they exist today. Yeah, that's just like how healthy are there all kinds of environmental concerns? We've talked a lot about biodiversity, Agrabad diversity, and putting all your eggs in one basket, crop wise, is really bad if disease comes along. Like, we've seen it happen time and time again through history, and we're at the point now. This is another sort of fact of the show for me. There are hundreds of thousands of edible plant species, but more than half of the calories that humans on planet Earth consume come from rice, corn and wheat. That's it. I noticed that's not agrobiodiversity. No. It's putting all of your corn in one basket. That's right. Which is a good way to carry corn. It is not knocking the basket. No. It's particularly a green and yellow basket. That's right. But aggrobio diversity is an extra concern because it's kind of like by limiting our diet globally, we're not only harming our health, we're harming the ecosystems of Earth's health as well. And then in addition to that, all of that slick packaging and wrappers and all that, those require natural resources to make, and they are automatically converted into waste after you are sold that ultraprocessed food. And if you consider Earth's natural processes as belonging to all humankind, it can kind of start to tick you off that there are companies out there that are using these natural resources to market their extremely unhealthy foods to immediately be converted into waste. It's kind of irksome. You know, it is. As for Montero and Brazil, they have made some big changes. About eight years ago, in 2014, their government created basically a whole new health guideline kind of based on this Nova framework. And they don't categorize foods according to, like, how much fat they have and how much fiber and how many other nutrients they have. They base it on that Nova framework and talk about food culture a lot. They say to eat regularly and carefully in appropriate environments and whenever possible in company, like, you've got people with you. And some other countries have followed suit over there. Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, france has jumped on board as far as saying, just try and avoid ultraprocessed foods altogether, or at least try and limit them. And we haven't seen it as much in the US. Aside from what I mentioned earlier, just certain manufacturers sort of seeing the future and knowing where this is headed and trying to, I guess, get ahead of the curve and tout how few ingredients they have. Sure. One of the problems is in the US. So Brazil said, this is our new thing. These are our food groups. Montero's, Nova system, that's what we do in the US. We're still doing that food pyramid kind of thing. And the USDA, from what I can tell, has no official position on ultra processed foods or how much we should eat or not eat. They will at some point. Well, apparently back in the 70s, george McGovern from either south or North Dakota tried to get the government to issue guidelines saying, like, you should eat less red meat and dairy, I think because there were studies coming out that were saying it was bad for you. And he got ousted from office in the next election because of that by the Cattle Association. And it kicks off a long trend to where food producers lobby the government to not take official positions against something. Instead, they might target nutrients, macromolecules, things like that, like eat less fat, don't eat so much red meat. And that kind of has the United States in a quagmire right now where our scientists are fully aware of the health risks of eating certain kinds of food over others. And yet the government is standing mute as far as advising citizens what to do or not do, which means that marketers can fill in that vacuum and argue, no, it's fine. Just eat this. It's good. Yeah. I mean, I think people like us who do this kind of research and I would argue, like, a lot of our listeners are genuinely curious people who see a headline about a nutritional study, and they will click on that and read that, but the majority of people don't. And they may look to official health eating guidelines of the USDA and not say, oh, look at this article I saw on this website that clearly says to avoid this or to avoid red meat or something like that where like, the lobby can't touch that. Right. But also there are other ways that the government can directly influence your diet. It can say, okay, it's actually really bad to eat as much corn as we're eating in all these different ways. We're going to subsidize soy. Apparently soy is not subsidized almost at all. So maybe they'll start subsidizing soy over corn and that will make the food producers start using more soy rather than more corn, and then people start eating soy, which may or may not be healthier. So the government can make these kind of macro decisions that affect people's diets even more than just issuing guidelines too. Yeah. And some people say, just stick your nose out of it and I'll do what I want. Yes. Which is totally fair. It's completely fair. But if from a public health standpoint, when you look at meta analysis that says the higher amount of ultraprocessed foods you eat, the higher your risk of death, cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, et cetera, it's a problem. It's alarming, especially if you're seeing it developing earlier and earlier. And younger kids who are being raised on ultra processed foods and as they grow into adults, are going to have no idea how to cook or what foods to eat and won't be able to pass that on to their kids. We're looking at a transitional generation right now, and it's not a transition in any kind of positive way. Right. And to be clear, we're not arguing for some nanny state where the government outlaws ultra processed foods. We're talking about issuing fair and honest guidelines that people can still thumb their nose at if they want to. Right. And plus, also this is not a hit job against ultra processed foods. There's a lot of people who say, again, we've come a really far away in fortifying foods through processing to cure certain diseases that used to happen to prevent birth defects by adding folate to breakfast cereals. It's not processing itself. We don't quite know how to do it yet, or we're adding too much sugar, we're adding too many trans fats, and we need to go in and tinker with the tastes and the flavors and also the nutrient composition. And then we'll have everybody eating ultra processed food that actually is good for you. Whether we're able to do that anytime soon as that remains to be seen. Yeah. There's a journalist named David H. Freedman who in 2013 in The Atlantic said, there are too many people and we literally can't feed the world on this delicious whole food that's affordable. So maybe the onus is on some of these companies to mess with their recipes a little bit. Maybe we should look to McDonald's to tweak their recipes just a little bit. Not to where it tastes like some, drastically, not to push health food necessarily. But there are things you can do. They pointed out that the smell of vanilla can mask if you reduce sugar content, it can mask that and trick you into thinking that it's still just a sweet. Or there are plant derived compounds that can replicate the effects of fat on the tongue. And basically you experience that satiation that allows you to stop eating. And he's saying like, we can do this, we can make our ultraprocessed foods a little better at least. Yeah. And other people argue like, just because of food is ultra process doesn't necessarily mean it's harmful to you. There was a 2022 meta analysis in the American Journal of Epidemiology found the highest consumption of ultra processed foods was associated with the highest risk of death, but the highest consumption of breakfast cereal was associated with a much lower risk of death. So they kind of says like, okay, just because this ultra processed food does not make it inherently bad, and it also suggests that we may be able to make healthier ultra processed foods again. The problem is, it seems like nutritional science is not at a point where it can advise food companies on how to actually do that in a way that can actually replicate the nutrition you get from whole food. We just can't do it right now. Yeah. And I think the truth is if a large fast food retail chain tweaked their recipes to make them a little bit better, people may notice there may be a stink and then you know what, people would still go there and eat that stuff. Yeah, like Burger King is impossible. Burgers? And I thought those were going to last about five days and they've been on the menu for years. So obviously some people are eating them, which by the way, that is about as ultra process to food as you can find. It just happens to be healthier on meat, I guess, I don't know, it could be plant based. Plant based, there you go. Yeah, I had a beyond burger the other day. It was delicious. Talk about they're really good. Do they make you gassy? I couldn't tell any difference. I'm always farting. So who knows? Your bowels didn't step it up a little after? No, business as usual. I have to sleep in another room after I eat like an impossible burger. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, I'm considerate like that. Well, I haven't had impossible. I don't know how much different they are from beyond. It's probably about the same thing, right? Basically the same. Although I will tell you this, I would buzz Market Incognito's. Chicken tenders. They are good. They nailed plant based. Yes, they nailed chicken tenders. If you pull it apart and look at it, you're like, yes, this is not chicken, but it looks kind of like chicken. And it tastes like chicken. They do blindfold studies, right? Exactly. But they did a really good job. I would recommend those if you can find. All right, I'll have to try that because fried chicken is one of my Achilles heels, as we know. Totally. Anything else? We could go on about this for hours if we wanted to. Oh, I've got one more thing. Chuck. I do have one more thing. So another huge critique is that whole foods, non ultra processed foods are typically much more expensive than ultra processed foods. And so it's a lot easier for people to be like, yeah, eat whole foods. Not only is that not taking into account the time that people don't have, it's also not taking into account the lower income that a lot of people have. So it's kind of shaming people for what their only option to eat is. And that's a huge criticism of that kind of anti ultraprocessed food camp, too. Well, it kind of ties in with the tone deafness of just spend 3 hours shopping and cooking for your family and then sit down and eat it together. Like the 1950s. Exactly. So that's it for ultra processed food for now, until we do another episode on it in a few years, probably. Ultra, ultra processed food. Right. Somebody will come out with another name for junk food and we'll do an entire new episode on it. Or we'll just get to that space food we all yearn for when we were kids, where it's like a dinner pill. Yeah, apparently Space Food Sticks was like one of the first ultra processed foods. It was pillsbury. Did you ever have those? I mean, I had that ice cream of the future stuff that eventually morphed into dip and dots. These were more like an energy bar. Okay, yeah, I don't think I had that. Oh, well. Did it taste like ice cream? Maybe. And it was made of little tiny beebees. Who knows? It is funny, though, how much like, the army and NASA has influenced the food that we eat. Yeah, for sure. I got nothing else, though, so hats off to NASA and the army for coming up with the food we eat. That's right. If you want to know more about ultra processed foods, go start reading up on it. There's a lot from both camps on the Internet to satisfy you, to satiate you. And since I said satiate, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one of two kidney transplant emails. We're going to read the next one and the next episode. Okay. But boy, we heard some really good stuff and got great feedback and heard from some donors and some doctors. And this is from an RN in South Dakota named Danielle. Hey, guys. Longtime fan, first time rider. I've been waiting seven years to be able to contribute to your lovely show. And that opportunity hit after your kidney donor app. I'm a nurse who works in a small city hospital on the kidney transplant floor. You did a great job with this info. But I do want to inform you that anti rejection medications must be taken for life. Although the dose might change. I think I said you can eventually get off of them, which apparently is we're just trying to be optimistic. Right? And Chuck, you said the fact of the show is that all kidneys stay in your body. But here's the fact of this listener mail. I had a patient at one time with five kidneys in their body because they had been through several transplants. They had chronic disease. It caused each kidney to last about ten or 15 years. And trust me, I was sure to pull up those radiology images to see. Wow. But apparently Danielle believes in patient privacy because Daniel did not send those to me. That's nice. Thanks for spreading tolerance. Unbiased ish information and light conversation of the world. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Danielle. Thank you for saving lives and mending. Broken kidneys. Yeah, all five of them. If you want to be like Danielle and get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Witness Protection Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-witness-protection-works | The Witness Protection Program, or the Witness Security Program, was established in 1970 to protect government witnesses before, during and after a trial. Learn more about witness protection in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. | The Witness Protection Program, or the Witness Security Program, was established in 1970 to protect government witnesses before, during and after a trial. Learn more about witness protection in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:16:54 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=15, tm_min=16, tm_sec=54, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=300, tm_isdst=0) | 25825511 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworks.com. You've heard the rumors before, perhaps some whispers written between the aligns to the textbooks. Conspiracies, paranormal events. All those things that disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more of the stuff they don't want you to know in this video podcast from Howstepworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There is charles W, Chuck Bryant. Down the road of peace. Yeah. Et cetera. I am down the road a piece. I'm sure you are. I wish. Have you ever committed a crime, Charles? I've never been caught or convicted of committing a crime, Josh. But you have. I have never been convicted of a crime. Tucker is big on CYA crime. Everyone has made a right on red when they shouldn't have. Sure, yeah, I've committed a crime. Everyone who listens to this podcast knows that I started out early as a thief and stopped shortly afterwards. Remember the firecrackers in the Pacman shirt? Yeah. Shoplifter. Yes. If you commit a crime, you've got your own thing going on, right? Sure. But what happens if you witness a crime? You're just some innocent person and you see somebody shoot somebody else in the head. The blood comes spurting out in like a big arc and the eyes go glaze. And you're just standing there watching this and you get a good look at the person who did it. What do you do? You get the heck out of there. You call a cop. Yeah. That's a good first step. And what may end up happening, and I think this is where you're going, is you may end up a witness that has to go to court and testify against this bad person. Here's the thing. Part of our constitution actually, I don't know if it's in the Constitution, but let's say a general protection that any individual has is protection against being coerced into testifying against somebody. It's an individual's right to choose whether or not you want to testify. And a lot of people choose not to. Yeah, very much. It's a big problem, actually. There's a lot of people who do witness crimes that just say, I'm not doing it, I'm not going to get involved. Exactly. One of the reasons why is because there is a longstanding tradition of witnesses being murdered when they testify or agree to testify, especially in circumstances where you're dealing with gangs or drugs or racketeering crime. Yeah. But some of the heavy hitters sure. I mean, if you're going to go up river for 20 years and you've already killed a bunch of people, what's one more witness? Exactly. Right. So the US. Federal government and actually some other countries have this as well. I looked into that. Did you? What did you come up with? Well, we'll get to that later. Okay. They have something called the witness protection program. Right. Commonly thought to be called the Witness Relocation Program. That's kind of an aspect of the larger program. Right, exactly. So let's go back to the 1960s. Okay. So we're the guys that are dressed funny in 1960s. Exactly. Okay. And I haven't figured out yet if people can see us, can't see us, or just ignoring us. I think we're observing. Okay, so, Chuck, it's the yes. John F. Kennedy's father, Joseph, has just stolen the presidential election for him. Okay. And he's put his brother Bobby in his attorney general. Yes. They have turned on the very Mafia that helped get them. New York, I think, Illinois, some key states in the presidential election. Now, up to this point, there was no Mafia. It was an unrecognized entity. It existed. But as far as the federal government, it was our name, including and especially J or Hoover. It wasn't real. Organized crime in the United States wasn't real, and there certainly wasn't a Mafia. Well, Bobby Kennedy comes in and says, like, there is a Mafia, number one. And number two, we're going after them. Right. The Kennedy administration goes after organized crime. They very famously started interviewing crime bosses, some of whom said that they were patriotic Americans because they pay their taxes, that kind of thing. And the Mafia becomes part of the collective consciousness of the United States. Right. Yes. By 1970, there was actual real strides made in combating organized crime, one of which was the Organized Crime Act of 1070. Organized Crime Control Act. Thank you, chuck, just to be specific, which was introduced by who? Arkansas Senator John McClellan. Right. In 69. Yes. He had an aide who actually drafted the legislation for him. That would be g. Robert Blakely. Yes. And it was a large bill. So what he did and like many bills, there's a lot of things kind of snuck in there. Sure. Not snuck in there, but inserted he inserted a little thing about Witness Protection, for the first time officially, thanks to a guy named Gerald sure. Who created the Witness Protection Program? He was a US. Attorney. He had the ear of Blakely. Yeah. And he was a us. Attorney under Bobby Kennedy. So in this provision, or in this act of 1970, there's a provision that says the Attorney general can basically allow the federal government, I guess the Marshal Service is named in it to protect any witness by any means they need to. So there you go. That's a pretty wide latitude. Sure. It was revised in 1984 to include family members as well. Yeah. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 84. Right. And it's been going ever since then. Better known as Van Halen. It's the alternate name. Yeah. Man, you just made me want to do the robot, which you just did. I did, didn't I? Yes. So, Chuck, we've got the Witness Protection Program. Everybody knows about it. It's been part of popular culture since it's an inception. Yeah. Movies, especially. Right. The L and all the movie. Betsy's wedding. My blue heaven. Yeah. One of your favorites, right? I love that movie. I know you don't like it. It's not that I didn't like it. I didn't like Steve Martin. I didn't buy his character. You weren't supposed to buy his character. Martin doing a Mafia. So that, in and of itself, is comedy. That makes me a schmuck. Not necessarily. Everyone's entitled to his own opinion. Here at stuff you should know our motto is to each his own. Sure. So you're fine, Chuck. Thank you. But there was another little movie that's arguably the greatest gangster movie ever made. Possibly better than The Godfather. That's a tough one. It is. But the fact that it's even competing with The Godfather there's a lot about it. That movie is a little Martin Scorsese movie called goodfellas. Based on real life events. Based on a book called Wise Guys. By Nicholas Pelegy. Yes. And based on a famous rat snitch called Henry Hill who Ray Leoda played in the film. Yes. And Henry Hill was a real dude, and he really did snitch on the what was the family? The Lucha crime family. Yeah. And he took the stand and was in the Witness Protection program for a while. He's clearly not anymore because he's on Howard Stern all the time. No, but he was in the Witness protection program. He was a problem child, from what I understand. And, ladies and gentlemen, may I announce Mr. Charles W. Bryant doing a dramatic reading from the movie Goodfellas. Silence, please. We ran everything. We paid off cops, we paid off lawyers, we paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. That's the hardest part. Today everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everybody else. Can't even get decent food. After I got here, I ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles with ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook. Thank you, Charles. That is the last scene from Goodfellows when Ray goes out to get the paper in house right before he imagines Joe Pesci just shooting up the pool. Such a classic. So you can tell from that passage brilliant, by the way, buddy. Thank you. You can tell by that passage that Witness Protection is not a lot of fun, necessarily. Especially if you are a high flying mafioso sure. You have to go become some regular Joe and Tempe. Yeah, absolutely right, Chuck. I'm about to blow your mind, my man. I've been waiting on this. Are you ready? My Blue Heaven. Also based on Henry Hill. Was it really? Do you want to know why? I don't know. In 1987, nicholas Pelegy married one Nora Efron. The screen. No, I kid you not. I went back and cross referenced. Really? Yes. Those two got married in 1987. Nora Efron. Who wrote my blue heaven? Yeah. Both movies were based upon joint interviews they conducted with Henry Hill. No kidding. I kid you not. Did she write? My Blue Heaven? Did not know that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So there you go. There's a cocktail party tidbit. Yeah. That's good. Did not know they were married. Are they still married? Yeah, as far as I know. Or do you have her rubbed out? Not yet, but she does know too much by this time. She's got some concrete boots with her name on them. All right. So, Chuck, let's talk about the actual witness relocation program, which in the industry is called WITSEC. Yes. Officially took hold in yeah, we get into that part. Since then, hush your mouth. There have been more than 7500 witnesses and 9500 family members have entered this program and been protected and relocated by the US. Marshals. Right. And by family, Chuck, means by marriage or blood, not by crime family. Right. Of course. Like hide my wife and kids along with me. Right. Yeah. Okay, so who is eligible, Chuck? Well, you have to apply, and the ultimately, I see the application. Yeah. Ultimately, the Attorney General gives the stamp of approval, but they take certain things into account. Like what you're going to testify against. Right. It's going to be big. Sure. And probably there also can't be any other witnesses that have the same information as you that don't need to be because it costs some money. Oh, yeah. So I got the idea that they want to try to avoid it, if possible. But if you have the information and you're guaranteed to show up and testify, and you definitely are going to need protection because of this testimony, then there's a good chance that you might be accepted. Usually it covers people who have information big time about organized crime, racketeering, major drug offenses, major terrorist activities. Yeah. That's kind of new on the scene. That is new. And also fairly new on the scene are people who are members of gangs that have information about gang members. A lot of them are fit that mold these days. Right. So a prosecutor trying a case has a witness, puts in an application on his or her behalf to the Justice Department. They have a special bureau called the Office of Enforcement Operations. OEO. Right. And they get with the Federal Marshal Service, and basically all these agencies come together to interview the person. They create a dossier on the potential witness. I love that word, by the way. Thank you. And one of the things that they come up with is what kind of a threat that person will pose to his or her new community. That's something I never thought about a lot of times. Well, you clearly haven't seen my Blue Heaven, then. A lot of times, these people are criminals themselves. And just because the government is moving you doesn't mean you're a reformed person. True. Although we should say there's a recidivism rate of 17% in the Witness Relocation Program. Right. If you were a criminal and you are turning states evidence, you're protected. There's a 17% chance that you will go on to commit a crime while under protection. It is a bonehead word, isn't it? Yes. Compared to parole cons, that's not too bad, considering that it's 40%. Yes. There's a 40% chance that they'll go on to commit another crime while on parole. Yeah, or off parole, but sure. Right. So it's not too shabby. And so far, 10,000 I believe more than 10,000 criminals have been convicted from witness testimony from witnesses in the witness Relocation program. 89% chance or 89% success rate of conviction when they're using someone who's turning stakes evidence. Which is why it's going on still and why it has such a spectacular budget. Apparently, this year, or in 2008, they had a $38 million budget. Really? The Marshall's Office did. Just for witness relocation. Don't you get 60 grand a year? Yeah, let's talk about that, Chuck. So let's say that you've been enrolled in the program, you've been accepted. What happens is, when you get a T shirt, it says Witness Protected Person. Do you remember that Simpsons, where they go in the Witness relocation Program? Yes, I do. Yeah. And did you see that Onion article I sent you? A witness protection parade. Yeah. FBI Cancels Annual Witness Protection Parade. Yeah, that was good. So you've been enrolled in the program, you moved out to Tempe, and you are living a new life, right? Yes. You're no longer living a life of crime. Say you were a criminal, or say you were a normal person. You don't have your job any longer. No. You got to get a new job. To get to this point, to get to Tempe from, say, Philly, there are some things you have to do first. I'll say Detroit. Okay. Okay. All right. To get from Detroit to Tempe, there are some things you have to do first. Number one, if you have outstanding debts, you got to pay them first. Yeah. See, this is something I never would have thought of. Now, I would think maybe they would just kind of settle this, because what if you can't pay your debts? I imagine that if you have good enough information, they'd pay them for you. Okay. But I think that part of the program is they want you to do that if you can. Sure. And I imagine would know whether you have the money or not. Okay. But yeah, you have to pay your outstanding debts. They will change your name. You get to pick it, though. You get to pick it. Which surprised me. They suggest that you keep the same initials and or the same first name. That surprised me, too. Well, think about it. If somebody's like, hey, Johnny, and you look and that was your old name, but your new name is Fred. Sure. You don't want to do that. Yeah, but it also makes it easier to find once they put out this alert that, hey, they're probably going to have the same initials and maybe the first name. Sure. But who wants to go to Tempe? Yes, that's a good point. All right, so you have to clear your debt. They change your name. You get all sorts of new records, new birth certificate, new Social Security card, and all this is handled on the download. But there are records of you changing your name, changing your Social Security number, but it's all sealed. Yeah. I mean, apparently it happens just like a regular name change, but they seal it off instead of allowing it's not public recording. Once you get to Tempe, you are given housing, or they help you find housing. I think it's a temporary thing at first. They just want to get you taken care of immediately, and then later on, they will help you out with your ultimate, like, living out your life scenario. Right. And to help you live out your ultimate life scenario. How much do they get a year, did you say, Chuck? 60,000, they're called. Substance payments are on average 60,000 per year. And I didn't see in the article that they ran out over. Yeah. I couldn't determine whether or not once you get your job, I didn't know if that was to tide you over until you got a stable career or if that was for life. I don't know. I don't know either. Which one could argue, and I'm sure many critics have, that basically this is the government paying for testimony. Yeah, sure. I never really thought about that. But you have to try to get a job or you can be dropped. You can be dropped or they can stop giving you the subsistence payments. Yeah, I think that's what happened. But you can go on to welfare if you want. Right. But the Marshalls are responsible for I think they said they have to give you one job opportunity. They have to bring you one job opportunity. All right, so, Chuck, like you said, they get you out of Detroit to Tempe as fast as they can. They get you whatever, temporary housing until you can find real housing. You're getting sixty K a year and you're trying to find a job. But sometimes trials drag out for a while. Yeah. What do they do? I mean, do they just leave you alone? No. What happens when it comes time to go to trial? This is the most dangerous part. Kind of like stealing a nuclear weapon. The easiest time to steal one is when it's in transport. Sure. Same with a protected witness. You've got 24 hours protective custody around the area of the trial to and from the trial. Clearly. And they use all kinds of little tricky ways to make sure that you stay alive. Right. Gerald? Sure. Wrote a book called Wit SEC remember he's the founder of the witness protection program. Yeah, he did. And in it, he talks about how witnesses were delivered by fishing boat. I like that one. By mail truck. Armored car. Yeah. And actually, they often use armored cars as decoys while they bring a witness in a normal car trial. He did that famously with mafia member Joseph barboza. Don't you kind of have to say it like that? Yeah. Clearly, if your name is Joseph Barbos, you're born to be in the mafia. It occurred to me right now, we're really treading on thin nights. We might get greased by the FBI, the Marshalls true, or the mafia. So they cover you before trial? They cover you after trial, especially during transport. Sure. And then after that, all you have to do is if you remain in the program, you can remain in it for the rest of your life. And you just check in once a year, I believe is what it is. Once per year, unless you're moving, that kind of thing. Yeah. And you definitely have to let them know when you're moving. So it's not just that they move you to the dumping ground of tempe. There are some rules to follow, and we should say that the marshal service is quite fond of pointing out that no one who's ever followed the rules of the witness protection program has ever been killed. Yeah, Josh, there are two rules, actually, which is you can never go back to where you were originally from, and you can't get in touch with friends and family members from your past life. And apparently it's getting more and more difficult to get people to follow the rules. Why is that? Well, apparently people are dumber than they used to be. Sort of what the deal is, from what I read, is that the nature of the crimes these days, with gang members and the like, you're getting younger and younger people turning states evidence. So it's not like the old days of Sammy the bull gravano is like, in his fifty s and he turned states evidence. What was the story you sent from Newsweek? That one girl, 1717, she was a member of, I think, ms. Twelve. Yes. Which is an hispanic gang in Virginia, I think. It's all over the place. But she was based in Virginia, right. And she apparently had a very vivid memory. What's that quote? That quote is beautiful. Yes. Her court appointed lawyer said she wasn't just a witness, she was like the rain man of witnesses. Yeah. She'd like to talk. So she spilled it, bro. She did. And they relocated her successfully to Kansas City, I think. Yeah, they moved her to Kansas City. She did a while, did a good job for a little while, and then was like, oh, I missed my friends. Lol. Let me get back in touch with my friend and had them come out and visit. Yeah. At one point, her handler came out to check on her, and apparently her handler was supposed to be her stepfather. And she hid her Ms. Twelve friends in the bathroom, the weekly hotel they had put her up while he visited. Yes. So Brenda passed. She wasn't really trying to stay alive very hard. She wasn't. And you know what? She didn't. No, she didn't actually. She went back home. Yes. She got homesick and lonely and went back to Virginia. And two days later they found her floating in the river. I think some other person in the Witness Relocation Program, an official of it, called her a fatality waiting to happen. Yeah. They knew she wasn't in for the long haul. Right. So it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect people. But as we said, the Marshalls have a really good budget. They are what's been called the gold standard of Witness Protection. If you go down to the state and local level, if you're a Witness Seeker protection, you're probably going to die. Yeah. There are state few states have their own programs that don't cover federal good ones. I think usually up to about 500,000 is about as much as the state throws into witness relocation. And remember, you have to be testifying in a federal trial to get witness protection from the US. Marshals. Right. If it's just a state or local trial, it's gummer at the sheriff's office. Exactly. You're getting that level of protection. From what I understand, most of the protection you can expect will be to be put up in a weekly motel for a couple of weeks until the trial. Good luck. And a bus ticket out of town. Yeah. Maybe a security deposit for down payment on an apartment somewhere else. Right. That's about it. Yeah. And that's when Javier Bardam shows up at your front door with a cattle killer. Yes. And as a result, a lot of witnesses are murdered every year in state trial. Sure. In New Jersey apparently won't work with anyone who has a criminal record. Really? Yeah. So prosecutors are like, this guy can shut the case, but he wants witness protection and you won't give it to him because he sold crack before or something. New Jersey lived there. At least where I was. They didn't have county sanctioned waste disposal. So it was literally like the Sopranos. The trash guys would come and it would be like luchoni's trash service on the side of the truck. We're so dead. And these guys would get off the truck and remove your trash. And I always remember thinking, wow, that's an excellent front. So that's it for Witness protection. You can read the article on the site by typing in Witness Protected Action and the handychurchbarhouseofworks.com. We're sorry we don't have a lot more to present to you, but it's kind of a hush hush program. Yeah. They do have other programs in the rest of the world. We briefly mention that. But. Canada has it. New Zealand. I think Jamaica has one that's reportedly not very good. And what else? South Africa. And Kenya. New Zealand, oddly. China. You already said New Zealand. Well, it's even odder now. And Israel has one that start slated to start next year. Got you. So good luck, Israel. Good luck with the Witness Protection program. Let's see. I guess since I already said handy search bar and then Chuck started up again, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this listener mail from Jordan. How's that? Okay, we're straightforward. All right. Josh, you may remember recently we did a show on the clovis people. I do remember. You want to recap that briefly? Sure. The Clovis people were thought for a long time to be the first inhabitants of the Americas, that they came around about 12,000 years ago, and then a discovery no, I'm sorry, 10,000 years ago, then a discovery of a site in Chile. Right. Covered people who had lived there 12,000 years ago, completely turning the field of anthropology on here. So Jordan is an archeologist in Kansas. He writes in. He just graduated from UK. Go. Jayhawks. I'm a longtime listener. I love your podcast about the first Americans. It was entertaining and well researched. There was one mistake, however. I can't let go. As an archeologist working on the planes, josh mentioned there was no evidence of clovis people on the planes to explain how they traveled from the Bering Land Bridge all the way to Chile. Clovisites are found throughout the plains, but there are not as many of them as in other regions of North America. The problem is that and here's where he starts thinner down a little bit. Okay. The problem is that paleoindian records on the planes are deeply buried due to massive sedimentary deposition following the clovis time period. This means that most of the known sites are in valleys where streams have downcut and exposed the deep sediments on the banks containing the clovis deposits. So basically, the record could be several meters deep and only easily seen and cut bank exposures. That leads to sampling bias when compared to regions east and west of the Great Plains. A minor quibble, I will admit. So he wrote in and I wrote him back, and he wrote back again and said that if you're interested for context, there are a lot of pre clovis investigations currently going on all around North America. In fact, a major research area here at Ku is searching for preclovis, and there are a lot of sites in North America that are convincing that they're not Monte Verde. So he said that the Bering land bridge. His theory is that there were quite a few tricks across that by different peoples during various periods. I just wrote an article on evolutionary geneticist who found evidence of an evolutionary bottleneck at the bearing land. Oh, really? So, yeah, that supports what we're talking about or what the clovis. Police say, Jordan. Good luck, brother. Yeah, good luck, Jordan. Keep up. This Indiana Jones stuff very thrilling. Life that of an archeologist, I imagine. If you want to correct Chuck, and I not that harm, you can send it in an email to Stuff. Hold on. You thought I was going to give the email address, didn't you? I thought no. First, I want to say if you have a spare $25 lying around and you feel like saving the world with it, go to our Kiva team. Yes. That's a microlending website that helps entrepreneurs in the developing world and in the United States. Right, right. You can find our page at www. U www.kiva.org teamstepyshop. And again, if you want to send us an email now, you can send it to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Want more Housetofworks? Check out our blog on the hastofworks.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 charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-08-30-sysk-food-tasters-final.mp3 | How Food Tasters Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-food-tasters-work | Some people might think that tasting food for a living is the best job in the whole wide world. But think again! The reality is, it can be a tedious, grueling job that destroys your very love of food. | Some people might think that tasting food for a living is the best job in the whole wide world. But think again! The reality is, it can be a tedious, grueling job that destroys your very love of food. | Tue, 30 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=243, tm_isdst=0) | 50037310 | audio/mpeg | "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's over there. And this is stuff you should know. A cast. Yeah. Hey, dude. Hey. What is that? Sweaty balls. Bob Ross. Oh, man, I could sleep for that. Guy. Like no golf tournament that's ever existed. Love that guy. Yeah, he's a lovable dude. Yeah. And you know what? He's on our list of people that I want to bio on our show, along with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Rogers. There's a few of those icons out there that I still want to tackle. Okay, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it right now. Let's just scrap what we're going to do and start making up stuff about Bob Ross. It probably might be better than what's coming. This isn't that bad. Food tasters. No, it's not that bad. You know why it's not bad? Because everybody out there who's ever even thought of the concept of food tasters and then learn that it's a real thing, has this great conception of it. It's a bubble that we now get to come along and burst. I love ones like that. Yeah, that's true. You have a great fantasy about something. Not anymore. Yeah. Here's Ugly Stark Reality. We should change the name of our show to Dream squashers. That's not bad. Like that. Yeah. I have to remember that. We could create a TV show where we de renovate someone's house. Like, we trash it. Yeah. Dream squatters. And then move a semi out of the way and be like, here's your new house. This is the starter home you thought you loved. It's awful. Now I pooped on the porch. Oh, man, Aaron Cooper is going to love that one. Who Aaron Cooper? Oh, yeah. You mean who? It's funny because for people that don't know, aaron Cooper one of our oldest and dearest, most dedicated listeners. And I don't mean old as an age. Although he's no spring chicken of Kansas, which is why we make fun of Kansas lovingly. Well, one of the reasons. He is our Photoshop guru and does all our great funny Photoshop things. And we met him in Denver, came over and saw the show, came backstage, and I gave him a big toothless grin and a photo and just said, have fun with that one, Coupe. And it's like been comedy gold since then. Yeah, he's good. I'd say about a third of our new Photoshop pictures are my big goofy, too. That one smile. Yeah. It's just hard to resist putting that in there. He did one of my favorites of all time, which is me over Jack Nicholson's face coming through the door, shining. Yeah, that's a good one. And it's uncanny what that guy can do with Photoshop. It looks like I was in the signing. Yeah. Pretty great. So I salute you. Aaron Cooper. Way to go, Coop. We should salute a listener for every show. Yeah. Or maybe just at once. Okay. So food tasting. Yes. There is legitimately a profession out there. Whether it's full time or part time, it depends where you are paid to taste test food, and it can be amazing food. Chocolate ice cream. Ben and Jerry's have what they call flavor gurus. Yeah. They, like, profile them on their website, the Flavor Gurus. Oh, yeah. So those people are not just in charge of taste testing. They're in charge of coming up with new flavor ideas. Let's get into it. They represent one branch of food tasters. Like the professional, educated branch. Yes. Right. So if you're one of those food tasters, you probably have a degree in food science. Yeah. Well, the Ben and Jerry's gurus, I think, are mostly food scientists. Right. Although what can they come up with that they haven't done? That's what I was kind of zoning out on. I don't know. You know, I know they're trying to still innovate with the ice cream, but we need another hippie groove band to create an ice cream flavor for let's fart on a honeycomb honeycomb fart. And stir a pot of boiled cherries with that honeycomb. Okay. And then spit in it. Yeah. That's spinning. Jerry's new flavor. WOWe. Zowie. They do have an ice cream graveyard. For real, though. I think it's on their campus. Yeah. Where they have, like, those little funny gravestones of, I guess, like, the fart tires. Honeycomb fart. That didn't work out. Right. I love Ben and Jerry. Oh, man. I can't find any Chubby Hubby anymore. Oh, really? No. Where? I even looked up to see if it was discontinued. Have you looked in the graveyard? It's not in the graveyard. They say it's still out there, but I do not see it anymore. All I see are these ones with the what do they call them now with the plug in the middle full of stuff? Cords. Yeah. The cores cords are taken over. Yeah. I hope you like cores, pal, because that's all you're getting. Well, I don't eat as much ice cream now, which is good. Okay. Because I can't find my Chubby hubs. There you go. What's your favorite? We talked about this. I like Chubby Hubby, new York superfudge chunk. Right. Are you talking to? Ben and Jerry's. Because I have a different favorite now, and it's Bastard Robbins, actually. Surprised. Whoa. Which one? Mom's baking cookies. Wow. Cookie dough, obviously. No. Oh, no. It's some sort of heavenly ice cream with, like, a ribbon of brown sugar. I do like my ribbon. Something else in it, and it's, like, legitimately, like when you're taking a bite out of a sugar cookie, a buttery sugar cookie, and you've gotten most of it, but there's still, like, just a little bit of grit to it. Yeah. That is the sensation of eating this ice cream. All right, I got to try that now. And, Chuck, what I just did is what flavor tasters do. Quick shout out to Haagen Das chocolate peanut butter brother. That is about as good as it gets. Anything chocolate peanut butter I will eat. But Haagenda is up there pretty far. The bottom man. When you get all the peanut butter, that sinks. Alright. Alright. So that is taste testing. We could have just made money had we been testing and then saying very plainly what we liked about them. Because that's plainly what the job is sometimes. Right? And again, there are basically two ways you can get into it. One is you can be trained and educated and get some sort of degree, higher degree in something like food science. You could be a trained chef, somebody who knows what they're talking about quite literally when it comes to food and taste. Right. Not just, oh, this is good, I like it. Yeah, they want specificity way to go tosino this is a great pizza roll flavor and a very refined palate. And we'll talk more about sensory acuity, but that's a big part of it. The other way you can get into it is you can just basically be some everyday slob who says I think I could be good at this. Hook me up. I'll come like taste food for you. Yeah. And you write a letter like that, sign it in crayon, mail it off somewhere and see if they get in touch with you. Yeah. Specifically if you live in ordinary Marshall, Minnesota, and you like yourself some frozen foods yeah. You can apply to the Swan company and basically just send in, like you said, send in your little application and you can get hired on. They do though, I believe make you pass tests. They don't just take anyone. Right. All of them are going to put you through some sort of testing, if not also testing and then training. Correct. Because not just anybody can do this. Some people have what you mentioned earlier, it's called sensory acuity which is an ability to really differentiate the different flavors and textures and smells associated with particular food and then on top of that, be able to discuss it in an objective smart way. Yeah, it's not always a food company either. There's a company called MMR Research Worldwide and they do, they're like the middlemen yeah, research middle people. Sure. And they are the ones who will put you through the wringer with sensory acuity. And they're the ones that say you really need to be able to not only articulate your thoughts for a piece of paper maybe that you fill out, but you have to be nice to your kids too. Well, that too we'll find out if you're not. But many times you're in a room in that kind of setting with other people and you have to be able to get along and not fight about it. Did you ever do any of those market research rooms? No, I got on some list post college, and it's a great list when you're fresh out of college. Most of mine were not actual tasting food. Most of it was more what do you think about this ad campaign type of thing? Right. I did one for Heineken one time and I was like, oh, great, I get to go drink Heineken. You're like, yeah, great. Did you? No, it was just about there when they rolled out their Big Red Star campaign. Oh, man. And then I used to do them for non food products, like something at Home Depot or like this hammer. Yeah, basically. Some. Good heft yeah. Hold it tight. How's it fit in your hand? By your lower lip? By how likely would you be to recommend this hammer? Like, just dumb stuff like that. Right? Okay, so you don't need any training for that. And there are actual food tasting jobs that do amount to that. And I leave with, like, $50 in cash, which is the best part, by the way. But it's going to be like a thumbs up, thumbs down or something. Like, I think I saw, like, is this egg roll too spicy? Does pizza have enough cheese? Do these cheese make me look fat? It could be something very broad, like, give us your general thoughts about this product, or if they're in the final stages and they want to spend even more dumb money. That's not true. Market research is valid. It might be something super specific, like you said, is there too much cheese or is it just enough? Yeah, that's it. I don't want to hear about the tang and the sauce right. Or the crust. And if you're the kind of food taster who's like, well, what do you want to hear? You're not going to be very good at it. They want to hear legitimately. They don't care. Yeah, because this company, they're market researchers that they get their dough either way. So we'll talk about dough and how a day in the life of a food taster goes right after this. So, Chuck, there's this really interesting article on a site called Billfold. Did you read the interview with the food taster? No, but I read one on Vice with three food tasters. Okay, let's chat about our experience. So the one I read about it was an interview with a food taster named Matthew. They didn't use his last name, but Matthew apparently has a pretty decent amount of sensory acuity. He went through the training, he said the training. I got the impression he was trained by MMR. They didn't actually say who it was, but I also get the impression that MMR is about the biggest game in town, if not really the only game in town. But what you're saying is he's in touch with his, umami yes. So he said that they give you all these solutions to taste, but also sense to identify as well, because the old wives tailor old rule of thumb is that taste is 80% smell. Yeah, right. So he passed all these tests, and apparently also they test your visual acuity as well. They want somebody who is centrally very attuned to what's going on. Totally. And then they said, okay, explain mayonnaise. Tell us what mayonnaise taste like. Creamy, tangy, delicious. Yeah. Eggy. Does it taste eggy to you? I can taste the eggs sometimes. Okay. You know how much I love mayonnaise. It's hard for me to articulate. Do you love mayonnaise or do you love Duke's mayonnaise? Well, I do love Duke's, but I love Mayonnaise. You love all mayonnaise? Yeah. What other mayonnaise do you need besides dukes? Well, you don't, but if Duke's is not available, I'll take a Craft or a miracle Wittens. No, that's salad dressing. It's different, but it's the consistency of yeah, I mean, it's a distinction, though. Like, it's not mayonnaise because it's all artificial. Right. A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without miracle Whip. That's like they distinguish themselves purposely from being mayonnaise. Okay. It's way tinier. Is it? Yeah, and I like Miracle Whip, but I just never buy it because I'm always getting that Duke's duke's light. Actually, Dukes is the bomb. One of the few light products that still tastes great. Yeah. I didn't know you love mayonnaise so much. Oh, yeah, man. If it was more socially acceptable to just squirt mayonnaise all over your plate of French fries like it is in Europe yeah, I was going to say then I would be doing that every single time. What I do is ask for mayo for my burger, and I'm like a little extra, and then I just, oh, look, it spilled over. Sneakily dipped a fry in there. Because there's some mandates. People think it's gross, which I never got. Yeah, some people do. I don't get it either. Yeah, they'll eat aole like that's any different. Right? Well, it's pretty pungent with the garlic. Not if it's not garlic aioli. It's just fancy mayonnaise. I thought it was all garlicky. That was like a hallmark of aioli. No, you have any kind of aioli. Yeah, but I thought there was still garlic in the base. All right, we're off track here. No, we're not. We're talking food tastes. All right, so let's talk food taste. Wait, now, I know we were talking about a day in the life of a food taster. Yeah, Matthew taster and his mayo description. Right. So this guy really kind of tore the scales from my eyes as far as what food tasting consists of. It's not fun. It's not a fun experience, and it can be very monotonous. For example, he signed on with this, actually, he was through a temp agency, and the temp agency hooked him up with a frozen food manufacturer. Sure. So the frozen food group was mostly concerned over, I think, the course of eight months with frozen French fries. Oh, he was that guy. Yes. I did read that, and he said he tried frozen French fries in every different way. They would say, do you like these? They're baked a little longer. Do you like these with this cooking time? Do you like these with this much oil? Do you like these with this much salt? And he said salt was like the true thread throughout the whole thing. Sure. So much so that he developed blisters in his mouth, sores in his mouth from eating these French fries for eight months straight. And this is even working for only a couple of hours a day, because that's how you can work, because your pallet will get worn out. Yeah, well, that's not true. But a lot of these people work all day doing it. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. If you're full time in it. That's not what I heard. Yeah, not what I heard. So in addition to having to eat the same stuff, prepared the different way over and over and over again, you were given the same test, basically, because the company wants to make sure that what you're experiencing is repeatable. Yeah. It's like a little science experiment. Almost. Exactly. So they'll say, Here, try this fry how's the oiliness hit you say, it hits me, like on a five. Because, again, this is supposed to be objective. Right. Like you said, it's a science experiment. So on one end, zero are oils, on the other end, ten, or fruit juices, as far as taste impact goes. Right, okay. And so they say, okay, great, here's some more fries. Do the same thing, but you don't remember what you gave it. So you actually are experiencing a certain level of stress because you feel like you're being tested yourself. Sure. And it doesn't sound like fun. And at the end of the day, you go home and you dream of French fries and you wake up crying, and you have to get up and go do it again. Yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. Dream. Smashing. This article in Vice Professional Food Tasters. Tell us about their jobs. They interviewed three people, and the highlights are as follows. Louise Bamber is a product manager for Asda, and she says, in a testing week, I can be tasting up to 250 ice creams from eight in the morning till eight at night. That sounds great, but she's probably taking a bite and spitting it out. She is. She says she spits it out. She said, and if I don't, that means it's a really good ice cream. If I actually swallow it. Yeah, I imagine so. Like, if you're eating 200 something ice cream today. Yeah. And she loves her job. I don't think all these people are like, oh, my God, I hate my life. No, they all hate their jobs. And she says she always craves, like, buttery mashed potatoes and cheese and crackers and things. And she goes to the dentist four times a year because of her job. There's a guy, Peter Nixon, if you think of Peter Nixon, then your food tasting group could use some fiction so bad. He works at Morrison's. This is his day. He says, and this is all quote, at eight in the morning I have around five different cooked meats. Half hour later I taste from 15 different quiches. 930 in the morning is pie hour. I taste ten different pies. Can I vomit all of our chicken pies? All of our steak pies, plus all of the fruit pies? I was going to say, and that is my day every day. Then at ten on the dot, I have a bacon buddy, B-U-T-T-Y-I don't even know what that is. It might be some products they sell or it's a misprint, maybe. And then he says he actually does eat a proper lunch and dinner when he gets home just to keep his life sort of normal. But he points out that especially in the case of pies, you have to take a bit from each part of the pie. Yeah. So he said you got to taste the lid, the pastry, the filling and the meat content. And the gravy. They're always experimenting with gravy. Have I talked to you about pork pies and how much I love them? Yeah. From the trip to England. Yeah. Okay, so you're new obsession. Oh, yeah. Where do you buy them? Here. You haven't found them? No. I'm sure you can get pork pies in Atlanta. I hope so. And then finally they talk to this guy who's a noodle taster, and he is the founder of his own Cabuto noodles. Have you heard of those? I haven't had them, but it's supposedly like a sort of a finer version of cup of Noodles or ramen you? No, I haven't had it. Yeah, they're supposed to be pretty good. You ever had tofu noodles? I don't think the noodles like five calories, zero tofu, very low carb and they're noodles and they're made from tofu and they are really great. They're a great substitute for pasta. I do like tofu. You love the substitute. Those spaghetti squash. Yeah. Once they're cooked, you have no idea that they're tofu. They taste and appear just like cooked pasta. Pasta noodles. Yeah. This dude started his own company and he said that when they were getting going, he said easily over 200 noodle types. And when they tasted their own company, he said it's not the kind of thing where you taste a little bit and spit it out. Like they require that you eat the whole pot. He said, because it's different. The whole five gallon pot? Yeah, he said it's different. Like as you work your way through it being a noodle and a soup don't just take a little broth off the top. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah. And that's actually a huge distinction for that company. Then because for the most part, like you said, you are going to take a small bite, but you might take different small bites of different components. Yeah. Little crust, little lid, little filling, little gravy, little meat. And then with each of those bites right, so for the lid, they'll say, rate the butteriness. Right. Spit it out, take another bite of the lid. How's the flakiness? Spit it out. Take another bite of the lid. Is it sweet? Yeah. And then you do that a bunch of different kinds, a bunch of different times. Just for the lid, they say, okay, spit it out. Let's start over again. And let's see if you give it the same marks this time through. And that's just for the lid. Yeah. That's not just for the meat content. Like for all the different parts. You have to rate them and then do it again and again. This job is horrible. I don't care what anybody says. Well, I can see very easily how you would grow to loathe whatever you're eating. Yeah, like that guy probably never eats another French fry again in his life. What kind of life is that? I can't remember if he said he does or not. It probably took a while. At the very least, he says, I feel like at the end, like he'll eat fries really something. Yeah, but yeah, he got mouth sores and he said some people develop dental problems, so they quit. Yeah, well, the ice cream lady goes four times a year like me. Good for her. Did you know I have to go four times a year now because my stupid teeth? Yeah, you told me. Does insurance cover those or just the two? I just say, does Obamacare cover them? Because two should be free. Yeah, I have to pay more than your average Joe for my tooth care. Yes, and that's not including the obvious extra work I got you that I've got going on. Is that why you've been stealing from the office lately? Yeah, been stealing from the swear jar, but I've been adding most of that. It all evens out. Two more weeks, new tooth. So if you're a professional, there are some things that you need to do to keep your mouth and just all your senses kind of sharp. One of the main things they say do is to not be a smoker. Although I was surprised to learn that that's not just an absolute requirement. Yeah, me too. I thought, like, once they found out you're a smoker, they tell you to get out? I'm sure it varies. I bet you there are plenty of companies that don't allow you to smoke. Yeah, but I was also wondering, with everything that disqualified you, couldn't you also make the case that that makes you, like, a niche taster? Like, surely there's a bunch of smokers out there that are going to eat this turkey pot pie and they want to make sure that smokers love it, too. So maybe it's getting, like, these high end, like, smoker food tasters. I'm trying to picture that as a marketing tool. Like the turkey pot pie for the rotten mouth. Right, exactly. You'll love it. And all the teachers in that group, can you see them? They all look like Chris Cooper or something like that in Adaptation. Oh, yeah. Boy, that was a great role for him. Or not. He in the research. I was surprised to learn that you could smoke, like I was saying, because one of the things pointed out that they will demand that you not smoke within 30 minutes of tasting, which just seems like if you're a heavy smoker, that's torture. Yeah. Like, well, I just had, like, five camel menthols half hour ago. Well, you're good to go. Have a seat. Open up. So that does surprise me. What else? What else are you not supposed to do? No, just like, keeping if you have food allergies, then you're probably not destined for a career unless you're part of a niche food allergy, food testing group. A gluten person. Yeah. I was researching food tasting or food tasters just across Google, and I found that there are not one, but two portable food testing devices that detect gluten. Oh, really? There's the NEMA and the six sensor labs. Gluten portable gluten detectors. So this is clearly if you have celiac yeah. You would have one of these put some food in, not trust your restaurant that you're eating in. Right. Screw the lid on. And I think shake it up. One of them gives you a smiley face if it's all good or it's like the smiles, like you're going to get messed up in a second. And the other one just has a toilet with a line through it. But yeah. Wow, that's weird. But I mean, it's handy if you have, like, a severe gluten allergy. Well, Emily is off the gluten, and she is not celiac, but she has found a lot of just positive digestive results by avoiding gluten. But she did dabble in it in Europe and it did not affect her, which there are some who say, like, once you go non gluten, you can't go back. No, there's some who say that the wheat over there is different. Oh, really? Yeah. So I don't know if it's true or not, but we got to do one on milk because there are two definitely distinct types of milk available in the US. And a lot of people think that that's why so many people in America have milk. Allergies yeah. Because of the milk that we're drinking. Interesting. Yeah, we got some milk. What we're trying to do now is she's reading a book called Pharmacology. And so we're very much trying to buy not just organic and not just local. You're going to milk your own goats. Organic, local, seasonal food. Basically part of the whole slow food thing. Trying to eat things that aren't shipped all over the country or frozen ever. Oh, yeah. And so we've been going to the local farmers market and only getting what they have to offer, and we got this milk from grass fed Atlanta dairy. Whole milk. It is the sweetest creamiest, most delicious. It tastes like dessert, almost. Nice. It's so delicious. I'll bet that would make Frosting Flakes really pop. My God. It's so good. We bought it for our daughter, but I drank, like, half of it myself. And then the farm fresh eggs, it's all just noticeably better. It's all good. It ain't cheap, though. Yeah, I can imagine. But putting cash in a farmer's hand and then handing you eggs is, like, a great feeling. You feel like you're participating in how things should work and not like, well, this came off the truck, and only half are broke. Yeah. So let's put them in the grocery store until they rot, and then we'll throw them away. Yeah. That was a little soapbox moment for you after Shaving. Cologne no good. Perfumes no good. You got to put your car up forever. Yeah. Because it all goes back to the smell and tasting. They don't want your car tainting. That their rolls, high rates, and then how much can you make, Charles? These are always very dubious numbers when I see articles like, you can earn between 30 and $100,000 a year depending on your negotiation skills. Yeah, that's what it says. But yes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have a food taster category, but they do have a food scientist category. And even that's pretty there's a pretty wide spectrum between the two. I think the mean annual wage for food scientists and technologists is 65,340, with some professionals earning more than $100,000. Yeah, I think you're right. Take that, throw it all trash. Yeah, exactly. You might also end up, I should say pet food taster. Oh, yeah, that's the thing. People eat pet food. And the reason why is because the theory goes that if a human finds it disgusting, there's a pretty good chance your pet is going to find it disgusting or awful or bad or tasteless. So humans eat pet food as part of taste testing? Yeah, I thought that was an interesting section because I thought it was a joke at first, but they first point out that there's way more testing of the product than actual tasting. Right, but that's part of it. But it is part of it, and smell is a big part of it. And it made perfect sense to me. Like, not only are animals enticed by smell, but as a human, you don't want to open that can of cat food and gag because it strongly smells like salmon guts or whatever. So it has to be palatable to the human in a smell sense. Right, yeah. Like, our dog food is a little stinky because it's all natural, like real meat stuff. Sure. From that local farmer? Yeah. Oh, man, I wish. Get some local dog food. I bet there is some. Oh, I guarantee there is some. What other kind of food tasters are there? There's the one that most people think of when they think of food taster, which is the one that is basically testing food out to make sure that the king or these days the president isn't being poisoned. Yeah, I saw a website that was making fun of Obama. King Obama is what they call them. He had someone taste his food and blah, blah, blah. And they failed to mention that. Every president has people who taste their food, at least since Reagan. Yeah. When they go out from the White House, it's a very common thing. Secret Service doesn't give details on that because they're Secret Service, but they take great measures when outside the White House to make sure the president's food is safe. Right. And Putin took a lot of heat in 2012, so apparently it comes up every once in a while and everybody makes fun of whoever it is. That's what the food taster it's actually a very old tradition that dates back at least to the Egyptians. Where there were people of great import would have somebody eat their food first. Which is stupid. It turns out. Because there are almost no poisons available to humankind that kill so quickly that a food taster would be affected by it before the person. The president or the king or whoever ate. Yes. Cyanide is the quick killer, and even that takes, like, an hour, right? It says minutes. Okay, there you go. Cyanide strictnine atropine trioxide. Other things, arsenic, things that people have generally used in history to poison people, like you said, not like King Henry VIII said, well, I'll wait a day before I get that turkey leg going. I'm being kind of nasty by them, but I got to feed my gout, so bring it on. And this person who wrote this article, Ashley Lutheran, said that she thinks of it more like a placebo. It just makes them feel better about tasting. Right. I ran across an article, one of Hitler's 15 young girls who tasted his food during World War II. You had 15 young girls tasting food? Yeah. And she was the only one who survived because she was the only one who left the Wolf Slayer before the Russians rolled in and killed all the rest of them. That seems like weirdly fetishist. He had young girls eat his food and spit in his mouth. That's kind of fetishist. Yeah, they didn't do that. I'm just joking. I know, but just bring me 15 young girls that taste my food. Just seems weird. Right? Well, there was a lot about Hitler that was weird, to say the least. Yeah. But that was definitely part of it, was he had 15 young girls taste his food. Let's take a break, man. And then we're going to tell you everybody when we get back, as maybe even you could consider it a PSA. Yeah, we could do that for tax reasons, how you at home can develop your own palette. All right, Chuck. So if you want to go about creating a more sophisticated palate for yourself yeah. Not even just to become a food taste. No. But just to enjoy life more. Sure. And we should say it does seem like a bad idea to teach Americans how to appreciate food more. We've got a pretty big food problem as it is. It turns out that if you follow some of these steps, you will probably end up eating less. As a matter of fact, savoring your food. Exactly. Which requires things like going slow, slowing down, and thinking about the food that you're eating. Right? Yeah. Well, let's just start there. If you think it's a process, the way the chemicals fire in your brain from your taste buds, like we talked about smell anti, it seems immediate, but there's a process going on. And if you're just shoveling, if you're drinking that gallon of ramen down like it's gatorade on a hot day, sure. You're not saving all the subtleties of that broth. No, you're not. But if you can slow down, some of the recommendations are eat with chopsticks, use your nondominant hand. Yeah. Boy, that'd be tough. Chewing 30 to 50 times per bite. Ridiculous. Really tough. That's ridiculous. Turning off the TV or your computer or putting your phone up, that's ridiculous. Making the meal last 20 minutes. Yeah. Maybe taking breaks if you need to. If things are going too fast, I try to eat a little slower when I think about it. Sitting down while you eat. It's a big first step right there. Do you stand and eat? I mean, it depends on the meal and how busy I am. Occasionally, I'll stand at my kitchen island and eat. I like it. Do you like it? Yeah. Not like as an everyday practice, but it's not by accident that I'm standing. I got you. I kind of enjoy it. Okay. So you want to not do that so you can savor the food. And when you're savoring this stuff, when you're saving it, you're eating more slowly. Correct. And by eating more slowly, you're probably going to be paying a lot more attention as well. And surprisingly, I didn't realize this, but this article says that your digestive processes become 30% to 40% less effective when you're tuned out. When you're not paying attention, you're like watching TV or something like that. You're not paying attention to your food. Yeah. That's interesting. So training yourself could actually help you become healthier because you may get more nutrients out of your food because you're breaking it down better. Yeah. Plus, don't they say that, like, a lot of overeating is eating too fast because you just power through that point where you're really full, but you just don't know it yet. Right? Yeah. Haraachibo. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, my God. Yeah, I can't move. If you are paying attention, you're also feeling when you're starting to get full and you say, okay, bail. Bail. And that stuff expands, and all of a sudden you're fully full. You're not overly full. You just feel good. Yes. You ever hit that sweet spot when you're eating and the food is literally making you high? You're getting a body high from it. You're just getting off on the food. Oh, that happens to me every once in a while with very fresh food where I'm eating just the right amount. I'll feel high. Not like out of it, like I ate too much, but invigorated and you can actually train yourself to do this very simply, too. Rather than just taking it slow, you can pay attention and just start out, this article suggests, by taking a slice of apple and removing all distractions and all that and eating a slice of apple and just closing your eyes and paying attention to every aspect of it. It's very interesting. Yeah. It's all just basically training yourself to pay more attention. I like that. Yeah. One thing I never considered was medicine and prescription drugs, especially in clinical studies. They've identified more than 250 scripts that will alter your taste sensation. And you might not even see it listed on the side effects, but you might not even realize it, but your taste buds have been dulled, especially if you're older, elderly, take a lot more pills, and a lot of times they have a harder time tasting and for other reasons as well. Right. But a lot of it could be due to medication. Yeah. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Marge is cooking pork chops and everybody's complimenting it, and she's like, thank you. You might say the extra ingredient is salt. I think it's the Lisa goes vegetarian one, but that's a really good point. This is probably an extreme, but there's a lot of people out there who are in ruts and who aren't adventurous. And I feel so bad for people who aren't willing to point to a food and say, that looks weird. I've never had that before. Let me try it. Right. Instead they say, that looks weird. You I'll never touch that. Because they're missing out on a whole world of stuff, not just with that particular dish, but maybe the spices in it that go with other dishes, that lead you to other dishes, or I've never tried this nation's cuisine. Yeah, I don't eat Indian food. It smells funny. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's missing out on so much. Yes, it's sad. Of course, there are certain I don't get super adventurous with certain animals and stuff, but that's a different deal. Oh, because of cruelty. Yeah. I might not want to eat shortbreads, and I don't think I'm missing out on something. You're not. I think personal taste comes into play as well. So you've never had short breads? No, they're a lot sweet breads. I'm sorry, we were both saying yeah, shortbread is disgusting. Yeah. Fruitcake, sweet breads. Sweet bread. Some of the brain glams, I think, awful. And brains and organ meats, I'm just not a big fan of. Yeah, I tried them enough to know I don't need to try them more. Boom, there you go. You tried them? That's too many. I have not, because I don't need to. That's what you're saying. You've had enough tripe to know you don't want stomach? Yeah, I had a tripe taco once. Did you? Yeah, it's a thing. Although that's a great example. I tried tongue before, and I'm like, Holy cow, I really like tongue. I tried cheeks before. Tongue freaked me out. Well, it depends on how could you tell it was tongue? Yeah, you're not supposed to be able to tell. Its tongue had that texture. Oh, yeah. No, it's supposed to be much more chopped up than that. Like, you don't want the exterior, you want the stuff that's inside. No, I think you had poorly prepared tongue. No, this is good stuff. Well, I've never had it where you could tell it was tongue. Yeah. You know what I mean? But I tried it, and I'm like, Holy cow, tongue's great. Same with cheeks. Cheeks are great. They're, like, probably the tastiest part of any animal. And you know where I learned that? Well, hannibal Lecter. Your own personal taste. Well, I first heard about eating cheeks from Hannibal Lecter. Yeah, but as far as it being the best part of the animal right, that's your personal taste. No, it's objectively true. We should make that clear. But the point is here is that have you never tried tongue? You wouldn't know you didn't like it, and you'd just kind of be bereft for not having tried it. I'd be super bereft for not having tried it because I do like it. But we're adventurous, and that's the point. Go be adventurous with your food. And if Indian food is the threshold of your adventure, officially disagree. I don't understand how you can eat what you want to eat. Everyone doesn't have to be like you. No, that's fine. Like, if you don't want to be adventurous, I disagree with that. Then don't be. I feel bad for you if you're not adventurous food. Yeah. I don't think you should take pity on someone for liking what they like. No, I don't. And knowing what they don't want to try. But I think a lot of people who don't want to try something, if you look at their diets, they're probably pretty limited, you know what I mean? It's not expansive. And then just this stuff like o, fal and tripe, I'm not big on. Yeah, but that's okay, too. Whatever. Sure. I'm not going to come to your house and make you eat anything, but I do feel bad for you because I think you're missing out. And some really great sensory pleasure. I think the people that aren't like that will say, you know what? Don't feel bad for me because I'm great, and I'll say, TS for you. I feel bad for you, and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm just always very conscious about putting my stuff on other people and saying, like, I can't believe you're missing out. I'm not doing that. I'm saying I pity them, that's all. And I'm not like a foodie either. I hate foodies. I think foodies are annoying. It's not at all what I'm saying. I'm just saying from personal experience, when I've been adventurous, nine times out of ten, it's paid off. Well, that works for you. That's great. Cleansing the palate is a big deal, especially if you're a taster. You got to neutralize it. And they say a lemon wedge or an orange segment to do that, which explains why they give you orange segments at the end of a Chinese meal sometimes. Never understood it. I thought it was just, like, supposed to be a sweet treat, but I guess it's to cleanse the salad, maybe before your dessert or whatever. Yeah, and that also explains sorbet, too, because it's usually, like, a citrusy fruity. Yeah, it's usually citrusy. So I guess that's why I always knew it was Ford cleansing the palate. I just never understood how I did it. Or they say and I hate the word tepid, especially with water. Do you? But like, moist tepid water? I don't know. I like cold water. Okay. But tepid water, they say, can be a good palate cleanser as well. Sure. And you mentioned salt earlier. I'm a big advocate for salt, but the proper amount, of course. Yeah. And salt I've found you can use not just as a seasoning, but almost like, mechanically. I have this great new secret for guacamole, probably the greatest guacamole anyone's ever created. Do you make it in mochajet? Yes, sometimes. But the first step I found I recently figured this out, cut the onion and put it in the bowl or the mochajete and salt it. Salt the onion and let it sit there, and the salt starts to macerate, or I guess break down, because I don't know if macerates specifically sugar and vinegar, but it breaks down the structure of the onion and really lets those enzymes out so you can really taste the onion. It's a great first step. And then do the same thing with the tomatoes and let the tomatoes and onions sit there, salted for a little while, and before you move on and make the rest of the guacamole, dude, it's like a brand new day. Yeah, I make a good guac. It's very popular in the household, and, you know, it's a great substitute for tortilla chips, radishes for guacamole. It's a great sub. Yes, I like my tortilla chips. Sure. I'm a traditionalist. I can dip anything with guacamole and like it. Yeah, give me a piece of dirty thumb. Give me a cauliflower floret and I'll dip that in there. Would you say a dirty thumb? A farty. Honeycomb, has this episode totally gone off the rails or is this good stuff? No, it's totally gone off the rails. It has it sorry, debate is just like what do you mean? I mean, should we just go back and edit it out? No, that's up to you. Why is it up to me? Because you were the one taking the hard line, so I stand by it. Well, great, then leave it. So anyway, salt is the right amount. Like an under seasoned meal with no salt is not good. You want salt. Sad. And if you don't use a lot of salt at home and you wonder why restaurant food always tastes better. It's because they're solving their food correctly. But too much salt is no good. And if you use too much, you need even more. And then it's a problem. Yes, it's better, I think, not to cook with a lot of salt, but to start to add it a little bit at the end. Like when you're making like a stew or something like that because it's easy to over salt it and then you're totally screwed. And then I've never figured out why this is true, but there's finishing salt, which is basically just salt, but applied right before the meal is served. If you take a steak and you sprinkle this a little bit of salt on it before you serve, it does something magical that goes way beyond just adding salt to a steak should. Yeah, and I don't understand what it is. It's delicious. Yeah, but I mean, there's something to it for sure. I'm from the south, so I eat too much salt. Salt and butter. I have a good taste for it. I'll just get a salt lake like a horse. I have it mounted on my dining room wall. Yeah, well, speaking of eating too much salt, apparently the average human needs something like 1500 milligrams a day and Americans eat between 2008 thousand a day, which is nuts. And this article points out that quitting salt for a week and quitting sugar for a week and just saying I'm not going to eat anything with this stuff for just a week. It might seem like a lot by Wednesday, but just make it through the rest of the week and you'll basically recalibrate your palate. And all of a sudden junk food tastes cloying. But you can really appreciate the more subtle sweetness of some stuff or more subtle saltiness of other stuff. And you really appreciate salt rather than bombarding your tastes with too much salt or too much sugar. Yes, it's definitely an exercise worth doing well. And all that packaged garbage food that we talk about is just loaded with sodium and sugar. Like even a can of soup. You'll get, like, sodium content on just a can of soup. Yeah, it's true. Terrible. Sad. Do you have anything else? No, man. It's always good to quit something that you're addicted to for a week just to make sure you can do it. Yeah, I agree. Unless it's good deeds. Unless it's tongue or cheeks. Just eat that anytime you can. Okay, I'm ready. I liked your good deeds thing. That was good. Now you should quit that for a week, too. Treat people poorly. See how it goes. Do dream smashers. If you want to know more about food tasting, type those words in the search bar. Howtofworks.com? And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this butte detail. This is from Chelsea in butte, Montana. Okay. We talked a lot about evil Knievel being from Butte. It really stood out to me how frequently you guys commented on evil growing up in the rough butte community and how it affected his personal presentation. Here are a few things that might help you understand all this. Okay? Number one, nobody calls it butte, Montana. It's called butte America. What? How about that? Butte? Number two, butte was a huge mining town that saw tremendous growth, wealth, and decline and still very much tied to its mining past. Number three, montana's political campaign contribution laws were in large part passed in response to the copper kings and the wealth resulting from the copper mining operations. Also, the Montana capital building had electricity for many parts of the country. Fun fact number four, butte has an incredible history tied very closely to the history of unionization. Number five, finally, butte had and still has a very Irish population. You don't go there for St. Patty's day unless you're there to party hard. Oh, yeah, sure did know that. Butte America. Yes, and not that weird. So in short, Bute's history is very much still tied to its current identity. It's still a very scrappy place. But that being said, some of the best and most loyal people I knew I know grew up in Butte. I hope to help clarify evil became who he was. Please keep making podcasts forever so I never run out of content to binge while at work. Nice. That is Chelsea. Thanks, Chelsea. That was an awesome email, chelsea from Butte America. Planet earth. Why do they hate Montana? Maybe it's just its own thing, but I guess yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can hang out with me at josh. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at charlesw chuck Bryant. Or you can hang out with the both of us at facebook. Comsteno, right? That's right. Send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshono.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit househopworks.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 series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-10-05-sysk-giraffes-final.mp3 | How Giraffes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-giraffes-work | Even though giraffes are one of the most recognizable animals on the planet, it wasn't until the 21st century that biology really set about studying them. They've found giraffes are even more amazing than they appear. | Even though giraffes are one of the most recognizable animals on the planet, it wasn't until the 21st century that biology really set about studying them. They've found giraffes are even more amazing than they appear. | Thu, 05 Oct 2017 16:40:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=16, tm_min=40, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=278, tm_isdst=0) | 51745087 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howtofworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So that makes this stuff you should know. Amazing. Animal Edition. Yes. Special request fulfilled. Animal Edition. Yeah. We should tell the story, huh? Oh, yeah, for sure. There's no way we cannot tell the story because it's the cutest thing that's happened in a long time. It really is. So we did a show in Vancouver on September something, right? Yeah, in real time. It was last week for us. We usually don't turn stuff around this fast, right? Exactly. And a lot of times we'll do Q and A after a show because we're like, the podcast isn't enough. We owe people more than that. So we'll do a Q and A, right? That's right. And the last question of the night was this cute little girl, just adorable. And her name was Mika, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay. And Mika had a special request. Chuck and what was it? Well, it kind of went down like this. Mika's dad walks her up to the microphone. Everyone turns their attention to this adorable six year old, and in front of what was it, like, 1001, 200 people, she said, can you do a podcast on juice? And 1200 hearts melted. And immediately afterward, you and I were like, well, we're doing this as soon as we get back. Yeah, that's right. And this is where we're at. We did it. Yeah. And you know what, Mika? You are not alone, because giraffes are amazing, as you will see in greater detail. And you are not alone among your peers, because I got to tell you, as the father of a two year old daughter and Jerry as the mom of a two year old, they're all obsessed with giraffes. Yeah, it's true. You mean I started our niece Mila actually off on giraffes pretty early. Yeah. There's some of the most adorable stuffed animals or toys around, too, so it's understandable how it would stick in a kid's crawl like that. Yeah. I mean, they look nothing like things that they've seen, yet enough like things they've seen, I think, at that age, to where they think, well, I've seen a horse or a hose or I've seen a zebra, but I've seen a camel, even, and those things look a little weird. But then a giraffe comes along and small mines are blown. They are blown so much that I suspect that there are giraffes in the little angel holding bay where babies say, before they come down here to Earth. Yes. When I say small minds, it's not to say children are small minded. No. Maybe literally small minded, but not in the figures of adult sense, physiologically speaking. There you go. All right, so everybody knows what giraffes are. You can point to a picture of a giraffe and say, what is this? And the person will say, It's a giraffe. It's a pretty common thing to do. Maybe arguably the best Charlie Harper illustration of all time is the mother and baby giraffe snuggling. I don't know what that is. Look it up. I'll send it to you. You're going to love it. It's just adorable. So everyone's quite familiar with giraffes, but giraffes are one of those animals that we found from our research are just taken for granted. Yeah. Everyone's like, look at those things. They're amazing, but let's just leave it at that. Apparently, it was how science approached giraffes for millennia, basically. Yeah. In fact, these evolutionary wonders and boy, aren't they, like, in every sense of the word, for many millennia, human dumb dumbs referred to these animals as camel leopards. Right. With a tidy little hyphen in between the two to really show that clearly a camel and a leopard had gotten it on at some point. Right. And created the giraffe. Yeah. Which, I mean, it makes a little bit of sense. They are sort of camel like, with their necks and their kind of long legs and hooves, but then also you look at a giraffe coat in that amazing leopard like pattern. So it sort of makes sense that human dumb dumbs would say stuff like that right. Because they didn't understand evolution. And even like, Mr. Evolution himself, charles Darwin was like, I'm not even getting into the giraffe for a while. Like the giraffe debate. Yeah. So he started waiting into where the giraffe got its neck, because by the time Darwin came along, they said, okay, they're not camel leopards. We know that much. Everybody stopped making fun of us. Right. But also, let's give it a scientific name, giraffe camilla Pardalis. Yeah. Which is a nod to the dumb dumbs of yours. That's right. So by the time Darwin got in on this, he had written on the Origin of the Species, but it was the 6th edition before the giraffe makes an appearance in it. Yeah, I'm sure Mika has already read that. Sure, that's why she was asking. She was hoping we could expand on that. That's right. So Darwin suggested that potentially the giraffe's neck evolved because in times of drought or famine, where other animals were starving and dropping like flies, the giraffe neck gave it an advantage to reach leaves on trees that other animals couldn't. So it was quite literally rising above the competition, natural selection wise. Right, yeah. And that's got to be it. Right. Well, one of the reasons that one of the issues that's raised against it is that giraffes still feed at the same level as other animals, like a pretty significant amount of the time. Well, they're discreet, I guess, so they're like some for me, and I'll have some of yours, too. Yeah. I don't know. I can't think of any other reason it makes complete sense. Well, there's another guy, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who was pretty credible as far as old timey scientists Go and Lamarck said, I think they're an antelope that just stretched its neck further and further and further, and he lost all credibility. I think so. But they're not entirely certain what precisely it is that gave the giraffe its neck, because you don't see that elsewhere in nature. It's not an adaptation that is pretty common, like eyes or hearing or flight. It's its own thing. Yeah, in a lot of ways. But there are some other long neck animals, like swans or something like that. But giraffes are mammals, and aside from that, really long neck and a couple of other things that they've had to change or adapt to because of their long neck and other features, they're nothing like other long necked animals. Yeah, that's right. And the long neck club, they stand alone. Exactly. All right, so let's start with classification and taxonomy and that kind of thing, because that sort of lays the groundwork for what we're talking about here. Right. Technically speaking, drafts are what you would call an even toed ungulate, which is kind of a fancy way of saying they have just two weight bearing hooves on each foot, like a camel. Isn't that right? Yeah, I believe so. Okay. Not a leopard, though. No, a leopard with hose would not be much of a leopard, let's be honest. And they are in an order called RTO dactyla, and that does include the antelope, to be fair, but also includes things like sheep, moose and hippos. Cows. Cows. Pigs. A little weirdly, but maybe not because they have the little hooves. Sure. What else? Well, their family is giraffe, and in the giraffe day family, there's two genera, right? Yes. There's the Giraffe genus and the Ocapia genus. And they split, they think now about 11 million years ago, and still today. You can walk around in Africa and find the okapi. But the okapi looks way more like it's related to a horse or a zebra than it does to a giraffe. Right? Yeah. Did you see those things? Yeah, I've seen them before. They're pretty neat. They're like, chocolate colored with zebra striped legs. Yeah. It literally looks like it's an animal that said, I don't know what I want to be. I like you guys. I like you guys. So I really would just like to sort of be both of you. Right. It's a social butterfly. Yeah. It's very pretty animal. And then over in the giraffe genus, there's basically one species, as far as anyone's concerned. So like any giraffe you ever see, even if it looks different from all the other giraffes you see, it was the species Giraffe camilla pardalas, like you said. Right? Yes. But there was a 2016 study that was carried out by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, and it was published in the journal Current Biology, and they said, you know, all these little subspecies that we've been saying are actually the same species of giraffes. There's just variations they're actually different species. There are four giraffe species. Yeah, but that study was just last year, and now they're saying that that's not the case. Oh, is that right? Well, isn't that what it says? Well, I think it's more like the wheels of biological science as the academic field moves slowly. Okay, so their findings are supposedly legitimate, but they didn't put the stamp of authenticity on it. Not yet. Okay. They probably will in the future, but they're like, just give us some time. We just made some tea, as scientists want to do you want to take a break? Sure. All right, we'll take a break and crane our necks up and get some food to sustain ourselves and then talk a little bit about these awesome necks right after this. Okay, Chuck. So there was not a lot of study in the field of giraffes. Everybody was just like, that's neat. Giraffes are cool. Let's just leave it at that. Especially in the field, specifically, like, out in their natural habitat, they weren't studied. Killed by poachers, but not necessarily studied. Right. Yeah. So most of the understanding we had of giraffes was of captive giraffes that were being held hostage and zoos. Right. But from those, we got, like, a pretty decent amount of at least anatomical understanding of them. Yeah. And you just have to add this to the list of the jellyfish and the octopus. What? Bats. What else are we forgetting? Oh, man. There was one other one that we did. We did one recently, I guess. Frogs. Yeah, for sure. All animals. Yeah. Any animal we cover, we find fascinating. You notice we haven't done one on the common house cat. No, we probably should, though, because I'm a cat lover. I feel like that would be like doing an episode on Gamers, like, just inviting trouble, you know what I mean? Well, yeah, I love cats, of course I do. But I just don't know that it's, like, in the same category as an octopus right. When it comes to amazement and astonishment. That's true. Although we did speak about them for a while in the what was it? Domestic animals episode to me. Yeah, I think so. And of course, toxoplasmosis oh, yeah. Weird and ugly head. All right, Mika's, like, get back to it, guys. I don't really care about that stuff. I hate cats. So they are the tallest living animal in the world, and it says in here. And this kind of reminded me of something that a giraffe can look in a second story window. Yeah. And I just saw recently I had no idea this existed, but Giraffe Manor in Nairobi. This is a hotel, and it is. They work with conservation and ecolodge. Well, I guess it's that, too, but I can't think of the right name. But what it is, it's a hotel, and they work to help giraffes that are in trouble and help to introduce troubled giraffes into the wild, like a home for juvenile delinquent giraffes. Yeah, like a rehabilitation center. And I just saw this for the first time a couple of weeks ago and there are pictures of people dining and eating in a second storey window and giraffes sticking their heads right through them and eating fruit off a plate and people just thinking, I'm getting cheated out on my breakfast and it's the best time I can remember that happening. Yeah. So it's amazing. And now I want to like I think Emily and I are going to try and go on a safari. So we're dying to go on a safari. I just need to find out a good one that's like ecologically sound. And I don't know anything about safari, so I don't know if they're like, bad or they're good or if there are good ones and bad ones, but I'm going to check it out and we're definitely going to go stay in that hotel. The first question I think you want to ask of a safari operator is, do you use cattle prods? A big stuff like that? Oh, I'm sure some people do, for sure. Yeah. And hey, if anyone knows of a really sustainable, well done safari, let me know. Sure. We're in the market. So what is it called? Giraffe Manor. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, they can they are just super tall. And the reason why they're super tall, there's two reasons. One is obviously their neck. Their neck alone is like 6ft long, right? Yes. And again, there are other long necked animals out there in nature, like swans. But giraffes are mammals and they have the same number of cervical vertebrae that other mammals do. They're just really big cervical vertebrae. Right. So each vertebrae of a giraffe's neck is about eleven inches in length. That's crazy. And there's seven of them. And you put them all together and you've got about a six foot long neck. Yes. But they also have really long legs too, that are also about 6ft long. Yeah. So six foot long legs, six foot long neck. And you have giraffes female, because they still have other body parts. Females can grow up to 14ft, weigh about \u00a31500, and males can grow up to 18ft tall and weigh about \u00a33000. Yeah. For males it's like five and a half meters tall and 1360 kg. They're big animals, but they're also known as like, gentle giants, too. They're not very violent animals as well. True. Although if you're into the sweet, giraffe do not look up videos of male giraffes fighting. I know, it's disturbing the world. It's very disturbing. And you just want to think like, oh man, you guys should just always like each other. Why do friends fight? Pretty much. So part of being tall like this, it presents some amazing evolutionary traits and some challenges that thankfully the draft has overcome. Let's talk about their nerve cells. If you've got a neck that long, everything is just stretched out. So there, for instance, their recurrent laryngeal nerve, which this activates their larynx, helps them swallowing, because they're going to need a little help swallowing down that long neck. That thing is 15ft long in itself because it starts in the brain, goes down the neck and then loops back up to the throat. Right. And we have one of those, too, and it's actually pointed to as proof that it's evolution, not creation, that accounts for us, because it's just such a poor workaround. But it's 15ft long in giraffes. Crazy. Right? So since it's a nerve fiber, nerve fibers are made of bundled nerve cells, so that means that if you separated these things, it would be made up of 15 foot long cells. Yeah. That's nuts. It really is. Is that your fact of the show? There's about 50 of those in here. I think you're right. So if you've ever been to a wildlife refuge, that's the word I was thinking of. Okay. Or a zoo, let's say, and you've seen a giraffe up close and personal, the one thing that you will notice, and some zoos will even have times of day where you can feed the giraffes, which is pretty amazing. But the first thing you'll probably notice, aside from their neck when they get up face to face, aside from their friendly eyes, is the size of their tongue when they go licking stuff, and they have a very active tongue that things always moving around, it seems like. But these tongues are almost 2ft long. They can be 21 inches in length. Yes. And not only are they long, they're also prehensile. They have the ability to grasp things, as we'll see later, right? That's right. So they have enormous tongues, they have feet that are about a foot across, about a third of a meter across, right. And their hearts chuck, I think this might be the fact of the show for me. Well, then take it. Well, their hearts, if you talk about a giraffe as a big hearted animal, you can say that in every sense of the word, because the heart of a giraffe is 2ft long and weighs about \u00a325, which, Mika, for you, that's 11 kg. That's right. So they have this huge heart and you're like well, of course they have a huge heart, your dummy. It's a huge animal. That's true. But prepare for this if you did, based on body mass, proportionately, a giraffe's organs, like it's heart or it's lungs, that can take in an enormous amount of air at one time. Twelve gallons, right. They're average. Yeah, they're just about average in size. Right. So the giraffe is actually faced with a couple of issues here, right. If its heart is, proportionately speaking, normal size, but its neck is way longer than other mammals, it has an issue, and its legs are way longer than other animals, it has a secondary issue. Right. So you would think, well, it needs a huge heart. And again, though, it's heart is not proportionately up to the task. So there's been other adaptations that the giraffe underwent over time to allow for it to not, say, faint when it suddenly lifts its head up after drinking water, or for blood not to collect and pool in its legs. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So the way this works is the heart of a giraffe is really, really thick, so it has a very thick wall. And so that means it can pump blood at a super high pressure, about five times that of a human heart. So that sort of solves that problem. It gets blood going where it needs to go as effectively as possible. And then they have a really tough coat and a tough hide. And the way this article put it is it sort of acts like a compression sock, but around the whole body. So that basically just helps the blood counteract the gravity of pumping all the way up that long neck to the brain. Right, exactly. It keeps it also from collecting or pooling in places that shouldn't. It just keeps everything running smoothly. Yeah. Like those big feet. Yeah. So it's pretty interesting stuff. Right? Agreed. And you were talking about the coat as well. One thing I saw in research is that the Jurassic coat is unique to the individual. Like our fingerprints or iris print is. Yes, which I hadn't really thought about, which makes total sense. You know, giraffes are all unique, individual little flowers, snowflakes, if you will. Sure. Just good giant liberal mammals. Mika, you can ask your dad about that job. So when you look at a draft, you might have think like yeah, they all just sort of have the maybe it's unique, but the patterns are all basically the same. Not exactly true. Depending on where the giraffe lives and what they eat, they're going to have a different sort of pattern going on and then each one is unique to itself. Right. So in Kenya, I'm going to call it a Masai giraffe. They have the pattern that looked like the oak leaves. Very pretty pattern. Right. And then there's Uganda. Giraffes they have like big large brown splotches with lighter brown lines separating the splotches. Like a giraffe. That's the one you think of or I think of. When I think giraffes, I think of all of them giraffes. Sure. Then there's the Reticulated giraffe, and this is only in northern Kenya. Evidently, these have the darker coat and it looks like a really narrow white lines all over the place. But with all these it's kind of like what are you looking at? Are you looking at the spots or the lines in between? Sure, yeah. It's like an optical illusion. And the whole reason that the giraffes hide or coat looks like that is because it's camouflaged. They're so big, there's really no way for them to hide anywhere. So they hide in plain sight by blending in with the trees that they eat. That's right there is also, Chuck, I don't know if you saw this or not, but in Kenya, again, at the Eshop Beanie Herola Conservancy, they found two all white giraffes, head to toe white. I think I've seen those. Yeah. I think they kind of became like an Internet hit recently. And they say that they're not albino giraffes. There's, like a lesser condition called leucism, which really just kind of affects the skin and hair and coat, but not like, say, the eyes or anything like that. But it's really cute. It's a mom and her baby, and they're being watched probably more than other giraffes. So the mom is kind of like, you stay here behind the bushes. Okay. I'm going to handle the photographs. But it's just cute to watch them. I love watching giraffes at all times. At all times. I'm watching some right now. So, drafts. Are they outside of our studio? Oh, my gosh. How wonderful would that be? You can't see them. They're looking over your shoulder right now. I know. I had my back to the door. So giraffes live in what are called savannahs through sub Saharan Africa, and the weather there is semi arid. They like woodlands that are sort of open, that have smatterings of trees and bushes, and that's really kind of the best habitat for giraffes. Right. And lastly, chuck their eyes. Right. You said that their eyes are adorable, and that's largely because of their wonderful eyelashes, but they also have really large eyes and maybe among the better vision of any land animals. Their peripheral vision is so good, they can almost see behind them. Yeah, it's amazing. And they can see in color. They can see a long, long way in front of them. And like you said, those wide angle lens eyeballs, and they're huge is really handy because giraffes basically lions see giraffes and they think, all right, I know no one likes to see this kind of thing on television or on nature shows, but we have to eat, too. And they make for good eating if you're a lion or let's say a crocodile. Right. Aside from humans, that's basically it. Hyenas prey on giraffe calves, but they don't have that many predators. Yeah. Well, which is great, because they need more giraffes. Yeah. And they also don't have a lot of recourse against predators. They can't kick, as we'll see, but there's not a lot they can do besides run away. But even when they run, despite their lungs being so big, they don't oxygenate their bodies well enough that they can run for very long distances, so they can run fast and short bursts. But being camouflaged and being so huge and high off the ground that their predators can't actually reach them easily, that's really how they survive. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's take a while. All right, we'll be right back. All right. So you're talking about giraffes running fast. They can run about 35 miles an hour. For our Canadian friends, and certainly for Mika, that's 56 km. We don't often do those conversions anymore. Well, we don't usually have an episode requested by a cute little Canadian. That's correct. Although you could make the argument that all Canadians are cute. Sure. Right. Nice, at the very least. So have you ever seen a giraffe run in person? I don't know that I have. You know that thing when you start to get older, Chuck, where your brain has been around long enough that it can just make up memories? Sure. And you don't know if you've actually experienced it or if your brain is like, this is what that person just asked would look like, so just go ahead and say yes. That's what I just did. I'm not sure if I have or not, but at the very least, I've seen it on TV and can imagine it. Right. So I know we did it. We did an episode on Zoos and whether or not zoos are good or bad. And I sort of still haven't completely made up my mind on Zoos. But I know you have. You're on record. But I went to the San Diego Zoo when we did a tour show there a couple of years ago, and they have a giraffe habitat, very nice one. And they had some giraffes walking around doing cute stuff. And then one of them, out of nowhere, took off and started running. And it was the most graceful thing I've probably ever seen in nature that didn't involve wings and flying. Oh, wow. It was unbelievable. Like, you can look it up on YouTube. Giraffes running like banjo music wouldn't have been appropriate. No, they just sort of glide, man, and they're so big, and their necks are going forward and backward, kind of like they're cranking it out with their neck. And then their legs it almost seems like they're not touching the ground. It's a gallop, but it's hard to explain. Like, when you see a horse gallop, you feel like they're grabbing that ground and it's very just strong looking. But a giraffe just sort of glides it's for such a big animal. And that might have something to do with the optics of it, but it's just something to see. Well, the way that they move their legs is kind of peculiar as well. I think when they're running, it's front legs and then back legs and front legs and then back legs, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, but then when they're moving along at a slower speed, they're moving like right side legs, left side legs, right side legs, left side oh, really? So it's not like one at a time. It's a bizarre way to walk around. Interesting. Yet another amazing thing about giraffes. All right, so one of our favorite things are groups of animals. Names of groups of animals. Like a murder of crows and where they get these crazy names and giraffes, I never knew until today. A group of giraffes is called a tower. I didn't know that either. Really neat. Giraffe. It's long been known they're social animals, they live in packs, but again, they live in towers. They live in towers. I'm sorry. Since they weren't really studied out in the field, everything that they noticed about giraffe sociality was basically in zoos, and that's an artificial habitat. Right. So they didn't get to see the real giraffes. But now that they've really started to study them out in the field, like, systematically and really scientifically, they're finding that giraffes are, like, even more social than they thought. Yeah. And they're also sort of like sort of like a liberal hippie commune. A tower can have ten to 20 members, but it's not like a lot of pecs or murders or gaggles where you have, like, well, the women and the children are here and the men do this. It's sort of anything goes. There can be mixed genders, they can be young and old members can come and go as they please. They don't necessarily stick together for life. It just seems like sort of a loose arrangement where giraffes will be like, all right, I'm cool to hang out with you guys for a little while. Right, exactly. And the other thing that struck me, too, was that giraffe towers don't have territories, which I can't think of any other mammals off the top of my head that don't protect their turf. Yeah. So apparently when giraffes do fight, male giraffes do fight, it's strictly over access to the ladies. Well, but that's it. It's not like, hey, get out of here. This is my acacia tree. Right, true. I just think that's neat. There's no territories. It's like, go wherever you want, man. Yeah. Very chill. This is one of the other big facts of the show for me. So giraffes, one of their evolutionary adaptations, is because they are so vulnerable to attack, because they eat, like, what, 16 to 20 hours a day? Yes. And they're just hanging out, eating, trying to all get along lines are nearby, so they don't sleep for hours at a time because they're so vulnerable to attack. So they sleep they only sleep about five to 30 minutes a day in a 24 hours period. And sometimes those are like, all right, I'm going to stand here and I'm going to take a 1 minute nap standing up. Right. Or maybe, why I'm super tired, I need to lay down for six minutes. And so just Google a picture of giraffe sleeping on the ground, and you will see a giraffe curled up with its long neck kind of craning back towards this rump with his little head on his butt like a swan. Yeah. It's just adorable. Yeah. Momo, my dog, she takes naps like a giraffe with her head up or like. A really old person, not off, and then lifts her head up. Really? It's cute to see. Yeah. So a giraffe basically has to stay awake to keep an eye out for predators. And they don't have a voice either. They're one of the quietest mammals in nature. Yeah. A lot of people think or thought for a very long time, that dresses didn't make sound because it's so rare to hear them make a sound. But again, further studies found that they do make sounds, they just very infrequently do. And they also think that potentially, giraffes communicate to one another over long distances at subsonic frequencies that humans just can't hear. Right. So they may be humming. And there's a recording of a giraffe humming to itself in the dark in a zoo. Wow, it's really sweet to hear. But if you think of a giraffe by itself in the dark in a zoo and it's humming, it makes you wonder why it's humming like that. Yeah. If you're around a giraffe, what you might hear, if you're lucky, is like a snort or maybe a hiss or a grunt. Probably won't hear any roaring or mooing, although they can do that. But the idea I've got is that they just don't care to talk to people much. One thing with the snort in particular, if you do hear a giraffe snort, it means that it's spooked and it's saying, oh, my gosh, basically as it's running away. But it's also alerting its fellow giraffes as well. And apparently, giraffes are easily spooked enough that they're kind of like an early warning signal for the other animals on the savannah that they've spotted a lion. So they're easily spooked, but they also can see really well over very long distances, and because of that height advantage, they can see even further. So if a giraffe starts running, the other animals are like, I'm out too. Well, yeah, not only that, and this is so cool. I love it when animals work together like that, but it goes even deeper. If you look up tick bird on giraffe, just Google that stuff, you're going to see a giraffe hanging out with these little birds all over its back and neck. And they're buddies, they have a symbiotic relationship, and what happens is the thick bird, or it's called an oxpecker, because they do this on other animals as well. But they basically sit on top of these animals and they eat bugs in the coat. They kind of pick their nits and they warn the giraffe like they might see a lion and make their noise. I don't know what it sounds like. All right, I'll do that. And then the giraffe in turn snorts and takes off. So, in a sense, the tick bird is sort of warning everyone on the savannah that the lion is coming around. Poor lions, they get such a bad rap. Yeah. But they got to eat. It's just one of those things it's the circle of life. It is. Nobody likes seeing a lion chowing down on an antelope or running after a family of antelopes. Right. They like to see lines and alligators or crocodiles fight each other. Yeah. Because then it's a fair fight. Sure. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. But we did talk about the giraffes fighting each other for the ladies. And they do this with those osakones when you look I guess you might want to call them horns, but they're called ossicones. And it's not always two. Don't they have more than that sometimes? So no, they'll have two Oscars, but then they get these calcium deposits to protect against the headbutts, and it looks like they have more horns, like you're kind of showing off at that point. Yeah, you really went a little far with the horns, man. So as the giraffe matures, too, they'll have that little kind of tufted hair, patch of hair at the top, and that starts to fade a little bit. It's replaced by the calcium deposits. The neck gets strong and upright and everything. And apparently young giraffes become young. Male giraffes become young men like giraffes as they're growing up by emulating the giraffes that they see in real life. And they'll act like they're tough or whatever and go, like, pull the girl's hair, or something like that. And then when the actual adult male giraffes, the bowls are what they call come around, the kids just suddenly just go back to being little kids. Like, nothing. I wasn't doing anything. But they almost practiced at first by emulating their grown ups. Yeah, it's pretty neat. Like you said, the males are called bulls, the females are called cows. Calves are what they have when they make a little baby, right. And when they mate, the cow has a gestation period of about 14 months. And then you can look up on YouTube and see a video of a calf being born. And it is something else to see, because a six foot tall, 150 pound giraffe, which is tiny by their standards, will kind of be pooped out of the back of the mom giraffe while the mom's just standing there, it'll flop and fall on the ground like a little lump, which is all cute and sort of amazing looking. And then, like, a bunch of really other gross stuff comes out. That's what you need to be just aware of. If you watch this video, you can just stop it. There is what I would recommend. But there's a lot of after birth. There's one thing you know when you're a young giraffe, is don't look up. Yeah. Never look up. Yeah. And while you're on YouTube, go look at baby giraffe learning to stand and walk, because it's amazing. They do it really quickly, about an hour later. But as with any mammals, first steps, it's one of the most adorable things you can witness. It's a little shaky. Yeah. But instead of taking months or however long it takes for human babies to learn to walk, like an hour is all it takes. And one reason, probably the reason why giraffes can walk that quickly after being born is because they are huge targets for predators out on the savannah. Yeah, it's like super sad. Only about one in four infant giraffes survived that first year. Yeah. That's a big milestone in a giraffe's life. I would say so, because you made it to your first year, and after that, you're starting to grow to the point where I think by age three to six, they're fully mature. So if you make it to your first year, you're going to be able to survive probably longer and longer. Your chances of survival increase tremendously just because of the size you're getting to. But making it to that first year is very tough. And it's at that first year also that they wean I think they nurse for the first year and then start eating leaves after that. Yeah. And so for many years, they thought that mama drafts might be a little cold hearted because a lot of times they would see the mama draft leave the calf behind for this very vulnerable young calf for extended periods. But what they now think, thankfully, is that the mama giraffes are just not neglected at all. They're really social and they're going out to look for food and stuff. And the job of the baby calf is to just lay down, sometimes for a whole day and be as quiet as possible until Mama returns. And mama will return. Right. But that seems to me that's probably one of the reasons why the mortality rate is so high among giraffe calves is that they're tiny, their mothers leave them and they just are expected to lay there quietly on the savannah until they return a day later. Yeah, but they do like the only other thing they could do is walk around with mom, which makes them more vulnerable. Yeah, I guess that's a good point, you know. Yeah. So the mama basically says, you hide here, be quiet, I know you want to run and play and you might want to snort, but there's bad things out there. They're hungry lions. And so I'll be back. Trust me. Yeah. So like you said, they do come back. But because of that, I think you said scientists, for a long time thought, what's wrong with giraffe? Moms are the worst of the worst. Right. But they have found again, through recent study, that now giraffes actually seem to demonstrate grief, like prolonged grief, even when they lose a calf. And there was one mother giraffe who lost a calf to a predator and stayed at that spot for four days and didn't eat anything and was actually consoled, it appeared, by two other female giraffes who are friends. So they are not neglectful, cold hearted, they're not like Joan Crawford of the animal kingdom. No, I told Emily that fact this morning and she literally started crying, so I'm bad. All right, so we mentioned that they eat plants that is exclusively giraffes, are herbivores, mika. So that means they only eat plants, they don't eat meat. And what they really like to chow down on, they eat seeds, they eat fruits and branches and things, but they really love are mimosa trees and especially acacia trees. That is what their main meals consist of. Right. And again, they kind of look like these things that they're eating, at least in their camouflage pattern. And because their tongue is prehensile, meaning you can go grasp stuff. Right. They are able to kind of circumnavigate, like the thorns that are part of acacia trees and mimosa trees and just kind of pluck these great leaves without getting stuck by the thorns. And their lips are also prehensile, too, so it's like on their face, around their mouth, they have two hands that are just going to town, sorting through these trees and eating the leaves off of them. Yeah, I think that's why when you see a giraffe, they have so much personality. It's because that mouth yeah, I think that's part of it. Also, those eyelashes are not hurting things at all. It's very expressive. Yeah. So for their size, they eat hundreds of pounds of leaves a week, which you think, like, man, that's a lot of leaves, but for their size, that's not a lot of food. They have a very efficient internal system. Sometimes they can live on as little as \u00a315 of foliage per day, which isn't a lot of food for an animal that can weigh up to \u00a31500. Right? Yeah. It's like 7 kg for our Canadian friends for the rest of the world, except for Liberia. What's the deal with the cud? So they're ruminants, right, like a cow. And that means that they eat their leaves or flowers or whatever they're eating, and then it passes through four different chambers of their stomach and then it comes all the way back up through their stomach, all the way back up their neck into their mouth. Basically, they throw up the leaves that have now been turned into cut, and then they chew on that some more and then swallow it again. That makes them aruminate. And actually, I believe it makes them kosher as well. Really? Yes. I saw that somewhere. That does not mean that you should go eat giraffes, though. No. What's wrong with people? And then finally, their wonderful adaptation that I think is one of the best is because they're out there in the dry sub Saharan Africa. There's not a ton of water around, and certainly a giraffe leaning down and drinking water could be very vulnerable, especially to a crocodile. They can go weeks at a time without drinking and they get most of their water and the moisture that they need to survive from those plants that they're eating. Yeah, it's pretty astounding amazing. So because they're doing all of this eating of tree tops and all of that, not just the tree tops, but just about anywhere on the tree they'll eat from it. They're actually doing a lot of other things, too, and usually herbivores, they play some pretty good role in their ecosystem. But giraffe seem to be, like, really integral of their ecosystems as well, just because of the really long neck, and they're reaching places that other animals can't reach. So they have a big impact on the ecosystem as far as keeping it healthy and running smoothly, basically. Yeah. It's kind of like bringing a wildlife management Pruning system in there that's 15, 18ft tall. And while they're eating, they are distributing seeds all over the place. Yeah. Pooping out those seeds so they can serve as pollinators, even. Yeah. Pretty amazing, the little acacia tree seeds go. Thanks a lot for the ride. That's right. As far as their conservation status, they're not endangered, which is good news. Yes. But are they not? I mean, just think about this. I know over the past 15 years, they've declined by 40% to around 80,000 from 140,000, which is a troubling number to me, for sure. I just don't know exactly what it takes to become endangered. I don't either. But most of that loss of the giraffes 15 years, they lost maybe 60,000 out of 140,000 drafts are gone now, mostly due to poachers. Yeah. Boo. Maybe booze of all booze go to the poachers. Yeah. And then their ecosystem, their habitat, is being lost because trees are being cut down for everything from developments to cropland boo again. And if they don't have their well, we kind of do need cropland, but yes, agreed. When it affects your assets like that. Boo. But even beyond that, apparently the giraffe's tail is used for all sorts of stupid stuff. Frankly, you don't need to kill a giraffe for if you really need the tail hair, just cut the tail off. If you're going to do that, at least don't kill the giraffe first. Maybe sedate it and surgically remove it or something. But jeez. Yeah, I wouldn't even go that far. Well, sure, right. Don't remove the tail. Yeah. You can make a fly whisk or a bracelet out of something else. Exactly. But that's concerned. That's what they use them for, bracelets and fly whisks. And because of all this bad stuff, Mika, you'll be glad to know that June 21 has been declared world Giraffe Day is the longest day of the year, and they have awarded that day to the tallest animal. So now there's a lot of awareness going on and efforts underway and a lot more studying than has ever been done before to help preserve the future success of the giraffe. Thankfully. Yeah. And I also want to go on record. Yes. We realized that flies spread disease in Africa, and that fly whisks are actually pretty valuable. Like Chuck said, you can make fly whisks out of other stuff. And maybe it's incumbent upon some of us here in the west to make sure that the people who need the flywhisk in Africa get the synthetic ones so that the giraffes are left out of the loop there. How about that? I think that sounds great. So you got anything else right now? I have nothing else. All right, well, there's Giraffe Mika. Thanks for the idea. And since I said thanks, time for Chuck. Yes, that is correct. Administrative details. Okay, everyone, administrative details. If you are new to the show, it is a segment wherein we thank listeners for the really neat, wonderful things that they send us. That's one of the great things about doing what we do, is people are kind hearted and loving and will send us stuff. Agreed. So let's start. Chuck. All right, first on the list, because we forgot him last time, our old buddy Greg Storkin came to see us in Denver, Colorado, right? I think so, yeah. And he sent us some whiskey. And Greg, you are one of our long time listeners and man, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for sticking with us and for the whiskey. Yes. And Chuck, there's another one that yeah, thank you, Greg. There's another one we missed last time, too. Lucas and the rest of the crew from Penelope, which is a charming restaurant at Lexington and 30th in Manhattan, they sent us a wonderful care package of stuff from Penelope. So thank you guys, finally, at long last for that. That's right. And speaking of whiskey, might as well go ahead and shout out our buddies from the Greatest Generation podcast, adam Franca and Ben Harrison. If you don't listen to that show, it's really good. If you're a Star Trek Next Generation fan, or even if you're not, that's the best thing going for you. And they sent us some what was it? Woodhouse whiskey from Brooklyn. Yeah, it was good stuff. Did you already dive into that? Oh, it's long gone. Okay, let's see. How about Tim Lazarov sent us a bunch of Wegman's organic ketchup. Thanks a lot, Tim. He also griped on email that we hadn't thanked him, so tim. Hold your horses, Tessie's, old oddities. They sent us toddler gifts and dog gifts, which we always appreciate. Little bat costumes and dolls for bat conservation. Yes, it's very, very cute. I put it in my daughter's room and she loved it. Yes, thank you for that. And Miles got a costume, right? Yes, she did. She looks adorable in it, too. I need to post a picture of it, to tell you the truth. Totally. But I'm afraid that somebody will kidnap her. Well, yeah. Then don't do that. So I have a correction also from last time. We thank Matt Dragon for sending his home brew beer, but we hadn't tried it yet, remember? It turned out to be kalua. He made homemade kalua. What? Yes. Don't you remember? It's amazing. I don't remember that. I don't know if I had that. It's good. It's in the green bottle that Jonathan Strickland's faces on Sarah Lopez big thanks she sent from Scandalous. Scarves. Sent scarves for our wives after we made fun of infinity scarves on our live show, right? Yeah. With somebody wearing an infinity scarf right there. It was uncomfortable. Thanks a million to Christina, who gave us freestyle embroidered sampler portraits of us at the Chicago show. You remember? Yes. They were amazing. Shot Tower Jen. We love our gifts of spirits. Oh, yeah. So Shot Tower Jen. I cannot remember the person, and I feel terrible about that. But big shout out to Shot Tower. Jen. Yes, do right in and let us know so we can thank you a second time. Thanks to Robin at Mother Dirt for sending us all the great skincare stuff is much appreciated and well received. Thank you. Ben and I could not read the spelling. It's either clerk or cloak. He sent us a very cool and solvable very key for a maze stuff. You should know maze. And I've never tried to design a maze, so it was pretty neat seeing that. Yes. Let's see Cody Diet send us a copy of his books, period. And also, while I'm on, John M. Hamilton sent us a copy of his book, a Hell called Ohio. He thought I would appreciate that. In particular, Argentina coy invited us to her wedding to Dustin Cottage so we could not come. But we always appreciate wedding invites. Yes. Daria from Happy Socks in Sweden. I had no idea that Happy Socks was out of Sweden, but she sent us a bunch of happy Socks, appropriately enough, and they're awesome. Yeah. You love your happy socks yes, I do. Mr. Jack Ramsay sent us his graphic novel called Skit City. And this thing is awesome. Look up Skit City online. Ski tcity. And it's really great. Yes. And Brigitte for the cutout drawing of me with my lovecraft book. I love that. That was very cool. Yeah. Who else do we have here? Now, I thought it would be Rebecca, but I swear it was an N. So I'm going with renika marshall sent us her young adult time travel novel, The Mender. M-E-N-D-E-R. Check that out. Yes. And you want to save the rest for the next episode. Yeah, we're going to continue this with a part two. How about that? All right, let's do it. So in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S Kpodcast or Joshua Clarke. Hang out with us on Facebook at Charlesw chuck Bryant or stuff you should know. You can send us an email. The stuffpodcast@houseofworks.com. As always, hang out with us at our home on the Web stuffyshirenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
aeac4f3e-3435-11e8-8f0b-bf61902e2ff8 | SYSK Selects: How Guide Dogs Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-guide-dogs-work | You know how when you see a guide dog leading a blind person to their destination and you think, "There goes a truly great dog?" It turns out you are absolutely correct. Guide dogs are about as special as dogs can get and it's through years of hard work. | You know how when you see a guide dog leading a blind person to their destination and you think, "There goes a truly great dog?" It turns out you are absolutely correct. Guide dogs are about as special as dogs can get and it's through years of hard work. | Sat, 31 Mar 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=90, tm_isdst=0) | 39353867 | 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. Al. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK Select, I've chosen how guide dogs work. It's a heartwarming look at some amazing animals that work really, really hard to help humans out and do some extraordinarily amazing things and keep an ear out for a surprise appearance by the Globe of Death. Before we knew it was called the Globe of Death. Enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and we hope we sound correct. Yes. What does that mean? Well, Jerry was looking at her, putting the headphones up to her ears. So she's not even paying attention to you. Basically, what you're saying is we have no quality control going on right now. Well, no, we did, because Jerry had the headphones up to her ear. Okay. Yeah. Now we don't. She checks in occasionally. She wakes up and says, yeah, what? So, Chuck yes. How's it going? It's going great. How are you? I'm doing good. You look well. Thank you very much. Healthy, fit. Well, happy? Sunkist. Sunkist, yeah. Feeling good. Chuck, have you ever seen a guide dog? A guy dog? Guide dog? Yeah, sure. Guide dog. I see them all the time. Do you know why they are also called seeing Eye dogs, or used to be? Well, because guide dogs specifically, unlike the general term service dogs, are to help guide around people who cannot see. That is a pretty nice story, but it's not entirely correct. I had a feeling Seeing Eye dogs were actually part of a company called the Seeing Eye, the first American guide dog training company. And it wasn't the Americans who came up with training guide dogs. It was actually the Germans. In Potsdam, Germany, the first guide dog training academy was set up to help veterans that had been blinded in World War One. Wow. And it was successful. It didn't really take off, but a woman, an American woman living in Switzerland, her name was Dorothy Harris Eustace. She was very wealthy. American. Heard about this one, visited the school and said, this is pretty awesome. Came back, waited a few years before she got around to writing an article, and it was published in the Saturday Evening Post. And a young, blind whipper snapper named Norman Rockwell no, his name was Morris Frank. He heard about it, and he got in touch with Mrs. Eustace and said, I would like one of these dogs. Can you help me out? She said, not only will I help you out, I'm going to fly you to Potsdam, to Switzerland, actually. You're going to be trained with a dog, and we give you $10,000 to go start the first school in America. So Morris Frank took her up on it. Took the $10000 and started in Tennessee. The Seeing Eye dog school. So are you saying that seeing eyed dogs are the Kleenex of the working service dog world? It's actually a brand name. Interesting. I never knew that's how I liked this. And I said, nothing really surprised me. It was a good article, but I wasn't surprised. And here you go surprising me, kaboom, right off the bat. Thanks. All right, guide dogs, let's get to it, eh? Yeah, it's pretty straightforward stuff, but it's neat to know the details of things. Like, first of all, if you ever see a guide dog, it's actually working and you should leave it alone. Yes. In my house, it's difficult with Emily. Yeah. You're really not supposed to do that. I know, and she doesn't, but dude, she's like a five year old. I have seen her fake, like, she's going to look for something and just brush up her hand against the dog's head, like in a store, like, let me go look at the cereal. And she'll just brush up and be like, oops, I didn't mean to pet your guide dog. She's like a fraudulent for guide dogs? Yeah. Is that people who rub up against the public? Yeah, she's totally weird. She can't help it, dude. When she sees a dog, she like she cannot not touch it. It's understandable, especially with guide dogs, why Emily would do that. Because it's like dogs and then five echelons up guide dogs, right. Like the best. Not only are they dogs, which are great animals to begin with, but they're dogs that actually help not only just regular people, but people who can't see. So it's like you just want to pet them and be like, here's the greatest thing on the planet. And they look sad, which makes you want to pet them even more. But people, they are not sad. They are working. And they are delighted to be working, because if they're not delighted to be working, they wouldn't be guide dogs. Exactly. They wouldn't make it through the process. That's exactly right. So that's not to say that you can never touch a guide dog. Normally you want to leave them alone, just rub them against the store. Right. But if you really can't resist the urge, Emily, you can ask the handler, the guide dog owner, the person who the guide dog is assisting, if you can pet their dog that way, they can say, not really, he's really concentrating now. Or, no, you can go ahead and pet him. And then the owner knows that now he needs to get the dog back into his concentration working mode after he's been petted. Yeah. Okay. That's rule number one. Okay. Guide dogs are rule number two, typically allowed anywhere the general public is allowed, because if they're not, then you're saying, oh, no, only people who can see are allowed into these public areas. Exactly. Which is one of the best things about them and why Emily wants to rub up against them. Because she's like, I'm in a library and there's a dog. This is a bonus, right? It's a great library. The thing is, since they're allowed anywhere and they're a dog, and because there's people like Emily walking around who want to pet them all the time, the dog it's up to the dog, rather than Emily to decide, like, let's keep things professional here. I'm not going to create any kind of ruckus or disturbance. So the dog has to be extraordinarily well trained to concentrate. And what it's concentrating on is a certain prescribed set of things, specifically how to take a direct route and to stay in front of and just to the left of the handler at a steady pace. You don't want a dog that runs some and then stops to smell and eat poop and then runs again. I would say probably easily the biggest thing a guy dog must do is have complete mastery of the intersection in the crosswalk. Yeah, that's really where I mean, stairs and cliffs and things like that are important. But the crosswalk in the intersection is when it comes down to brass tacks, it's the most important thing that a guide dog needs to know how to do perfectly. Right. The way that guide dog trainers have established the importance of this is the guide dogs are taught universally to stop at every curb. Yeah. And that's a good way to you should train your dog to do that. Anyway, I was thinking, Chuck, if you can get your hands on a training manual for a guide dog, just use that. You could use that for any dog and have, like, a super terrific a one dog. Yeah, I bet you could. That sounds like a service. Josh is a one dogs. Yeah. And fingerprinting powder. Yeah, that's a good point. And that's a good way to train a dog. Anyway, like I said, you don't want your dog pulling you into an intersection, even if you can see. But back to guide dogs, that is the most important thing. They have to stop at every curb, sit and while they're sitting. And like I said, these aren't just service dogs because there are other dogs if you have like, epilepsy or if you're in a wheelchair. Sometimes these are specifically for the blind. But they'll come to an intersection and they work together as a unit. The dog stops and the blind person listens. They listen for traffic and they listen for traffic stopping and then they tell the dog, all right, now we can go forward into the intersection. But here's the cool thing, and this is, I think, the coolest thing in this article about guide dogs. The dog doesn't just say, okay, let's go. The dog says, well, you're saying it's okay, but you can't see. So why don't you let me decide for sure if it's okay? Yes. If there's a car coming, even if the handler says Move forward, the dog won't do it. The dog will wait until whatever hazard is coming is cleared and then we'll follow the command. It's called selective disobedience. Yes. It's pretty spectacular. Yeah. When I lived in La. In my first apartment, I lived across from I don't know if it was a dog training school or if it was just a school for the blind, but all the traffic lights around me made noises. Oh, yeah. Like, Wait, no, that would be good. Actually, it was just like these sounds, like these ticking sounds that they knew. Oh, yeah. They knew what it meant. Or go was even better. There's one by Yumi's in my house that say, wait, when you press the button, wait. Oh, really? And then it will say, what street light is now red and what street you can cross, depending on where the intersection is. Is that just a new thing or is it near a pretty new dog? My voice sounds pretty futuristic. No, but is it tied to the blind or is it just yes, I think that's what it's for. Okay. Because it directs you verbally across what street you can take. Right. Wait. And it's funny because you can press the button a few times. It'll be like, wait. Really? That's kind of fun. I'm sure you've never done that, though, right? Well, what else is there to do while you're waiting for a crosswalk light? Shaywalk that's right. You can get a ticket for that in Los Angeles, by the way. Yeah. It's a way of life in New York. Yeah. Don't do it in La. Another thing the dog has to do is to know how to bring the handler to an elevator button. Set of elevator buttons, sure. Yeah. Stop at stairs. Very nice. At the bottom and the top until told what to do. Lie there quietly when the handler is sitting wherever the handler is. That's a big one. Part of being a guide dog is you just have to just cut out all of the other distractions that would drive any other dog bonkers and just sit there. Because the first time a guide dog acts like a regular dog in a public setting, guide dogs everywhere have a bad name. That's right. Well, and that's why they look sad to me. Like, I used to take Marta and there was a guide dog frequently on the way home with this lady, and the dog would just lay down under the seat on the subway and just look so sad. But I always had to tell myself, this dog's not sad when that harness comes off, it's playtime. When you say that, it's like tear streaming down your street. I might have teared up a time or two. So, like we said, they work as a team. It's not the handler just giving orders. And it's not the dog just carrying out orders. They have to work together because a, the dog doesn't know where to go. Right. That's the handler's job, and the handler doesn't know when to go. Oh, yeah. What obstacles are coming up? Exactly. Put the two together, you got a pretty great team. That's right. You have the makings of a fine sitcom. So, like you said, after hours, after they're working, when the harness is on, the dogs at work, concentrating. It knows everything to do when the harness is off. It's just like any other dog. It's belly rub time. You're right. A guide dog is both a service dog and the family pet, too. That's right. So really, genuinely don't feel like bad for service animals when you see them out in public. They're treated just as well and even better than other dogs back at home. And from what I understand, they're really enjoying themselves because they're like, concentrating, they're stimulated, they're going places, they're just like sitting at home all day waiting for their owner to come home and let them out for half hour on a leash. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of people who believe that guy dogs leave far more fulfilling lives than the average house dog. Yeah, well, dogs, it depends on the breed. But in general, dogs have jobs. And if you have a poorly behaved dog, that means it's probably a breed that wants a job that doesn't have one or you just got a lemon. One of our dogs is really bad. Lucy's terrible. She's 13 and she's still bad. Well, she was bred to be a car dealer. We haven't taken her to Vegas in a long time. Chuck she is a cat of whoa, though. And they're herding dogs. And she needs a job, basically. She's never had a job, so her job has been to poop in the house and to eat books and furniture and stuff like that. What kind of job are they supposed to do? Well, the catahulas were herders, like sheep herders and things. Did she hurt you guys around the house? Like, does she try to make sure you're all in the same room at the same time or no. Okay, so let's talk about the process of schooling a guide dog. They're usually free. They will pair people up. They're generally nonprofits who run on donations. Yeah, if you wanted to feel even better about guide dog schools, it's free. Yeah. You don't have to pay $2,000 for your well trained guide dog. They will pair you as a person that can't see with a great dog for no charge in general, although it could be a lot of money in that you start up a private one. Josh's dogs. Yeah, sure. You could get a free one, but if you want to really give one, you have to pay for it. So the schools are set up and pretty much handled the whole process from soup to nuts, which includes breeding them. Sometimes if they're like really great guide dogs, they might go into a breeding program afterward. I have the impression that most major guide dog schools handle their own breeding. Yeah, probably. So they arrange the puppy raising program, which is where it all starts, which we'll get into in a minute. They evaluate these dogs along the way. They train them once they're ready. They train the instructors, they train the handlers, they match the dog with the handler, reevaluate them after a while, and eventually retire the dogs, which is very sad and happy. Yes, which we'll get to that, too. That's at the end. But you're talking golden retrievers labs. German shepherds are generally who you're going to see because they're all whipsmart and generally pretty nice, loyal, obedient, very trainable and confident, too. That's one of the number one, again, qualities of a guide dog, is self confidence. And that self confidence is built up as a puppy. That's one of the main things in a pretraining guide dog raising person. Yeah. I think Alicia Hood wrote this. She interviewed no, this is a Tom Harris joint. Oh, was it? Okay. Tom interviewed someone at a place called Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York, and we're going to be referencing them a lot. As far as or that's who we're talking about when we throw out some of these common stats. Like 20% of the original puppies aren't suitable for to even enter the program. Like, they start weeding them out really early. They sell them as pets if they're part of that 20%. Or they may be okay for service dogs, but not good for guide dogging. So they'll maybe send them to another organization that will help people, like with epilepsy or wheelchair or something. Yeah. The ones that do make it, though, the ones that are like, okay, you're a six week old puppy, and we can tell already that you are probably going to be worth a shot, so we're going to send you into training school. Pretraining school puppy raising is what it's called with just regular people. You can go out and do this if you have the time and you have the patience and you have the resources. You can actually get puppies to the point where a year later, you will then turn them back over to a proper school. A year to a year and a half, depending. Yes. And along the way, you're going to be trained sure on how to raise a puppy according to the standards of the school. They're not just going to say, here's a puppy, don't screw it up. There's usually weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings with other puppy raisers where all the puppies get together to ensure they're socialized, to update things, to make sure everybody's on the same page with raising their puppies so that there's evaluations. And like we said, what they're trying to do is they're not training the puppies at all. Right. The main point of puppy raising is to start to set up how a puppy can become confident, make it feel good about itself. And I take that back. They are training themselves. They train them in the basics. Sit, stay, lay down, that kind of thing. Yeah. Nothing advanced, just good basic obedience. Exactly. And then they're also getting the puppies used to the idea of training for extended periods of time on a daily basis. And they're doing that by taking the dog all over the place. Anywhere that they can get a dog into. They're going to take this dog to expose it to new experiences every week. Yeah. And after a certain amount of time, they'll get their little coat that says, I'm a puppy dog in training. Very cute little situation there. And that's when they can really take it anywhere they want to go. As I understand it not necessarily right. By law, you can't you're supposed to ask. Right. But for the most part, it's like yeah, but socialization is a big deal. Like you said, they try to expose puppies to at least five new experiences a week. So everything from other dogs being around to being in a shopping mall to going to Jim Bury and having screaming kids throwing their poop all over the place. I would guess so. Actually, I don't know if I'd take a puppy to be trained to Jim breathe, that's probably like the proving ground. Yeah, they can ignore that. But basically what they want to do is develop a good relationship with a dog which will eventually transfer to their handler. And we were talking about learning obedience, like just basic obedience. All guide dogs are taught. Not with treats. Yeah. And there's a very good reason why you don't want to teach a dog with treats. Sure. Because if you have a guide dog, that's like food as a reward, and I think a lot about food. As a matter of fact, you could say, I'm fixated on food. You got your dog voice. Yeah. And you take that guide dog into, like, a diner. Yeah. Or a nation's. That guy dog is going to have some real problems concentrating. Yeah. So you use praise and then correction through just a tug on a leash. Yeah. That's typical. Like Caesar Milan stuff. Yes. One of those two. I saw one the other day where he was training a dude. He was scared of dogs. An adult. He had grown kids. He was in his probably late forty s, and he was still frightened of dogs. And it was like every stupid episode of that show, very emotional. Well, that music is pretty oh, man. So ratchet up. Right at the right time. 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. Wait, hold on, Chuck. Yeah? I think we should do a little public service for our listeners out there and teach them the Whiz bang, a one no fail method of house breaking a dog in as little as one day. All right, let's hear it. Do you want me to do that? Yeah. My dog poops every day and eats it herself, so I've done a poor job. Buckley, peace. When it Thunders. Do you have a Thunder shirt for him? Yeah, we call it Thunder, buddy. It helps a little bit. But if we're not home and it's Thundering, he'll pee. Do you give him sedatives or anything? No, I just clean up the pee. Got you. Okay. All right. So if you have a puppy, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I don't know if that's true or not, but with a puppy, it's easier. I think that should be you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Come on. I don't know if that's true or not. Semicolon with a puppy, it's easier. That should be the full adage. That's the a one slogan. So you take your puppy outside once an hour? Pretty much, and you take them to the same place outside, and you wait until they finally start to go. And when they go, you say puppy's name, insert it here, do your thing. Yeah. Or whatever you choose to say. And then you praise that dog like it just saved your life. And then the next time, you take the dog out again and you wait. You do that a couple of times, and then maybe by the third or fourth time, you take the dog out to the same place and you say, Puppy, do your thing, and that dog will probably peer poop on command for the rest of its life. Yeah. I say Go potty. And it works still. Yeah. Especially when it's thundering. Yeah. Go potty. He's like, Dude, perfect. And again, the reason why you want a dog that will only peer poop on command is because, again, you can't have a guide dog pooping in public, because people will be like, we need to legislate guide dogs. Yeah. Dog poop in a library. Yes, exactly. This lady over here is rubbing against the dog while it's pooping. Yeah. Plus, you don't want your dog taking a big dump in front of Forever 21 because little kids at the mall will be turned off by that. So, like you said, puppies are evaluated every few months during training. And eventually, like we said, in about the year and a half mark, the saddest day ever happens, and you have to take that puppy that you raised and turn them over to a school. And they did an interview with a lady who raised a dog named Sonar. Her name is Mary Container. Yeah. Sounds like she does this a lot. And she had a really good attitude. She's like, here's how I look at it. I had three kids, and I raised them and eventually sent them out into the world, so I'm going to do this with this dog. And they provide a service. And we don't look at it as losing this dog. We look at it as like we've given someone a gift of a well trained puppy, and a lot of people will get another one right after that and start all over again. Yeah. I think also, once you prove yourself as an able and capable guide dog, puppy Razor, they'll keep coming back every time to ask you if you want to do it again. Yeah. And you may. 1 day, actually, maybe one day soon get that dog back if it gets kicked out of the program. Yeah, because like you said, 20% right off the bat aren't even trained as puppies. Of the ones that go through puppy training and are brought back after twelve to 18 months, 50% of those will just be turned down. Yes. And a lot of times they'll offer them back to the original puppy raiser, say, hey, do you want this dog? You failed. Would you like the dog back as a token to commemorate your failure? Or the sweetest thing ever? Perhaps when that dog retires, you might get it back. Yeah. Usually if the person who has the guy dog yeah. The handler the handler can't because they need another guide dog after that one retires. If they can't keep two dogs, keep the other one as a pet, then I think you have a first shot if you rate it as a puppy. Yeah. Can you imagine raising this puppy, giving away, and like, ten years later getting it back? Kristen the lion or something. Yeah, that's right. So once your puppy has been raised and it goes to regular school, they're going to basically reinforce and train everything they've already learned and then introduced all the serious parts of schooling. Like, here's an intersection, here's a cliff. Here's stairs. A lot of the schools have fake intersections built, so they can really do, like, hands on training there on the campus. Right. And this is like intensive training. This isn't like whenever some burnout who lives at the school gets around to it. This is intensive training, like, every day from multiple people, one of whom the dog trainer, the master trainer is actually assisted by other apprentice trainers. It's a very intensive month long training. Yeah. About six months, I think. Yeah. And that's after a year to a year and a half of puppy training. So by the time a handler gets it, that's a couple of years old. Well, not only is there so there's puppy training, six months of intensive dog school training, and then when the handlers finally matched, there's a whole month where the handler and the dog are trained together. Yeah. And the matching process takes a little while, too. They don't just throw any dog with any person, just like adopting any dog. It's got to be a good personality match for you. Right. So, Chuck, let's go back to dog training school. We got a little excited. Okay. We're back in school. Right. So like you said, a lot of places will have their own intersections built. Simulated. Yeah. The first step before they ever get to that point is learning to walk like a guide dog in a straight line. A little forward, ahead of the handler and slightly to the left. Up and to the left. And this is a big one. The guide dog has to be taught to think of the world in human size. Not dogs I view any longer, but human size because apparently they pick up pretty easily. Like, well, there's a garbage can. I need to make a wide arc around the garbage can so that the guy I'm leading doesn't run into the garbage can. But what about that narrow crevasse that I can fit through? No problem. But my blind guy is a big fatty. Is there a way he can fit through there? Look at this guy. Exactly. I'm going to have to go around the block because he can't go down this alleyway. Right. A dog has to think in terms of its world like that, and that's enormous to be able to train something like that and for the dog to be able to learn like that, that's just really my head is off, like over and over again. I'm just not even putting it back on for the rest of this episode. Yeah. The one that really knocked me out was the headroom. Like, the dog, even though it's two and a half feet off the ground, will be able to look up and say, this guy might or lady might bang her head on this low hanging beam. I shouldn't go into the sewer. It shouldn't go in there. Stay out of the sewer. So that's just amazing. Like, the dog has to look up and know how tall the owner is and gauge how low that beam is. Yeah. Unreal. That matched again with the most spectacular thing in the world selective disobedience, stopping at all curbs, all stairs, learning all of the commands. Go to the right, go to the left, forward. You? Me and I watched Short Circuit last night. Yeah. Holds up pretty well. Except it's just as crappy as it was when it was, for sure exactly. The Fisher Stevens character, the Indian programmer is so racist because it's a white guy doing, like, the worst Indian impression ever. Like Mickey Rooney and what's it called? I have no idea. Breakfast at Tiffany's. He played Mr. Moto or whatever. The Chinese guy. Yeah. I have to watch that. Very famous racist portrayal. But anyway, they couldn't get Johnny Five to come forward. Ali shit. He couldn't until she stumbled upon forward. She's like, Come here, come this way. Walk. And he was just standing there and she's like, Forward? And he's like, oh, forward goes forward. So guide dogs and sentient robots, you have to say forward from the right. So we said before, 20% of the puppies are weeded out off the top. Out of those puppies who go to school, about those are kicked out of school. And then finally, once those remaining are in school, only about 72% of those graduate. So they really weed out. Say, out of 400 dogs that go through puppy training, you got like 140 that eventually graduate and go on to be matched with a handler. And there are a few things that will weed a dog out, even if they're pretty good, if they're, like, aggressive toward cats or something that'll weed them out. So they really get the cream of the crop. Drug problem, drug problems, gone. They don't want any drug abusers in there. No. So they get the cream of the crop at the end, make sure they're compatible with their handler, train the handler with the people, and then boom, it's got a match made in heaven. Yeah. In the article, Tom Harris says, like, if you're taking a first time handler, somebody who hasn't had a guide dog before, right. By the time the handler comes and you're putting it together with the dog now, you're basically in people training mode. Your guide dog is already trained. The process is training the handler in the commands that the dog already knows, training the handler how to walk, and basically taking this person and this dog and teaching them how to work as a team. Yes. And the dog has this their new master. They've had their instructor for six months or more. So it takes a little while to adjust to the fact that, hey, this is my new alpha dog. Yeah. And usually it takes, I think, on average about a month. That's about the time that set aside. And so these nonprofit guide dog schools have facilities for blind people to come live while they're spending a month learning how to work with their guide dogs. And some of them have dorms. That's pretty cool. That's very cool. And again, we should say all of this is free. The nonprofit group is shouldering all of the financial burden the puppy raisers. They're given a stipend for food all vet bills are paid by the guide dog school. Everything that has to do with the training and the raising of these dogs is paid for by these nonprofit groups. Amazing. If you're looking for a place to leave an inheritance, you could do worse than a guide dog school. Yes. Josh is a one dog school. Right. I'll give you my tax information if you email me directly. So if you want to be an instructor, it's going to vary depending on what school you're going to try and go to. But generally you have to have two to three years experience as an apprentice, supervised apprentice, and then different states have certification processes. You're probably a college graduate. Even though the job doesn't pay, it's still really hard to get this job. People want to do this. It's wait listed a lot of times, not a lot of openings, and it's a tough job to get. It's very demanding physically and emotionally, and it's a real challenge as a trainer, but super rewarding. Sure. Wouldn't you think? Yeah. And if you are interested in becoming a master trainer, from what I understand, the best route to take is to start by being a puppy raiser. Work your way up to apprentice trainer and then to master trainer. And who knows, you may just feel like topping out at puppy raiser. Anybody can do it. File an application. Have to be pass, of course. Yeah. They got to screen you. I would imagine you I don't see how you could have a job like a regular. No, it's probably yeah. Because if you're exposing a dog to five new things a week yeah. I guess you could balance the two if it was, like, my work and this puppy, but even still, I don't know. I would think you'd probably get bumped off a lot easier. Sure. And they're screening you to make sure you're, like, a super awesome person. Right. And you're not like, I'm going to expose them to the back of my hand. Do you have, like, stains on the sleeveless under shirt that you wore to the puppy raising application meeting? Yeah. Give me like, four of them puppies. I'll train them good. They may pass you by. Yeah. Anybody can do it, I guess, is what we're trying to say. Almost anybody. Yeah. I don't know how heavily they screen as far as, like, if you have kids or you can have other dogs, even other puppies, but your puppy has to be, I think, seven months old. And I guess the whole point is they have to deal with those distractions. Right. Anyway a bad thing. Yes. That's exactly what the mind thought processes behind that. And like we said, they retire generally eight to ten years old, although that doesn't mean they're like, old and feeble. It just means it's probably time to get a new guide dog. Right. They are sharp mentally, typically, but they're starting to slow down a little bit, and they have to be able to keep pace with their handlers. So yeah, I think about eight to ten is the usual age that they're retired. Yeah. And like you said, they'll offer it to the handler. If the handler's like, yeah, I can handle keeping this dog and still get my new guide dog, then great. If not, they may offer to the original Puppy Razor. Or you might be lucky enough. It's another waitlist deal. People want to adopt retired guide dogs because they're pretty much the best. Yes. And you may not have as much time with them, but you're providing them with, like it's almost like taking in an old person and giving them something great in their twilight years. Right. Like just letting them whipped cream right out of the can anytime they want kind of thing. Poop wherever you want. Sure. And they're like, Dude, what's wrong with you? Poop into my hand. The dog just thinks you're crazy. Dog is like, I remember I used to work yeah, he asked me to do things like that. I love that blind guy so much more. I can't even mention it on this, I think. All right, you got anything else about guide dogs? This one's a little wackier than I thought it was going to be. Sure. Okay, well, if you want to learn all about guide dogs, you can type guide dogs into the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for Friends a message break. Hit the jingle. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep let students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K Twelvecom podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. Now, Chuck, it's time for listener mail. That's right. And this is dogcentric. It just worked out that way. This is from an Er doctor whose passion is animal rescue. And her name is Jane m Jeanb. J-E-N-A-B. Never heard that. J-E-N-A-B. Yeah, jenab. So Jane says, I have a charity knitting site, guys, where I donate 100% of the proceeds from selling my hand ended items to an animal rescue in your neck of the woods. Actually angels among us. Pet rescue in Alpharetta, Georgia. Do you remember them? Yeah, how do I know that name either? Maybe. Can dogs detect death? Or can dogs tell when you're going to die? Or can dogs detect illness? Remember the Chihuahua that could detect breast cancer? Yeah, I feel like we talked about that organization in that episode. I think you're right. So Angels Among US in Alpharetta, they rescued thousands of dogs and cats from kill shelters right before being euthanized and found them loving homes. Last year, my knitting site donated $5,000 to their cause, and this year, my goal is $6,000. And this is like she's just knitting, selling this stuff, and giving all the money away. Knitting, knitting, knitting. A few days ago, I lost my 15 year old rescue girl, Rica, japanese for a beautiful girl. I rescued her when she was eight weeks old, and she was with me through marriage, divorce, medical school, residency, and first four years of practice. She moved with me from Denver to Tulsa to Kansas City to Grand Junction, Colorado, to Mendocino, California, and back to Denver. Her loss has broken my heart, but it has also inspired me to work even harder to accomplish my goal for other homeless animals, including asking for help spreading the word. Guys, I would love it to make you both some hand knitted hats for the winter if you think you'd enjoy them. The links to my page on Facebook and to Angels Among US are below. You can see pictures of the hats, baby hats, dog sweaters, all kinds of things I can net. Thanks for your consideration, but more than anything, thanks for a fantastic podcast that keeps me entertained and educated. So this is from Jane. Jane AB, MD. Owner of Jane's Creations. And we would like to challenge people to go out and buy one of her knitted gifts because that money is going to go to Angels Among US pet rescue. That is so cool. So go to her Facebook page, facebook. Comjanescreations. J-A-N-E-S creations, Denver, Colorado. Or just check out angelsamungaspetrescue@facebook.com. Angelsrescue. And let's help her reach that goal of $6,000, because that's pretty awesome. Let's do it. Let's make it an official SYSK thing. Okay? And hey, you know what? Jerry adopted her cute little dog Tuli from Angels of Mines doing with the drunk couple, doing that? Washed out a goddard. Yes, the tweaker. Yeah. So we have a personal connection, too. Let's do it, Chuck. Let's make it an officialssysk thing to raise some money for this. Yeah. So go to facebook. Comjanescreations. And Janet corresponding with her own email. I was very sad to hear about Rica, but she's got other animals because she's an animal crazy person, just like me. Nice. Animal crazy people are the best crazy people around. Agreed. If you want us to help try to raise some money for a very worthy cause via you get in touch with us, we're going to have to check you out, make sure you're legit, make sure you're not making money off of other people's goodwill. Yeah. Hecky. And we get a lot of these, so unfortunately, we can't get everyone on the air. But we do our best. We try. Yeah. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at syscapepodcast. You can join us on facebookcom stuffycheanow. You can send us an email directly, and you can join us on our website, which is pretty awesome. It's called Stuffyoushineo.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 Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-03-30-sysk-shroud-of-turin-final.mp3 | The Shroud Of Turin: No Ordinary Bed Sheet | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-shroud-of-turin-no-ordinary-bed-sheet | The Shroud of Turin is no ordinary bed sheet. Some think it's the burial cloth of Jesus. Others think it's an amazing piece of artwork. The truth is, we'll probably never know what it really is. The mystery of the Shroud of Turin awaits you... | The Shroud of Turin is no ordinary bed sheet. Some think it's the burial cloth of Jesus. Others think it's an amazing piece of artwork. The truth is, we'll probably never know what it really is. The mystery of the Shroud of Turin awaits you... | Thu, 30 Mar 2017 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=89, tm_isdst=0) | 43059502 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know what that means. Yes. That means it's time to let people know about your favorite podcasts. Just to share the sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right. It's tr y pod side still in nascent industry. A lot of people don't know what podcasts are, and it helps everybody out if you would go out and just say, hey, family member. Who I see it Thanksgiving once a year. You should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and here's how to get it. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be our show, just any podcast you like in general that you think someone else would like. Just share it. Yeah. So get on board the tripod train. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across from me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Looking so sharp today, dude. Wrapped in shark wrapped in my hearing bone linen. I thought that was an infinity scarf you're wearing. It like an infinity scarf. That's the second infinity scarf joke you've made. Although one was live on stage. Edit it. Yeah, you sort of accidentally made fun of the lady there on the first. Yeah, some lady was like, what's wrong with infinity scarf? And I looked over, and lo and behold, she was wearing an infinity scarf. I backpedaled from that pretty fast. I don't get why is it called infinity scarf? Because it looks as if it never ends. I think it's a scarf that is sewn together. It's like a ring. Okay. Not a good name for it for not a great invention. Like an infinity pool that never ends. You can swim and swim forever. It looks as if I just call them rich person pools. Yeah. Not like my above ground pool in the back. The rustinator right next to the trampoline. Yeah. All right, I think we've insulted enough people. Well, that was a Simpsons reference. Technically, they insulted people first and the hick. Yes, we did. Anyway, let's talk shroud of turn. Chuck, are you familiar what made you pick this? The Easter? No, it's just timing. Although, heck, that's great timing, huh? Seriously. To be honest, I was listening to an episode of WTF with Mark Maron, and it's an older episode. You get all of our ideas from Mark Marin do. I'm growing a mustache. Well, I've grown it. I'm just going to shave the beard. Right. Yeah. He was interviewing William Friedkin, the director. Right. And it turns out it's quite chatty. Did he not stop talking the whole time? He talked a lot. Wow. It's a really good interview. Well, yeah. That's what you want out of an interviewee. Yeah, sure. But he saw the shroud of Turing in person, and he described the experience, and I thought, Why haven't we done one on that? That's pretty important. What serious relic. What was his reaction to it? He wept. So that's actually something that's called Jerusalem syndrome. Yeah, he was incredibly moved and he's not especially well, he talked a lot about Jesus specifically, but said that he's not religious, but he really has a thing for Jesus. But he doesn't identify as a Christian. But he really is a big fan of Jesus in his work. A Jesus file, which is sure, a lot of people like that, I think. Yeah. There's even Messianic Jews. Jews for Jesus. Yeah. And apparently William freakin. I mean, by all accounts, Jesus, the historical figure is a pretty stand up guy. Sure. And I think let's just stop dancing around this. Okay. We're not a religious podcast. Oh, we're not? No. Every time we've ever done a religious episode, we've gotten so much blowback from every single thing we've gotten wrong that we're like. Our structure is not really set up to podcast on religion very much. The Shroud of Turin is such an interesting and contentious flashpoint where science and religion meet and butt heads yeah. Big time. That we just couldn't possibly pretend like it doesn't exist. It's too interesting. I agreed. And I can imagine that William freekin wept when he saw the Shroud of Turn. I would love to see the Shroud of Turn myself. I have no idea what my reaction would be, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if I did weep when I saw it. Sure. Whatever the shot of Turing is, it is probably the most venerated object in the world. Yeah. Perhaps it's at least among the top two or three. Give me that. Yeah. And the idea that so many people look at this thing with love and awe and amazement that it somehow imbues it with the very stuff that it's venerated for in some weird way. And I can imagine that even as an atheist, you would get hit by that. Well, it would be, to me, like looking at a great painting or something. Not to say that it is a painting, even though some people say it is a painting, which we'll get to. But you know what I'm saying? Like, just moved by seeing the moon and Elisa. Yeah. Or being like, I thought it was bigger than that. Yes. I was a little underwhelmed. Well, that's the same thing that Jerusalem Syndrome typically happens when you go to a very holy site and you're overcome. But it can also happen when you're looking at art as well. All right. If you don't know what it is and your hearing is going on and on about crying throughout a Turing, it is a 53 square foot piece of linen rectangle. I think it's about three ft by 14ft. Yeah. And it is, like I said, herringbone twill, faint brownish image. And we'll get into some of the more interesting, finer points, but when photographed, the negative image is a very clear image of a man naked man with his arms folded over his groin area. Tastefully, beard, mustache, shoulder length, hair parted in the middle. And if you grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, looks like that picture of Jesus hanging on the wall that I grew up with, or your friend that you went to that 311 show back in, there are stains in areas on the linen consistent with crucifixion wounds. Yes. Which we'll get to because it's very important. All of this is I feel like we're going to be teasing this out throughout. Well, let's stop. Let's start at the very beginning of all this. Okay. If you're a believer that the shot of Turing is a legitimate religious artifact, that is to say that Jesus Christ was wrapped in it after his buried in it right. In Jerusalem. And that is indeed his image. So when he died and this is Jesus we're talking about, still not William Freakin. Right. He's still alive, right. Is he? Yes. When Jesus died and was interred or entombed I'm sorry, after three days, his apostles went and checked on him and they found he wasn't there. Right. He had ascended into heaven. This just happened to be what we now celebrate as Easter. Yeah. And boy, really? This is going to come out right around then, isn't it? Yeah. And Easter celebrates among Christians the resurrection of Christ. After his death, he dies crucified on Good Friday. He is found to have been resurrected up into heaven on Easter Sunday. Jesus wasn't there. His body was gone. But according to legend, they found shrouds. Right. Still there. His burial shroud. So the idea is that his burial shroud was taken out of his tomb and venerated from the get go, basically held onto and moved from Jerusalem out to where did it make its second trip to? I believe from there it went straight to Turkey, Constantinople. And it was there for several hundred years. Right. It was in the possession of some of the sultans there. Yeah. And then the Crusaders came along and said, we'll be taking that and whatever else we want. Yeah. And we're going to move it to Athens, Greece. And it was there, or actually, I don't know if the Crusaders took it. Maybe it was smuggled out, but Crusaders sacked the town. I saw both. Okay. Well, the history is a bit murky until the mid 14th century. Right, it is. And you would think that if the Crusaders had taken it, they would have taken it back to Europe because that's where they hailed from. They wouldn't have taken it down to Athens, Greece. But supposedly it spent several centuries between the Crusades and about the 13th century in Greece, and somehow, someway, it made its way to France. Right. Yeah. A French night. And I think this is where it gets a little more solid and it travels. Jeffrey Descharne took it to France, about 130 miles outside of Paris, and eventually it made its way to its final home in Turin, Italy. And it's been there ever since. Yeah. The cathedral. St. John the Baptist. Yeah. 1578 is when it landed there, and it's still there, and you can go look at it. I think it went on tour for a little while within the last few years right. With Van Halen. Yeah. It was on display as part of a traveling exhibit. Was it traveling or was it just on display in turn? No, I think it traveled, but I'm very surprised. But here's what I'm going on is William Friedkin's account. Oh, gosh. So I'm not sure. But I do know that more people saw it in the last few years than ever before. Yeah, ever before. Very recent times. Because apparently for many centuries, it was on public display. Yeah. You just have to go to Turin right. Go into that church. Right. And they would probably ask you a series of questions before you entered. Right. And as you exited, what kind of fish is this? The Jesus fish. Come on back. The Catholic Church does not have an official stand on the authenticity of the Shroud, but John Paul, the Chokester in, said, we trust science, basically, to keep studying this thing. Yeah. The Church, I think, used to have an official position on it until, I think, around 1988. And they said, you know what? Whatever it is, we still believe that you Catholics or Christians should venerate this thing because at the very least, it's symbolic of Christ's suffering on the cross. Right. But we're not going to say either way, we're the Catholic Church. Thank you. Goodnight. I think it's how it ended in transmission. That's how Pope jump ball into all of his speeches. All right, let's take a little break here. You want to? Yeah. And we'll talk a bit about the early science, the Shroud of Turn. So, Chuck, we were saying, as far as the Catholics are concerned, the Shroud didn't really exist until 1353 when Joffrey de Charnay came up with it. Right? Yes. So that's the beginning of its documented existence, that the Shroud of Turn at least goes back on the record to 1353, which makes it pretty awesome in and of itself. Right, sure. And for centuries and centuries, people saw it, people looked at it, I'm sure they kissed it and wept over it and everything. And then it wasn't until, I think, the 19th century, or at least the 20th century, that it was really started to move out of public display and started to be cared for and preserved a little more, I think. And that's when science kind of started to come around. Specifically starting in 1898. Right. Yeah. That was the first. If you look at just the regular image of the Shroud of Turin, not the negative photographic image, you sort of see an image of a person. But in 1898, like you said, there was an amateur photographer in Italy named Sakunda Piya. That means the second PIA. He had an older sibling. He took a picture. He was first to no, Primo. Primo. That's right. Have you ever seen Big Night? It's Stanley Toocci movie. Great movie. Yeah. Sicondo and Primo. Yeah. Man, I want to see that again. I haven't seen it since it was out. Have you ever heard that FAM? Keith Janssen, the actress? Yeah. Does her name mean female or girl in Danish? I have no idea. I think it might, because that means her name is Girl Jansen. Interesting. That's what her parents named her, if that's what that means. Sorry. That's okay. So Sekundo took this photo when he was developing it. He saw the reverse negative and went, wow, mamma mia. And what he saw was that much more clear image of a man of the likeness of a human being in much more detail. He was accused of a forgery, of course, out of the gate. And I think it wasn't fully clear until the 1930s when more photographers did the same thing and they were like, It's just a negative image. Right? Let the guy up. Yeah. Like, all right, fine. You win this round, Sekundo. Yeah. So this negative image really kicked off, like, an even greater interest in the shroud of turn. I think up to that point, people of science had just been kind of like, yeah, sure, that's exactly what it is. It looks definitely like a burial shroud. Right. When they saw that, though, that negative, it's really difficult to avoid the fact that it is clearly the image of a man like you described at the beginning. Yeah. It's not Jesus on toast. No. It's not a Rorschach test or on the wall of the house I'm demoing. Right. Or this grilled cheese I made. Yeah. It's very clear. No, it is. And it's universally recognized as that it kind of looks like this. That's what that is. So much so that even skeptics say, well, then it's just a painting or something like that by some artists. Right. But just like that 1898 photograph by Sekona's, our new techniques and tricks and software that we use as far as photography goes and images go, is starting to unlock even more weirdness of it, too. Right? So if you take the lightness and darkness patterns and turn them into. Like. Three dimensions. It actually reveals very clearly the three dimensional shape of a face. Which is kind of surprising because that would mean that if it were a painting. Somebody had to have painted on a face with just the right amount of darkness in places where that would have been closest to the cloth and a lighter amount in places that would have been further away from the cloth. So that when you did look at it in this light gradient map, it would appear in perfect three dimension. That's a bizarre little thing, don't you think? For sure. As far as real study. It took all the way until almost 19 70. 19 69, when scientists could finally I mean, for decades, people had done what they call indirect analysis. So basically, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking about it, and I'm talking about it, but as far as actually getting your hands on it, it was like you said that they needed to preserve this thing. So they brought in a team of scientists to say, hey, how do we preserve this thing? We'll let you touch it. And they all went, Sounds good to me. Touch it with your eyes. So they formed the we're always laughing about how the acronyms work out. Perfect. This is not that. This is not that. The Shroud of Turn Research Project or stirp. They had five days of continuous access in 1978. Like, 24 hours a day for five days. Yeah. So this is nine years after the first scientists were allowed to touch it. I guess they formed this thing. And of course, what they did was they didn't say, like, all right, we'll work eight or 9 hours a day, kick back, have some dinner, and then sleep, get up and start over. Have one of those eight course Italian meals. They split up into teams so they could work non stop around the clock. They have 33 members from all over the spectrum of science, 20 major research institutions, along with a team of European scientists who observed I guess they sat there with their arms folded, and just, like, every ten minutes, they were the ones that brought the good espresso. The US. Led team were like, we don't know where you get that around here. Not the kind of Espresso you spit out into a napkin. Like, what was that? It was in Mall Holland Drive with a great scene. So good. So here's what their report said. We need, like, a bombshell effect here. Okay. Quote, The Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourge crucified man. Yeah. A whip with several flays on the end of and I think it has rocks or something tied onto the end of the flays. It's terrible. Very bad crucifixion. We could do a podcast on that. Yeah. Something that came out of this research for me was you have to be a real Sob to crucify a human being. Yeah. Whether it's the son of God or some criminal. Criminal. Sure. Whatever. The idea that the Romans used to do that is just it makes my ear bleak. Slow torture until you die. But just variety of ways. The worst kind. Yeah. So they continue to say it is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. And despite this, they said it is a mystery because no combination of physical, chemical, biological, or medical circumstances can adequately account for the image. Right. That's their official report from that first scientific inquiry. Yeah. Published in and these definitely were men of science. But the Stirps team was also, and it's still today is criticized for, I guess the way it's put is there a team of scientist believers, like they were all legitimate scientists, but they also legitimately believed the try to turn was the burial shroud of Christ that had been some way or another miraculously imbued with Christ's image upon his ascension to heaven. Yes. I get the feeling a lot of this research is like, well, let's get a team in here to debunk it, let's get a team in here to verify it. Right. There were skeptics on the STURP team, but they apparently didn't have as full access as the believers did. Oh, really? And there was a lot of like infighting and backbiting among the team. But one thing that's universally agreed on by the members of the team, skeptics and believers alike, is that the Vatican itself did not try to influence the outcome of these tests. Right. At the very least, back in 1978, they were willing to just say, hey, whatever you find is what you find. We're still going to love the shroud no matter what. Right. I thought the thing you were going to say was the one thing they all agreed on was that those STURP T shirts didn't really work out very well. They argued about the name a lot. Yeah. But the sturd team is still their findings are still criticized. And one of the things that's very much criticized is the idea that there's no artificial pigments on the shroud and that the blood stains are actually blood. Right. For an alternative hypothesis or an alternative examination. There's a guy named Walter McClun. Did you run into him? Yeah, in the hallway. Very ironic. Well, he's also very dead, so that's odd. That happens. I should have mentioned it was the ghost of Doctor McCrone. McCrone, I'm sorry. That's it. So Walter McCrone, I was like, is this guy is he legit? He's probably the most legitimate scientist of the 20th century. Oh, wow. Like he published and edited a peer reviewed journal on microscopy and microscopic investigation. It's called this an exclamation point. Yeah. He's a legitimate scientist. Let me just say that. And he did some examination of the terran shroud and he found no, there's actually no blood on this at all. And what looks to be blood is actually red ochre pigment, vermillion, and then a temper binder. Yeah. And this was in the late seventies, early eighty s. And he said basically he could account for everything in there as something that would have been in a paint from the 1350s. Right. Whereas other folks have said, no, actually, that iron in there. That's old hemoglobin. That's from the hemoglobin. And he said, no, it's not. Yes, he didn't bend. So the idea that he did find red ochre and vermilion pigment, you think, okay, well, case closed. Right. This is a great example of the Shroud of Turin. It is not case closed. It's never going to be case closed. No, it's not. Chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists. You can throw every single scientist that you can possibly think of at this thing and they can find wherever they want to find. You're going to have another team who finds the other contrary findings, and neither group is going to read one another's publications except the most hardcore people carrying out these experience. But people like you and I have no idea whether wait, was there blood found on it? Yeah. What were the findings about the red ochre? Did he just surmise that it was red ochre pigment because he found all the stuff that makes up red ochre pigment, or did he actually find red ochre pigment? Like, this is the kind of thing that keeps the shot of Turing a mystery. Yeah. I mean, he's not the only one to have studied whether or not it was blood. There have been other people that said who's at Heller and Adler said, oh, it's blood, and it's AB blood type. Yes. We can even tell you that. Right. And then someone else would come along and say it's not blood. Or if it was, you certainly can't tell the blood type or whether or not it's blood from the person who might have been wrapped in the shroud or blood from someone handling it. That's a big one. Or animal blood. Yeah, there's a big criticism of that, that it was contamination from somebody who was actually analyzing the samples. Yeah. Because as you'll see later on, a lot of people touch this thing over the years. Right. And then other skeptics point to it and say, dude, you can see it's not blood. That's not blood. Blood turns black, or at least such a dark, deep brown over the years that it looks black to the human eye. This looks like blood. That's not what blood looks like once it dries and ages on cloth. So there's a lot of different arguments either side, but neither one is compelling enough to convince the other side that they're correct. Correct. And so it just goes on and on. And I read, I think, a skeptics dictionary post on the charter Turin, and the guy who wrote it just perfect skeptics fashion was basically said, even if you do prove that this is Jesus burial shroud, that Jesus Christ was buried in his burial shroud, it doesn't prove that he's the Son of God, so it will never be settled. Yes. That's not the point of the shroud of Turing. I don't think anyone's saying that this proves that. I think they're just trying to get well, there are two big mysteries. One, is it authentic as a shroud? Who is it? Or, if it's not, how is this thing made? The second thing is called the question of questions. Yeah. So should we take another break? Yeah. All right. We'll talk about that and some other carbon 14 testing and DNA testing. Right. For this. Let's start with carbon tech. Yeah, let's go chronologically. 1988, late 1980s. I'm a junior in high school. Sonny crockett with coke to the guild. I have long bangs hanging in my face. I think I'm a skater, but I'm really not. Same here. I tried pretty hard, but I was never that great. No, that was okay. I was wearing jams. Sure. You were. Like a little version of me. Do you wear jams? Yeah, we all did. Did you ever wear skids or wear those, like, pasture? Pasture? Tony. I don't know. Skids. They were like pajama pants. Clear and simple. Definitely not. They had footies. No, but I mean, they were what you would think of as flannel pajama pants, but they were to be worn like pants. They were a weird fad. Not as weird as the Kabaricis, but they were weird. I saw a guy I try not to judge people on their appearance, but I saw a guy getting on a Delta flight a few weeks ago wearing a pair of oversized baggy fleece Batman pajama pants with these huge, fuzzy animal slippers and, like, a Porsche or a Lamborghini T shirt and mirrored sunglasses. Oh, how cool. He's like a 40 something year old man. So cool. I couldn't figure it out. And that man was Valkyrill. It might have been. All right, carbon 14 dating, 1988. The Vatican said, Go forth and date this thing. Right. That's what I kind of love about how the Vatican treated this over the years. They've always been like, you got some new scientific methods. Let's bring them in here. We're the Vatican. We love science. Yeah. So they sent it to three different labs. University of Oxford Radio carbon accelerator Unit, university of Arizona Go Wildcats and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Go Mountaineers, probably. So this is an interesting case because all three of them found that the Shroud material that they were given dated between 1260 and 1390, right. Long after the Jesus of history lived, and perhaps not coincidentally, right around the time when the Shroud first shows up in the documented record. Yeah. So that, combined with the fact that it was much after Jesus time, led a lot of people in the late 80s say, Case closed. This thing is certainly not the burial cloth of Jesus. No. Now, when somebody comes out with findings like this, the other side sets about trying to take it out as much as possible every way they can. Yeah. There's a lot of really interesting backwards, twisting, turning arabesques that involve logic in a lot of instances. But with this, one of the first ones that came out was the sample was tainted somehow. That was a big one. And then the scientists said, well, how is the sample tainted? And this is where some of the stretching comes in sometimes. Right. One of the accusations is that the samples were tainted by contemporary carbon deposits, which threw off the readings of the carbon 14. Right. Okay. There's a very famous thing that I think maybe Walter McCrone came up with, but it shows it's a graph, and it shows how much 20th century carbon it would take to paint the results from the century Ce. It would take an amount of carbon contamination that weighs more than the Shroud itself weighs. Okay, so that was probably not the case. Yeah. Another thing that some people kind of poopooed about this study was they gave them three control fabrics to test alongside all old stuff egyptian mummy, a medieval newbie and tomb, and a medieval French vestment, ecclesiastical vestment. And all the data from those three, from the three different institutions came out the same, whereas there was a span of about 150 years on the Shroud of Turin between the three, and what they released was the mean of these three. Right. And so a lot of people said, well, hey, your fancy science test nailed these controls, all three of them, but there's a big variance in the Shroud of Turin's results. So they go back to the your stuff was tainted. Another criticism that was proposed was that they had taken a patch from the medieval era that had been used to patch up the Shroud, because the shroud actually was in a fire once when it was in France, I believe. Still. It was folded up in a box, and the chapel that it was in caught fire, and the box caught fire, and the Shroud, miraculously sorry, didn't burn it just kind of got some scorch marks and melted a little bit. They survived. Yes, they are. But they survived this fire. So what the critics of the carbon 14 test said was that, well, you guys chose a part that had been patched up around this time during the medieval age. If so, facto, you got it wrong. And then they probably said, well, why'd you give us that part? Well, they didn't. The carbon 14 report supposedly says that they specifically avoided any part that showed any stitching or patches or anything like that. They did not take a sample from that. And these were very small samples, too. Right. It's not like they cut off the bottom third of it and send it out for testing. Right. All right. So back to what you described. Well, you quoted the description of physicist Palo de Lazero as the question of questions. All right? Forget the fact that this could be the Shroud that Jesus was buried in. Forget all this stuff. How was this thing made? Because no one's been able to recreate this. Like, come up with a process that could recreate this thing because it's got a weird color, and no one can replicate it. Right. And the reason why they're having trouble replicating it is it's not just the color that's tough to replicate. They're. Finding that if you look at the places where it is colored, the thread itself is only just a little bit saturated with this color. Yeah. Like it soaked in a very thin amount. Right, right. This is what's throwing everybody off, apparently. To me, this is the whole key that the mystery swings on. If you are an artist and you are creating this using pigment, your paint should just soak right through at least one thread. This stuff is literally not deep enough to penetrate in an individual fiber, let alone all the way through like a paint would. Yeah. Zero 7 diameter of an individual fiber. That's a very shallow pigmentation. Right. So this is where the big stumbling block is. They're like, how would you do this? One of the proposals is that there's this technique called boss relief. I always thought it was boss relief until yesterday, I do. But it's like if you take an image and you carve it and this is actually pretty well known in the medieval era you can make it out of metal or stone, and you heat it up, and you can scorch an image on fabric. The thing is, to make a scorch that's as shallow as the Shroud of Turin's images, it would have to occur. The shrouded have to lay on the bar relief bus for something like just a minute fraction of a second. Right. And no one can figure out how you would get a good image like you have on the Shroud of Turing if the linen just dropped and was pulled off in less than a second. No one knows how that could possibly be done. Yeah. And that's just one like, there have been many attempts to replicate this over the years, either through science or through people using arts and materials available in the medieval times. Right. Something called acid pigmentation. There's actually a kind of photography, very primitive photography. I saw that in medieval times. Something called dust transfer, the bar relief, and then some have contended it's a Malliard reaction taking place. Okay. Explain. Well, I don't really know fully how they explain that, and I don't think it held up. But that's the reaction in cooking. Like, when you're browning like a meat got you. So I don't know. Well, that actually deepens the mystery rather than solve it. Other people say it could have been burial ointments, ultraviolet radiation. In the Bible, in Matthew, it says the Earth shook, the rock split, and the tombs broke open after the crucifixion. So geologists said it might be an earthquake that happened, and maybe that threw off the radio carbon dating, and maybe there was a blast of neutrons. Right. This image into the fabric. Yeah. And those are geologists, legitimate geologists, but they're also extraordinarily controversial, and most people in their field shun them, wouldn't even talk to them at a cocktail party. The geologist for Jesus. Basically what they're talking about is something called Piezzo nuclear fission. And the idea is that if you crush a rock, the force of it can actually break the atoms apart, releasing a bunch of neutrons. Right. And this Italian geologist's idea is that this earthquake that happened when Jesus died released these neutrons and created this irradiated image of him on his burial shroud. And that's if you take that one line from the Bible completely literally right. And suppose that they didn't mean, like, in a symbolic way. The Earth shook. Yeah. But even if it did, there's no evidence whatsoever that there is such thing as piazza nuclear fission. Right. And then secondly, it even says that it shook when he was crucified, so he wouldn't have even had the burial shroud around him at the time. A lot of holes in that one in particular. But it's a theory. And that's another thing about the shrouded turn, too. It's just learning about all the different hypotheses and all the different suggestions that people have come up with and all the holes that they poke in those suggestions. Yeah. That in and of itself is fascinating to me. Yeah. The physicist De Lazaro tried the ultraviolet light experiment, and he basically said the amount of ultraviolet light you need, quote, exceeds the maximum power release by all ultraviolet light sources available today. So how in the world could someone have done this on purpose in medieval times? So, Chuck, the carbon 14 and the fabric analysis, those were huge, big landmark cases. 1981 and 1988, right? Yes. And then I think things just kind of everybody bickered for the next 1225 years. Yeah, it's a lot of bickering. And finally somebody's like, well, hey, man, we've got this great DNA testing stuff we can do. Let's do something. Let's do it. To the shrouded turn with the DNA test. Yeah. And so what they found out they found out a lot of interesting things that didn't, in the end, lead to any sort of verification of fake or authentic at all. But interesting stuff nonetheless. Right. One is that this thing got around, or at the very least was touched by a lot of people from all over the world, and in return, it touched a lot of people around the world. I would say. So Europe, Middle East, India, africa had DNA from a lot of folks. And it had a lot of plant DNA, too. They tested both. Yeah. And a lot of weird plant DNA showed up on it. Right. So you've got, like, black locust trees from Appalachia and North America. Yeah, that was a little surprising. It's weird. Apparently a very rare Asian pear tree. Okay. Stuff that's found in India. Yeah. Mediterranean clover. That makes sense. Well, yeah. And so does with the human DNA. They found that the heaviest concentration of DNA was from people in the Middle East around where Jesus was buried. So that kind of makes sense. But here's the one I don't get. They said that the oldest DNA was from India, which they say suggested it could have been manufactured in India, because Indians and Europeans didn't have a lot of contact back then. Right. But then I saw someone trying to refute that in the same article. And this is from Life Science, by the way, saying that it could have been when it was on public display is where the Indian DNA came from. That's where all this DNA could have come from. Yeah, but they said that the oldest DNA was from India. So, again, it's just like every time someone uncovers something, there's just another little mystery to it. It seems like. Sure, unless you go back to the carbon dating, and those scientists are like, no, this has stood up to scrutiny over the years. Yeah. And I actually saw a BBC little documentary on the Shrouder Turin, and they went and visited somebody who was there at Oxford when they did the carbon dating, and they were like, no. His mind seemed wide open at the very least, but he was definitely like, no, it was all legitimate, and I've never heard an objection to it. That panned out. Right. You got anything else? I don't. Do you? Well, I think you can probably sit here for hours. In hours. Okay. But we're not going to if it has floated your boat, there's plenty of stuff for you to go read. You can start with a couple of great articles that we used, one from Nat Geo, why Shrouded Turn Secrets Continue to Elude Science. That was great. And live science, like you said. Article called? Is it a fake? DNA Testing? Deepens mystery shot of Turin and plenty of other stuff. Go check out Walter McCrone's site as well. He's got his own site on the Shroud of Turing. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I mention to mention this sendinology is what it's called the Official Study of the Shroud. Really? It has its own ology. S-I-N-D-O-N ology. Nice. We all know how to spell that. O-L-O-G-I-E. Right. If you want to know more about the child, like we said, go start searching, and welcome to the rabbit hole. See the thing? Yeah. In person? Why not? I totally would if I was in your turn. There's steamers that go to Italy still. And since we said Italy, it's time for listening. I'm going to call this divorce upcoming. Hey, guys. My wife Jade and I are huge fans of the show and listen almost every night before bed, but we don't like each other. We have our favorite S y esk moments, but one that made us both laugh like crazy was Chuck's Nerd Gasm. Toward the end of the action figures episode, we rewound the podcast and listen to that part so often, I decided to take a clip, make a clip of it, and set it as my alarm clock zone sound file is attached. It's very short, but played on a loop 15 to 20 times at 07:30 A.m. And you will get the full effect. Now we wake up to your voices as well as falling asleep to them. Long mayor. Great chill. Continue. David. He didn't leave his wife's name, but David and Jade in Newcastle, England. And let's just play this really quick. Let's play it like five times to get the full effect. Let's hear it. Wow. That would wake me up. I sit bold up right, and be like you. Yeah. Good luck with the divorce. Thanks. Sorry, Jade and David. Thanks, Jade and David. You could also bring them together in opposition against us. Sure. Okay. Thanks, David and Jade. Or Dade. That's your couple name now, David. Yeah, either one's good. I like it. If you want to get in touch with us, like Jade and David did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast or I'm also at Josh Clark, Chucks at Charleswchuck Bryant and at Stephaniel on Facebook.com. You can send us an email, stuffpodcast@housestepords.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshehno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
45271838-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-7f2c2552a9e7 | Short Stuff: Safety Pins | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-safety-pins | Safety pins are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. But that’s the genius of their design – they work so intuitively they might as well have come from nature. Instead, they were invented by a man who never went to the trouble of patenting them. | Safety pins are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. But that’s the genius of their design – they work so intuitively they might as well have come from nature. Instead, they were invented by a man who never went to the trouble of patenting them. | Wed, 21 Nov 2018 14:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=325, tm_isdst=0) | 11190659 | 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. Hey, and welcome to the Shorty. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. So let's get started. You must be at least this tall to enjoy this podcast. Remember the anxiety as a kid at amusement parks around that? I do. You just wanted to be a little taller. Now you look at it and you're like, wow, what is that? There are kids that aren't that tall. It just seems so short now. Before, it was like, oh, man, I hope I measure up. You'd, like, grow your hair out. Yeah. To make that extra, like, half inch or something like that. Get your blowout comb. Get your throw up high. It's exactly right. Although, remember, my story is that I was scared of roller coasters until my father finally said, I'm not taking you back here and paying this money until you get on a roller coaster. And then you weren't scared? Well, no, I just went on because I was like, I don't want to not come back. And then I loved it, of course, but he rolled the dice there. Yeah. My dad took me on Space Mountain when I was, like, five or something like that. And I hate roller coasters as a result. Really? Still? Yeah. I'm not big on it. Basically, the same thing happened to you. I don't remember how old she was, but it was Space Mountain. Her dad and we went back to Space Mountain, like, years ago to conquer it together, conquer our fears, and we did it. You got hammered it in tomorrowland, right? Got a board. Yeah, but that has nothing to do with safety pins. No, it doesn't. No. Safety pins actually have a totally different, equally engrossing story. There is a guy who is actually known as the inventor of the safety pin, chiefly because he invented the safety pin. His name is Walter Hunt, and there's a lot of different interpretations of Walter Hunt. I think this How Stuff Works article kind of misses the mark a little bit. Yeah. What's your take? So he was one of America's great 19th century inventors, number one. Number two, he invented the safety pin. If he had just invented the safety pin, that would be something. But he invented the safety pin back in 49. And if you look at his safety pin invention and the safety pin that you would go by today, it's virtually the same thing. Like the guy, right out of the gate, invented a perfect version of his invention. Yeah, this is one of those that's so brilliant in its simplicity, as I imagine he was just tinkering around with some wire, coiled it around itself and said, hey, that acts as its own spring, so it doesn't need to be two pieces. Which is sort of the genius of a safety pin. And then the little clasp. The little safety clasp, that's why it's called a safety pin. Keeps little fingers and big fingers, I guess, and toes and toes from getting pricked and stuck. And it was just a genius little idea. Yeah, it was. The legend goes that he was fiddling around with that wire and inadvertently invented the safety pin while he was just kind of keeping his hands busy trying to figure out how to pay off a $15 debt. I could not find what the debt was for, but it was to a pal. Okay, we'll go with that. But then when he figured out this safety pin was a pretty good idea, he went and patented it. But then he sold the patent to either that friend or somebody else to pay off the $15 debt. But he sold it for like $400. Yeah. Did you do the calculation there? No. What is that today? I didn't. Do you want me to just talk for a minute while you type? I do. Can you do a little tap thing? Yeah, but the point is that $400 back then and we'll get the number in a second, was a great deal of money, but obviously nothing compared to the riches that would have befallen Walter Hunt had he held onto that patent. It would be known as the Hunt pin today, probably. And his great greatgrandkids would be billionaires still, I would imagine. Oh, yeah. If he earned royalties from it and they had kept up the patent. Heck, yes. Or the trademark or something. I'm not sure how they would do it, but I do have a number. Chuck all right, what is it? Drumroll it's about $12,000, which not bad. It isn't bad. But here's the thing. So the guy sold off his patented idea. Sometimes he's reported as not even having patented it, just sold the idea, which is wrong, but so he sold the patent for just twelve grand. He's often very much characterized as like short sighted, maybe just like an absent minded inventor type or something like that. Sure. OK, maybe you can say that with the safety pin. But he also invented something pretty huge to the sewing machine. And this is where it gets kind of like a little cloudy to me. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, we'll clear the clouds out and we'll be back right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there. It can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. 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Okay, so the clouds are still over us, Chuck. We're about to part them. Okay, I thought you were about to say we're going to rain down some knowledge. Oh, that's way better. We should retake this part. Cloudy with a Chance of Knowledge walter Hunt invented the sewing machine, actually, back in like 1833, almost 20 years before he invented the safety pin. And it had like a curved eye needle, it had a shuttle, just basically like the Singer sewing machine would later be. He invented it decades before anybody else was making these sewing machines. And so, yet again, he's criticized for selling this idea without pending it or patenting it and not doing anything with it. The story I saw was that he did come up with this idea and his daughter pointed out that this machine would put a lot of impoverished women out of work and sewers. And he said, oh, well, I'm not going to do anything with this, and chose not to patent it and abandoned the idea so that it wouldn't even be out there for anybody else to pick up and work with. Did he destroy his machine? From what I saw, he didn't even make this prototype. I didn't see that anywhere else but in this article. Yeah, because in our own article, it even specifically says his prototype was wooden, which would lead me to believe that unless someone just was willy nilly making things up. That's got to be true, right? I don't know, but this is what I'm saying. Things are clouded. We parted them some and then they came back. All right, but either way, the reason that you look at sewing machines today and don't see the word hunt on them is just another sort of chink in his armor as a really brilliant guy who didn't see the big picture economically or didn't want to put poor women out of work. Right. Did I just overlook that? Yes. You're saying it was noble. That's how I'm taking it. Well, I hope so. That would be a great you know I like that better than I didn't think it was very good. Right. Exactly. Maybe because it was made of wood. If he did prototype it, I'll say yes, it was probably made of wood. But the reason why it's a Singer is because a man named Isaac Singer came along. There were actually two dudes, two businessmen, Elizabeth and Isaac Singer. And they were in a battle with each other to control this patent. In the couldn't tell is if they legit invented this thing or if they ripped off Hunt somehow. Yes. Not that it would have been Elias Howe. He was the one who held the patent. Isaac Singer was just making machines based on the same designs, ignoring house patent. Because for some reason, somehow, he knew that it was actually William Hunt who had invented the sewing machine decades before. Wow. So they went to court and Isaac Singer said, hunt, come in here and demonstrate that you did this and you can get the patent, and then I'll ignore your patent, too. And the judge actually ruled that, yes, William Hunt was indeed the inventor of the sewing machine, but it was too late to retroactively file a patent. I wonder if there's enough here for a movie. They made one about the guy who created the intermittent setting on the windshield wipers. Yeah, they made one. What's her face. Jennifer Aniston Lawrence. Right. Was in the movie about the inventor lady. Oh, yeah. Joy Mangano. Yeah. So maybe there's enough here. It would call it sew. What? No, you wouldn't. At the end of the trailer, it's spelled out and you would hear the sewing machine and it would sew it out. The title. Maybe this should just be a trailer. So what seems like a working title. Right. That like some producer comes in and changes and gets paid a billion dollars for it. Right. Then it would be called the Isaac Singer follies So the other thing about Walter Hunt, he invented plenty of other stuff, too. A foot pedal alarm to warn people that a streetcar was coming for sure. An Antipodium walking device. Yeah. And I had no idea what that was, but apparently it's like the human fly, like suction cup shoes. Right. It's pretty amazing. And today well, not today, but, say, back in the 70s, if you hung out with punks, you probably saw a lot of safety pins. And you can thank Walter Hunt for that little fashion accessory, too. Yeah. What was the deal? You would put a bunch of safety pins I was not cool enough to do that stuff. So there's a dispute over who came up with this. Supposedly Richard Hell, one of the original punk rockers, he accessorized a lot and he accessorized a safety pin. So some people say, well, it's Richard Hell that came up with it. But apparently Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols disputed that and said that it was actually, out of necessity, to keep the arse on your trousers from falling off. Because they just were beat up clothes. Yeah, because they were gutter punks. Didn't people actually put safety pins through their face? Some people didn't. Walter Hunt did not like that. His ghost was very upset by this, but no one could see that. Wow. So from the safety pin to the sewing machine to Sid Vicious. Yeah. That's the logical order of operation, really. It's American inventors, if you want to. You got anything else? No, I just know that I want to go out and get some anti podium shoes. No, I do, too. Man climb up a building and say, thank you, William Hunt. Let's see. If you want to get in touch with us, just go to our website. Okay, stuffyushino.com. It's got all of our social media links, and you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. 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How Therapeutic Hypothermia Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-therapeutic-hypothermia-works | Physicians noticed centuries ago that people exposed to cold temperatures often have amazing recoveries from serious medical emergencies. Now medicine is learning how to purposefully induce hypothermia in order to buy time to fix otherwise fatal trauma. | Physicians noticed centuries ago that people exposed to cold temperatures often have amazing recoveries from serious medical emergencies. Now medicine is learning how to purposefully induce hypothermia in order to buy time to fix otherwise fatal trauma. | Tue, 05 May 2015 17:54:46 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=17, tm_min=54, tm_sec=46, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=125, tm_isdst=0) | 46786853 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Eager Beaver. Chucker's, brian ready to get his therapeutic hypothermia on. Yeah, baby. I'm chilling. Moving at a glacial pace today. Right? I am. I'm sorry for that. I was actually a poke at the author of this article. Yeah, that stood out to me as well. I've not done yet. Jerry's over there. Now I'm done. Yeah. We were goofing off about this article and how stuff works. There were way too many cold puns for my liking. There's a lot of puns. Lots of them. This article stinks of puns. It reeks. So how are you doing, man? How are you feeling? I'm good. It seems there's a sickness going around the office. Yes. Which I thought we knew here in 2015 that if you're sick, you don't come into work. Right. Especially when you have a liberal telecommute policy. Right. Like we do. I realize that people need to come in and shoot video and record and all that, but come in, you do that and you leave. That's right. And you wear, like, a plague dust doctor's mask the whole time you're here, too. Yeah, I mean, I have a biohazard suit at my desk. Yeah. It has a rip in it. Anyone can wear it has a rip in it. It's a very small rental and cleaning fee. You are going to take a blood sample of mine wearing that thing. And it occurred to me, as you were about to put it on, like, I don't know where that thing has been. Like, that's a real biohazard suit, and Chuck's going to use it to open my skin. Yeah. This sounds very odd. We don't just do this in the office. We did our blood types episode live here in Atlanta, and we actually took Josh's blood type on stage. Because you didn't know it. No. When we recorded the version in the studio, I genuinely did not know it. Yeah. So I took your blood on stage. You trusted me. I did not wear the contaminated suit. No, you just use your dirty hands. That's right. With no rubber gloves or anything. Look at you. You're fine. And you know your blood type now. Yes. Which was A positive. That's right. Like Jerry this guy. Yeah. Pretty neat. We should release that whole live show is just a special little bonus. Yeah. Bonus. That was the word I was looking for. There's nothing special about it is just a bonus. It was special. Yes. It's a good idea. Okay, look for that soon, people. So today, Chuck, we're talking about therapeutic hypothermia, and I am very excited about this. This is my idea of this article. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I don't remember. I guess I first heard of it from that Mosaic article that we both read to The Big Sleep. Awesome article. And if you haven't figured out by now, we have started you on the podcast page for each episode. Put related links on there on our sitestepysheno.com. So that article is on there. There's a bunch of other stuff on there, too, that will cover. But be sure to check out that Mosaic article. It's very neat. Agreed. And that article first introduced me to the concept of therapeutic hypothermia, or medically induced hypothermia is another term for it. I don't prefer targeted temperature management. That sounds yeah, corporate. Yeah, very corporate. The HMO term for it. Like, we'll call it this because it'll lessen the likelihood that we'll get sued or something. Exactly. Yes, I agree. But it's been around for a while, and the idea that exposing people to lower temperatures to allow for better medical interventions, which is the whole basis of therapeutic hypothermia, has been around at least since the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I was interested to find that out. They noticed way back when, in the early 1800s, that troops in battlefield trauma, wounded soldiers, were the ones who were not kept to warm and cozy by the fire are in their tents. Right. They're just left out on the battlefield in the cold. Yes. They actually fared better. And they were like, Wait a minute. And of course, they had no idea at the time what was going on. No, they were like, did you notice that? Yes, I did notice that. They're hardy. Well, back to our brandy. Yeah, pretty much. But they did notice that the ones who were warm did a lot worse than the ones that were left out in the cold, which is super interesting. Yeah. But the real investigation into what was going on there didn't start until the 30s with a guy named Doctor Temple Faye. And he was actually the first guy to write about using therapeutic hypothermia, I think in 1945 was the first paper about it. But he was using it for a full decade or so before then, basically putting his patients in ice baths, opening the windows to their room during the winter, and just basically using any means he could to lower the temperature. I think he was using it on traumatic brain injury patients. Yeah. And I'm sure he did a lot of explaining along the way to family members that were like, hey, can you close the window and warm up my husband here? Right. And then he was like, all right, you want him to die? I think back then, too, he was like, it's the guy is a traumatic brain injury. Really? There's nothing I can do to make it worse, his prospects worse. So why don't you just lighten up their family member? So there was another pioneer in the 50s named Dr. Peter Safar. Safar. And he actually began experimenting around with this in the Er as well, trying to reduce tissue injury and brain damage from a lack of blood flow. And this was mainly at the time in like, stroke patients, cardiac arrest patients, and we'll talk more about it. There's all sorts of well, not all sorts. There are several uses, like cases where you would want to use this and ranging from cardiac arrest to, like a gunshot wound to, I think, what is the infant situation? What's that called again? It is called chuck. It's a type of encephalophymic. encephalophy? Yeah, where the natal basically the blood flow, the lack of blood flow to the brain is cut off for whatever reason. Like maybe the umbilical cord gets wrapped on the baby's neck or what have you. It leads to a swelling in the brain. And they started using it to medical hypothermia to treat that. That's right. And that was in the 50s, right? Yeah, the is when Dr. Safar was doing his work. So this is all kind of going on on the side. And experiments into hypothermia had kind of a bad name, thanks to the Nazis and a little bit also the Japanese in world war II. But the nazis, especially at DA Kau, the concentration camp or the death camp there, experimented using unwilling human subjects. They experimented on the effects of hypothermia on people's bodies. They did all manner of horrible grizzly, gruesome stuff, but they recorded the data. And there was a long debate over the years over whether that data could be ethically used. And on one hand, people were saying, no, it's the nazis. They used unwilling subjects. It amounted to torture in the name of science. And I just used air quotes. Right. And then other people said, well, wait a minute, these people died. And whether they wanted to or not, they were made to be these test subjects, and they gave their lives. We can honor them at least by using the data that was cold from it. Well, once they really dug into the data that the Nazis had accumulated, it was just like rank amateur performing scientific experiments. They followed almost no protocol. They did terrible record keeping of descriptions of subjects and things like that. So it's almost like you just have to toss it out because you just can't trust it scientifically. The data that will start over. But the idea that people were exposed forcibly to hypothermic conditions kind of gave hypothermia a bad name. So these guys experimenting with this stuff, it was fringe science for a while. Yeah. And then it started to come into the mainstream, and then everybody said, well, wait a minute, hypothermia has all these bad side effects. Let's just table it for now. Yeah. In the 50s, too, NASA was doing a lot of work during the space race because the idea was and this is really sort of two parts there's the modern day cooling that's not freezing somebody, basically. Right. And then we also have what's called suspended animation, which we'll get to later. Those are totally different things. Totally different things. But they follow the same process initially. Right. Yeah. Well, sort of. The methods are different, but the same idea, basically, is to slow the body down, slow down the heart rate, slow down everything, your metabolism. Yeah. But NASA was doing this because they put a lot of money into it because they thought two things. One, you could protect astronauts from cosmic rays, and the other is basically straight up alien. Like, we can freeze people on long journeys into space and then unfreeze them when they get there. Right. Which is not just alien. That's a bunch of Sci-Fi movies. No, it's Prometheus, too. But there was a doctor named James Lovelock back in the day. He was freezing hamsters until they froze, and then basically until he couldn't hear a heartbeat. Frozen. Yeah. They were clinically dead. Yeah. And then he would put a little hot tea spoon against their belly and warm them back up, and he found that they were actually okay and he was able to revive them. Some of them. Well, sure, yeah, I'm sure there were losses along the way, but, I mean, even one coming back to life and seeming normal again is pretty significant. It's a significant finding. Yeah. Because basically the idea was planted all of a sudden that hypothermia can kill you or it can preserve you and keep you from dying in an extreme situation. Right. Which is kind of counterintuitive. Like, if you think of people who undergo hypothermia or being exposed to extremely cold temperatures, they're dead. We've all seen The Shining, we know the end. But apparently there's a rule of thumb among Er physicians and staff that there's no such thing as a cold, dead body. Oh, I thought it was measured twice, cut once. It's a little different. It's for the surgeons. Right. No, there's no such thing as a cold, dead body. Okay. You're only dead when you're warm and dead. Right. Because well, there have been some cases throughout the years. The one that's spectacular one yeah. This lady was she with Norwegian? Anna Bagenhome? I don't even know what that is. It's not an, um, loud it's a single circle above. That a that's a it's very Norwegian. Yeah. It's like death metal band name. Oh, totally. So she was skiing and actually, I think she was Swedish, but she was on holiday skiing in Norway. Fell headfirst into a frozen stream and was trapped under ice. Submerged for 80 minutes. Stopped breathing, heart stopped. Drowned. Yeah. She was well known. She didn't drown. They thought she drowned until they reheated her. Ten days they reheated her and she was fine. Like, weeks and months later, she fully recovered. Right. And basically, if you're underwater, warm water, you have a few minutes at most. But what they discovered was, if you actually go into hypothermia, it can preserve your body, which was amazing. And a big breakthrough into, like, hey, maybe we can use this. Right? Yeah. She was one of few a handful of people and we'll talk about some others, too. But what researchers into hypothermia have learned and why they figured out that you're not cold and dead, you're just warm and dead. Is that it's the addition of cold or the exposure to cold that kills you? It's warming back up in the wrong way too rapidly under the wrong circumstances. That's what can kill you. Yeah. It seems like it's a very fine line between we'll talk about the process, but you have to do it just right on the cooling side and the warming side if you want to be successful. Right, exactly. They haven't quite figured it all out yet. This is in a very nascent stages still. It is ridiculously primitive. Yeah. And to the point where it's kind of like if you're a doctor experimenting with this, you would be like, there is 100% chance that your dad is going to die under normal circumstances. We have this one radical technique we can try that might help. Can we try this? And that whether the dad lives or dies after being given medical hypothermia, he's still going to end up as, like, the subject of a major paper that will be written, because that's where it's at right now. Yeah. And I read one doctor said that they think they pretty much know it's super possible and will work. He said, but it's the doing of it that's really hard. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it makes complete sense intuitively. We understand what it's doing. It's just the fine tuning, the nuance behind it that's still kind of a mystery. And the most brilliant doctors say it's just really hard. He said it's really dog gone hard to do. It kind of makes you go, Is that the quote? No, his quote was, it's really dog gone hard. And then my quote was, Good stuff. So we'll talk about medical hypothermia and what it is specifically, in just a minute. All right. So therapeutic hypothermia is basically when you lower the body temperature for various reasons to keep it alive. And right now, what they're mainly doing now, this isn't the second wave, which is freezing somebody. This is just cooling a body before and after surgery to help them increase their chances of survival, basically. Right. Your body typically and they're doing that now on this side, they're just not doing the other quite yet on humans. Right. Yes. So under normal circumstances, your body maintains a normal core body temperature, normative temperature is what it's called. Right. And that's somewhere between, like, 96 and 98.6 degrees, is a normal human core body temperature. Yeah. And all of this is and dude, do you remember when I went on that crazy, weird metaphysical tangent and does the body replace itself? Yeah. Somebody wrote in and said, Check this article out. Like, here's a really great explanation of why things live where life comes from. And it was this idea, it's a physics based idea of life, and evolution. And it says that because of entropy, because of one of the laws of thermodynamics, that atoms will arrange themselves in a way that they can take in energy and dissipate heat in a really efficient manner. And so, of course, atoms are eventually going to arrange themselves into life. It just makes total sense. Right. So being living things like we are, we take in energy and we dissipate heat, and that's what forms our core body temperature. Right, yeah. With therapeutic hypothermia, what you're doing is lowering the metabolic rate through the addition of cold. And so we put out less heat. And by doing that, we're also lowering our energy demand. So that little engine that's going all the time in our cells and our body in general gets slowed down. And it's not altered in any way except for the speed and the energy consumption. It's just slowed down. It's doing everything slower. And you can do that simply by lowering the temperature of the person. Yeah. And it's not just lower. It doesn't need to be faster. Does that make sense? Like, the heart beats slower because it doesn't need to beat any faster. Right. It's not like your body is struggling. Your body is still doing fine. It's just reducing the demand for stuff like blood flow and neurotransmitter action and stuff like that. Exactly. And ultimately, what your heart does is pumps blood. And what your blood has is, among other things, oxygen. And your cells need oxygen to carry out these metabolic processes to burn energy. Right. So if they need less than, your heart doesn't have to beat as much. It's like you said, it's just the normal processes, but on a much slower scale. Right. Pretty awesome stuff. It is. And it's just through the application of colder temperatures. Oh, yeah. And in this case, we'll get to how to do it. But in this case, you're literally cooling the body with ice packs and cold blankets and stuff like that, pre surgery and post surgery. Right. It's not the suspended animation one that we'll get to when they're actually pumping frozen saline through your pains. No, but there are some techniques for medically induced hypothermia that do put in, like, chilled saline oh, really? To chill your body down very quickly. But it's not like replacing your blood. Yeah, I hear you. So there's a couple of applications at this point, and the cases are either involve intervention or prevention. And intervention is when they're trying to prevent further damage from an incident like a stroke or cardiac arrest or sort of the two main ones, and then preventative wise it's to extend operating time because back in the day, you could not operate on well, back in the day, you couldn't stop the heart to operate on it. No. Do you remember we did, like, this day in history about the first guy to ever do open heart surgery? He's a black surgeon in Chicago. Like the early 20th century, I think, and he did an emergency open heart surgery with a beating heart. That guy was totally awesome. Yeah. Champion. This was the case for a very long time and you couldn't stop the heart. They finally invented a machine that basically does the work of the heart and the lungs, called the heart lung machine. Exactly. Where you're transferring blood through this machine and it's removing CO2, it's adding oxygen and it's pumping it back into the body while the heart and lungs are stopped. That's right. Revolutionized open heart surgery. There are problems with it. One of the problems is when the blood comes back in the body, since it's been through this machine, it may have picked up some sort of foreign bacteria, and the immune system sometimes mounts an attack on the blood. So this machine poses its own problems. And alternatively, an alternative method for stopping the heart or slowing the heart is to use medically induced type of thermia. So that's an intervention? No, a prevention preventative use of medically induced type of thermal. But intervention is another way, like you said, and it can have to do a stroke or heart attack or cardiac arrest. Right. Aren't those two different things? I think so, yeah. Technically. Okay. But it's some sort of cessation of the heart pumping blood. And the big problem with that, it doesn't really matter whether your hand is getting blood for a while. The big problem that comes from a heart attack is your brain not getting blood for a while. Right. So here's what happens when blood stops flowing into your brain, right? Yes. And we covered this somehow in How Dying Works episode. Yeah. The dying process. Okay. Because it's not a black and white thing. You're not alive and then you're dead. It comes in many stages. Right. And we talked about the stages of death. Yeah. So what they've discovered is that I'm alive and now I'm dead is what we covered in the How Dying Works episode. Right, yeah. Like dying in your sleep. I mentioned that the other day. Yeah. How, like, nobody died in their sleep. That's just a nice thing. That's a nice way to say they died in their bed. Yeah. Overnight. Overnight, yeah, exactly. So yeah, with medically induced hypothermia, they've been able to extend that time between when you appear to be dead and when you're actually dead. Right. And by extending that time, they can intervene better. Yeah. Even a little bit of time can go a long way. So one of the things that medically induced hypothermia has been shown to really help is what's called return of spontaneous circulation. After you have a heart attack, the problem is your heart and lungs. Your cardiopulmonary system can start working again, but you might not regain consciousness. And in that case, that's a sign that your brain may be in trouble, your cognitive function, you may be suffering brain damage at that moment, yeah. And isn't the stat one in ten cardiac arrests outside of a hospital goes on to live, like, without brain damage? Only 10%. Right. Because you have a very small window, and that window is usually longer than it takes to get to the hospital. Right. So if they bring you in and you are showing signs of ROSC without return to consciousness, too, they may induce medical hypothermia. And the reason why is the heart pumps blood, and blood contains things, including oxygen. Right? Sure. And one of the organs that uses probably the most oxygen of all is the brain. And the brain uses this oxygen to burn energy, basically. It uses it to oxidize glucose. And when it does that, the reason it does that is because your neurons, your little neural cells that fire the way they fire is because they're chemical battery. They're a chemical battery with a stored potential charge. And they do that by keeping a lower concentration of electrolytes inside the cell than outside. So this difference creates the electrical charge that your neurons use to fire. Right, right. On normal circumstances, that's all well and good, but when they stop when they stop getting oxygen, they can switch to anaerobic mode for a little while. So they're still burning energy, but they're like, you need to start breathing again, because this is not very efficient. Yeah. It's like when the emergency lights go on. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration, you get the stuff called lactic acid. Yeah. Lactic acid in and of itself isn't bad, but it can build up. One of the other things that happens, too, when that runs out, is the difference between electrolytes inside and outside the cell stops it evens out. And now, all of a sudden, you have things like calcium, potassium, sodium coming in and out of the cell as much as they please, and the cell is like, what is going on? This isn't good. And releases its store of glutamate. Right. And glutamate is a neurotransmitter that excites neurons, and again, in very small amounts, totally fine. It's needed. But when a neuron just freaks out and dumps all that into a synapse, it sets off that neuron and all these other neurons and makes them go totally crazy, and it also lowers their structural integrity. So all of a sudden, you have neurons going nuts, dumping their contents everywhere, and then creating also free radicals, which are atoms with unpaired electrons. They run up against the cellular structure and the cell walls and start borrowing electrons from those atoms, and that weakens the structure even more. So even more stuff gets dumped out into the intercellular matrix, and you have a problem. This is a really big problem in and of itself. Right? Yeah. You still with me? I'm still with you. Okay. That's what happens when you stop getting blood flow. It's just as bad, if not worse, when you start getting blood flow, again, because you have all these damaged cells. You have dead cells. And when you have dead cells that have dumped their contents, one of the roles that your white blood cells, your immune system plays, is to come clean up dead cells, because that's toxic stuff, that's bad stuff, and you need to get it out of your body. So when blood flow returns again, all of those white blood cells come to the site of this problem, your brain, and they start cleaning up. When they do, an inflammatory reaction happens, and all of a sudden, you have swelling in your brain, and the process gets even worse. So these structurally challenged neurons don't just erupt immediately. They do immediately, but it can continue for hours and days afterwards. And all of this happens from a heart attack. But by applying cold temperatures and bringing hypothermia on somebody, you can actually stop this process. You can stop the glutamate from ever being dumped, they're finding. Right. And so give time, basically, for your brain to rebuild itself in the way it needs to by lowering that metabolic rate that your neurons need. That's what it does for a heart attack, cardiac arrest. They're definitely two different things. I looked it up. Okay. And someone's going to say, you guys should do a podcast on that because you don't know what you're talking about. Right. It's coming. So probably after that, we should take a little break, huh? I think so. You want to get some tea? Yeah. And we'll be back with more cool stuff. All right. So how is this magic done? It's pretty easy, actually. It's easy in theory, but there are generally three stages for therapeutic hypothermia, and they are induction, maintenance and rewarming, and they are all very carefully monitored and have to be done just right. So when they go to cool the patient, first thing you'll do is sedate them, because shivering is the body's way of trying to stay warm. Like your body wants to be warm. Right. And it's going to do everything it can until you die. Like Jack Nicholson outside The Maze and The Shining. Exactly. To stay warm. Yeah. And you can't have a body shivering because, number one, it fights off that hypothermia you're inducing. Right. Yeah. Number two, that uses a lot of energy, which is what you're combating right there. You're trying to slow the metabolic rate, not increase it. Right. And you want a patient that's still as well. One of the problems I've seen is the problem with doctors, like, performing in these conditions, because stop scoring. Well, that too. And they have to keep the room very cold. It's not like they're in, like, an 80 degree room, and they're trying to keep them like everything is cold. So the doctors have to perform under those circumstances, too. So they may shiver themselves, but to keep the patient from shivering, they just solved that problem by injecting them with the paralytic exactly. So now they're nice and still they're cooling down the cheap way to do it, which is and they're not doing it because it's cheap. But ice packs basically armpits, groin, chest, they're basically wrapping your legs up and everything they can with ice packs. And that's just going to cool you down pretty quickly. As you said, they will sometimes use like catheters or a chilled saline solution. Those are more invasive and more dangerous. They also work a lot quicker. Yes, very much. And I think they want to cool people down pretty quickly, too, which is I don't think they want to do the cooling part slow. No. And that's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Especially if you're bringing a patient's body down to a really low temperature, you have to protect against ice crystals forming in the cells because that can rupture cells and that's a whole set of other problems. Right. Yeah. So if you bring the temperature down very quickly, you can prevent ice crystals from forming. That's right. Because they require time to form. Yeah. So if it's super fast, they won't form. That's the impression I have. Okay. So during the maintenance phase, it's exactly how it sounds. We're just maintaining that temperature, keeping a very close eye. Again, using these cold water packs or forced air blankets and things like that. Right. They sound kind of cool. They sound kind of cool, the forced cold air blankets. Yes. That would be nice for these Atlanta summers. Get a hold of one of those. Yeah. And there are a lot of risks along the way. Arrhythmia is a very big risk. Electrolytes leaving like potassium, which is necessary for the heart muscle to function as it should. So they're pumping the electrolytes back into you because you're losing them. Right. So again, they're just maintaining everything. And then the rewarming part has to be done very, very slow, otherwise very bad things can happen. And we're talking to .9 degrees per hour Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit zero five to five degrees Celsius per hour. Yeah. That's super slow rewarming process. That's right. But if you got a good four stare blanket, you can really control the warming. You get a good brand, not some off brand. And again, they're not like, oh, well, if we heat the person back up at zero five degrees Celsius per hour, then this is what's going to happen on a cellular level. They're not quite there yet. They just know that that's the sweet spot for rewarming somebody. That's right. So, Chuck, one of the really problematic side effects with rewarming a person is odor. Yeah. They're like, wow. You start to get gaming while you're under. Sure is. Blood clots. So when your blood stops pumping because your metabolic rate is so low, the blood inside you starts to form clots, thanks to your red blood cells and your platelets. And when you warm back up, all of a sudden you. Have clots all over your body. And that's a real problem. That alone can kill you. And that's part of the problem with the rewarming process. But it turns out that investigation into animals that hibernate, they found that animals have some sort of technique to where their red blood cells just kind of disappear. And then once the animal comes out of hibernation, it reappears. Yes. They don't even know where they go. No, but they do know that they don't get rid of them somehow and then regenerate some other ones because their reappearances so fast that they just think the body somehow absorbs them and then releases them again. Yeah. And the other really cool thing and we're kind of into hibernation right now, which we'll talk about in more detail, but white blood cells, hibernators remove white blood cells from their blood and storm in the lymph nodes. Yeah. And then about an hour and a half after these animals awake, they reappear. And this has a couple of functions. One is when you're an animal undergoing hibernation, your immune system is going to be compromised because those white cells are in storage. Right. That's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem. But just knowing that animals can do these neat little tricks with their platelets and white blood cells could have big effects on us if we can figure that out for ourselves. Well, yeah, specifically, also, Chuck, because remember when we were talking about your neurons dying? And when you reprofuse, when you bring blood back to the brain again, one of the things that brings with it is those white blood cells, and they start going on the attack. So if you can figure out how to take white blood cells out of the equation, it's going to reduce things like post warming swelling, which can give you brain damage itself. Yeah. And you talked about the heart lung machine. One of the big dangers with that machine is aseptic sepsis. And if you have those white blood cells stripped away, then you're not going to be at risk for that. Right. And they'll be able to hang on to blood longer. Right. Now, blood donations can only be kept a week. It goes rank quick. Yeah. And transplant organs can be basically cryoprotected for longer, too, which is pretty neat. Yeah. So I guess we should talk about hibernation for a minute because it's one of the neatest things in nature, I think, in torpor. Short periods of hibernation, reduced body temperature and inactivity. And when you link a bunch of torports together, that's full on hibernation. Yeah. It's also like hibernation light, too. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can be, I think, a bear inner torpor where it wakes up, like, every once in a while and eats or poops or does something. And then there's some animals where you can just shake them like this and they will not wake up. And they're in full on hibernation. Yes. And animals have to prepare for this. They just don't go Betty by and stay asleep for a long time. First, they become diabetics, basically, by gorging on food and becoming obese. Sounds familiar. But it doesn't affect like humans does. It doesn't make them unhealthy. Like their body knows it's reparation for hibernation, knows what to do with it. Exactly. Plus, they're probably also eating unprocessed foods, too, which I think makes a difference. Yeah, I think so. They don't atrophy like humans do. Like when we lay around in bed, our muscles will atrophy. Animals can go months and months without moving. Spectacular. Spectacular. It also kind of suggests that humans aren't supposed to hibernate. Yeah. Well, although when they found some of these frozen people oh, yeah. They start to think maybe human hibernation isn't such a bad thing. Their lungs, when you hibernate, become covered with really thick, like, mucousy deposits. It basically looks like a human with asthma, but it's a protective measure. Again, they go and their brains kind of go into a stage that looks like early Alzheimer's. Again, not a bad thing. It's just preparation. And it's weird. I mean, it looks like animals are almost dying when they're preparing for hibernation. Well, in some cases, and sometimes they do, especially when they're forced to come out of hibernation and then go back in. Their energy stores aren't built for that kind of thing. So they probably will die because they'll start a death, because it requires so much energy to wake back up again. Or they're also vulnerable to predators, too. Yeah, good point. Which makes you wonder, like, what's the point of hibernation? And the point is, well, they don't have enough energy to go elsewhere when temperatures get cold, so they just kind of shut down their metabolic demand when food becomes scarce. Yeah. And for the longest time, we didn't think that any primates could hibernate until 2004 when they found a lemur from Madagascar that could hibernate and, well, at least go into regular torpor. Right. Hibernation light still. And they said we share about 98% of our genes with the lemur. And they said it's basically like our cousin. Yeah. I mean, the doctor basically said it would be really remarkable if the ability to hibernate lay within that 2% that we don't have. So basically, humans may have more of an ability to do this than we think. It would just have to be medically induced. Well, you know who demonstrates that very well? Chuck. Who's that? A man named Mitsutaka. Yuchi Koshi. Oh, yeah, we talked about him. What did we talk about him? Was a cryogenics episode. It was a long time ago. Do you remember that one? Yeah cryogenics high frozen body that's a good title, but yeah, I remember this guy, though, for sure. So he is a Japanese man who, at age 35, was hiking with some friends in Japan, and he decided to turn back by himself to go. I don't know, get something out of his car. And he wandered off and apparently in the meadow tripped over a rock and fell and hit his head on another rock and lay there and exposed to these cold temperatures on this mountain for 24 days. And he was found basically in a state of hibernation. His body temperature was through the floor and he had almost no pulse. His temperature was 71 degrees, which is 22 degrees Celsius. That's his body temperature. That's like a hypothermic state. And he was in this weird kind of state of suspended animation for 24 days. He went without food, water, nothing. Just laying there, living in some weird way until he was rescued and returned to complete normalcy. Yeah. It's like the lady, the skier who was frozen not nearly for as long. But these cases where humans bodies are defying what we thought they could do can give us insight into, like, hey, how do we manipulate this for good? How do we use this to get to the stars? All right, so I mentioned earlier that NASA was kind of leading the charge for this really cool suspended animation where you're basically freezing a person like Han Solo in carbonite. Yeah, except it's not carbonite. It's not exactly like that. But it's sort of like that. Okay. Actually, it's not like that at all. All right. And where NASA dropped off the US. Army picked back up with some funding. Oh, yeah, this guy. Because they basically said on the trauma, hospitals during wartime are chaos. Because you're trying to save a person. You're trying to treat their immediate wound. You're trying to stabilize them. You're trying to make them better. You're trying to prevent blood loss. It's not an easy thing to do. It's not like Mash, where they just make it look super simple. Right. Well, everybody is drunk on homemade gin. Yeah. So they're thinking, I wonder what that stuff tasted like. I always wondered what they're still they seem to like it pretty much. Pretty well, because they didn't have anything. I know, but they really seem to enjoy it. Well, the way they handled it was very much like a fine martini. But, you know, this is, like, swell. I don't know. They were at it for several years. Yeah, that's true. We'll have to ask Alan. Alda. Man, I'd love to meet that guy. Oh, yeah. One of my heroes. Sure. Attention, Alan Alda. Reach out to us so Chuck can meet you. That would be great. My brother met him. I'm sure he did. He probably gets Christmas cards from him still. No, but he did get a picture with him, which is pretty neat. So where was that? Yeah. Mash operating rooms. Yeah. Because if you're a doctor, even in a battlefield hospital, you're like, I want a coffee break too. And so to be like, I don't have time for this guy right now. Freeze him. To have that ability that would be magnificent. Or if you did have time for the guy, but you literally didn't have time to fix these horrific wounds that he came in with, you could also say, freeze them to buy me some time. That's right. And that will give you the time to basically operate on this guy and completely repair heart or his brain or what have you. That's right. And that's what medically induced hypothermia does. It just buys you time for either the body to heal itself in ways we don't understand or for you, the surgeon, to sow somebody up who, without hypothermia, would just be a lost cause. Yeah. There's a doctor named Sam Tisherman from the University of Maryland, co Churps, working with the University of Pittsburgh. What are they, panthers? University of Pittsburgh pit panthers. I think so. That sounds right. It does. We'll go with Panthers. Panthers, if I got that right. I'm so sorry, Pittsburgh. We love you. But he is working hard to basically put patients into severe hypothermia or suspended animation. They're calling this emergency Preservation and resuscitation. And this is the one that they haven't yet experimented on humans. They think they're pretty close, but this is the one where they flush the body with freezing cold saline solution. Right. Which prevents ice from forming. Yeah. And it's worked on dogs. Working on dogs. Got to work on humans, too. Well, they did some experiments on pigs, too, because one of the things they think they can do where it's not like if you've had a cardiac arrest or a stroke, but again, with trauma, like a gunshot, you just can't and I never knew this you can't resuscitate a person with CPR that's had blood loss due to trauma. It's completely different than cardiac arrest. Why? Because of the closed circulatory system has been opened? I have no idea. I bet that's it because of the drop in blood pressure. It's just not working. It's like sucking through a straw that has a hole beneath your lips. Like a lot of it is escaping. A lot of the air is escaping. So you can't get as much draw. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I bet that's what it is. All right, well, we'll probably find out from Ellen album with trauma, like a gunshot wound or something, or a stab wound where you lost so much blood you're dying. This is when they're using these super cold temperatures. It's a tube inserted into the aorta, literally. Right. And they've done this on pigs in 2006. They examined deep, profound, and ultra profound freezing of pigs who had uncontrolled bleeding wounds. And I imagine that when did they get those? Yeah, imagine they induced those as well. Go stab that piggy grad student. Yeah, there's one creep post doc. You get to do all the stabbings. That's why I'm here. I'll get Ronnie. And they found that the ones who underwent the most profound hypothermia had the highest survival rates, like those french soldiers left out on the battle. Exactly. And then in 2000, they did the same thing with dogs, except they weren't stabbed. It was dogs in cardiac arrest. They may have induced that, too, though. Think of it. They'd be like, do you want this bone? No, you can't have it. But they use ice cold ceiling in that case, and their chances of survival with no brain damage really increased. So there are risks, though. It's not the easiest thing to do, like we said, and I know pneumonia was one of the risks for years, even with just the regular cooling. Right. Yeah. Pneumonia slowed heart rate. Apparently. You can enter hyperthermia while you're being re warmed. Like, you get way too hot, your body temperature increases too dramatically. There's a lot of problems that blood clotting is still an issue and probably will be for a while. Yeah. With Tisherman's case trying to use humans, though, there's a couple of problems. One is they have to get consent from a person to undergo an experiment like this, but you can't give consent when you're wheeled in there unconscious from a cardiac arrest. So what he's trying to do is just spread the word, literally, to spread the word to the citizens in his area that there's this thing. And if your husband or wife has a cardiac arrest, ask for the cold treatment. Right. Where we completely pump their blood out and replace it with frozen saline using cold saline. It's pretty amazing. It is. And there's a lot of people who are still very skeptical of the idea that medically induced hypothermia can actually work. But there's also a growing body of studies that show that it does that has a significant impact. Like, there were several in 2002 that really broke the thing open, where it was like, these people have a 25% chance of recovery without it. They have a 50 or 75% chance of recovery with it. Right. And that's really tough to ignore. Yeah. It's amazing. Amazing stuff. Into the future, Chuck. Let's go. If you want to know more about medically induced hypothermia, check out our podcast page for this episode. It's got a bunch of cool links, and you can type therapeutic hypothermia in the search barhouseofworks.com, and it will bring up this article full of puns. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Josh's theory on satire. Remember that we talked about that in the very recent show Clown Clowning. Do you want to summarize your position really quick? But maybe satire is just a release. And does it affect change? Is that the nuts and bolts of it? Yeah. Basically, it lets the populace who's angry let off steam at the leadership without actually forcing the leadership to change. All right, so that brings us up to speed. And this is from Chelsea. She said, I just started listening under a year ago when a change in jobs landed me with a 25 minutes walk to and from work every day. I think she's in Dublin. Okay. She says, I find myself laughing out loud at your repartee. And my boyfriend has affectionately started referring to you as my nerd friends, but he's a listener now, too, it sounds like dobblin. I'm actually writing in regard to Josh's theory on satire. It's a really interesting point, an angle I had not considered myself. I think there's another way to look at it, which is that satire has the ability to plant the seed of descent in a nonthreatening way and thus can eventually be a force of change. For example, someone may not be aware of a particular foible of a leader. Satirist points it out in a funny way now that someone has an awareness without feeling preached at and has it in their mind the next time the leader does something untoward, or perhaps they were aware of said foible, but the satirists open their eyes to just how ridiculous and or dangerous it is. So while there's certainly a possibility satire can act as placation or a way of letting off steam, there's also a very real possibility that can spark be the spark that ignites an eventual change. It is a good point. Yeah. That's from Chelsea and Morgan Hoffman. Thanks a lot, Chelsea. Morgan Hoffman of Dublin, Ireland? Probably. Well, she just said Dublin. Dublin, Georgia. We're going to go ahead and assume Ireland. Yeah. And boyfriend. Yes. Thank you both for listening. We appreciate it. And if you have a counterpoint or your own theory or hypothesis or just want to say hi or whatever, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstepychildo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our luxurious home on the web stuffyouchnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. 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Can oceans power the world? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/can-oceans-power-the-world | Oceans cover more than 70 percent of Earth's surface. But could the kinetic power of the tides or the oceans' thermal energy become the world's future power source? Listen in as Josh and Chuck break it down. | Oceans cover more than 70 percent of Earth's surface. But could the kinetic power of the tides or the oceans' thermal energy become the world's future power source? Listen in as Josh and Chuck break it down. | Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:25:59 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=17, tm_min=25, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=20, tm_isdst=0) | 27607954 | 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. This Charles W. Chuckle Chris Bryant that makes this stuff you should know. And the heavy index finger of Matt Frederick. Yeah. Did you hear that? Oh, yeah. It was like an angle coming down on something. Nobody pushes record like Maddie. One of my friends has finger tips, just fingertips that look very much like big toes all across. And they're big. He has big, huge fingertips is what you would so, like, the finger is just narrow, and then it balloons up at the end. Really? Yeah. Wow. Freakishly. So he'd be a good bass player, I would think. Maybe so. I'll ask him. He should do that. Chuck, do you remember we have talked about capturing energy because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only be captured. Yeah. We talked about several ways to do this. Yes. Well, one of the ways we talked about was by putting basically would amount to wind turbines underwater. Did you talk about that already? We did. Underwater turbines. Oh, yeah, sure. We did, right? I think so. It's hard to tell these days. Well, if we didn't, that's good, because we're going to cover that again in this podcast. I think we did, because we talked about verdant technology, and they were the ones who put some in the Hudson, didn't we? East river? Yes. Sure. Okay. So they put some in 2006 to why? To claim this is a huge project. They were going to just power large parts of New York with this technology, and they went back to check on them, and they found that all but two of their wind turbines were just completely in shambles. Yeah. It's one of the great challenges in underwater energy production. Bingo. I have updates on them. We'll get to that later, though. Okay. Luckily for us right. Because the ocean and, well, bodies of water are this huge, untapped resource well, mostly untapped resource of energy. There are other ways to capture energy from the ocean, which is what we're going to talk about today. Let's do it. And let's start with the French, because apparently they've long known. They're all over it. Yeah. All of the major innovations that we're pursuing right now came from the French over the last couple of centuries. Right. Who knew? Yeah. Well, we should just mention the history in 1799, long time ago, at Frenchie and his son. I could not find their names. I couldn't either, but they had a pretty cool idea. They attached a big lever to the side of their boat, and when the ocean moved up and down, the lever moved up and down, which could potentially power pumps and saws and things like that. Right. And that's capturing the mechanical energy of wave motion. Yeah. Very good. In a second. But unfortunately well, or maybe fortunately, the steam engine came along. Unfortunately for him, his idea was rendered moot. But thanks to the rest of us, because steam energy turned out to be a pretty cool thing, the steam engine did. About 100 years after that, another Frenchman used heat energy from the ocean to generate power, but it was not very cost effective. So that died as well. Yes. And then finally, some success once again in France. In Britain. Yes. On the Ross River. Yeah. And it still operates today. And it's actually, from what I can tell, the biggest success. Right, yeah. Because it's actually generating electricity quite a bit. 240 MW, which is about that's better than a wind farm. Not quite as good as a coal fired power plant, but it is better than a typical wind farm. And it is far and away, I think, the most successful ocean energy outfit running right now. Right. Yeah. Well, that's on a river, though. Is it a tidal river? A tidal river, yes. So it's capturing the energy of the tide. Also, you can capture the energy of the heat differential. Right? Yeah. And you can capture the mechanical energy right. With ways. There's three ways. Three, at least. Yeah, exactly. Right. Because there's also the currents, underwater turbines. It's four ways to capture energy. Right. It's awesome. Let's talk about waves. This one's my favorite because there's so much to it. Right. There's mechanical energy that can be captured, kinetic energy that can be converted into useful mechanical energy. Basically, what you do is you want to somehow power a turbine or a piston to create electricity from a generator. Right? Yeah. And waves move, thanks to the wind, create big crest and troughs, and at one point, someone looked at those and said, hey, that's pretty consistent. I bet we could capture that. Right? It is very consistent. It's very predictable. Right? Yeah. Waves are found all over the place, so they actually can bring energy from other parts of the globe to you. Top of the muffin to you. Let's talk about how a wave comes up. Did you read this? No. Because you're the expert. You're the wave expert. All right. So waves are the result of a transfer of solar energy to the water, to the ocean. Okay. Okay. So did you know that wind is really just a creation of solar energy, solar radiation, solar heat, and that ends up driving the wave. Yes. But it's interesting how it is. No, I know. Sure. Okay. It starts with the sun. It does. It does start with the sun. Chuck, thanks for that segue. The sun does not heat the Earth evenly. Right? Right. So there's different pockets of air, surface air that are heated more quickly than others. Okay. They rise, and as they rise, the colder air rushes in, and the movement of the colder air to fill in the space left by the warmer air. That's wind. Okay. That's wind. That's awesome. Okay. So when this water, when the ocean is pushed by wind enough, long enough, hard enough, fast enough, for far enough distances, waves pick up, right? Right. And that gives even more traction to the wind. So the waves just get bigger and bigger. That's why a good storm will produce bigger waves. Right. But what you have is kinetic energy pushing the water into ways. And that kinetic energy becomes stored in the wave, right? Right. So the wave is in a bunch of moving water. The water actually as this kinetic energy rolls over, it acts as a conveyor belt. Right. So it moves in a circular motion and delivers this big dense amount of kinetic energy to you to capture if you have a wave converter handy. Exactly. Dude. Very nice explanation. Was it? Yeah. Thanks, man. I think so. It's been a little while since I got one right. Should we talk about tides now? Yes. Much to the chagrin of Bill O'Reilly, we do know what causes tides. I'm glad you mentioned did you see that Bill O'Reilly didn't know that the pull of the Moon, the gravitational force of the Moon, is what creates tides. What's crazy is that the Atheist was like, well, we don't know, but still I know he was a little flustered. He was flustered. But I had a real opportunity to be like everybody that saw that was on the edge of their seat saying, say it the moon. And the guy was like, yeah, well, unfortunately no one stepped in there to correct him. Right. I haven't heard a response from him either. I'm curious. Who Bill O'Reilly? Yeah. I don't think he's going to come out and address it at this point. He already looked dumb enough. He didn't care. Okay, so for those of you who don't know what you're talking about, quickly bill O'Reilly was interviewing the head of the Atheist of America and said he explains God by the fact that no one can explain what causes tides. Tides go out, tides come in every day and we can't explain it and no one knows why, I think is what he said. So anyway, it is in fact caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon, mr. O'Reilly and the cool thing about tides is they're everywhere along the coast. All coastal areas experience two high tides and two low tides every day and they're pretty much on the button. The unfortunate thing is there's only about 40 places around the Earth where you can generate electricity from this because the difference between high and low tide has to be at least 16ft and that doesn't happen everywhere. So there's like 40 sites around the world that are suitable. 40 sites in the Bay of Fundy I don't think we mentioned yet that is where they're actually doing this. And that has a great place. Yeah, it's a narrow inlet and it has the highest tides in the world, 50 ft in a very short cycle. So in 6 hours, they can produce 110,000,000,000 tons of sea water flow in and out. Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah, it is. So that's you and me. Yeah. And they're actually generating power there at Fundy. But what's crazy is that one we talked about in Britain, France, 240 Bay of Fundy, with that enormous transfer of seawater in and out, still only generates a 20 megawatt power. 20 power? 820 megawatt power. Just one. So one way they can do this, Josh, is with rivers, with a dam. Right. They can build a tidal dam. Right. Essentially. And it operates kind of in the same way, which is how buddy, I didn't know if we need to explain that. Gates open up. It's called a barriage. Is it a barriage or a garage? And the tides, when there's an adequate difference in the level of water on the opposite side of the dam, the gate opens and allows water to flow in across the turbine spins. The turbine creates electricity via generator. Right. So any time you're talking about wave action or movement of water, there's going to be some sort of turbine or piston involved. Yeah. Because that's all you need. You're going to turn something and it's going to generate electricity. That's so awesome. It still blows me away. That's possible, yes. But it's so simple, too. We just have to figure out how to do it more efficiently and then we'll be able to come up with a nice grab bag of energy providers. That's right. Yeah. Ocean tides, Josh, into tidal currents is another way. Yeah. What are title currents? Well, title currents are what bring in the tides, are the currents that are created by the tides coming in and out. Right. Yeah. The problem with the title currents is that they're not constant. Like you said. They happen twice a day, in and out, each. Twice a day, right. Yeah. Too high. Too low. So you got four title currents. If you're set up to generate power, as is going in and out. Well, how would you do that, though? Underwater turbines. It's basically like underwater wind farm. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Like 66 foot propellers. Underwater spinning. But that's what they put was it the East River? That's what they put in New York. They had these in there. Still do, yeah. Well, at least two. Well, more than that. We'll get to that. Okay. It's paying off, finally. So, Chuck, that's electrical, as we said, electrical. There's going to be some sort of turbine or piston that is moved up and down by either the well, the movement of water, whether it's waves, currents, tides, whatever. But then there's also thermal energy. Right. Big time. You want to set? Yeah. The sun provides the equivalent of 250,000,000,000 barrels of oil per day in the ocean. Yeah. That's a lot more ocean out there. And collects all this heat from the ocean. I think in the US, we use 21 million barrels of oil a day. And this is 250,000,000,000. Yeah. Now, the problem is that's across the entire ocean, that's across 70% of the Earth's surface. Oh, yeah, sure. We don't know how to do that. We're still working with full of cells. How does this work? How do we make this happen? So that's as much as we could ever possibly capture. Right? Yeah. But still, even if we get a significant portion of that and can convert it into energy, we're on easy street otech. Explain. Otech is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. Right? Yeah, that's how they do it. And there's a couple of ways to do it. There's a closed system, there's an open system, and there's a hybrid system, which is open and closed system mixed together. So with a closed system, usually you take some sort of low boiling point liquid, like ammonia, which has a boiling point of negative 28 degrees. Yes. Fahrenheit. Right. Which I don't understand how windex works then. That's something I think we need to look up. How windy works. Yeah. Has ammonia in it. Right. How is it kept liquid? Because I can tell you the area under my sink is warmer than negative 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, but there's bottles of ammonia, too. Just plain ammonia. Right. I guess Bill O'Reilly was right, Chuck. So in a closed system, you take ammonia, you expose it to sea water. Warmer seawater. Right. And it immediately vaporizes into gas. As that gas expands, it pushes the turbine. There's another turbine. Right. It's like a steam engine. Powers the generator, and then the gas is moved into another chamber, where it encounters cold sea water and converts back into liquid and then pump back into the original chamber again. See, I love systems like this, where it's just a loop, stuff becomes vapor, then it goes back to what it was, then it becomes vapor again. Right. Central efficient closed system. Right? Yes. And then there's the open system. Right? Yeah. And that's a little bit of a different principle. It's warm surface water. But these are vacuum chamber. They remove all the air. And because of magic, when you do this, the seawater boils. Is that insane cloud posse? I think so. It actually boils, and that produces steam, like pure water steam. And then that can drive the turbine. And then just like with the ammonia, you pump cold sea water back in, cools the steam, changes it back into water. Right. And back again. Back again. The cool part about this is they can create fresh water as sort of a byproduct, which is awesome. That's huge alienation. They've had a lot of trouble doing that successfully in a large scale. Right, right. We talked about that in manufacturing water and some of the other ones. But yeah, if you create the steam out of sea water, they found that it's almost pure water. Pure fresh water, no salt. And you can drink that. So yeah, they're trying to figure out how to use open cycle systems and the hybrid system, which, like I said, combines closed and open systems. But both the hybrid and the open create fresh water. Right. And I think they figured out that a single two megawatt Otech plant, either open or hybrid, could produce 4300 desalinated water every day. Wow. I can't drink that much. That's why yes, you can drink that much coffee. I do, which is why I spell it right now. Unfortunately, Otech systems aren't producing a lot of electricity, but they think that the potential there is pretty great. So people are investing in that at this point. Yeah, that seems to be the one that's attracting the most investment dollars right now. I wonder why. What do you mean, why people are going that way? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's the most efficient, cost effective way at this point. Who knows? I think it's actually the most expensive, to tell you the truth. Oh, really? It's not the most efficient? It may be, it's true, but it's the most expensive, I think. Well, right now what's going on is there's a lot of research and development happening in all these fields because they think the ocean is really where it's at. We talked about verdant power. Here's a little update on their system. They are in phase three right now. Like you said, they had some problems in the demonstration phase because marine environments are pretty rough on everything. Just ask anyone who lives on the beach with a car. Some fish is like, I'm swimming here. That's true. We'll get to that. It's controversial. We talked about it before. Yeah, that's true. In the demonstration period, though, they did produce a free flow system. They called it excellent hydrodynamic, mechanical and electrical performance grid. Connected power with no quality problems. Fully bi directional, continuous, unattended operation. So they don't even have some dude down there. Right. I wonder how much that job would pay. Exactly. In the end, they produced 70 megawatt hours of energy to two end users. And right now they applied for a permit basically just a couple of months ago. Last month in December, they applied for a permit to make it real. And they're waiting on all of that was just fixed. They just wrote that story down. They're like, now let's make this real, investors. Right? Well, they want to do it in earnest and not just demonstrate. And they think they're at that point now. So I think right now they're waiting on New York City to say, take over the East River or this portion of it and do it. So 2 energy to two end users. I don't think they were families. I think they were probably power plants or something. Got you. Yeah. Are you sure? No, I'm not. Because the user could also be like some guy with a hot plate and he's like, hey, my hot plate is working just fine. True. The UK is who is leading tidal turbine research right now, though, so hats off to you. Is it the UK? I thought this goal has something well, no, they're all dabbling and it's fan in Portugal, but the UK is currently ahead of the game in this kind of stuff so far. Wow. Well, yeah, that's off, for sure. Yeah. They took the mantle from the French and ran with it. Right. The French are like convoc. It's two accents for me to zero for you today. Yeah, it's a switch. So why is this good? Why are we doing this? What are the environmental advantages? Well, one of the things we said was with wave energy, right. I didn't give you a stat, it's going to blow your mind. Wave energy alone. Right. The kinetic energy found in the motion on the ocean right. 2% of that right. Could power the entire planet. I'm sorry, zero 2% of the energy and ocean waves could power the entire still. Wow. Pretty impressive. Yes. .2. Not to point anything. .2. So what you're saying is we just need to be able to harness a very tiny percentage. Yes. Plus, also, the good thing about waves, which is why I throw my weight behind it, is compared to a wind farm, right. You've got three times the density. Right, yeah. So Conceivably moving at about the same rate as wind, five knots or something like that, you would have three times the amount of energy capable of being captured and transferred into usable electricity. Yeah. It says a water current, ocean current, running 5 miles an hour can turn a title turbine 30 revolutions per minute. And that is very much more than the wind. Well, just and don't forget, I mean, we're talking about turbines that are propellers that are 60ft across each. That's a lot. Yes. 30 times a minute. It's like almost once every few seconds. They also run silent and run deep. So a lot of people complain about the noise of wind farms, the buzzing, the buzzing, the constant buzzing, the aerodynamic noise, and they're underwater, so you don't see it. But the funny thing is that's such a human centric way of looking at it, like it doesn't make any noise because we're above water. Right. Who cares about what it sounds like below water? Surely placing these things in the ocean are going to have a huge impact. Right, well, and that's the downside. Might as well get to that. You can't just throw these things in the ocean and have no impact on marine life. It's going to kill some fish. Definitely disrupt some spawning patterns. We'll take like, an Otech system, right? A closed Otech system. If, say, it's battered about by a particularly bad typhoon, that closed system may not be closed any longer. And you've got a massive ammonia spill in a local area in the ocean and, yeah, that's going to kill some fish. Right. Same with any grease that you might need to keep a piston moving properly. Sure, there's a lot of factors involved, but conceivably, I'm pretty sure you could do a what are those called, that risk assessment people do, like a cost benefit analysis. Yeah. Versus, say, something like a power plant is spewing out. Right. Couldn't you compare that pretty easily? I don't think so. And I wonder if the impact would be much less severe on an ocean environment than above ground. Well, there's going to be an impact. You can't create electricity without some sort of impact on something in the environment. Make an anomaly. Exactly. You got to break a few eggs. So I think the ideal is to find the minimal impact with the maximum pay off. Right now, it is not ocean power because it's still heavily in the R and D phase, which means it's expensive. But as the kinks get worked out, the solar panels were I mean, they're still expensive, but they were way more expensive 20 years ago because they didn't work right all the time, and you had to put more money into making them work. Right. But once you get the kinks worked out, it becomes a little more efficient, a little cheaper. So maybe it'll close that gap a bit. Yeah. My money and I think we should talk about why tidal dams barrages are problematic. What was the problem? Because that kind of captured my attention. Like, I was thinking, well, yeah, build some hydroelectric dams at these 40 sites, and that'll help. Yeah, tremendously. Sure. Part of the problem is the whole point of tidal movement in a bay, or one of the benefits of it, is to filter out impurities, silt, crud, dead crayfish, all that stuff sucked out and turned into food or filtered into the rest of the ocean. Right. If you have a dam there that's making that more difficult or preventing that, in some cases, the local environment around that bay suffers because the water purity plummets. My money is on wave converter. Wave energy converters, like salter's duck. Plus, we found out that dams on the Earth can potentially cause earthquakes. I wonder if it could have an effect under the seafloor as well. Yeah. Learn the hard way sometimes. We definitely do, actually. That's the only way humans learn, Chuck. The hard way. Yeah. Okay. Agreed. Well, if you want to learn more about sultan's Duck, this mysterious thing I've just now mentioned, I would recommend you type it in S-A-L-T-E-R apostrophe S in the handysearchbarhouseupworks.com. Also required reading for this one is wave energy. Type that in ocean power. That'll just bring up everything right there. Read those three and listen to this podcast and just start spewing out information whenever somebody's like, I love oil. Yeah. For coal. Yeah. You know what we need to do a show on is mountaintop removal coal mining. Have you heard of that? That's tough stuff. Yeah. That makes releasing lubricants into the ocean through an Otech system look like nothing. Exactly. All right. Well, yeah, I said handy search bar already. Right. Listen or mail, Josh. I'm going to call this one of 100 or more ocular migraine emails. I would say at least 100. We've heard from a lot of people who suffer from these and we can't read them all. We're good now. We've got the idea. Right. I want to say to everyone that I'm sorry you have to deal with this stuff, but I picked out one from David in the UK, because I like UK. Did that. You all have a funny accent, too. It did. Hey, guys, just listen to the migraine podcast. I'm responding to your call. I was first diagnosed with migraines at 14. I'm now 47. When I had an extreme quarter of dizziness at 14, it made me nauseous, prevented me from standing because the room was spinning, prevented my eyes from remaining still. If I look to the right, they jittered. I've not had a particular episode like this since. But the migraine symptoms have changed over the years. Up to the early twenty s, I would get tunnel vision. I could only see what I was directly looking at, about 15% of my vision. The rest was all swirly. Imagine looking through a scene through two highly polished steel tubes. From then on, it was the opposite. The subject I was looking at would disappear, but the outer part was clear. Imagine looking at someone 20ft away, but look directly at their face. Their head disappeared. The peculiar thing I think that's peculiar. The peculiar thing is that it didn't look odd until I thought about it somewhat like a blind spot test. Yeah. Blind spots are very common with migraines, right? I think so. Well, sure. They're disconnected. There's a very mild headache following episode, similar to eye strain, and sometimes a feeling which I can only describe as an empty space in my head that feels as though it should have a sign saying, headache to be erected here soon. That's fine. Touchwood, guys. I have not had an episode in waking hours for about four years now and noticed no more morning symptoms, which I attribute to being on permanent statin medication for high cholesterol. You know, here in America, we don't touch wood, we knock it. So that's from David in the UK. And for everyone suffering from ocular migraines. I'm sorry. Yeah, same thing here. Same here. It sounds awful. He talked about his eyes when he looked to the right, his eyes trembling back and forth. Yeah. Do you remember that actor whose eyes went back and forth all the time? He was in what's the one with John Kuzak where there's a murder. John Kuzak. Rayliota say anything? No. Oh, the hotel thing. Yeah. That was awful. What was the name of the movie, though? I can't remember. Well, he played the guy, like the bad guy in that one, but he was also in a movie with Mickey Rock. His eyes twitchy. Yeah, that's just, like, what the actor was known for. Like, they just moved back and forth in a really weird way. So if you can tell me what movie that that guy appeared with with Mickey Roark. Right. Yeah. I want to hear it. Okay. Right. I think we should we can't do contests anymore, can't we? Actors always list. Have you ever seen a headshot? They always list on the back. There are special things they can do. Yeah, it's always like horseback riding, burp on command accents, and this guy has I twitch. Right. It's crazy. I can't believe you haven't seen it. I probably have. I just didn't notice it or something. Well, if you could tell me what movie he was in with Mickey work, I want to hear it. Wrap it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The house upworks. iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means 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. 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How Foot Binding Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-foot-binding-worked | Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish. In China, that fetish was foot binding and over a millennia three billion Chinese women's feet were brutally disfigured for men's pleasure. | Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish. In China, that fetish was foot binding and over a millennia three billion Chinese women's feet were brutally disfigured for men's pleasure. | Thu, 09 May 2013 19:33:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=19, tm_min=33, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=129, tm_isdst=0) | 26166827 | 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. Jerry's over there. And it's time for stuff you should know. Everybody ready to settle down? Buckle in, get ready. Hey, congratulations to Kristen Bell. Stuff you should know. Celebrity fan kristen Bell and her husband, DAX Shepherd had their baby. Oh, hey, congratulations. Big congratulations to you. And I don't know, I thought you were going to congratulate her on a Kickstarter movie. Oh, in the Veronica Mars movie. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. My wife is very much looking forward to that. Yes, and your wife is looking forward to meeting the baby. She's on her way right now. Christian Bell locking the doors. Oh, my God. It started out as small fascination with their show, and it is tragedy, dangerous, made for TV movie obsession. Anyway, just want to say congratulations. Yeah, that's nice of you, Chuck. Sure. I got no congratulations over here. Yeah. Interesting that I tied that to this podcast on, like, female torture, essentially. Do you think there's something to that? No. Okay. Well, we live in a world now where we don't have to worry about although I think they had a son or any little baby's feet being blinded, I guess. Not babies, but four or five year olds. Yeah. Bounded, bound. Okay. Because the feet were bound. Do you think we should explain to everybody what we're talking about? Footbinding. Yeah. I'm glad you congratulated Kristen Bell because I didn't really have much of an intro for this one because it's just so fascinating. I feel like we should just kind of dive right in. Yeah. Fascinating and horrible and oddly impactful in areas I never would have considered. Yeah. So we should say that over the course of about 1000 years, from roughly 970 till about the 1950s, like almost on the dot 1000 years. Yeah. About 3 billion women in China bound their feet to basically train them to become small and pointy in a really bizarre custom that just kind of came out of nowhere and stuck around again for about 1000 years. Voluntarily deforming their feet. Well, at the very least, their mothers and grandmothers voluntarily deformed their feet for them. Yeah, it's a very good point, actually. But at some point, they had to take over and I guess then it became voluntary. Well, sure. Well, we'll get to all that. Okay. Spoilers abound. So basically, this was purposeful deformation of the human foot, the human female foot, in order to attract men. Yeah. There was a standard of beauty, a bound foot, and we'll describe it in a minute. But the idea the whole thing kind of came from they think about, like I said, 970 Ad. In the court of an emperor named Lee Yu. And Lee Yu had a favorite girlfriend, ballerina girl. Yeah. And apparently he saw her dancing once on a golden lotus pedestal because everything was made of gold back then in China. Sure. And she had her feet kind of wrapped up, I guess, like ballerina or something. And he apparently got very excited at this. Visibly excited. So much so that the other ladies of the court noticed this. What did you say? Visibly excited. Visibly excited. OK. Yes. If you know what I mean. Really? I would imagine. Okay. Hey, this guy's been dead 1000 years. Like all slander and defamations, like, out the window. Sure. It was a rocking time. It was a Southern Tang dynasty. You never know what's going to happen. Yeah. It made Caligula look like watching it as an adult. Yeah. Boring. Yeah. Really? Lee was very much entranced by this, enough that other women in the court noticed it and they started wrapping their feet as well. And it just kind of took off from there. And it took a weird turn pretty early on. Well, what's the turn? Well, the turn is originally apparently the woman who started this whole thing just kind of wrapped her feet in bandages. Yeah, I guess. Oh, okay. I see what you mean. That turn. It's a literal turn. Yeah. Well, it became a status thing at first because wealthy women did it and then it sort of spread and it also would end up preventing women from doing, like, manual labor. Well, not prevent, but it made it tougher. So it was sort of a status thing that meant, like, if you had the bound feet, they're working in the field. Yeah. I don't even have to throw ho. But then hit spread throughout China and only a few places. Actually, it was more than this article let on. I did some more research on that. I saw where 50% to 60% of the women ended up binding their feet in China. And this says 100%, except in these provinces. Well, I think they were saying about close to 100% of the higher classes. Okay. But yeah, there was I guess that makes sense. So maybe about half of the Chinese population total. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So the strange turn it took, though, was to go from simply wrapping their feet to actually the binding process, which is malforming your feet at a young age, like four to seven years old for life, to where when your shoe is off, it looks like you're wearing your foot. Looks like a high heel. You're disfigured. Yeah. You can't walk very well, you can't work in the fields. And your foot has been brought to a point, basically, that's ideally three inches long. Three inches? That's it. And it's pointed. And you do this by training your foot and your bones to deform. Yeah. And when I say it looks like a high heel, like your foot looks like a shoe, like, the heel is separate from the rest of the foot and a big block that looks like the heel of a shoe. And the foot is permanently arched and pointy and the toes are curled under and it's just if you got pictures of it, it's horrific looking. Yeah. And it was so entrenched in the Chinese culture that when it was outlawed for, I guess, the first time in 1912, it continued on and it took the Communists taking over to really get rid of it. And footbinding went the way of disco by just practical necessity. Women had to work in the field. And if you had bound feet, well, you're in big trouble. Yeah. Well, the end of it. Should we talk about the end now or should we do it later? Let's do it now. Okay. Let's just mess with the structure. There were a lot of factors at play. One was Western missionaries came over there for the first time and said, yeah, this is really not what the rest of the world is doing, and it doesn't make you look good. By the way, social Darwinists got on it and we're like, yeah, you know what? We're not going to survive as a country because half of our population is hobbled, essentially. It's like, this is going to be really bad for business one day. And so they mounted like a real campaign, like an education campaign, which is really unusual back then. And they had three phases to it. One was that it made you look bad and look strange to the rest of the world. Two, that taught the advantages of having normal feet, like walking without pain. Right. And then they formed natural foot societies where people would pledge not to do this to their daughters or allow their daughter to marry a son, or allow their son to marry a girl who had bound feet. Because that was one of the big deals. If you didn't have bound feet, then guys would just pass you over. Right. That's what it took to finally eradicate it. When was that? Was that after the 1912 outlaw or the well known as a no? It was leading up to that. So 1912 was formally outlawed. Got you. They had government inspectors that would come around and make sure that you weren't binding feet any longer. Right. And they would like, hide girls that they still want to do. So. It's really impressive and weird. Yeah, because that campaign that you just described is basically point for point trying to undo 1000 years of custom. Like if you had unbound feet, like natural feet, you were considered a freak. You were ugly, there was something wrong with you. And even more to the point, no man would marry you because bound feet were so idolized in Chinese culture that if you were just totally plain or even horrendously ugly in every other way, but have really knock out bound feet, that was enough for you. You were butterflies. You're going to do pretty good. That's hilarious. Yes. I mean, it's hard to believe now, but when you see these photos and like the X rays and stuff. It's just like total deformation. Yeah. So let's talk about this. There's an actual process, fairly straightforward, although extremely painful and dangerous, I think. You said you grab your four year old daughter, you say it's time. Prepare for a lifetime of pain and suffering. Right. Starting now. Right. And you take your feet and you soak them in hot water for a few hours. Yeah. In animal blood, too. Oh, yeah. What did that do? Same thing, soften you up. Okay. So that was the whole purpose of the soaking, was to soften the skin, make it more pliable, and I imagine the muscles, too. And then after the soaking, you would scrape away any dead skin. And then after that, their toenails were clipped super short. So there's still kids are like, okay, I don't really like the toenail clipping part, but the foot soak more than makes up for it. Right. And boy, do I really It turns out I like animal blood soaking my feet in it. And then either their mom or maybe a learned woman in the village sure would say, all right, now we're going to start bending your foot. Yeah. I imagine these ladies, too, if they were the village lady that did it, they probably didn't take much guff. No, probably not. They probably didn't mess around. I imagine they came in there and sort of took care of business. Like they've heard it all before. Right. But for as grisly and grotesque procedure, it's actually a delicate procedure, too, because if you can wrap your mind around us, there's ways to do it wrong that can lead to problems. Good point. There's actual risk factors. So the one other thing I left out was the sprinkle TAUK in there to keep it from perspiring because you want it to be dry. Right. And then they start bending things. Right? Yeah. Well, then the cotton comes out, the bandages about two inches wide, about 10ft long. And they would soak those in the hot water and blood and herbs as well, because they want those to shrink up. It's all about shrinking. They want those to shrink up after they're applied to the feet. Right. And then the old lady comes up and she folds the little four toes that were just clipped, not the big toe under, as far as she can, and then starts to do little figure eight to keep them in place. You leave the big toe exposed? The bandages. Yes. And you leave the big toe exposed and the heel exposed, and you just sense those little front toes under. They break the toes, it breaks the foot bones. Sounds horrific because it is. Right. And it brings the heel closer toward the ball of the foot. So the point of your feet is now your big toe, the slightly wider part behind it is the ball of your foot, and then behind that is your heel. And underneath it all are your four poor little toes. Yeah. And the top of your foot is at this really unreasonable, odd looking arch, right. Because it looks like you're on a high heel. Yeah. By making it arched, you're allowing that distance that was once between the ball of the foot and the heel to go up rather than between the two. You're bringing them together. And so all this has just been done to a four year old. Four year old is probably crying in pain. And after you finish with the bandages, the old lady or the mom would probably sew them because especially if you're dealing with a four year old, it's going to try to get these things off. And then they say, all right, start walking. Yeah. They put a little shoe on there. And the first steps with these things, and I imagine many steps afterwards, excruciatingly painful. Yeah. Well, yeah. Here's the craziest part, if you ask me, you do this every day for years. Well, every couple of days. Okay. Every day or every other day is what I got to diminish it for a couple of years. It takes a couple to a few years for these things to be fully deformed into what are called lotus pedals or new moons or whatever, because it's a bandage you unbind. And they actually would need the broken foot. Keep it broken and dry it all out real good because infection like the toes would cut into the foot if they weren't clipped properly. So infection and gangrene is too tight. All big threats to losing their feet. Right. Because if you wrap them too tight, they can become gangrenous because you get gangrene, which is a massive loss of dead tissue due to poor circulation. So the foot could just fall off. And like you're saying, if you don't clip the toenails chuck, you have to do that every day or every time you unwrap and then wrap your feet. And then even worse than that, if you didn't wrap them pretty quickly after you bathed them every day or other day, they could start to lose their shape, which apparently was as painful as the initial footballing procedure. Yeah. Like once your foot has started to take shape, if you wanted to say, no, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore, it was just as painful for the foot to undo itself because it's already malformed. But there was like you didn't think that. I think once this happened to you from your mom or whatever. And you grew a little older and you started to take over for yourself and you were bathing and wrapping your own feet every other day. You understood why you are doing this. Because footballing was so important that you could be just completely poverty stricken and some rich dude would still be like. I like your feet a lot. Two and a half inches. Yeah. I can't even breathe right now. Because your feet are so deformed that I want to marry you. And beyond being wrong and gross and oppressive and all that stuff, it was just so odd to me that that was like a turn on. Yes. And, man, it was a turn on. Like, footballing was highly erotic. You guys are like, nice feet. Trust me. I get that. But he's deformed. I just don't get it. But this is pretty much a national foot fetish. Yeah. And it was nationalized, it was cultural and it was extraordinarily widespread. Like we said, about 3 billion women over the course of 1000 years bound their feet. Yes. And it had a lot of odd effects, side effects that went along with it. Yeah. When 3 billion people do something that hobbles them, there are going to be some weird repercussions yeah. That you don't think about. One thing it definitely did was it fostered dominance over women because of the simple fact that if a woman is being beaten, she can't run away. A woman can't travel very far, period. So they're going to hang around their village and their house and so it's like hobbling somebody. Right. All of a sudden they can't get around as well. So they're just dependent on you. Right. And they really aren't traveling much. Not a lot of traveling going on when your feet are bound. And then also the fact that women with bound feet had trouble walking meant that the architecture of China kind of was created to help us out. Like, they had to lean on windows or walls. I mean, so buildings were built close together so the average woman could lean on a wall while she was walking. Yeah. And there weren't a lot of six story walk ups in ancient China. Man, that would have been cruel. Everything was one story as a result. So it had a weird impact on the architecture and what else? Colonization. Yeah. That was a really big one. Surprising. Yeah. You know, most people realize that China didn't do a lot of exploring while the rest of the world was it just kind of isolated itself and shut itself off. And one of the reasons given for that was that the women were footbound and they couldn't travel. Like women in other countries who could walk normally did. So with the Chinese women unable to travel and I guess, see the sites, their men didn't want to leave them, so they stayed at home. And actually, the areas that didn't practice footbinding are the ones that actually did go out and colonize other places. Like the Philippines. Right. They were southern China. Yeah. Or the Old West. Every great old west show has, like, the one Chinese immigrant family with the ponytails. Yeah. The article points out, like, we're being hard on it because it's easy to look today at some antiquated practice. It's really cruel and unusual and weird. But at the time the women wanted their feet bound, there were great bonds between the generations because it was such a cultural thing between the women. Oh, yeah. They would sew their shoes together. I listened to this one, NPR Fresh Air that interviewed some of these old Chinese ladies that still are some of the last surviving ones. And a couple of them said, I really regret it now. It's been a lifetime of pain. But most of them said, no, we wanted to do it, and I'm very proud of the fact that we did this. Yeah. And these are women who are confronted with the outside world and they still feel pride about their bound feet. You can imagine how much pride a woman had in her bound feet. While it was the norm, because it was basically the norm in China and these women weren't going out anywhere else. So if you had really nice bound feet, that was a huge point of pride for you. So one of the other weird things we need to talk about is sexy time. Because we talked about foot fetishes and things. But it really like something happened in the water at this time where Chinese men really got into it and they would take the shoe off in these odd deformed feet and they would. Like. Do weird things like drink the water that they bathe their feet in or put nuts between the toes and eat the nuts from their toes and just really odd things. I also read that it became another orifice I guess, if you can imagine. Oh, really? Yeah. And even outside of that, I guess one of the more normal things to do is to bury your face in the center of the bottom of the foot and really get like a good way motor boat notice smell it got you. And then, Chuck, we should point out that if you're doing that, if you're burying your face in the foreign foot of a foot bound woman, one of the things that happens pretty commonly when your feet are bound is that they develop pustules that break and stink. So there is a I read one guy, a contemporary report from several centuries ago saying that there is no other smell like it in the world. Nothing as sexy as a deformed foot was leaking, stinky pustules. Exactly. Wow. Yeah. There was a definite fetish that grew up around it. There was at least one sex manual released with, I think, 48 different things to do with a bound for yeah. Wow. And the shoes we didn't talk about the shoes. They play a role in that eroticism as well, about the strengthening of the muscles. Yeah, that's a big part. Yes. Apparently there was a theory at least that because they had to walk so funny and oddly, that their vaginal muscles were extra strong and thus more pleasurable to the man. Right. So the average woman with football shoe with bound feet I'm sorry, everybody, she had at least four pairs of shoes. You had to, or else there was no point. Sure. In having bound feet. You had to have one for each season. Ideally, you had at least four pairs per season, so 16. Some women had hundreds of these, and they were designed to really show off, like, hey, look at my bound feet, buddy. That's what they were there for. But there was one specific one that were always red. They were your wedding shoes. That's right. And inside there was erotic embroidery, which the husband, the new husband and the new wife would look at and try out together. It's kind of an instruction manual for the bride by her mother or the women of the town, like, just do this. Here's a picture of what you're supposed to do tonight. Yeah. And slippers period, I think, were just almost like the lingerie of the time, because the bedroom slippers were more, like, embroidered, more sexily as well than just your average I got to go to the shop and pick up some rice. So the Chinese Communists came along, Mao and his comrades, and said, you know what? You're a woman. We don't care. Get to work digging ditches and all your bound feet hurt you. Well, I guess you're going to starve because we give food based on how much work you did. If you don't do the work, you're going to starve death. That led to the real conclusion of footbinding. And apparently today they say with great authority that no one does it any longer. Yeah. That's good to know. Yeah. I'm surprised that it completely died out, because do you think there'd be, like, some remote families here? There but it's possible. Well, welcome to the modern age is what I say. Isn't that just a bizarre, strange chapter? Thousand year chapter in one of the most populous nations on the planet's history totes and very few people know about it. Yeah. Well, now a lot more people. Do you have anything else? No. There's no place we can direct people to voice their outrage because it doesn't happen anymore. No, but I'm sure we're going to get a lot of suggestions for female genital mutilation. We should probably do that one. Female circumcision. We haven't done that. No, we did. Male circumcision. I don't think we talked about female. I think we mentioned it and said we'll do that later. Oh, well, there you have it. We'll do it again. Okay. So if you want to learn more about footbinding and see some pictures of some unshod bound feet, you can type Footbinding in the search bar@houseworks.com. It'll bring up this article. And I said search bar, which means it's time for a message break. Now, listen to mail, right? That's right. I'm going to call this we're plugging something. Okay. When we asked to plug things, we get a lot of people right in for, like, good charities, and we can only do a certain amount of them otherwise we'd be reading charity plugs all the time. So apologies to those who don't get theirs read. But this is from Kate Have. She said don't worry about paying my last name wrong. No one does. If you just did, you get a fruit basket. I demand one. Havana. It's got to be German. That's good stuff. She lives in Bozeman, Montana. She says it's the most beautiful place on earth and she's just been listening for a few months because her brother Jack is awesome and turned her onto it. So during listener mail, guys, you supported some really awesome charities and groups that try to make the world a better place. A friend of mine works for such a place. It's a coffee brewing company called Brown Water Coffee, which got started here in Bozeman a few years ago and is now based in Denver. The great thing about these guys is that 15% of their profits go directly to getting clean water to those who need it. Hence the great double meeting of the name Brown Water. Oh wow. They're also a small company with only a handful of employees, but so far I've done an amazing job. Not only is it great cause, but their package design is awesome. And I can say that because I'm a recent grad of graphic design for Montana State University. Bobcat, the coffee is fantastic and actually it's really some of the best I've ever had. So she highly recommend. No seriously, they sell it in shops, mostly in the north west at the moment. So unfortunately you won't be able to get your hands on it. But if you send me an address, I'll be more than happy to send some along. Do they sell it online? You would think so. Online. She said check them out on Facebook. Soon they will have their website back up and running after a quick redesign. I'd be ecstatic if you mention them on the show. Shout out to Ricky, owner and founder, and Katie, graphic designer, and Stevie who was the master brewer at Brownwater Coffee. So hopefully by the time this comes out they'll have their website up and running. So I imagine if you search for Brown Water Coffee it would come up, right? I would think in this day and age you've got to be able to find something else online. I would think so by the time it comes out. So get with the Brown Water Coffee if you haven't already. Thank you, Kate. Yeah, thanks for writing in Kate. It's pretty awesome. I feel like they owe you some coffee or something for that. Sure. If you have an awesome nonprofit organization charity that we can help out by giving a plug, you can send stuff to our Twitter handle, the at symbol, SYSK, podcast, all one word. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffychildnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and check out our website. It's got some good stuff on it. It's called stuffyoushaneknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, Netflix, streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www, dot netflix. comStuff and sign up now. 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. 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." |
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